Daily Archives: 23rd February 2024

I’ve begun gathering these remnants in the months before the book comes out, in part as it’s hard to let go of a project that’s obsessed me for the past three years. Now, sorting through the piles of postcards and old booklets, beachcombings, cuttings and photographs, I am repeatedly drawn back into their stories.

Before it began to collapse into the sea, Uncle Tom’s Cabin was Blackpool’s first entertainment venue. It's said to have started out as a ginger beer stall in the 1850s, selling sweets and nuts, with fortunes told by 'Gipsy Sarah'. With a traveller encampment on nearby cliffs since the 1830s, Sarah's husband Ned was among the first to settle there.