The Spanish City and Whitley Bay Pleasure Gardens opened in May 1910. Recently refurbished into bars and restaurants, it has also previously housed amusement arcades, a ballroom, the Starlight Rooms bar, and of course the famous rides and sideshows.
Immortalised in Tunnel of Love by Dire Straits, I attended school lessons here during the caretakers’ strike in the Winter of Discontent, and it was also the subject of the first piece I wrote for a writing course in 1995.
Previously unpublished.
The Spanna
The Spanish City is a fairground situated above the promenade in Whitley Bay, a small, northern seaside town. Far from being the busy, bustling place I remember from childhood, today it is near-deserted.
The last day of the school holidays, it seems the very end of summer. The sun pokes hopefully through the clouds just enough to illuminate the scene below the large white dome of the adjoining ballroom.
Multi-coloured rides stand in silent contrast to the pervading greyness of the concrete floor and low sky: the carousel with horses of red, white and gilt; dodgem cars in yellow, green and blue; roundabouts, swings and trains all provide a palette of motionless colour, eager to spark to life and paint the day.
Workmen shuffle past one another clutching full toolboxes and teacups half drained, while ride operators slouch, with only their empty purses for company. In the background, Dire Straits fights a musical battle with electronically piped organ music and the scent of fried food wafts over from nearby vans.
Bored-looking, teenage stall holders, complete with uniform crew cuts and love bites, chat distractedly to each other. Tattooed men and their peroxide-blonde partners keep a watchful eye on their Lycra-clad children, who race by empty side stalls from ride to ride. The roller-coaster, the pirates’ ship and the Psycho Ghost Train all wait, redundant until an eager child steps forward, clutching a ticket to ride. Suddenly, the background music is drowned by a great pneumatic ‘WHOOSH’ as ‘England’s finest set of golden galloping horses’ rattle into life, racing jockey-less, save one solitary passenger, after each other in endless circles.
From the ‘Stars and Stripes’ fish and chip shop to the ice cream parlour resplendent in the colours of the star-spangled banner, ‘The Spanna’ seems preoccupied with Americanization. Signs scattered between traditional attractions such as the bingo and hook-a-duck exhort people to ‘have a nice day’ and at the same time warn; ‘NO ALCOHOL IN FUN PARK.’ There seems to be precious little fun in the fun park this day.
Amongst the many empty side stalls is one belonging to Abigail Lee: ‘expert palmist and crystal ball reader’. The stall is locked tight and the windows boarded. Madam Lee may well have seen something everyone else missed, packed up and shipped out south for the winter.