The Parks Art Deco Cafe

The Parks Art Deco cafe is frankly stunning. A majestic art deco building set in beautiful Stanley Park, the cafe was built in 1926 and is grade two listed. It is owned by Blackpool council and is fully licensed, although as we went for breakfast we didn’t indulge in the glorious jugs of Pimms they had advertised. There is seating both indoors and outdoors facing the Italian gardens, so wherever you choose to sit you certainly have a room with a view.

When I was in Blackpool last month, the local historian Ted Lightbown also took me to the Stanley Park Café, which is situated in the very impressive and expansive Stanley Park in the Great Marton and Layton area. Still described and marketed as an Art Deco café, the cafe is a very popular place to go, and is well maintained by a subsidiary of Blackpool Council. Although, not ‘seaside moderne’ architecture, it is a striking piece of early modernist architecture, and has many interior features of art deco architecture. The park and the café were designed by architect Thomas Mawson in the 1920s, after the population of Blackpool grew significantly from 1870 to 1900, and there needed to be an outdoor space for the inhabitant’s recreation.

On a busy day, like when I visited, you have to look up to really appreciate the Art Deco detail. The most distinctive of features are the figurative grates around the top half of the walls, which outline leisure activities such as a woman playing tennis and a woman dancing, and a ship in full sail. There is also very stylish 1930s lighting and skylights, as well as curved mahogany entrance and exit doors and steel framed windows.