Llandudno Pier - Fundraising Continues

The Gofundme campaign towards the repairs of the pier’s storm damage continues, and has passed £17,000. Of these recent donations, the town of Champéry has given £1000 towards the campaign. Champéry has been twinned with Llandudno since 2022.

Roker Pier - Security Breach on Closed Pier

Roker Pier has been closed to the public since 2023, after damage to the superstructure was inflicted during storms. Locals were surprised to find throngs of people emerging along the pier, the security gate lock being cut by an unidentified individual. The police’s wording of their response, of “advising” these people to leave, suggests that the public presence on the pier was not intentionally illicit. The gates have since been secured again, making the pier’s state of closure abundantly obvious to everyone. Repairs to the pier will not begin until April. (Image: BBC)

Southport Pier - No Further Progress Yet

This article offers an up-to-date account of the recent circumstances at Southport, but sadly no new developments have been reported that have not been notified before. Planning approval is still under determination, with the Conservation Officer having provided comments. Of this, concerns were raised over the choice of castellated beams substituting the existing lattice beams and not all being paint-finished, but it was decided that the benefits of the pier’s reconstruction outweighed this harm. A decision will probably be given in the coming month, but no securement of funding is evident as yet.

Southend Pier - 70 Years of the Pier Race

The Southend Athletic Club have just completed their 70th annual running race along Southend Pier. 37 participants entered the race this year. (Image: Mike Jeffrey)

Ramsey Queen’s Pier - New Year Celebrations

Perhaps the only pier in the country to have successfully followed through with their plans for New Year Celebrations, the weather having cancelled most other pier events Nationwide, The Queen’s Pier have invited visitors to the pier in the early morning of the 1st January, supposedly to enjoy the first sunrise of 2025. Whilst the nationally problematic weather denied the opportunity for enjoying a vivid sunrise, the experience was clearly thrilling and joyful from observing the photographs on the trust’s Facebook page. The pier has also offered two exceptionally luminous Christmas evening openings, which have been highly successful. (Image: Queen’s Pier Restoration Trust)

Cromer Pier - A Successful Christmas Show Season

Adventure Attractions, and its subsidiary Openwide Coastal, operators of Cromer Pier’s attractions, have recognised a successful Christmas season at the Pier Theatre, a considerable improvement over the previous year. Ticket sales rose by 10% compared to the 2023 season, leading to an additional performance week being organised.

Now that the Christmas season has ended, work has begun in improving the staff facilities in the Theatre. Repairs and thermal retrofitting work will take place in the backstage areas and will be completed by March. Disabled access and facilities will also be improved. Above all, these developments show the Cromer Pier Theatre to have a very bright future and the Summer Pier Show is certainly a fixture to anticipate fondly.

Saltburn Pier - Closed for Repairs

Minor repairs will take place at Saltburn Pier over the next few weeks, costing £22,000 and involving the partial replacement of the decking boards. Supposedly “redundant” lighting and wiring will be removed from under the decking. Of this, under-deck lighting was first installed in 2005 and replaced with a colour-changing LED system in 2019. Evidently this has stopped working and is to be scrapped; commentary on social media suggest it to have fallen victim to electrical damage from the Cliff Railway fire in early 2024.

Llandudno Pier - Excellent Repair Progress

Since the damage from Storm Darragh in early December, Tir Prince Group have rapidly progressed with structural repairs underneath the pier and much of this work is now complete. Approximately half of the principal pier neck is now re-opened to the public. Preliminary roofing works to the damaged kiosks has been completed, but work to install a new lead roofing surface is still underway. With the pier being grade-II* listed, some of the work will likely require specialist conservation contractors. It is expected that the pier might re-open by February, which will be a remarkable and commendable achievement if it does come to pass.

Swanage Pier - Café to Close for Two Weeks

The 1859 Bistro and shop will be temporarily closed to allow internal maintenance work to take place. It is closed from now until the 20th January. The rest of the pier will remain open and programmed events (See below) will continue as planned.

Bournemouth Pier - No Pleasure Boats From the Pier Yet

The circumstances involved in this article are quite confusing, since the fatal incident on Bournemouth Beach in 2023, quoted often in the article, proved to have no direct connection with either the pier or pleasure boat company. Pleasure cruises were, however, discontinued after the incident whilst investigations were ongoing.

Anyway, £9.5 million of Government funds will be used to repair the pier’s concrete substructure. Naturally, for as long as this work is ongoing, BCP Council are not considering boats to land at the pier - fair enough. (Image: Bournemouth Daily Echo)

Brighton Palace Pier - A Motorist’s Hazard?

Last and certainly least, in terms of importance and quality, is this rather pointless article on a new ranking which a gambling website has decided to devise: “ The Most Dangerous Landmark to Drive Past”. None of the entries, it seems, offer such hazards as precarious towers collapsing into the highway, or concealed road spikes, or structurally compromised road bridges… and certainly none of the contenders offer danger from their own nature (except perhaps from distraction-ability). In this latter regard, it is surely the LED roadside advertisement displays, which are sprouting across the highway network, that are the greatest hazard for distractions and for blinding the driver at night!

