Palaces by the Sea - Brighton West Pier

Brighton West Pier, designed by Eugenius Birch, was built from March 1864 to October 1866 by Messrs Laidlaw & Sons of Glasgow. Birch's successful reputation as a pier architect saw him design piers at Blackpool, Eastbourne, and Weston-super-Mare. The cost of the pier was some £21,890 and it opened to the public on 6th October 1866.

By 1877, in addition to the two toll houses at the pier root, and six ornamental octagonal houses dotted along the pier, the central section was widened to take a covered bandstand. On 19th October 1893 the 125ft long, 100 ft wide pavilion was opened; Eugenius Birch's nephew, R W Peregrine Birch, was responsible for the design of the pavilion. By 1896 a landing stage was added, and enlarged in 1901, allowing steamships excursions to the Isle of Wight, Boulogne and Dieppe.

Between 1914 and 1916 the central pier was widened by fourteen feet and an eight-sided, oval concert hall designed by Clayton & Black, and constructed by Noel Ridley, was erected. Its roof was designed to need no internal supporting columns, giving unobstructed views inside. Some 2,074,000 visitors came to the pier in 1920. By 1939 visitor numbers had declined to 760,000, and with the outbreak of the Second World War the pier was closed. In case of invasion, the pier was deliberately breached and mined.

Although visitor numbers rose to one million after the war, the West Pier was unable to compete with the neighbouring Palace Pier. By 1965 AVP Industries Ltd became the owners of the pier, but their plans for the pier came to nothing. In 1970 the pier head was declared unsafe and closed and by 1975 the owners declared the whole structure unsafe.

On 30th September 1975 the pier was closed to members of the public after nearly 109 years.

Following the Second World War the West Pier saw a slow decline in its fortunes; an ambiguous identity for the pier in the eyes of the owners and a resultant inability to make large-scale changes secured its closure. Perversely we can be grateful for the poor management of the pier, for although it allowed the pier to become dilapidated it meant the pier remained largely unaltered.

In the early 1980s Brighton West Pier became Britain's only Grade I-listed seaside pier. In Britain, of the more than 365,000 listed buildings some 94.5% are listed Grade II, 4.1% Grade II*, and only 1.4% - roughly some 5,000 buildings - are listed Grade I and only buildings constructed prior to 1700 receive automatic listing; to be listed Grade I demonstrated the importance of the pier.

Despite this listing, the pier began a slow, inexorable decline. The deterioration of the pier has been accentuated by the lack of proper maintenance since the 1950s. In 1987 the Great Storm lashed parts of the country, and the pier was breached before the concert hall, leaving her stranded from land.

In 1991 the rest of the pier root was carefully dismantled. In the late 1990s sections of decking and chunks of the pier neck between the concert hall and pavilion fell into the sea, and most of the landing stage had collapsed.

Brighton West Pier Trust, having owned the pier since 1978, secured lottery funding to aid a two-phase restoration of the pier. A grant of £10.65 million towards the restoration of the pier sub-structure and deck and a £3.5 million grant towards the restoration of the pier structures such as the concert hall was allocated. Topped up with private funding, this meant approximately £34 million for the regeneration of Brighton West Pier.

Preparatory work had begun on her iron piles. Changes to the pier would have been inevitable to make her viable. Work would have involved dismantling the pier head pavilion and the concert hall. These would have been replaced in their original positions once the pier structure had been repaired and raised to take into account a rise in sea levels. Then the West Pier would have once again represented the pinnacle of pier architecture and the most original of piers in the country.

However, it was just a dream. Following two arson attacks and the collapse of the concert hall, funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund and St Modwens, the sole private sector backer, was withdrawn. This followed years of stalemate between the parties involved.

The owners of the Palace Pier - the ironically named Noble Group - used every available means to delay the restoration of the West Pier while the National Lottery Fund failed to live up to its promises. Their respective vindictiveness and inaction ultimately sealed the fate of the pier.

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