Southend: Peerless among piers

Here in south Essex, we tend to be, understandably, a bit smug on the subject of piers.

Yet the fact that we have the best pier in the world shouldn't delude us into thinking that we have the only pier.

Other towns have other boasts. The oldest, tallest, grandest, widest and, of course, the shortest pier all reside outside Southend.

A surprising number of piers survive around Britain, despite the onslaught of gales and local Councils. Tim Mickleburgh's new survey lists a surprising 67 survivors in his book Piers.

To view them all would entail a journey of around 4,000 miles, and enough money to fund a Caribbean cruise. So it is probably hardly surprising that more people choose to bask in the tropics rather than travelling to, say, Tighnabruaich, off the Isle of Bute, Scotland, which boasts the distinction of being the most rained-on pier in Britain.

For Tim Mickleburgh, however, it is a case of no contest. As chairman of the National Piers Society, a day without a peer at a pier is for him a day without sunshine, whatever the weather.

He must know more about the history and sociology of these architectural hippopotamuses than anybody else, and his picture collection is unrivalled.

Mr Mickleburgh has now produced a pictorial round-up of the nation's piers which ranks as a great asset to all in Essex. This must be the finest and most comprehensive collection of pier pictures put together between two covers.

Allied with Tim Mickleburgh's text, it not only renders cross-country journeys unnecessary for the rest of us, but also helps to put Southend Pier in context.

In a way, it can be quite humbling. You can't travel far in these pages without realising some of the superlatives that Southend Pier is not.

It is not the oldest. Indeed, as with a lot of other things in its history, Southend seems to have caught up rather late in the day with the whole pier idea. Great Yarmouth, Southend's bitter rival as queen of the East Anglian coast, boasts - boasts? - a miserable plank affair. Excited fish have been known to leap straight over it.

Yet it dates back to 1560, four years before Shakespeare was born, and 332 years before Southend became a town. Ilfracombe had a proper pier by 1678 and the present pier in Ryde, Isle of Wight, was constructed in 1814, the year that Southend first advertised itself as a prospective seaside resort.

Technologically speaking, Southend also lagged. The age of the train (official birth 1825) had barely begun when Herne Bay added a railway to its pier in 1832, while Margate - another fierce rival - put Southend's long nose well out of joint when it constructed the very first iron pier.

Southend is certainly not, and never has been, the grandest. Few would dispute that the Oscar for elaborate splendour goes to Brighton's ornate West Pier, a wedding-cake at sea.

Napoleon III called it "Britain's finest structure", though, coming from a Frenchman the compliment was double-edged.

Blackpool Central (1903), with its cloud-capped towers and what the promoters called "golden palaces" (in reality amusement park arcades with a few turrets and a splash of gold paint) must run it a close second.

Southend cannot even muster the record for most pier per head of population. Withernsea, with a mere 1,500 inhabitants, managed to project a substantial affair out to sea.

However, Southend's record as the longest has always remained unassailed and unassailable. Southport, Lancashire, boasts to this day about being merely the second longest pier.

Other towns have tried desperately to outstrip Southend. Brighton almost got there, but strong tides and currents washed the extension away.

Of course, another area where Southend remains triumphant is in disaster-proneness. No pier can rival its record of fires and collisions with ships. Not that other piers have failed to try.

One of the most remarkable photographs in the book shows Worthing pier the day after it simply collapsed from the strain of staying upright - luckily in the early hours of the morning, and without casualties.

Ramsgate managed to get itself blown up by a rogue mine in 1917, a feat that even Southend has never contrived. Part of Eastbourne Pier was blown up by our own forces in 1940, in the middle of an end-of-pier show featuring the Clarkson Rose, later a mainstay at Westcliff's Palace Theatre.

You don't require an interest in pier scholarship to be captivated by this book. Piers have always brought out the best in postcard photographers, and there are many mouthwatering reproductions of images that have lain ignored in bric-a-brac shops.

Southend itself appears in a striking hand-tinted original from 1929, with the pansies at the entrance in particular looking most radiant.

Other extraordinary images, all printed for the tripper postcard market, include the north pier at Scarborough in the process of being battered to pieces by the killer gale of January 1905, and Beaumaris Pier in Wales with the rarely-seen sight of Snowdon looming above it.

So how does Southend Pier emerge from all this? I think this book merely underlines a simple fact: Southend comes top of the piles.

No other pier can compare with the sight of Southend Pier, marching across the waves, journeying to the horizon. That, after all, is what piers are about.

Set alongside all the other piers in the realm, Southend Pier emerges as matchless. Indeed, peerless.

Piers, by Tim Mickleburgh, is published by Dial House, and available at local bookshops, price £15.99.

Splendid by day or night - Southend Pier before a series of disasters struck and changed the look of the landmark for ever

Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.