Most of the contenders are, of course, in central London. Brighton Palace Pier is the only non-London hazard in the top 10 list. Apparently an average of 15.8 incidents take place *NEARBY* to this attraction per year. “Nearby”, of course, could mean anything. Presumably this list has been compiled by plotting a limited list of famous attractions, which come to the minds of those who have chosen to fall down this silly rabbit hole, onto a map of local traffic incidents submitted by the police (available to view on the “Think Map”).

Great Yarmouth Britannia - Old Pier Signage Sold for Preservation

The entrance building of the Britannia Pier is presently undergoing a comprehensive reconstruction, with an entirely new frontage of a minimalist “Streamline Moderne” character. The existing orange signage has been removed and offered for sale by the owners. It is slightly earlier in date than the article suggests (“1970s”); the entire frontage as seen today having been completed by c.1967. Due to the age of the signage, being probably of fibre-glass or vacuum-formed plastic construction, it has become too fragile to be of any real use outdoors. However, it has been purchased by a local memorabilia collector and the intention is to preserve the letters for sharing with future generations. In reality, the collector has no immediate arrangements for publicly displaying it, and instead it will likely be put away in a storage unit - but at least not scrapped. It might normally seem quite an excessive gesture for mere commercial signage, but the orange angular letters will surely be a distinctive memory of the pier for many people. As signage, despite changes in fashion, the old letters were quite successful and striking as the first point of contact with the pier. The collector remarked, rather depressingly, that “They're moving with the times; everything is digital now”. Indeed, the upcoming frontage design and signage has a lot to live up to, but the translation of the sprawling show boards to an automatically transitioning digital display may well be an appealing one. Hopefully the new “Britannia Pier” signage will have some “character”, as elusive a word as it is. (Image: Andrew Turner)

Great Yarmouth Britannia (again) - Abandoned Victorian Proposal Drawings Revealed

Great Yarmouth Borough Council have discovered and shared two presentation drawings for an improvement scheme to Britannia Pier, prepared by the local architect J. W. Cockrill in 1897. These proposals, projected in elevation and axonometric cutaway, proposed swimming baths, shops and a performance hall, adjoining a central arcade. The scheme has the grandeur and scale of an important municipal railway station of the time, and may well have been one of the largest pier buildings if it had been built. What materialised instead was something more of the scale that one would expect for a British pier: single-storey kiosks, shops and shelters with decorative lead roofs. The new Pavilion at the seaward end of the pier, typically of highly-decorated timber construction, only lasted five years before the sequence of conflagration was set into motion. The Facebook link offers several more photographs of the drawings, and all at a much higher resolution. (Image: Great Yarmouth Borough Council)

Southend Pier - Licencing Application to Extend Events Potential

An application for a new alcohol licence has been submitted with regards to activities in the Royal Pavilion, situated on the pier head. This will enable the Pavilion to remain open to paying customers until 10PM and offer live music Friday-Sunday until 5PM. This will hopefully allow the programming of events and day-to-day public offerings on the pier to expand considerably.

Llandudno Pier - Repairs Progress

Excellent progress has recently been made on both storm damage to the pier decking and kiosks; but also on the reinstatement of the Happy Valley Road entrance. The first half of the pier was re-opened to the public last weekend, and it is planned that some of the kiosks along the deck will be re-opening on the 1st February. Of the entrance reinstatement, most of the new steelwork has been delivered and assembled at the pier, with only the decking still to be added. (Image: Llandudno Pier)

Brighton i360 - A “Mystery” Buyer Found

Brighton and Hove Borough Council have confirmed that a potential buyer of the i360 attraction has been identified, although this comes with the important condition of the £51 million debts accumulated by the Brighton i360 Company will not be transferred to the new owners. It would seem that the terms of the sale have now been agreed, and the debts have been written off by the council. The details of the new owner are strictly confidential at present, but are intended to be revealed somewhat soon.

Weston-Super-Mare Birnbeck - Contractor Sought for Restoration Work

North Somerset Council published an open tender on Thursday, inviting specialist contractors to register their interest in engaging in the works necessary to restore the main pier structure. These proposals were submitted to the planning department by the RNLI in September and are still under review. The deadline for responses is the 25th April. At present, all scheduled work for 2024 has been completed ahead of schedule and budget. This involved emergency stabilisation/protection works to the cliff face and island buildings. Works to the landside buildings are scheduled to begin in Spring 2025.

In the second article are some comments by Cathy Keep, who was born in the Pier Master’s Cottage in 1943, and whose father was the Pier Master.

25 Historic Photographs of Blackpool North Pier

A good selection of some fairly unusual photographs depicting the North Pier (and one of the Central Pier).  Many of these differ from the usual pool of photographs which one tends to see. It is particularly interesting to see the details of the long-lost Jetty (complete with telegraph/electric poles) and the startling arrival of Modernism to the pier in 1966. (Image:  National World)

Roker Pier - Permission Granted for Structural Repairs

Repairs to the masonry structure and balustrades of Roker Pier were approved on Monday and, as reported previously, is due to commence from mid-April.

Clevedon Pier - Commemoration for “One Direction” Member

The band One Direction filmed a music video at the pier in 2014 and a much-pampered commemorative plaque was promptly affixed midway along the pier deck. Since the death of bandmember Liam Payne last year, a new plaque in memory of the same has been installed. (Image: Tom Wren)