Blackpool's Tour de Force

Blackpool Tower – copied from the French prototype but opened five years later in May 1894 – has been an icon of mass culture for over a century, its 518ft structure (containing 2,500 tons of steel, 95 tons of cast iron and 5 million bricks) serving as a backdrop for everything from the famous saucy seaside postcards of McGill to the adventures of the 1940s radio soap hero, Dick Barton (who was featured in a 1947 film battling secret agents firing deadly ray guns from the Tower's pinnacle.