A Brief History

Among the architectural glories left to us by the Victorians and Edwardians, none is perhaps more typical of the age than the seaside pier. Of those which still remain to grace our resorts, the tradition is exemplified by Britain's only Grade 1 Listed pier, the West Pier at Brighton.

Opened in October 1866, the pier has withstood the vicissitudes of weather and fashion and after years of neglect, faces a brighter future, thanks to the dedication of a band of amateurs, in the true sense, the West Pier Preservation Trust. Their steadfastness through the years has finally seen the acceptance of the trust's application to the Heritage Lottery Fund for enough money to provide a proper restoration of the former glories of the pier.

West Pier wasn't Brighton's first, that distinction belongs to the Chain Pier of 1823, now demolished, but the construction of the West Pier showed what advances had been made in engineering in the intervening 40 years between their construction. The West Pier's foundations are iron, not wooden, piles, screwed rather than driven into the chalk that underlies Brighton's foreshore. The piles were topped by iron column which formed the main supports of the pier, while the whole was bound together by a latticework of ties, rods and braces, the whole surmounted with the girders which carried the decking of the pier surface.

The comparative visual slenderness of the supports lends charm to the pier and was intended to provide support whilst offering minimal resistance to the waves, but vibrations set up within the structure were to prove a problem and much additional strengthening work has been carried out over the years.

The pier has been through a number of incarnations in its history. As built, it was a promenade pier, on which the respectable could take the air. As late as the 1930s, there was an enforced dress code for those wishing to use the pier for pleasure, or to take the seaside ozone for "medical reasons". The eighteenth century preoccupation with sea bathing as a medicinal activity had given way to a belief in the health giving and curative properties of "ozone". Taking the air could be combined with a pleasant stroll above the waves; all the pleasure of being at sea without any of the inconvenience of being aboard a boat.

In order to maintain the attraction of pier, in the mid 1880s, proper landing stages were inaugurated so that steamer excursions could be taken from the pier head; a bandstand was added and the pier widened to accommodate it half way along. Gradually, the pier became a pleasure pier, with entertainment provided by daredevil divers and the swimmers of the Brighton Swimming Club.

By the 1890s, competition from, among other attractions, the Palace Pier to the east, necessitated a complete transformation. The pier was enlarged to accommodate a large pavilion, soon converted into a theatre with seating for a thousand people. The little bandstand in the centre of the pier became a fully fledged Concert Hall. The existing pier head facilities for steamers were expanded for a larger excursion business, so that it became possible to cross from west pier to the Isle of Wight, or as far afield as Cherbourg, by paddle steamer. The popularity of the pier can be judged by its turnstile receipts, in 1910, 1 million people visited the pier and even at its low ebb in 1916, the pier attracted 900,000 visitors. Immediately after the First World War, the numbers surged to an all time high of over 2 million visitors in 1920.

From that peak, the pier went into decline, changing tastes and different holiday fashions led to Brighton's gradual decline as a middle class resort and with its fortunes went those of the West Pier. From the turn of the century, there had been automatic machines as part of the attractions and between the wars, the pier's owners introduced more and more mechanical games and amusements. By 1937 there was a large amusement arcade at the root, or shoreward end of the pier. The pleasure pier had become a funfair pier.

No new building works were carried out and the coming of the Second World War spelt the death knell of the old pier. The theatre was closed in late May 1940 and has never reopened. The neck of the pier was cut by explosive charges and the pier head was systematically booby trapped against the feared invasion. Eventually the booby traps were cleared and, in 1946, the pier was restored and reopened. By now it really was a funfair pier, and the theatre seats and fittings were all sold off. The auditorium was divided horizontally, amusements downstairs, the Ocean Restaurant upstairs, with seating for 700. The immediate post war years were ephemerally successful, 1¼ million people visited the pier between April and October 1946. But more than twice that number visited the Palace Pier. By 1952, the numbers were well below 1 million. In the mid 1950s, the pier was struggling to keep up with the holiday fashion of the moment, the holiday camp and the increasing wealth of the 1960s saw people jetting off to exotic holiday destinations in Spain and other Mediterranean resorts.

Perhaps surprisingly, the gentle decline of the West Pier, did not entail any financial collapse. The pier continued to trade quite profitably into the 1960s and then fell into the hands of businesses that dithered about what to do with the structure, numerous proposals being made and dismissed over the stumbling block of the sums required to put the structure into good repair. By 1970 the pier head was sealed off as unsafe. In the later 1970s, in the words of Fred Gray, "The owners refused to invest in the structure or keep the pier open: the Council refused to allow demolition, but was unwilling to spend public money on it or assume control". In 1975 the pier was closed to the public.

Today, thanks to the work of the West Pier Trust, it is possible to visit the seaward parts of the pier again, by special arrangement. The future looks brighter than it has for many years.