Whitley grey

JUST two others step down from the train at Whitley Bay station, 10am on August bank holiday Saturday. One of them stops, belches loudly and in the echoing emptiness of that once-cacophonous concourse awaits the reverberation, as if stepping back to admire his handiwork.

A Northumbria police banner hangs above the portico, welcoming to Whitley.

“Get drunk, get violent, get disorderly – get locked up,” it says. If not foul of the black economy, then Whitley Bay is a victim of the night-time one.

Fifty years ago, 30 even, eager families would be teeming down Station Road like lowsed-out lemmings, intent only on bucketing onto the beach or disporting el-bent at the Spanish City.

The sun used to shine then, too.

Now Station Road, Whitley Bay itself, is all but deserted. The bed and breakfasts, those that remain, advertise that “contractors” are welcome and by contractors, they mean working men with working ways. The signs proclaim vacancies, but what they mean is voids.

The Shimmer Sun Studio is but a pale imitation. Another’s called Bronzed, which must not be confused with browned off.

The pubs promote happy hours, happy hours which may last for days and still barely raise a laugh.

There’s a pet hotel which may be busier than the two-legged sort, a sign announcing that Al Forno is coming but without explaining whether Al Forno is a restaurant or a music hall comedian washed up on the morning tide.

The old place stirs memories, of course, but not really all that many.

Whitley was for high days, if not holidays.

Whitley was posh, posh as periwinkles, and when posh came to shove it gave in.

From the station to the seafront, maybe 600 yards away, I pass just four people.

IN truth it’s a last of the summer wine morning, really quite pleasant, though the rest of Whitley Bay seems to have opened an eye, seen the sunshine, assumed it a dream and collectively drawn the blankets over its head.

When the sun shines, which desultorily it does, there can be few finer coastal views in the North-East than northwards across Whitley Bay beach and to St Mary’s lighthouse, or few finer beaches, either.

The sands remain largely unvisited for all that, almost solely populated by brown ale-bellied young gentlemen with T-shirt messages like “Kiss my airs” and faces on back-to-front.

It’s the morning after the bachelor night before and this is a stag head start.

Another is dressed as Batman. Unless it’s Al Forno, there’s no sign of The Joker. Whatever else they are, they’re not Bolton Wanderers preparing for that afternoon’s match at St James’s.

The moribund promenade, the whole town, has a gamut of Asian restaurants. I spend half the day vainly trying to think of a collective name for them.

The lower promenade is almost permanently steel shuttered, save for a neatly named restaurant called Down Under – “Fresh stuff made by the owner,” it promises – and for the lifeguard and the lavvies, both vital in emergency.

Another group of unlikely lads plays football against the shutters. If it’s this noisy at noon, what’s it like at midnight?

There are clubs with singular names like Envy, Sin, Deep and Heat, though not of course Deep Heat, which is something you rub on for the rheumatiz. On what may be the strip, Echo – Echo, for shame – has strippers.

In the Café Mediterraneo, full English £4.95, a group is planning a day trip – from, not to, the seaside. In the Whitley Bay News Guardian (nee Seaside Chronicle) a correspondent writes of grim seafront, dire times and nothing to do, especially for families.

“If it weren’t so sad, North Tyneside Council’s continued inability to decide the future of Whitley Bay would be laughable,” she says.

The paper also has a story about the town’s newest police inspector – experience of Newcastle city centre will serve him well, he says – and of the sand castle building competition.

The kids got little badges saying “I had a great time in Whitley Bay”; their elders may disagree. There are those who remember the Bay of plenty; now it seems the Bay of pigs.

YET on the grass near what remains of the fabled Spanish City are notice boards which talk loudly of regeneration and of masterplan, which promise hotels and housing, a skate park and a major facelift for the Playhouse.

Whatever it sounds like, the Playhouse is a theatre and not one of those places with distorting mirrors, concave walls and ever-rolling barrels.

Only the great funfair’s Grade II-listed dome – once white, now mucky, murky grey – remains, peeping like a rheum-eyed Chad above the builders’ boards.

It may not be akin to the stately pleasure dome which Kubla Khan in Xanadu decreed, but it’s Grade II-listed, almost 100 years old and a symbol and a reminder of altogether better days.

Among the proposals for its future, from a group called the Culture Quarter Company, is that it becomes a national centre for mind sports – they could hardly call them mind games – like chess, Scrabble and backgammon.

Like The Little Engine That Could, Whitley Bay may become the town which thinks it can.

