Tiny Tuesday - The Kursaal

This china thimble depicts the Southend Kursaal, which has stood for over 100 years on the seafront at Southend-on-Sea. Along with countless people from the area, I have a soft spot for it for personal reasons. My parents met there in the late 1940’s at a Saturday night dance in the ballroom, to the music of Howard Baker and his orchestra. Dad was very shy and reserved, and hid behind a pillar on the balcony trying to pluck up courage to ask Mum for a dance. Happily he did, and they married in November 1949. They spent the next 65 years together, raising the three of us girls and having many adventures along the way, all in happy unison and with never a raised voice between them.

I saw my first rock concert in that same ballroom in 1976 - The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, which was really exciting. The building had deteriorated quite a lot in the intervening three decades since Mum and Dad went there, but was still functioning inside and out as a concert venue, amusement arcade and fairground.

It was renovated in the late 1990’s, but sadly the pandemic saw it close in 2019 never to reopen since. Its future is now uncertain, but there are people fighting for this iconic and much-loved Grade II listed building to be saved. My extra is a postcard from my collection which was sent in 1907.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kursaal_(amusement_park)

Many thanks to Pinkhairedlady for hosting Tiny Tuesday in March.