Seaview’s wobbly but attractive pier was another storm victim in 1951.
CELEBRATED author James Joyce had it all wrong when one of his characters described a pier as: “A disappointed bridge”.
Far from being disappointments, piers were practical celebrations of Victorian engineering brilliance, which enabled pleasure, passenger and cargo boats to beat the tides and promenaders to take the sea air.
The original Ryde Pier, which opened in 1814, is often regarded as the earliest in the United Kingdom. Soon, resorts up and down the land were following suit. By the 1860s, piers were a “must have” for any seaside town worth its salt.
Some of the earliest, borne out of navigational necessity, took on the dual functions of landing and pleasure pier and developed their own attractions in the open air and in the pavilions spawned at their heads.
Horse-drawn, and then electric tram, and at first steam and then electric train links, sped people less interested in strolling than transport to and from the Island’s Ryde gateway.
Ryde was a main gateway but that artery was severely restricted by its geography.
By the late 18th century ‘Ryde Wherries’, which had provided a fairly regular service on the Ryde-Portsmouth crossing had grown into the large sailing vessel Packet, but when it was unable to moor at Ryde’s town jetty, travellers faced a rowing boat and horse and cart ride across the half mile expanse of Ryde Sands at low tide.
It took a handful of years for businessmen to realise the commercial potential of a pier but its 1,740ft length in a hostile environment was always going to be choppy financial water. That continues to this day with repairs and replacement making the pier hardly recognisable from its early cross-boarded largely timber construction.
Nearby, at Appley, Sir William Hutt, MP, jumped on the pier bandwagon to a much smaller scale, constructing the little-known and short-lived Appley Pier, completed in 1873 to replace an existing structure nearby.
It was but a tiddler at 100ft in length, was little-used because its channel silted up readily, and was removed in 1911.
Round the corner, in Seaview, the Caws family was at the peak of its influence and spearheaded construction of a fine suspension pier designed as a magnet to bring the lucrative pleasure boat trade to what was then a quaint sailing village.
Early concerns of the fragility of the 1,000ft long structure, when it was noted to oscillate when crowded with people, were assuaged by fine-tuning of its cable tension. Designers of London’s “Wobbly Bridge” would have been wise to have borne the Seaview experience in mind. Like many piers, its continued operation was plagued by high maintenance costs and by the arrival of the Second World War the pretty pier was closed to the public. On December 27, 1951, a violent storm carried away some of its structure, followed by much of the rest two days later.
As part of transformation of much of Bembridge Harbour for a railway, Bembridge had a short wooden pier 250ft long constructed in the 1870s. It had a lifespan of 50, or so, years.
Sandown Pier was opened in 1875 and extended to a length of 875ft in 1878 when the pier pavilion was added, while at the other side of the bay Shanklin followed suit in 1890, showing that resort could do it bigger and better with a length of 1,200ft, most of which was blown away by the Great Storm of 1987.
In place of a failed harbour project, Ventnor’s Royal Victoria Pier was many years in the making, finally officially opened in 1887 with a length of 683ft.
Nearly 100 years later, fire spelled an end to the, by then, deteriorating structure.
To the far west, at Alum Bay, there were various stabs at piers. Much of the final version was carried away in the vicious storm of February 13, 1928.
Totland Pier, which remains to this day, was opened as part of an ambitious development programme partnering the impressive, spired, Totland Hotel which was knocked down in the 1970s.
Yarmouth’s listed timber pier is now 135 years old, thanks to restoration and regular maintenance, support that was not given to what remains of the older structure at Fort Victoria.
At Cowes, its impressive Victoria Pier was opened on March 26 1902, twin pagoda tollhouses, making an impressive landing point at The Parade, but by 1961 it too had succumbed to decay.
Archivist of the National Piers Society, Martin Easdown, and seaside historian Linda Sage chart the development of Piers of Hampshire and the IW and include previously little-published photographs of structures present and past adorning the Island’s coastline.
The Island has a proud pier heritage and its timber, iron and concrete structures feature prominently in the
book, giving insight into the how, why and when they were constructed.
The Island has several other small pier stories, not least those for the lifeboat at Bembridge, for the royal family at East Cowes and at other landing points dotted here and there.
All helped underline the Island’s premier position for Piers of the realm.
l Piers of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight is published by Amberley at £17.99. It has 224 pages and more than 200 photographs and illustrations. It is available from the County Press Shop.