A Safe Harbour - Book review

Benita Brown (1937-2014) published almost two dozen novels. A Safe Harbour was her thirteenth novel, a saga set in the Northeast of England. 

This well-written saga is set mainly in Cullercoats, in 1895. Eighteen-year-old Kate Lawson has striking Titian hair and is known to be bright and a worthy catch for any local man, but she has chosen Jos, a fisherman. Unfortunately, shortly before their wedding, Jos dies at sea due to a foolish accident. When her drunken father discovers she is pregnant, she is banished from the family home. Kate has to rely on the kindness of her aunt.

Richard Adamson, the handsome owner of a fleet of steam trawlers, is not popular among the fishermen as his new boats are more efficient and claim bigger catches. Despite her family’s enmity towards Adamson, she falls in love with him. Yet she cannot reveal her shame to him or anyone else in the community. The best she can hope for is to move abroad, heartbroken, to be confined with a relative in North America…

Brown was a north-easterner and it shows in her characterisation and depiction of the area and period. Many of the places named are familiar to me, not least Cullercoats, Tynemouth, Whitley, Jesmond, Newcastle, and Monkseaton. There is a smidgen of Geordie jargon, but nothing that is too incomprehensible. A family doctor figures, too, by the name of Phillips; which reminded me of our Whitley Bay family physicians, Doctors Phillips and Vardy, both of whom sported bow-ties!

Adamson is made from the broadcloth of Victorian heroes, and Kate is his equal in her strength of character.

Highly recommended.

The Spanish City in England

Anyone who has visited Whitley Bay (my home town) on the north-east coast of England will have heard of the Spanish City. I grew up with this fairground as part of my life. On the waltzers, I suffered a split lip when I inadvertently hit the safety bar. I lost money on the penny amusement machines, got my face covered in the sugary cobwebs of candy floss, and believed the people who ran all the rides and games were magical. Little did I know then that I would move to Spain to live!

The Spanish City was founded in 1908 and formally opened in 1910, when a dance hall was added.

The Spanish City, 1910 - Wikipedia commons

The Spanish City earned its name in 1904 when Charles Elderton, who ran Hebburn's Theatre Royal, brought his Toreadors concert party troupe to perform there. The City was formally opened by Robert Mason, chair of the local council, at 7:30pm on Saturday, May 7, 1910, when it was known as The Spanish City and Whitley Pleasure Gardens. The new building housed a 1400-capacity theatre, shops, cafes, and roof gardens.

In 1920, the Spanish City became the Empress Ballroom. In 1979 the Rotunda Ballroom was converted into the starlight rooms for live entertainment.

 

Its funfair was extremely popular with fairground rides and amusements, including a 'Corkscrew' roller coaster—which has now moved to Flamingoland in Yorkshire—ghost train and the waltzers, the House that Jack Built, and the Fun House.

Its centrepiece was its distinctive dome, now a Grade 2 listed building; when it was built it was believed to be the second largest unsupported concrete dome in the UK. There are towers on either side of the entrance to the fairground, and situated on top of them two half-life-size female lead figures, one carrying a cymbal, the other a tambourine. The building's architects were from a local firm.

The Dome has had a number of uses over the years as a ballroom, amusement arcade, and Laser Quest Laser Tag Arena.

The band Dire Straits immortalized the Spanish City in their 1980 Mark Knopfler song, "Tunnel of Love," and thereafter the song was played every morning when the park opened. Cullercoats and Whitley Bay are also mentioned in the song.

All things considered, it lasted a long time but was mostly demolished in the late 1990s.

[Most facts supplied by Wikipedia, the rest from memory...]