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My haughty old friend is still the best

Adam Trimingham - The Argus Wednesday, 4 February, 2004

WE want the West Pier! That was the slogan of Brighton residents who aimed to save the grand old lady of the sea from a watery grave 30 years ago when it was in danger of partial demolition.

They collected 30,000 signatures and persuaded Brighton Council to change its mind. But last year fire-raisers and storms achieved what councillors would not allow in 1974.

All the time the pier was a romantic ruin there was a hope it could be saved and restored to its most glorious days 80 years ago when two million people passed through the turnstiles.

But the arsonists succeeded in making the pier look a sad wreck and from that time support started ebbing away from plans to conserve it.

The Brighton West Pier Trust, successor to the We Want The West Pier Society, was not helped by having to go along with a large shoreline development by private sector partner St Modwen.

This was deeply unpopular with conservationists who could normally be relied on to support saving the second-best building in Brighton.

Blame

Just one week ago, the Heritage Lottery Fund hammered what seemed to be the final nails in the coffin by withdrawing the millions which had been pledged for the pier's restoration.

So who was responsible for the decline and partial fall of the pier? I blame:

• Former pier owner Harold Poster, who let it fall into such an appalling condition it was partially closed in 1970 and completely closed five years later.
• Brighton Council for not accepting the belated but generous offer of Mr Poster to sell the pier for £1 and put £250,000 towards the restoration which would then have covered most if not all of the cost.
• The Heritage Lottery Fund, for changing its mind over money for the pier and mucking around with the trust. That has stalled restoration schemes in their tracks.
• English Heritage for not sanctioning a really bold and imaginative piece of architecture as the shoreline development for the pier. This led to the controversial proposals by St Modwen which had to be designed so they were subordinate to the pier.
• The Palace Pier for putting every obstacle in the way of the trust once a democratic decision had been reached a year ago to grant planning permission.
• The arsonists for twice wrecking the pier and giving the green light to anyone else with an unwanted but listed historic building to torch it and see what happens next.

I have been cycling past that pier almost every day since the Sixties and always gained great pleasure from its appearance until the events of 2003.

It's half a lifetime ago but I recall walking on the pier in its dog days and even then being impressed by its fading grandeur.

Last Wednesday as I went by the West Pier it was like saying farewell to an old friend with all hope of restoration gone.

But a week later there is a different story. The trust is still trying to rescue the St Modwen scheme by persuading the Heritage Lottery Fund to think again.

Various other bidders have put their names forward for a rescue deal, including the consortium headed by former boxing champion Chris Eubank.

They also include Aros, whose plans for a futuristic pier attracted a lot of interest when revealed last year in The Argus.

Most intriguing of all was the proposal by English Heritage for restoring the pier, not to its Twenties splendour but to how it was in 1866.

This came as a complete surprise to me and most people much more intimately concerned with the pier although not, I suspect, to others.

The advantages are immediate and obvious. A more simple pier with a promenade and a few kiosks would be easier and cheaper to build and maintain.

Such a structure would not pose any commercial threat to the fortunes of the Palace Pier owners, who could cease their opposition.

It would also meet the concerns of conservationists because there would be no large shoreline development to accompany it.

The restored West Pier would be a tribute to the original designer, Eugenius Birch, since it would be his pier people saw and not one subject to additions for the following 50 years.

Such a pier would be more of a rebuild than a restoration because several of the kiosks are intact and most of the original piles for the pier still stand.

The Heritage Lottery Fund might be persuaded to renew its original large offer of £14 million towards the West Pier.

English Heritage would be prepared to fund the rest and run the revived promenade pier as an ancient monument.

But there are many questions which need to be answered before such a project can be sanctioned.

Is the 1866 pier really what people want? To many visitors, the pier was symbolised by the imposing theatre at the end, built in 1893, and the elegant concert hall finished in 1916.

Will English Heritage be able to afford the lesser but still substantial (perhaps £25 million compared with £40 million) costs involved?

If there is to be a charge for going on the West Pier, who will pay to stroll on a bare promenade when they can enjoy all the attractions on the Palace Pier for free?

Will members of the West Pier Trust, which owns the pier, be prepared to go along with this new scheme when they have invested so much time and trouble in a partly commercial solution?

What will be proposed to fill the large, empty spaces where the shore-line development would be and will that be commercial too?

There will be some in Brighton who will say they have had enough of the West Pier and the structure should be demolished as soon as possible.

Passion

But they should be warned there is no way this could be achieved with any speed.

Firstly the pier would have to be delisted, not a likely solution when it is a Grade I listed building strongly supported by the Government's conservation watchdog, English Heritage.

Then there is the question of who would pay for the demolition, which would cost at least £2 million. Not cash-strapped Brighton and Hove City Council and not the West Pier Trust, which is a small organisation.

If eventual ownership of the pier reverted to the Crown, as it did in the Seventies, demolition would only be considered if the pier declined to the extent it was considered a danger.

The practical task of demolition would be immense. There was enough trouble a few years ago getting rid of Margate Pier, also designed by Birch, when it fell into disuse and Birch was only a beginner when he built that.

Those of us who love the West Pier have a passion for it which no other pier could possibly evince.

It is purely and simply the most beautiful pleasure pier ever built or ever likely to be built should a new wave of modern piers be considered.

Of the 50-odd surviving piers along the British coastline, just the Palace Pier, Blackpool North Pier and Clevedon Pier (the only other Grade I listed) have any serious claims to be a rival.

The West Pier had a haughty air the more plebeian Palace Pier never possessed.

It was in a posh part of town. Its slogan was The West Pier Is The Best Pier and it lived up to that billing. People loved to stroll up and down its decking to see and be seen.

The West Pier attracts admiration through its sheer survival. The fact any of it stands after all those gales and storms, including the 1987 hurricane, is a tribute to the genius of Birch.

Brighton was for years known as a resort with piers, queers and racketeers.

The last two categories are still around in sundry guises but it would be a cause for genuine tears if the two piers were ever reduced to one.

Once we know what the future holds it will be time to gather public support for another We Want The West Pier campaign to show the powers-that-be how much backing there is for it.

The alternative, too sad to contemplate, is to let it slowly rot away so that in time the West Pier becomes the Disappear.