Lytham St Annes
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Template:GBmap Lytham St Annes is a town in the Fylde district of Lancashire, England. The original twin towns of Lytham and St Annes have grown together and now form a seaside resort, sometimes seen as a smaller but grander alternative to nearby Blackpool.
St-Annes-on-Sea was a 19th century planned town. The town of St Annes was mostly laid out according to a plan drawn up by businessmen who saw the economic benefits of attracting large numbers of visitors from the mill towns to the east. It retains much of its original character today, but has less style than Lytham, its near neighbour. It is a traditional quiet Victorian / Edwardian seaside resort with up-market hotels, a sandy beach, donkeys, a small pier and ice cream stalls. Sand dunes fringe the beach, and the town has an excellent, but little known sand dune nature reserve, international sandyacht racing championships, and very good floral displays.
Lytham's tree-lined streets are flanked by small shops that are still family businesses. There are some particularly good speciality food shops. Lytham brims with old fashioned charm.
The town's history has seafaring links, the economy previously being founded on fishing and shrimping. Later, wealthy industrialists moved from the east of the county.
Today Lytham St Annes is famous for golf at Royal Lytham Golf Club, The Green, the recently restored Windmill and Old Lifeboat House Museum, and Lytham Club Day, a local festival each June. The Green overlooks the estuary of the river Ribble and the Welsh mountains.
Ansdell is a small district between Lytham and St Annes. It has its own railway station (shared with Fairhaven), the "Ansdell Institute" club and a small library. It is famous because of Richard Ansdell RA, an artist who lived in the area and painted a large number of oil pictures of dead pheasants held by spaniel dogs and other similar hunting and shooting subjects. In fact, Ansdell enjoys the distinction of being the only place in England to be named after an artist.
Fairhaven, another district between Lytham and St Annes, lies between Ansdell and the coast. It is named after Thomas Fair, an early resident of Lytham St Annes. Its main claim to fame is its artificial lake, known as Fairhaven Lake or more formally as the Ashton Marine Park, which is an important wildfowl habitat. Its other famous landmark is the Fairhaven United Reformed Church, which is of unusual design, being built in Byzantine style and faced with glazed white tiles, and commonly known as the White Church.
Lytham St Annes is twinned with the German town of Werne.no:Lytham St. Annes