Cliff Lifts

BLACKPOOL
BROADSTAIRS
CLIFTONVILLE
RAMSGATE
SHANKLIN (Isle of Wight)
WHITBY

Cliff Railways

ABERYSTWYTH
BABBACOMBE
BOURNEMOUTH
BRIDGENORTH
BROADSTAIRS
CLIFTON ROCKS
DOUGLAS (Isle of Man)
FOLKESTONE
HASTINGS
GREAT ORME TRAMWAY
LYNTON / LYNMOUTH
MARGATE LIDO
SALTBURN
SCARBOROUGH
SHIPLEY GLEN BRADFORD
SOUTHEND

Most people who live outside of towns where these marvels of Victorian or Edwardian ingenuity still survive, probably remain oblivious to their existence. But for inhabitants of towns such as Scarborough and Bridgenorth, they are as much a part of everyday life as getting on a bus. The majority still survive at seaside towns, where steep cliffs often presented a tiring obstacle when trying to get to and from the beach, but as demonstrated at Bridgenorth, this was not always the case. Towns such as this that are divided by a cliff, have also benefitted from this type of technology. Some 25 pre-war examples still survive, many in good working order, but others are now closed and face an uncertain future. A few, like the millennium lift at Broadstairs, are very recent.

These devices fall into two distinct categories. Those of a lift type, similar to any lift that might be found in a modern office building, or those referred to as funicular railways or tramways. In the first type the carriage would pass down a vertical man-made shaft to the foot of the cliff, and with the second type the carriage would travel down tracks laid on the surface incline of the cliff. This arrangement would normally comprise of two counter-balanced carriages running on parallel tracks, and as weight was increased on the top carriage it would descend, pulling the now lighter carriage up from the bottom as it went.