Southend: Future of iconic Kursaal building to be discussed
The leaseholder of an iconic seaside venue has confirmed it is working on plans "for a viable future" for it. The Kursaal in Southend-on-Sea opened in 1901 and has hosted acts such as Queen and AC/DC but last year it was added to Victorian Society's top 10 list of endangered buildings after being left to deteriorate.Southend-on-Sea City Council owns the freehold of the land but London-based property group AEW has a 200-year lease on the of the Grade II-listed building. A spokesperson for AEW said it was "looking forward" to discussing the results of a public meeting on Thursday with organiser and MP Bayo Alaba.
'Exhilarating building'
The Kursaal was thought to have been the world's first purpose-built amusement park with a circus, ballroom, arcade, dining hall, billiard room, an ice rink and even its own zoo. Comedian Griff Rhys-Jones, Essex-raised and president of the Victorian Society, told BBC Essex the Kursaal was "an exhilarating building" as it was placed on its endangered list in 2024.
Bayo Alaba, the Labour MP for Southend East and Rochford, described the Kursaal as "one of the most iconic buildings in the south of England".The MP - who will chair the public meeting on Thursday 19 June at Belle Vue Baptist Church - told the BBC he had spoken with both the council and the leaseholder to "spark a conversation" about the Kursaal's future."They're keen," Mr Alaba said about AEW, adding : "They know they've got a symbolic building... they want to do something with it".Mr Alaba said he felt that the leaseholder was "serious about getting the building back into community use"."[The Kursaal] is central to the community, it's important to civic pride," he told the BBC."The fact that it's closed - it sends almost a subliminal message that Southend isn't open for business, and we need to fix that."
How the Kursaal changed over time
The venue has had many different leases of life, and was even the home of Southend United before the club moved to Roots Hall.Later it housed a casino, bowling alley, and hosted a number of major bands including Dr Feelgood, Black Sabbath and the Kursaal Flyers.The Victorian Society said the Kursaal's Wall of Death motorcycle rides were the first such spectacle in Britain.The whole complex finally closed its doors in 1986 with its ballroom demolished that year.Following years of dereliction, and millions of pounds spent on restoration, it re-opened 1998.But presently, only a Tesco Express occupies a small part of the building.
Southend-on-Sea City Council leader Daniel Cowan will also be at Thursday's meeting, which starts at 19:00 BST.Mr Cowan said the council was "keen to bring the Kursaal back into public use and we will pull every lever at our disposal to see that happen"."This icon of Southend deserves a present and future that befits its glorious past, so we're delighted to have the backing of Bayo Alaba MP in making that happen."A spokesperson for AEW said the group was "looking forward to discussing the feedback at a meeting we have arranged with Mr Alaba later this month"."We continue to work on plans for a viable future for the Kursaal, but are not in a position to comment further at this stage," they added.
Follow Essex news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Sun
an hour ago
- The Sun
Blackmail horror for EastEnders teenager as sexual predator Joel targets another victim
EASTENDERS villain Joel Marshall has sunk to a new low - by blackmailing Tommy Moon over the sick sexual assault. The teenage incel tricked his pal Tommy into filming a prank on the tube that was actually a pre-meditated sexual assault on a random woman. 2 Joel was caught after the woman complained and Tommy fled, horrified at what had happened. In today's episode Tommy was cornered by Joel's stepmother Vicky who threatened him into keeping quiet or she would ensure he suffered for Joel's actions too. Despite Vicki's threats, Tommy spent most of the day trying to avoid Joel, determined to escape his grasp. But when he found him in the cafe, he had no choice and tried to put distance between them. However Joel wasn't having any of it. Instead, the incel creep decided to force Tommy to be his friend with a vile threat. Tommy told him: 'All I'm saying is… we might not be able to hang out as much.' Joel replied: 'Meh. Do what you like. I'm ain't really that bothered. Just don't forget who your real mates are. I ain't told Vicki about you having that video. I easily could've done, I thought we were good.' He then told Tommy that he could delete the video so he didn't get in trouble - and just asked him to forward it to him first. Tommy fell for it and then Joel told him: 'You do know that you're not completely off the hook though, right? EastEnders fans horrified as incel plot takes very dark twist and Joel's actions are exposed 'Well now it's on my phone and it's obvious that you filmed it and you shared it with me. 'Don't look so worried. We're mates again so I'm not going to snitch on you just like you're not going to snitch on me.' Tommy looked trapped by Joel's threats and things are only going to get worse for the troubled teenager.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Loyle Carner: Hopefully! review – rap sweetheart faces family, fear and the feels
Loyle Carner raps like he has a lump in his throat and tears in his eyes. Wonder, nostalgia, love, hurt, excitement, hard-won peace: these are the emotions his voice tends to catch on. When combined with his typically blissed-out sonics – feathery breakbeats, dreamy piano figures, delicate synth washes, gently plucked guitars – the results are often very nice. Sometimes a bit too nice. So it is on Feel at Home, the sentimental love song that opens the 30-year-old's fourth album, Hopefully! Carner – whose moniker is a spoonerism of his real name, Benjamin Coyle-Larner – never makes music that is boring or basic. As well as the slushy lyrics and comfortingly toasty chords, Feel at Home is buttressed by madly skittering percussion and what sounds like a blurry reproduction of young children's playground chatter. But much like the outpouring of earnestness and loveliness on the Croydon-raised rapper's first two albums, Hopefully! may well have you hankering for a shred of dissonance or