Debate on future of pier rated irrelevant

The Argus Monday, 17 November, 2003

ARGUMENTS about whether a revived West Pier in Brighton will be a restoration or a rebuild are irrelevant, says its historian.

Professor Fred Gray said in a lecture at Sussex University: "It's because the West Pier is culturally important that those questions about whether it really will be the West Pier if it's restored or rebuilt are essentially shallow and misplaced.

"HMS Victory in Portsmouth - that great symbol of the might of the British navy two centuries ago - is still HMS Victory, despite only five per cent of the original ship surviving.

"And in any case, of course, piers are always being constantly remade and restored."

Prof Gray, Dean of the Sussex Institute and Professor of Continuing Education, said: "People become passionate about the pier because it's culturally important.

"But this works both ways and my guess is that the passion sometimes aroused against the pier is because it can also be seen as a symbol of the English and Brighton seaside from the past."

The West Pier has also become a place of myth and rumour. A wooden sculpture in the artistic quarter of the seafront supposedly commemorates the children who died during its construction.

But Prof Gray said: "As far as I know, no one, adult or child, died in the construction of the pier."

The pier had aroused great passion and received international coverage.

He said: "In part it's because of the quality of the architecture and because it's become an icon of the Brighton and indeed English seaside.

"It's now part not just of the physical landscape of Brighton but also the more powerful cultural and symbolic landscape of seaside Britain."

That was why 10,000 people had signed a petition calling on the Palace Pier not to hold up West Pier restoration.