Pier of the Year

Hastings re-vamped pier has won a prestigious award, Pier of the Year :-

In the competition judged by the National Piers Society, Hastings have beaten off beat off Worthing pier which came second for the third year running.  Llandudno pier tookthird place.

Hastings 145-year-old structure was hit by a devastating fire in 2010 but it reopened last year following a £14.2m restoration project.

Gavin Henderson, National Piers Society president, called the pier "a phoenix" and Maria Ludkin, the chair of Hastings Pier Trustees, said: "We are absolutely delighted that our wonderful community-owned pier has won this prestigious award."

http://www.hastingsobserver.co.uk/news/hastings-scoops-pier-of-the-year-accolade-1-7897013

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-39455620

Hastings Pier is Up and Running again

The 144-year-old Hastings Pier, originally designed by Eugenius Birch, and Grade II Listed since 1976, has reopened this year, eight years after closure and six years after the structure was almost totally destroyed in a devastating fire in October 2010. The blaze, thought to have been started by vandalism, destroyed the pier head ballroom, all of the kiosks and stalls, much of the decking and one of the two curved pavilions. No one has been prosecuted.

The revived pier, with restored 1916 pavilion to the left. 

Following the fire English Heritage assessment confirmed that the heritage value of the substructure remained, so an application was submitted for funding to the Heritage Lottery at the end of November 2010 to restore the substructure of the Pier and renovate the remaining pavilion. Heritage Lottery trustees visited the pier on 16 March 2011 to assess the application. Hastings Borough Council were granted £100k toward emergency works by to pay for structural supports to be applied to the central section which was weakened by the loss of the deck in the fire.

5 October 2010, the blaze destroyed most of the
structures on the pier and damaged the substructure

Hastings Pier; Good News

The derelict Hastings Pier, which followers of this blog will remember I’ve been interested in for some time, will have a £14m restoration after the Hastings Pier Charity formally took ownership of the ruin this week.

The 140-year-old structure was almost completely destroyed by fire in October 2010. Renovation work is due to start very soon, hopefully this month. This will include refurbishing the remaining pavilion and building a new visitor centre, the project is scheduled to be completed in the spring of 2015, which seems quite quick until you remember that the pier was closed in 2008, after being declared unsafe. It then belonged to a nominally Panamanian company, Ravenclaw, who did absolutely nothing with it, leaving the gates padlocked and the structure subject to the ravages of weather and, with no security in place, vulnerable to idle trespassers and vandalism. 

 Ravenclaw was issued with a compulsory purchase order last year, after it failed to carry out any repair work or even appear to explain why it had not. Hastings Borough Council formally took ownership of the pier this week, on Wednesday 15 August and passed ownership directly to the Hastings Pier Charity, which will oversee the work. Most of the £14m will come from the Heritage Lottery Fund, significant amounts have also been allocated to the project by the Coastal Communities Fund, Community Assets Fund, Hastings Borough Council and East Sussex County Council.

For more recent information see:-   http://hpcharity.co.uk/tag/hastings-pier/

For a complete history of Hastings Pier:-  http://www.hastingschronicle.net/hastingsPier.html

Hastings ruined pier, latest; Picture of the Week 26 Dec 2012



The ruin of Hastings Pier

The pier, which was devastated by an arson attack in 2010, has won Heritage Lottery funding for its restoration, granted in November. Work is expected to begin in the New year and be finished in 2014.

See http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/nov/19/hastings-pier-lottery-grant

Ruined Pier; Picture of the Week 16.10.12

A ruined pier, a sandy beach, but where?

The first mystery photograph for a while. One more clue, for what it's worth; I shot it in September 2001.


* Update  7 November 2012

The old pier was on the coast at Atlantic City, New Jersey. When I shot this picture, the landward end of the pier still had a pavilion on it. I haven't been able to find any pictures of this online, which means if any remained after 2001, it probably was probably washed away in the hurricane of 2012.

The Seaside Pier, A Burning Question.

The devastating fire which destroyed ninety-percent of the buildings on Hastings pier on the night of the fifth of October 2010 was only one example of a number of conflagrations which have devastated seaside piers across the UK since these iconic structures began appearing around the British coast in the nineteenth century.   The over water position of piers means they could be expected to suffer the ravages of water, weather and occasional collisions with shipping, but fire might seem to be less probable.

The difficulty in some instances is a direct consequence of the leisure use they are put to. People at work tend to pay attention and take more pride in their workplace, casual visitors are relaxed, mainly on holiday and their concentration is elsewhere.  Some pleasure-pier fires may have been caused by discarded cigarettes, matches etc., soft furnishings in ballrooms and theatres, the timber decking and many wooden structures built on the piers make them particularly vulnerable.

Beware of falling debris, Hastings 2012

Today the smoking ban might make a thoughtless smoker surreptitiously discard a lit match in a hidden location, with disastrous results, though most are more sensible. However the sheer number of serious fires on seaside piers is far larger than can be blamed purely on the tobacco industry.  Past fires on piers have been started by anything from casual vandalism and ineptly used kitchen equipment to gas lamps and electrical faults, though deliberate arson is suspected to be the cause at Hastings and this wasn’t the first case of a pier subjected to a criminal attack.

Britain’s seaside piers are passed down to us from the era of the Victorian enthusiasm for trips to the seaside, made possible in most cases by the equally Victorian enthusiasm for railways.  Without the railways most seaside resorts would have remained the small ports or quiet fishing villages which they were in previous eras and would have no use for the expensive luxury of a pleasure pier.  Some ports, such as Southampton, had become popular spa towns in the Regency period, but no piers intended principally for purposes other than serving shipping were constructed until Victorian times.

Hastings Pier, Picture of the Week for 22 February 2011

Hastings pier, Feb 2012

Hastings Pier  was gutted by a fire in October 2010 after being closed since 2006.  Arson was suspected and two people arrested.  Campaigners are still trying to raise support to refurbish the pier despite the devastation.  The Hastings Pier and White Rock Trust want to secure community ownership of the pier.

Designed by Eugenius Birch, Hastings Pier opened in 1872 and was originally 277 metres (910ft) long.  Birch was a renouned engineer who worked on the railways of India and with naval engines before turning his hand to pier design. He eventually created fourteen, the most famous being Brighton West pier which, also as a result of fire damage, has for many years been in an even more ruinous state than Hastings Pier.