Long walk, meet short pier
Somebody torched Hastings Pier last night.
Bastards.
It was a great spindly thing with a ballroom at the end, like a Victorian lady hiking her skirts and wading out to sea. Designed by Eugenius Birch (who also designed Eastbourne Pier and West Pier in Brighton — which was itself torched a few years ago), it opened in 1872 on Britain’s first bank holiday.
Its fortunes — like those of all Britain’s pleasure piers — were up and down through the 20th C and into the 21st. In the Sixties and Seventies, Hastings Pier was a rock and roll venue, hosting concerts by The Rolling Stones, The Who, Jimi Hendrix and Pink Floyd.
They’ve already made arrests. I’m guessing it’s insurance money or something, but we may never get to the bottom of it.
There is no part of England that is farther than a hundred miles from the sea. When I was told this, I sat down with a map and a piece of string and worked it out. It’s true. The seaside holiday is deep down in the marrowbone of the Briton.
From the very beginning of the Nineteenth C — and really hotting up once railroads made travel easy — Brits built pleasure piers like this. Dozens of them. So they could visit the ocean even when the tide was out, without getting their pink satin slippers wet.
They’re like…long, thin state fairs stuck into the sea (the one at Southend-on-sea is almost a mile and a half long!). They had concerts and shows and shops and food running down the middle, railings on either side to look out over the water and at night they’re lit up like Rock City.
I love these things. I’m sure they make perfect sense to Brits.
October 5, 2010 — 7:03 pm
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