Scarborough's Victorian cliff lift celebrates 150th birthday
"There are a lot of people who have grown up and come to Scarborough with their grandparents or their parents and now they're bringing their children back to the lift," he said."It's a 40-second journey but it just seems to be quite memorable - it's that nostalgia as well."The Spa Cliff Lift was heralded as "a marvel of Victorian engineering" and used to transport passengers between the hotels on the Esplanade and the spa.It cost £8,000 to build and was originally powered by water and gas engines until it was converted to run on electricity in the 1950s.
Alan Wilson, the lift's longest-serving supervisor, said he has "no plans to retire just yet"."I've worked on the lift for 23 years, and I still love it," he said."The best part is seeing visitors come back year after year. Everyone has a story to tell about the lift – it's part of what makes Scarborough so special."The weekend celebrations will include a live brass band, and Scarborough-based arts group Animated Objects will display working models of the lifts.Artwork commissioned in honour of the anniversary can also be viewed in the recently redeveloped South Cliff Gardens.
Artist Adrian Lewis and poet Charlotte Riley collaborated to create the piece, which captures people's memories of both the lift and the gardens as "micro-poems".These are displayed on small metal plaques, designed to look like Victorian lift tickets.Ms Riley said: "It's about people condensing down their treasured memories in very few words - they're very personal snippets of stories but quite a lot of them have really universal appeal."The programme of entertainment events for the Spa Cliff Lift anniversary will run from 11:00 BST to 17:00 BST between 5-6 July.
Listen to highlights from North Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North.
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