But Blackpool is not catering to a class of tourists that no longer really exists. Instead the city is trying to lure more visitors for stays of three nights or more, while promoting better hotels and fewer old-fashioned bed-and-breakfast places. The Council is planning an extension of the modern tramway from the railway station to the beach and a modern conference center — complete with air conditioning — that would be attached to the Winter Gardens, hoping to again attract political party conventions.

There is both a toughness and a sweetness here, a strong regional and class consciousness and pride.

Even as the Blackpool Tower spiffs itself up — with a 4D movie featuring diving gulls and sea spray, and costing more than 860,000 pounds — there is nostalgia, too, with its circus and ballroom and its sense of a prettified past. It attracts nearly 9,000 visitors each day.

A photo from 1929 on the wall of the tower features three young women in summer dresses, with their hair blowing and smiles on their faces, standing with the tower in the background. One of the young women is Lillian Bullen. Her granddaughter Kate Shane manages Merlin Entertainments’s Blackpool offerings.

Ms. Shane remembers Lilly, who lived to be 95, with great fondness. “I have strong memories of her as a kid, going to the circus with the performing animals,” Ms. Shane said. “And I remember going with her to Roberts’ Oyster Bar,” a famous wood-paneled restaurant that opened in 1876, but is today reduced to a shabby, shopfront shellfish stall.

And now the photo of Lilly is available on a tea towel, and a pretty mug made in Thailand — both for sale in the gift shop.