Southend Pier
Friday, 10th February 2006 by Alex Turnbull
This is Southend Pier in Southend-on-Sea, England. At a staggering 2,158 metres, it is officially the world's longest pleasure pier. Work began in 1887, and at the peak of its popularity in 1949, Southend Pier had 7 million visitors.
Southend Pier really is absolutely humongous, and there's all sorts of stuff to see. There's a funfair with loads of rides on the shore, there's some people wandering around, there's a train on the pier (yes, it has it's own railway to get you to the end), and you can also see where the track splits to allow the pier's two trains to pass.
Unfortunately the pier was damaged by fire late last year, and not for the first time either - it previously suffered conflagrations in 1959, 1976 and 1995! However the Google Local shots shown here are from before the fire, so you can still see the now-destroyed train station and restaurant. There's also a visitors centre here too.
One more interesting tidbit - Southend Pier was featured in the end credits of Minder, if anyone other than me remembers that show!
The Southend Pier Wikipedia page has loads more info, and for more extremely long things like this, see the previously posted Extremely Long Jetties.
Thanks to Jonathan Rawle, Remko Jansen and Cookie Monster.
About the author
Alex has decided that his title will be Senior Vice President of Stuff.
That’s 1.34 miles (7080 ft) for us non-metric users out there. 🙂
If you look closely you can see two people walking along holding hands:
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heh, I think these two are arm-in-arm View Placemark
You will notice that if you go to the end of the pier there’s a load of building work going on. You can see lots of wood and there are various holes in the pier where you can see the water beneath.
That was the damage being fixed from the 1976 fire – only 28 or 29 years after the fire ripped through the pier head. I only hope they repair the damage caused by the fire in 2005 a little sooner.
I didnae say that about Southend pier – I said it about Southport pier (that’s in Merseyside)
Southport Pier is here and it’s not even built at this point.
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Oops, sorry BM of M, I must have been confused – post duly updated.
They have finally started repairing our pier (i live in southend) by demolishing the fire damaged sections but we still don’t know what caused it.
having lived in southend all my life it’s about time southend borough council sold the pier to john gardener or phil miller who both have made southend proud to be called a seaside resort again