Not only the longest pier in Britain, Southend pier is the longest pier in the whole wide world. So long indeed that it has its own railway to take visitors from one end to the other, a distance of 1.34 miles into the Thames Estuary.
The reason it’s so long is a shade unglamorous: mud. In the early 1800s, passenger boats couldn’t dock at Southend because of its extensive mudflats.
Thus a 182-metre wooden pier was opened in 1830 and tripled in length three years later. Finally, by 1846, it was elongated to 1.3 miles so boats could dock whatever the tide. It was eventually replaced with a terrifically expensive iron pier (it cost £70,000, equivalent to more than £9.5m today) – complete with the world’s first pier railway – and extended to its current length in 1898.
The pier is pictured here in 1896. It was a magnificent success, despite the fact visitors could clearly detect the fun-sapping odour of a mortuary under the original wooden pier.
The pier saw its heyday in the years following the First World War and in 1927 an eastern extension was built to allow more boats to dock.
By the end of the 1940s, nearly six million pleasure-seekers were visiting per year. However, the trend for foreign holidays began a decline in the pier’s fortunes.
Five major fires broke out between 1959 and 2005, destroying facilities at both ends. More recently, a new 170-tonne cultural centre has been lifted on to the pier (by a rather large crane) and the railway has been electrified to make it more eco-friendly.
In 2023, Southend won the National Piers Society’s Pier of the Year Award, setting a seal on its rehabilitation. southendpier.co.uk
We named it one of the best piers to visit