Though a global sum of £60m is tossed about, the problem for Whitley is that it has become a player in a sort of regeneration game, ideas forever going round on a conveyor belt but with little sign of any worthwhile prizes.

Back on the promenade, the amount of weeds a civic disgrace, the boarded buildings burgeoning, the familiar clock has long-stopped at 11.30. It’s opening time and the few afoot seem already to have fallen in.

August bank holiday Saturday, 2008.

Whitley Bay again drinks afresh, but it drinks in the last chance saloon.

Bay watch

Twenty things you may never have known about Whitley Bay

THE town was known simply as Whitley until the death in Edinburgh in 1897 of Osmond Tearle, a well-known actor/manager. Following his request to be buried in St Paul’s churchyard, Whitley, his coffin was loaded onto a train and the hearse awaited at the station. Sadly, however, the coffin was taken to Whitby – down the coast in North Yorkshire – highlighting the frequent Victorian confusion between the two towns and causing the funeral to be delayed by a day. Following a competition in the Seaside Chronicle, the new name of “Whitley Bay” was judged the most suitable.

A village of just 300 people at the start of the 19th Century, Whitley Bay grew rapidly after the arrival of the railway in 1882. By 1901 the population was 6,800. It’s now put at 37,500 – the 25th most populous seaside town in Britain.

Like neighbouring seaside towns, Whitley Bay was served by the Tyneside “electric loop” railway from 1904 until the station’s closure on September 10, 1979, the LNER posters proclaiming “Life is gay at Whitley Bay”. For some reason they don’t use that gambit any more. The Metro station opened in its place 11 months later.

After the Seaham-based ship Lovely Nelly was driven onto rocks at Briardene during a New Year’s Day blizzard in 1861, Whitley Bay’s women hauled the lifeboat over the headland. The history doesn’t say where the men were. Only Tommy the cabin boy was lost.

“Glasgow fortnight” in the 1940s and 1950s attracted tens of thousands of Scots to the town – with pipe bands to greet them at the station.

Famous Whitley Bay residents have included Biggles writer W E Johns, “Guinness artist” John Gilroy, Animals guitarist Hilton Valentine, England rugby player Toby Flood and Gladstone Adams – a former mayor who’s the man who invented windscreen wipers.

The 1970s television series Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads plodged up to the oxters in references to Whitley Bay.

In One Foot in the Grave, Victor Meldrew’s friends Ronnie and Mildred were said to be from Whitley Bay – though the suggestion that they “bugger off back there” may have been characteristically unkind.

The Duke of Northumberland remains Lord of the Manor and principal landowner in the area.

A “K4” red telephone box, one of only 50 ever made and with an adjoining stamp machine, still stands outside the railway station – “Post Office” instead of “Telephone” in the glass on two sides. The telephone still works; the stamp machine doesn’t.

In the children’s television series Byker Grove, Dave Richmond – the leader of the rival gang from Denwell Burn – was a drug dealer from Whitley Bay. His trademark act of violence was the “Whitley Smile” which is sadly unexplained.

There’s been a lighthouse on St Mary’s Island since medieval times, the present 38-metre tower with 137 steps erected in 1898 and the base for an Enid Blyton television series. It was taken out of service in 1984.

The island was originally known as Bates Island after Thomas Bates, surveyor for Northumberland in Elizabeth I’s reign. On the OS map it’s mistakenly identified as Bait Island – an off-the-map impression that they dug for worms.

In 1799 the island was used to house Russian soldiers who’d developed cholera on a voyage south to fight Napoleon. Many are buried there.

Though not completed until 1910, the Spanish City is said to have been given its name six years earlier when Charles Elderton, who ran the Theatre Royal across the river in Hebburn, brought his Toreadors concert party to perform. The dome is a Grade II listed building.

Dire Straits’ 1980 hit Tunnel of Love mentioned the Spanish City and for years became the amusement park’s unofficial theme song, played every morning. Dire Straits frontman Mark Knopfler once said the Spanish City was the first place he heard rock and roll music played “really loud”.

The Marks & Spencer food store in Whitley Bay is said to be the most profitable per square foot after the flagship Oxford Street store in London.

An online petition to 10 Downing Street urges Gordon Brown to think hard about the “mind sports” proposals.

Now billed as “The coolest place in town”, Whitley Bay ice rink was also a major music venue until the opening of Newcastle Arena – hosting bands like The Cure, Oasis and Stone Roses.

Between 10am-1.30pm this Sunday, St Mary’s lighthouse marks its 110th birthday with traditional seaside games, activities and stalls. Details on 0191-2008650.