Southend Pier
The Southend Pier is a popular attraction in Southend-on-Sea . It extends 2.16 kilometers into the Thames estuary , making it the longest pier in the world.
history
In the early 19th century, Southend became a coastal vacation destination. During this time it was considered healthy to spend time by the sea. Because of this, many came to Southend from nearby London . However, the coast there consists largely of the Wadden Sea , which is why the sea is never very deep there (between 4 and 6 m), even at high tide. At low tide , the sea is 1.6 km from the beach. Because of this, it was not possible for ships to dock in Southend near the beach, let alone at low tide. Many potential visitors therefore opted for places with better mooring options.
To counter this trend, local personalities called for a pier to be built that would allow ships to dock regardless of the tide. The campaign was led by former Mayor of the City of London Sir William Heygate, a resident of Southend.
Wooden pier
On May 14, 1829, plans to build a pier received royal approval. On July 25th, Mayor of London Sir William Thompson laid the foundation stone for the first section of the pier. The oak pier was opened in June 1830. However, since it was too short at 180 meters to be used for mooring at low tide, it was lengthened three times in 1833. In 1846, its original owners sold it due to financial difficulties. In 1848 it was the longest pier in Europe at 2,100 meters.
In the 1950s the London, Tilbury and Southend Railway reached Southend and brought in an influx of visitors. In 1873 the pier and the Southend Local Board, the then local government, were sold.
In 1887 the board decided to replace the wooden pier with an iron one.
Iron pier
The pier was designed by James Brunlees, who built the first iron pier in Southport , Lancashire in 1860 . Construction began in early 1887 and the new pier opened in summer. However, the pier was not fully completed until 1889 at a total cost of nearly £ 70,000. The pier was so successful that further expansion was proposed. This was completed in November 1897 and officially opened in January 1898.
An upper floor was added to the end of the pier in 1907. In 1927 the pier was expanded again. The construction work was carried out by Peter Lind & Company . The renovation work was carried out to make the pier accessible for larger steamships. The extension of the pier was opened on July 8, 1929 by Prince George, 1st Duke of Kent and named after him. It was 99 meters long and cost £ 58,000. In 1931 a second track was added to the electric railroad for £ 35,000.
On June 27, 1931, 38-year-old Ernest Turner fell from one of the trains and was run over by it.
On the 100th anniversary of the pier on July 23, 1935, Lord Richie of Dundee unveiled a bronze plaque at the end of the pier.
HMS Leigh
During the second world war the pier by the Royal Navy has been claimed and HMS Leigh renamed, the area around it in HMS Westcliff . As of September 9, the pier was no longer open to the public.
During the war, 3,367 convoys with a total of 84,297 ships were deployed from the pier. The pier was also used by the Outer Thames Naval Command.
Also worth mentioning is the sinking of the Liberty freighter Richard Montgomery , which can still be seen from the coast at low tide.
Post war history
In 1945 the pier was reopened to the public. The number of visitors exceeded that of the pre-war period, with a high of 5.75 million in the years 1949–50. In the 1950s, other attractions opened on the pier, including the Dolphin Café, the Sun Deck Theater, the Solarium Café, and a Palace of Mirrors.
In 1959 a fire destroyed the pavilion at the beginning of the pier. Over 500 people were stuck on the pier and had to be rescued by ship.
The pavilion was replaced by a bowling alley in 1962 . At that time, however, British holidaymakers were increasingly relying on package tours abroad. As the use of the pier decreased, so too did its condition. In 1971 the pier after which a child was injured on it was examined. In the course of the following decade, some repairs had to be made, including the extensive renewal of the path on the pier.
A fire in 1976 destroyed a significant part of the pier. The flames were fought by firefighters on the pier, from boats, and from the air with a crop sprayer. In 1977 the bowling alley was damaged in another fire. The following year the railway was deemed unsafe and had to be closed.
In 1980 the Southend County Council announced the closure of the pier. However, protests resulted in the pier remaining open for years. In 1983, the Historic Buildings Committee issued a permit to repair the damage. Repairs began in 1984 and ended after 18 months when Princess Anne named the two new trains, replacing the previous ones scrapped in 1982, after Sir John Betjeman and Sir William Heygate. The cost of the renovation, including new buildings and trains, was £ 1.3 million.
On July 20, 1986, the MV Kingsabbey crashed into the pier and destroyed the boathouse. The pier collapsed due to the severe structural damage. A gap of 21 meters separated the pier from the rest of the pier. Even though this section was temporarily bridged to allow access to the pier, the repair work was not completed until 1989.
On June 7, 1995, the bowling alley burned down. The Pier Museum and the train station were not seriously damaged. The pier reopened after 3 weeks.
In the summer of 1999 the Ross Revenge, the ship of the former pirate radio station Radio Caroline , docked at the end of the pier for about a month. From there, the station was legally broadcast to Southend and southeast Essex for 28 days. During this time, the power supply at the end of the pier was accidentally disconnected by a worker. Radio Caroline employees then connected the end of the pier to the ship's reserve generator, thus enabling the café, shops and amusement arcade to operate until the power supply from the mainland could be restored.
21st century
In recent years, the county council has invested more to restore attractiveness to visitors.
In 2000, the end of the pier was largely redesigned. A lifeboat station was set up in collaboration with the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. At the end of the pier is the Southend Pier Museum and a souvenir shop related to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution and lifeboats. The museum has exhibits about the pier's history, including a restored signal box, trams and railroad cars, photos, historical costumes, and some old slot machines.
