Blackpool Tower

For a considerable amount of time through my life, I believed that Blackpool Tower had been constructed as a prototype for the Eiffel Tower in Paris. I’m not sure where I gained this belief, although I suspect it originated, as so many long-held and unquestioned beliefs do, in the school playground. Some believable kid probably told us in a sage and wise tone about the origins of the Eifel Tower being in a Lancastrian seaside resort. This unremebered child didn’t offer any explanation as to why Gustave Eiffel had decided to come to the windy north west of England to test out his design. Or perhaps we simply believed that he had copied the Blackpool Tower (the reality is that Blackpool Tower was inspired by the Eiffel Tower).

Whatever the case, I never event thought to question any of this knowledge until much later in life whereupon at some point I guess I suddenly had a random realisation that it was all a load of bullshit.

I had similar beliefs about the Tyne Bridge in Newcastle being a prototype for the Sydney Harbour Bridge as well, although, in that case, the builders and designers of the two bridges were the same, and the Tyne Bridge predates it’s larger Sydney version by a few years.

Yashicamat 124G & JCH Street Pan 400. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9mins @ 20°

Taken 1 July 2023.