Â鶹Éç

When Hastings Pier burnt down in 2010 many thought that was the end of Britain's first purpose-built pleasure pier.

But a growing number of people have been campaigning to save her. So can she rise from the ashes and reinvent herself, or has the golden age of British seaside pier long gone?

The story of Hastings Pier is the story the seaside resort, a familiar tale of its rise and decline repeated around the British coastline.

But Hastings Pier has a history of reinventing itself and intends to rise like a phoenix from its derelict ruins.

Hastings Pier is being restored to its former glory.There are exciting plans to make this once great attraction rise from the ashes to start a brand new chapter in the story of the Great British Pier.

Golden age

In the 17th century the coast was primarily a working environment where merchants, fishermen and smugglers carried out their trade. But in the late 18th Century, people started to rediscover the seaside as a leisure playground, encouraged by the royal patronage of resorts.

Along the South East coast of England there were fantastic beaches but no harbours to accommodate visitors travelling by ship or boat.

The solution was to build piers which enabled upper class travellers to step from ship to shore without getting wet and with minimum inconvenience.

Britain’s oldest pier seaside pier is Ryde, on the Isle of Wight, which opened on the 26 July, 1814.

Two more piers were built in the 1820s (Leith Trinity Chain 1821 & Brighton Chain 1823) with seven more being constructed during the 1830s (Walton-on-the-Naze 1830; Herne Bay 1832, Southampton Royal 1833, Gravesend 1834, Sheerness 1835, Dunoon 1835, and Deal 1838. The boom in seaside piers had begun.

With the arrival of the railways in 1840, the seaside was opened up to the wider public and resorts became places of mass tourism. By 1870, more than 40 towns had added a pier to their seafronts.

To keep up with other seaside resorts Hastings needed a pier of its own.

The great pier architect Eugenius Birch (who designed Brighton’s West Pier and the North Pier at Blackpool) was commissioned to design the pier and came up with a new concept.

Hastings Pier would be more than just a jetty with a few buildings, it would have its own in-built entertainment complex.

So Hastings became Birch’s first purpose-built pleasure pier. Work began on 18 December, 1869 with construction workers screwing the first column into place by winding a capstan deep into the Wadhurst Clay below.

After over two years of construction the pier opened in August 1872, complete with an Oriental pavilion providing entertainment and shelter for 2,000 people. In its first year nearly half a million people passed through its turnstiles.

It was a golden age for seaside resorts and piers all over Britain – and business was booming. By the time St Leonard’s Pier opened in 1891, less than a mile from Hastings Pier, there were more than 70 piers around the country.

By now piers were becoming destinations in their own right with many adding attractions to draw visitors including places for entertainment. Hastings was determined to bring in bigger crowds every year which meant adding even more attractions and buildings, and widening the deck on the pier’s promenade.

Even the First World War didn’t dampen visitors’ enthusiasm.

But, in 1917, after a concert for Canadian troops stationed nearby, disaster struck. A fire, probably started by a discarded cigarette, destroyed the Birch pavilion.

Five years later, Hastings Pier was reborn, with a big new pavilion to entertain the crowds.

The 1930s were great years for Hastings Pier. In one week alone in 1931, 56,000 people passed through the turnstiles. There was entertainment, day and night.

The pier grew wider and enjoyed a fashionable art deco face-lift to boost its appeal to visitors.

War years and decline

During the Second World War action was taken to stop piers being used by invading forces as landing stages.

For many piers, the war brought destruction and death. In 1940, bomb damage and fire made the St Leonard’s pier unsafe, with a storm finishing her off in 1951.

After the war everything changed and piers took on a new lease of life. In the 1960s piers became mini-fairgrounds with slot machines which became popular with a new customer, the teenager.

The cream of British bands played in the bars of Hastings Pier including The Kinks, The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix and Pink Floyd.

But by the 1980s, many of Britain’s once thriving seaside resorts were falling into a slow and steady decline with a drop in visitors which took a heavy toll.

Piers that were well-maintained managed to survive but many of those that weren’t began to deteriorate and become unsafe.

Hastings struggled on as the pier teetered from one owner to another until an offshore company, Ravenclaw Investments, took legal ownership in 2004.

But without a proper regime of maintenance and repair, the structure deteriorated, whilst a strange mix of shops and businesses came and went on the deck above.

In August 2008, after a colourful life of 136 years, the structure was deemed unsafe and the pier was shut down. There she stood, uninsured and without visitors.

But some people in the town were determined to save her. They’d formed a trust in 2006 and began a campaign to take legal ownership of their pier but, as their campaign gathered pace, the pier suffered another fire.

It was a huge blow and it looked certain that Hastings would be listed as Britain’s 42nd lost pier.

Saving the pier

But the people of Hastings were determined to save their pier from disappearing into the history books.

Just seven weeks after the fire, the trust made a bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund for £12 million to rebuild the pier. The turning point came when the structure finally became the property of the Hastings Pier Charity in August 2013.

A few weeks later work began to bring Hastings Pier back from the dead.

Today, most of the funding is being spent below the deck to repair and secure the structure to return it to the kind of pier originally envisaged by Eugenius Birch. It’s a complicated process that involves sophisticated construction techniques and laser technology.

Two new buildings are planned - a restaurant and a visitor centre, the latter with mirrored walls to reflect the sea and the sky.

The rest of the pier will be open space where a range of leisure activities can come and go as the weeks, months and seasons change.

The grand design is for a new kind of seaside pier geared up to the 21st Century. There’s even a new way of running and managing the pier. A community share scheme has been launched, enabling anyone to invest and have a say in its future.

After 140 years, it is hoped that Hastings Pier will be restored to its former glory, complete with a few modern twists. A new beginning in the history of this incredible building is about to unfold.