The British Seaside Pier and Eugenius Birch

Blackpool North Pier ca.1898

The sad news of the severe fire damage to Hastings Pier earlier this week is a timely reminder of how important the seaside pier was in Victorian seaside tourism and beyond into the early 20th century. It is also a stark reminder of how many of these venerable structures have either been destroyed by fire or storms, or simply fallen into decay.

The first opened in 1814 at Ryde on the Isle of Wight. It was mainly intended as a combined promenade and jetty. It proved to be the first of about a hundred constructed over the next century. Early piers were usually of wood construction, but by the 1850s, when the great boom in pier building was just beginning, iron became the preferred material. 

Innovative Victorian seaside entrepreneurs quickly realised they could add 'entertainments' and charge people for their 'flanner' in the bracing seaside air. Entertainments became very diverse, ranging from traditional theatres and music to racy peep shows and pinball mechanisms. Steamer pleasure trips were also a popular  use for many piers. Piers were simply a major part of the seaside pleasure experience.  

One of the great Victorian pier designers was Eugenius Birch (1818-1884). Early in his career he was involved in building the Calcutta to Delhi of the East Indian Railway in India that clearly inspired the oriental designs that he often incorporated into his seaside structures. The pier at Margate in 1853 was the first of fourteen that Birch built in England and Wales: Aberystwyth, Blackpool (North), Bournemouth, Brighton West, Deal, Eastbourne, Hastings, Hornsea, Lytham, Margate, New Brighton, Plymouth, Scarborough and Weston-Super-Mare (Birnbeck). Birch was also a talented artist and a further legacy is the collection of fine water colours of scenes in Egypt and Italy.

A few of the great British piers remain, such as Blackpool's North Pier. Indeed Blackpool has managed to retain all three of its piers, though nearby Morecambe has seen two fall by the wayside and the total number surviving is thought to have fallen to around the fifty mark.