Forums Forums Wirral History : Chasing the Past Wirral History New Brighton Palace

There was indeed an accident involving a 'Concorde Flyer', but not the one at New Brighton.

From the accident report:

"On 26 December 1978 one arm of a fairground machine known as the ‘Concorde Flyer’ installed at the Kelvin Hall, Glasgow, Scotland, fractured due to fatigue. The car attached to the arm overturned, killing two passengers."

Excellent write up & Pics upton


me pops use to work on them waltzers




Thanks For Sharing

Forgot how 'majestic' looking the waltzers were. Cheers.

I hadn't realised those rides in the 80s were so old....

IMO that is what we should be doing with New Brighton now. Not another supermarket! Lets have a Tower and outdoor pool and so on back!

Haha it is very likely given the lack of H&S in days gone by, these incidents even happen on expensive modern rides; one of the cars on "Enterprise" in Alton Towers flew off in pre-season testing this year, though fortunately nobody was on the ride (presumably why they have rigourous pre-season testing lol).

Fortunately for Alton (money-wise), it flew off in the direction of the tree's and was only on a slow setting, had it been going fast and hit Oblivion or Submission, the X-Sector would have been out of action for much of the 2009 season!

So it certainly would'nt surprise me if an incident like this had happened at New Brighton at some point in the past.

I now own the waltzer from New Brighton and am busy restoring the machine. I attach a photo of how the machine looked when new.

Does anyone else have any photos of the Waltzer?

If so I would love to hear from you

Thanks

David



New Palace - Wilkies Wonder Waltzer Click Me

Good look david

Upton, may i say, what an exellent report!

Thanks for sharing, i remember the jets! i loved that ride, and those waltzers are a part of everyones memory i think.

I`d love it if they rebuilt the new brighton tower and ballroom, my god, i didn`t realise the scale of the place it looks gigantic, would of loved to have seen it

couple more pics for the thread, New Brighton tower 1960 and the illuminated pier

Unbelievable that welost something so good.. That would draw some serious crowds in the summer now days

I ran a shop in the palace for nearly 6 years and also helped out the maintenance crew during the winter.
The forman of the maintenance crew recorded hours of footage when the rides were removed.
I've got loads of footage of the redevelopment/ part demolishion of the palace some years ago, I'll try to get them on to my pc someday.

Not a myth at all. It happened in Moreton in the early sixties I think? Couple on honeymoon and she was thrown off the ride and into the gear mechanism in the middle. Decapitated her. A former work colleague of mine was a special policeman involved with it but wasn't told what he was going to. He puked! I would have too!

what was the ride in the far corner? Was that concorde? Went on it when they did the sunday market in the 80s. Cheap sweets and rides. And a sick feeling lol

From the Birkenhead and Cheshire Advertiser 28th November 1896:

now!!!

wow that wheel is huuuuge.. I wish they did built it

It was not the jets ride that was in the corner. It was along the back wall between the ghost train and the location of the 'Easy rider' carousel that is on one of the previous photos in this thread. It was mostly orange and surrounded by hoardings with pictures of glamorous women with white feathers in their hair and diamonds etc. It was very like a 'Matterhorn' type ride like this except I think the cars where suspended by a single arm in the middle of the car. It was only there a short time during the 80s. I only saw it on 2 occasions.

The story about a car flying off could easily have been utter tosh.