A Brief History of Southend Pier
The pier was designed by James Brunlees, who had built the first iron pier at Southport in 1860. Work began in early 1887 and the new pier was opened to the public that summer, though it wasn't completed until 1889 at a cost of almost £70,000. It was an immediate success, so much so that demand outstripped the capabilities of the pier and a further extension was proposed. This extension was completed in November 1897 and formally opened the following January.
In 1892 Southend became a Municipal Borough and received an unofficial coat of arms. This depicted a three-masted ship on top of a shield showing an image of the pier, the church of St Mary the Virgin, a well in Prittlewell and the emblem of Essex county. The motto was 'forti nihil difficile', 'to the brave nothing is too difficult'. This coat of arms was replaced in 1915 after Southend was given County Borough status and an image of the pier is no longer included.
An upper deck was added to the pierhead in 1907, and the pier was further extended in 1927 to accommodate larger steamboats. It was formally opened on 8 July 1929 by HRH Prince George, Duke of Kent. This part of the pier was named the Prince George Extension.
On 27 June 1931 the Pier was the scene of a tragic accident. Ernest Turner fell from, and was run over by, one of the electric trams on the railway and was killed instantly. Turner, who was 38, was one of a party of over 500 workers and family members on the annual works outing from Ansell's brewery in Birmingham, where he worked as a brewer's drayman. The party had arrived at the pier having travelled down the River Thames from Tower Pier in London where they had arrived earlier that day. At the inquest, which was held two days later, the jury returned a verdict of accidental death.
The Pier's centenary was celebrated on 23 July 1935, rather than 1930, as this date reflects the date the Admiralty began to include Southend Pier on their navigation charts.
HMS Westcliff
During World War II, Southend Pier was taken over by the Royal Navy and was renamed (along with the surrounding area) HMS Westcliff. It was closed to the public from 9 September 1939.
Its purpose in the war was twofold. Firstly it served as a mustering point for convoys. Over the course of the war 3,367 convoys, comprising 84,297 vessels departed from HMS Westcliff. Secondly, it was Naval Control for the Thames Estuary. Notable in its career was the accidental sinking of the Liberty ship SS Richard Montgomery which, still containing several thousand tons of explosives, is visible from the North Kent coast and Southend beach at low tide, and continues to pose a threat to navigation over 60 years later.
In 1945 the pier reopened for visitors. Visitor numbers exceeded their pre-war levels, peaking at 5.75 million in 1949-1950.In the 1950s, more attractions on the pier opened including the Dolphin Cafe, Sun Deck Theatre, the Solarium Cafe and a Hall of Mirrors.
However the success was not to last. In 1959 a fire destroyed the pavilion located at the shore end of the pier. Over 500 people were trapped on the other side of the fire and had to be rescued by boat.
The pavilion was replaced by a ten-pin bowling alley in 1962, however by then British holidaymakers were turning to package holidays abroad. The use of the pier slowly began to decline and with it the structure began to deteriorate. In 1971, after a child was injured on the pier, a survey was undertaken and over the course of the next decade repairs had to be made including much of the replacement of the pier walkway.
In 1976 a fire destroyed much of the pier head. The massive blaze was battled by fire fighters working on the pier and from boats, and even using a crop-spraying light aircraft. The following year the bowling alley was damaged in another fire, and a year after that, the railway was deemed unsafe and had to be closed.
In 1980 the council announced that the pier was to close. Protests led the council to allow the pier to remain open until a solution could be found. This happened in 1983 when the Historic Buildings Committee gave a grant to allow repairs to be made. The work commenced in 1984 and was completed eighteen months later, when Princess Anne named the two new pier trains (commissioned to replace trains scrapped in 1982) after Sir John Betjeman and Sir William Heygate. The total cost of the repair including new buildings and pier trains was £1.3 million.
However on June 20 in that year, the MV Kingsabbey crashed into the pier, severing the new pier head from the rest of the pier, destroying the boathouse used by the lifeboat service and causing major structural damage due to the destruction of iron piles and supporting girders. This left a 70-foot gap in the pier. While this was temporarily bridged to restore access, full repairs were not completed until 1989.
On June 7, 1995, the bowling alley burnt down. Fortunately, the pier museum and railway station were not severely damaged and access to the pier was reinstated three weeks later, with all the debris cleared in time for the summer of 1996.
2005 fire
On 9 October 2005 a fire severely damaged much of the Old Pier Head including the railway station, pub, shell shop, snack bar and ice-cream shop.
Much of the wooden planking was destroyed, but the main iron structure was largely undamaged. Heat from the fire was so intense that the Pier Railway tracks buckled and trains can now only run to within approx. 15m of the old station.
The fire was thought to have started in the pub at around 10:45pm, but due to the extreme location and the damage (several buildings collapsed into the water), the cause has not yet been formally determined, although it is being treated as an accidentNo one was injured, but fire-fighters encountered difficulties extinguishing the blaze as, due to the low tide, pumps installed on the pier were rendered ineffective. The Southend lifeboat crew were deployed to transport the first firefighters to the scene.
The pier reopened to the public on 1 December for the first time since the fire.
The pierhead station was destroyed in the blaze so a replacement with two platforms has been constructed to take the pier trains as close as possible to the area where the blaze took place.Access to the pierhead and RNLI gift shop and boathouse is now available walking past the temporary toilets and onto the area of restored pier after the earlier fire. The pleasure steamers Waverley and Kingswear Castle are able to take and drop off passengers once more from the pierhead and autumn 2006 saw the tall ship Kershones visit again.
Shortly after the fire, pieces of charred pier planking have turned up for sale on eBay with the proceeds apparently going to the RNLI
In recent years Southend Council has invested in the pier to restore it as a visitor attraction. Funding for this has been coordinated by the "S-SHAPE" (Southend Seafront, High-street And Pier Enhancements) project with funding coming from European Objective 2 funding and National Government regeneration schemes.
The pier head was extensively redeveloped in 2000 creating a new sun deck and, in partnership with the RNLI, a new lifeboat station was built. The new station is constructed in glass to give a strikingly modern style. It also houses a museum and giftshop relating to the history of the RNLI and lifeboats.
In 2003 the shoreward end of the pier was redeveloped in a similar style to the pier head. The pier bridge was raised to enable taller vehicles to pass under it (a recurring problem had been double decker buses getting stuck under the bridge) and a visitor centre/tourist information centre was built. This connected with the new Cliff Lift and redevelopment of Pier Hill that was constructed the following year.
Design competition
On 15 September 2009, Southend Borough Council announced the winner of a design contest for a new pier head - a Sweden-based architecture firm, White arkitekter.
The company's winning entry was a design called Sculpted by Wind and Wave and was chosen from 73 international and local entries. The contest was run by the Landscape Institute for the Council
More history and culture of Southend on Sea