disruption – especially after 2022's Mercury-shortlisted Hugo, which gratifyingly offset Carner's trademark tenderness with a more abrasive sonic palette. Initially, the musician seems to have moved on – or perhaps backwards – from that record. Then he starts singing. Carner has said he was duped into doing so by his producer, Avi Barath (he originally thought his vocal track was a placeholder for another performer). It was a trick worth playing: whenever Carner slips into his low-pitched, totally unaffected croon, it cuts through any over-sweetness like a squeeze of lemon. The combination works particularly well on the exceptional In My Mind – whose lugubrious self-laceration and loose, clattery instrumentation recalls King Krule's thrilling early work, while always remaining characteristically Carner – as well as in the choruses of Lyin and Strangers. The latter's sing-song central refrain is flatly murmured in a way that feels authentically uncertain and all the more appealing for it. Vulnerability has always been Carner's lyrical stock-in-trade. It tends to manifest in two ways, first in open-hearted sincerity that has generated songs about grief and ADHD, and which is in full flow on the album's title track: 'You give me hope in humankind, but are humans kind? / I don't know but I hope so.' Second, in a less anodyne and far more striking form of introspection: on In My Mind, he admits a tendency towards myopic self-obsession and alludes to the bitter dismissal of a 'minor friend'. Carner has two young children, and the artwork for Hopefully! features the kind of felt-tip scrawl most toddler-wranglers will recognise. Parenting is the album's major theme, and there are moments when Carner approaches it from a compellingly raw angle. On About Time, covering the tensions between fatherhood and artistry, the narrator lists the thrills of his job before describing what sounds like a fight with his partner, in which he lets slip yet 'another fucking thing I know you couldn't forgive'. Yet for all Carner's accounts of the internal and external conflict involved in fatherhood, it's hard to buy the more damning self-critique – on Lyin he claims to be 'just a man trained to kill, to love I never had the skill' – from an artist who makes music this heartfelt. Sign up to Sleeve Notes Get music news, bold reviews and unexpected extras. Every genre, every era, every week after newsletter promotion Lyin introduces a third lyrical mode, capturing early parenthood's transcendent surreality in a stream of impressionistic imagery: Carner looks for reassurance under sofa cushions; his bedroom walls fall 'to Poseidon'. Progressing from anxiety to confusion to a strange elation, he is overcome by the way his child's hand reflexively tightens as he attempts to let go of it and how bright the sky looks in the middle of the night. His voice radiates awe and trepidation-tinged delight. It is magical songwriting, and his most impressive work to date. Even before fatherhood, Carner's work fixated on family: his mother is unusually omnipresent in his music, even by hip-hop's standards. His 2019 song Dear Jean even took pains to insist that his new girlfriend was no threat to the pair's intimacy. She's still never far away; over luminous guitars on All I Need, he recalls the smell of 'the sheets on my mother's mattress – just the place I learnt my backflips'. It's classic Carner: the place where heady feeling threatens to tip over into cloying soppiness. Yet thanks to a pleasingly precarious new vocal style and some levelled-up lyricism, he's more adept than ever at this specific balancing act. Big Thief – Incomprehensible This taster of the Brooklyn band's sixth album, Double Infinity, ups the tempo as frontperson Adrianne Lenker makes peace with the aging process in her trademark stream-of-consciousness style. The sound is fittingly cosmic; the overall effect truly sublime.
The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
Post your questions for music legend PP Arnold
She's the singer with iconic 60s hits such as The First Cut Is the Deepest and Angel of the Morning, who has been called on as a collaborator by some of the biggest names in British music. And as she gears up for a performance at this year's Glastonbury festival, PP Arnold will be answering your questions. Born into a family of gospel singers in Los Angeles, Arnold could have easily never ended up in music: by the age of 17 she was a mother-of-two in an abusive marriage. But she auditioned for Ike and Tina Turner and was hired as an Ikette, fleeing her husband to perform backing vocals on tour and in the studio, with Tina becoming a mentor. After the Turner band toured with the Rolling Stones in the UK in 1966, Arnold left and stuck around in England. The admiring Mick Jagger helped secure her a record contract, and she was quickly in the thick of swinging London as British pop and rock swept to cultural dominance. Arnold sang backing vocals on the Small Faces' Itchycoo Park and the band in turn backed her own studio recordings; she duetted with Rod Stewart on Come Home Baby; her backing band for a time were the Nice, featuring Keith Emerson; and the Bee Gees' Barry Gibb produced some of her work. Her debut album contained a cover of Cat Stevens' The First Cut Is the Deepest which many consider to be the definitive version, while the follow-up Kafunta – orchestrated by Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones – contained another iconic cover, of Angel of the Morning, both British chart hits. Those would be her biggest solo successes, but Arnold remained rooted in the entertainment business, segueing to musical theatre and collaborating with Eric Clapton, Nick Drake and singing backing vocals on Peter Gabriel's megahit Sledgehammer. She was sought after in the 80s and 90s dance scene, doing vocals for the Beatmasters and Altern-8 and singing the hook of the KLF's 3am Eternal. She also partnered with Ocean Colour Scene and Primal Scream. Now 78, she has continued to release her own music – 2019 brought The New Adventures of... PP Arnold – and she will perform songs from her remarkable discography at Glastonbury's Acoustic stage on Sunday 29 June at 4pm. Before she does, she'll answer your questions – post them in the comments before 10am BST on Tuesday 24 June.