In 2003 the beginning of the pier, similar to the end of the pier, was redesigned. Since double-decker buses were repeatedly stuck under the bridge, it was raised. A tourist information office was also built. In connection with this, the Cliff Lift was built and Pier Hill was redesigned the following year .
Fire 2005
On October 9, 2005, the old end of the pier and with it the station and some shops were badly damaged
A large part of the wooden floorboards was destroyed, but the iron framework remained largely undamaged. The fire was hot enough to deform the iron tracks. Trains could only run up to 15 m from the end of the pier.
The fire is believed to have spread from the pub around 10:45 p.m. Although the cause could never be determined beyond doubt due to the extent of the fire, it is assumed to be an accident. There were no injuries. Since the tide was low during the fire, water pumps installed on the pier were useless. The Southend lifeboat was used to transport the first firefighters to the fire.
The pier reopened on December 1, 2005 and was named Pier of the Year in 2007.
Since the station at the end of the pier was destroyed in the fire, a replacement with two platforms was built to transport passengers as close as possible to the end of the pier.
Shortly after the fire, charred wooden floorboards were put up for sale on eBay . Profits from this should apparently be paid to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution.
Cultural center in the Pier Pavilion
On September 15, 2009, the county council announced a winner of the competition for a new pen - the Swedish architects White , in collaboration with the structural engineers from Price & Myers . The winning design was implemented by Sprunt Architects and the Sweet Group. The Pier Pavilion, which is also used as a cultural center, was built by the Kier Group.
The submission that won was the Design Formed by wind and waves (eng. Sculpted by Wind and Wave). It was selected from 73 local and international submissions. The competition was hosted by the County Council's Landscape Institute.
The cultural center opened on July 21, 2012.
train
The railroad runs along the entire pier and runs every half hour or quarter of an hour on all days the pier is open.
A horse-drawn tram ran on the wooden pier, built in 1830, to transport visitors and goods to the end of the pier. With the construction of the new iron pier, an electric tram was built. In 1891 this was already running along the entire pier. The system was continuously expanded over time, in 1930 a total of four trains with seven cars each ran on a double-track line. In 1949 the old trains were replaced by four new ones.
In 1978 the electric railroad was closed due to deterioration and the cost of repairs. When it reopened on May 2, 1986, two new diesel trains were now running on what was now a single-track line. The station at the beginning of the pier was temporarily relocated due to the fire at the end of 2005 until a new station was opened in September 2009.
Lifeboat
One of Southend-on-Sea's two lifeboat houses is at the end of the pier. A boat of the Atlantic 75 class and a smaller D-class lifeboat are stationed there. Both are lowered into the water by a davit . The modern boathouse houses accommodation for the crew as well as offices, a shop for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution and a visitors' gallery from which one can view the lifeboats. On the roof there is a visitor terrace accessible to visitors. The lifeboat crew use an electric buggy with a siren and blue flashing light to reach the boathouse from land.
A lifeboat has been stationed on the pier since 1879. Originally, like today, davits were used to lower them into the water. In 1935 a new boathouse was built, which had a slipway . This was destroyed in 1986 in the collision of the MV Kingsabbey . A temporary one was used until the current boathouse opened in 2002. The current boathouse was designed and built by Bondesign Associates and Dean & Dyball Construction Limited .
Trivia
- The pier can be seen in the credits of the British television series The Watcher .
- The pier is mentioned in the book The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy . After Ford and Arthur are thrown from a Vogon ship and picked up by the Heart of Gold, Arthur notices that it looks like they are standing on the Southend boardwalk. However, in the 1981 film adaptation of the BBC , neither the set nor the view looks like Southend.
- In season 18, episode 1 "Loaded" of the series The Bill , the pier and the coast of Southend can be seen.
In the early 1970s, the Kelvin Hughes Company conducted marine radar training in a small room at the end of the pier. The students were accommodated in numerous local bed and breakfasts .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Peter Nonnenmacher: England and the loss of its «Pleasure Piers». Tages-Anzeiger , August 2, 2014, accessed on January 11, 2020 .
- ^ History of Southend Pier . Southend-on-Sea Borough Council. June 16, 2011. Archived from the original on September 29, 2010. Retrieved on September 3, 2011.
- ↑ http://www.southendtimeline.com/spierhist.htm
- ↑ Southend Pier Blazes - 500 Trapped . In: Daily Herald , October 8, 1959, p. 1. Retrieved March 14, 2019.
- ^ Pier gloom for town's next season . BBC News. October 17, 2005. Retrieved September 3, 2011.
- ↑ Chris Foote Wood: Walking over the waves: quintessential British seaside piers . Whittles Publishing, Dunbeath, Caithness 2008, ISBN 978-1904445-67-8 , p. 126.
- ^ Southend Pier case study . Sprunt. Retrieved February 12, 2014.
- ^ Opening Hours, Ticket Prices and Pier Train Information . Southend-on-Sea Borough Council. Retrieved August 19, 2010.
- ^ Transport Miscellany article on the Southend Pier Railway . Greywall Productions. Retrieved August 19, 2010.
Web links
- southendpiermuseum.co.uk - Southend Pier Museum
- southendpier.co.uk - Southend Pier and Foreshore
- Southend Pier - southend.gov.uk (English)
- SouthendPier360 - A virtual 360 ° tour of the pier