Victorian triumphs which turn to scrap metal by the sea

Tag : Metal Cast

As with most objects in Britain that inspire outpourings ofslightly irrational affection, we owe our seaside piers largely tothe Victorians. With their innate genius for ornamentation, theytransformed the humble landing stages of the early 19th century(built for well-heeled travellers voyaging around the newlyfashionable resorts) into long thin promenades on which the middleclasses could sniff the ocean breezes without being forced tomingle with hoi polloi.
Stiff admission fees kept the riff-raff off the piers in thoseearly days. And at first the entertainment was as lofty as thesocial mix. Elgar presided over performances of his own music inthe grand concert hall on the West Pier of Brighton. Sir MalcolmSargent cut his teeth conducting the band on Llandudno Pier. WestEnd thespians graced the summer shows.
And thanks to the ingenuity of brilliant engineers such as EugeniusBirch, the “Brunel of the British seaside”, theend-of-pier theatres — improbably suspended a few feet abovethe waves — were often as elaborately designed and lavishlyequipped as the London Palladium.
But all that changed in the late Victorian and Edwardian era withthe arrival of the penny arcades, the “what the butlersaw” machines (the Victorian equivalent of today’sinternet pornography), the Mystic Megs in their kitsch“oriental” kiosks, the raucous funfairs, the candyfloss and the saucy postcards. Suddenly, piers developed areputation for uncouth misbehaviour, if not outrightlicentiousness. You don’t have to be Sigmund Freud to workout why. If the sea stands for everything that mankind cannotcontrol, then the pier — as potent a phallic symbol as anyskyscraper — was a daring protrusion into that dangerous,boundless realm. It invited those who stepped on to it to cast offthe usual constraints of polite society.
Perhaps this aura of breezy liberation is the reason why piersstill occupy such a prominent niche in the British psyche, as wellas in such classic British movies as Oh! What a Lovely War,Brighton Rock and Wish You Were Here (in which the shape of thepier alters from scene to scene, because the film was shot in bothBognor Regis and Worthing).
And nostalgia also explains why we go to such desperate lengths topreserve these tottering wooden structures that are peculiarlyvulnerable to the ravages of fire (this is the second time that theGrand at Weston-super-Mare has burnt down), gales and the constantcorrosion of salt water.
Barely half of the 100 greatest Victorian and Edwardian piers stillexist. But doughty enthusiasts fight ferociously to preserve theones that are still in working order or to breathe new life intothose, such as the Grade I listed wreck of the West Pier atBrighton, that are now little more than tragic mangles.
The trouble is that rebuilding an ornate Victorian pier is a bitlike visiting a London dentist: you can expect to add a millionquid to the bill for each year of untreated decay. To bring theWest Pier back to its former glory would now probably cost£40 million. The bill to rebuild the Grand could well be ofthe same magnitude. The sadness is that it had only recentlyreopened after handsome refurbishment by its new owners.