Taking in the sea air: why pleasure piers prevailed

Victorian doctors also recommended coastal getaways to their patients as a cure for all sorts of ailments, from depression to tuberculosis. A prescription of ‘sea air’ meant getting out of crowded, smoggy cities polluted by the heavy machinery of the industrial era.

Experiencing the restorative effects of the sea or taking a walk along a pier with an ice-cream was considered a powerful tonic. And pavilions providing ‘end-of-the-pier’ shows became a byword for bawdy entertainment, making stars of their performers.

But piers are more than a relic of the past – Brighton Palace Pier is one of the UK’s most popular attractions outside of London, with around 4m visitors strolling its wooden promenade each year. That said, there aren’t as many piers dotted along the coast as there once was.

“At the beginning of the 20th century there were some 100 piers spread around the UK coastline, but the number has dwindled to just 62 existing open or operational piers now,” says Richard Baldwin MRICS, director of leisure at Avison Young, who has been involved in the surveying and sale of piers.

Despite the reduced number of piers, they are still valuable commercial real estate. “There is continued recognition by central and local authorities that these seaside areas are important visitor enterprise areas that underpin employment and generate value for economies,” says Baldwin. “General economic pressures, cost of living crisis and perhaps more focus on staying and enjoying the UK, as opposed to foreign travel, is perhaps underpinning confidence in the market and that piers and arcades have a long-term commercial future and many are regarded important landmarks.”

He adds that after years of slow decline, there has been a lot of seaside regeneration spurred by initiatives such as the Seascape Restoration Grant. “People are now realising that some of these seaside resorts aren't as down at heel as they thought they were,” he says.

While the UK isn’t building any new piers, it is restoring or refurbishing plenty of those it does have – helped by the fact that sturdy Victorian engineering means the piers were built to last. “During the last 25 years a number of piers have been restored, while others await funding for restoration work to begin. Recently, Bognor Regis, Swanage and Southsea have received awards from the government’s Coastal Revival Fund.”

However, it’s not just the UK that has a passion for piers, they exist all over the world and Modus has put together a selection of fine examples.

A Grade II listed pier in Wales, which looks much the same as it did when it was built nearly 150 years ago, thanks to ongoing upkeep and preservation efforts. In 2015, the pier was sold to a local leisure operator called Adam Williams and his company Tir Prince Leisure Group.

“He hasn't changed anything on the pier, he's upgraded it all, made it more attractive and it's doing very well by all accounts,” says Baldwin. “It's got some lovely original features and a beautiful building at the end of it.”

Birnbeck is an unconventional example of a pier because it connects an island to the mainland. And thanks to a £10m lottery grant, work is now under way to restore the crumbling Grade II listed pier that served as an RNLI lifeboat station for 132 years, until 2014.

The pier was originally built as a boarding point for Victorian paddle steamers but fell into disrepair in recent decades and restoration work is expected to be completed in late 2027.

Blackpool is a town in the north-west of England that loves piers so much it has three of them. It’s North, Central and South piers welcome millions of visitors each year. The North pier was the second of 14 piers designed by architect and civil engineer Eugenius Birch and it cost £11,740 to build.

“It's pretty unusual to have three piers in one seaside location, but perhaps that was a product of the popularity of Blackpool in the heyday [of the UK seaside holiday],” says Baldwin. “There was quite a big development of railway infrastructure at that time to get people to these locations.”

While Santa Monica Pier was originally built to run treated sewage out into the ocean, it has since lived a more glamorous life, appearing in countless films (Forrest Gump “felt like running” all the way there from Alabama), TV shows and video games. It was the second pier in the world to be made entirely from concrete and in the 1920s fairground rides and a ballroom were added and proved a big hit with Californians.

But times changed and it was saved from demolition in the 1970s, with the help of support from the residents of Santa Monica. In 1988 the Santa Monica Pier Development Programme was responsible for adding retail, dining, and entertainment attractions that included Pacific Park.

When is a pier almost not a pier? When it is a sea bath. This eye-catching construction would also be at home in the Modus feature on urban swimming. Intrepid sea swimmers can use it for free all year round and enjoy views of nearby Sweden.

It is made entirely from Azobé wood, which is an African hardwood chosen for its durability in seawater, as well as resistance to rot and woodworm.

This beautiful German pier has a dramatic history of being damaged by fire, ice floes and storms, before being repeatedly repaired and restored, from the early 1900s through to the 1940s. Neglect was a far more dangerous foe and by 1978 it had fallen into such a state of disrepair that it was demolished.

Then came the reunification of Germany in 1991 and efforts to rebuild the pier, which was completed in 1998 and based on the original designs.