“We all went down to Montreux, on the Lake Geneva shoreline ……” So sang Deep Purple in 1972. Don’t know why I should quote those lines, but they just popped into my head as I began to write about our Bank Holiday trip yesterday. We all went down to Southend, on the sunny Essex shoreline. No, doesn’t quite have quite the same ring to it, but at least some stupid with a flare gun didn’t burn the Casino down!
As kids, we were taken to Southend for days out, I suppose because it was fairly close and easy to get to and more importantly fairly cheap. As a teenager, I bunked off school a couple of times (after registering first), caught a train from the High Street, got to Liverpool Street and from there down to Southend. Just had time to run up the pier and back, grab a snack and then back to Watford, aiming to get home as if it was just another school day. Mum didn’t know for years. Later, we’d go there with boyfriends or when playing away with the Amersham Angels (Ladies Football Team) as one of our fixtures was against Southend.
We had a lot of fun at Southend – mum and dad and all us kids piling onto the coach with our bags of food and buckets and spades, towels and swimming stuff. We must have gone with Premier Albanian coaches, which were based in Queen’s Avenue, Watford and even back then there must have been the usual pick-ups elsewhere. It took longer, of course, and you couldn’t just zoom around the M25, but once on the A127, you knew it wasn’t far and even now, you go passed the pub where all the coaches used to pull in for a courtesy stop – though I don’t think they called it that back then. A few years later and I still can recall the excitement of going on a Diesel train. Steam had or was being phased out and there was this big, new, smelly, dirty diesel engine on the front of the train. How we long for steam now!
This time we went by car, me and Martin in the front, mum, dad, Alysha in the back and the two wheelchairs in the boot. The morning had started off misty, but by the time we were half way round the M25 the sun was coming out and when we finally pulled into the car park it was a lovely sunny day with clouds sailing overhead. It was only a short walk to the front and there we were at Southend. There have been some changes, of course, in the intervening years, but all pretty much to the good. Even though the fairground has relocated across the road to the sea side, we were pleased to see the facade of The Kursaal still standing; that iconic reminder of all good times past. We strolled along the front and finally up onto the pier.
Now here beginnith the history lesson. As many of you will know, Southend pier is the longest in the world, at a mile. Well, actually, it is 1.34 miles long. Originally it was built of wood, 600 yards long and opened in June 1830. However, it was too short to be usable at low tide, so by 1833 it had been extended to three times its length and by 1848 was the longest pier in Europe at 7,000 feet (2,100 m). By the 1850s the London, Tilbury and Southend Railway had reached Southend and with it a great influx of visitors from east London. The many visitors took their toll on the pier and in 1873 it was sold to the local board (the local government of the time) and in 1887 the board decided to replace the wooden pier with a new iron pier. The new pier was opened to the public in 1887 , though it wasn’t completed until 1889. It was such an immediate success that demand outstripped the capabilities of the pier and a futher extension was proposed. This extension was completed in November 1897 and formally opened the following January. An upper deck was added to the pierhead in 1907, and the pier was further extended in 1927. Further work was carried out to accommodate larger steamer boats and the work of doubling the electric railway was completed in 1931.
During World War II Southend Pier was taken over by the Royal Navy and was renamed HMS Leigh with surrounding areas being renamed HMS Westcliff. It was closed to the public on 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 and the surrounding area to this day.
In 1945 the pier reopened for visitors. Visitor numbers exceeded pre-war levels, peaking at 5.75 million in 1949–1950. However, 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.
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 another 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 yet 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. A surge of protests followed, then in 1983 the Historic Buildings Committee gave a grant to allow repairs to be made. The total cost of the repair including new buildings and pier trains was £1.3M. Then on 20 June 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. Then in 1995 the bowling alley burnt down!
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 about 15m short of the old station.
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 gift shop 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.
On 15 September 2009 Southend Borough Council announced the winner of a design contest for a new pier head. The design called Sculpted by Wind and Wave was lowered onto the pier and on 21 July 2012 it opened to the public.
Here endeth the lesson. One can’t help wondering when the next Southend Pier disaster will happen. Happily, nothing happed while we were there, so, back to the day’s outing. We took the train up the pier and parked the wheelchairs so we could all take in the sea air. On the way up we had spotted some boats heading from the estuary and out towards the pier and only when we walked round to the Royal Pavillion (a wonderful cafe open to the seaward side and with easy access ramps up to the cafe itself) did we realise from the broadcast commentary that we were witnessing a race – it was the 50th Thames Sailing Barge race and the sailing barges were an amazing sight and, of course, a wonderful photo opportunity. After a coffee, we had intended to walk back, but with time pressing and lunch overdue, we took the train again and then crossed over the road to sit in the sunshine outside one the many cafes. We’d all been talking about having fish and chips at the seaside, but in the end only mum partook of the conventional fayre; the rest of us dining on burgers, pies and an all day breakfast!
Meal over, we began a stroll along the front, reliving times past. It was busy, the sunshine having brought everyone out and eventually we stopped where a ramp had been placed down to the beach with an area of decking perfect for parking the wheelchairs – as close as we could get mum and dad to the sand. Alysha and I went off for a paddle, Martin took some more photos and then it was time for tea and dougnuts. Of course. Then just as we were thinking of crossing back and perhaps heading for the car park, we discovered a new addtion to Southend and that was the fountains set in the pavement. Always game for a laugh these days, I risked a soaking (and not to mention broken bones had I slipped) and played a game of dodge the water with Alysha. Such fun.
We had one last thing to do and that was the Amusement Arcade. Copious amounts of 2p pieces to hand, we spent the next hour happily dropping coins into the slot machines and gleefully watching them pushed over the edge into the catcher below. Well you just have to, don’t you. And then it was home. It had been a good day with lots of memories and I’m so glad mum and dad enjoyed it.
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