Hastings Pier
Hastings Pier was proclaimed to be the ‘peerless pier’ when it opened in 1872, recalls Steve Peak. It immediately became the town’s leading tourist attraction, and remained so until the late 1970s. The high-point of its popularity came in the 1930s, the boom-time for Hastings as a seaside resort, when the pier’s theatre, ballroom, restaurant, shops, amusements, bandstand, speedboats, angling facilities and illuminations brought hundreds of thousands of people through its tollgate every year.
But serious problems began in the early 1980s. Nationally, seaside piers started falling out of fashion, and many have experienced similar financial problems to those seen at Hastings since then. But the decline of Hastings Pier in the last quarter century has been worsened by the failure of its several owners since the early ‘80s to invest in maintaining its structure. The pier’s future now hangs on obtaining the major finance needed to restore that rusting ironwork, and then find a way of turning its many facilities into a viable business.
The 1860s
If you stand on Hastings Pier, you will see nothing of the original Victorian ‘peerless pier’. Only the below-deck iron posts and gantry date back to 1872, but they are now starting to collapse.
The first seeds of the pier were sown in late 1860, when a group of local speculators, including several councillors, set up the Hastings Floating Harbour Association. This initially aimed to build a small harbour, consisting of a single floating arm chained to the seabed, off the Old Town. But in 1861 this proposal turned into a much bigger plan: a two-arm 57 acre harbour in front of the Old Town, including using the harbour arms as public ‘promenade piers’, as was just becoming fashionable. At the same time, another company came onto the scene from out of town with similar plans for a harbour and pier.
Until the construction of the railways throughout Britain in the 1840s, ‘50s and ‘60s, piers were primarily landing stages for boats bringing health-seeking visitors to the seaside towns. But the railways brought many more middle class pleasure seekers to the seaside, who liked ‘promenading’ not only along seafronts, but also out on piers. From the late 1850s the new pleasure piers began appearing around the coast – simple structures carrying no buildings but making an excellent promenade.
For most of the 1860s there was a bitter fight between the Hastings establishment and the non-local company over which would win the prize of building a pier (the harbour idea was soon dropped). The winner on points was to be the out-of-town Pier and Harbour Company, led by Britain’s most prolific and famous pier builder Eugenius Birch. This doyen of pier engineers, born 1818, had been involved in railway and bridge works in his early life. His first pier was Margate 1853-6, and by the time of his death in 1884 he had been engineer for another 13 piers, including Brighton West, Eastbourne and Hastings.
Despite lack of support from Hastings Council, the company obtained the legal powers necessary to build a harbour and pier under the 1861 General Pier and Harbour Act. But the project never came to fruition because of the default of the contractor, plus steadily growing local opposition. Many local people believed a harbour would reduce the town’s growing character as a fashionable resort, plus councillors and traders wanted their scheme to make the profits, not a company run by people unconnected with the town.
Another problem for the Pier and Harbour Company was the requirement under the 1861 Act that the harbour be built before the pier, and this all required massive funding.
In 1865 Birch and his company produced a new proposal: to separate their two projects, with the pier being at White Rock and the harbour remaining at the Old Town. They also drew up plans for a pier at Warrior Square, to be called the Alexandra Pier, but this was soon dropped.
The secretary of the Pier and Harbour Company was Mr WH Simpson, a solicitor who was involved in several other piers, including Brighton West, of which he said he was the sole promoter. He had lived in the Hastings area since 1839 and wanted to benefit the town. But by 1865 he was up against fierce opposition, and he said ‘there was a great hostility to the plan amongst some members of the council, because these gentlemen [councillors] wished to carry out a plan of their own’.
The most vociferous of these councillors was leading local builder John Howell. In 1866 Howell was given a £25,000 contract by his fellow councillors to build major drainage facilities across the town, and he had his eyes on a similar sum for a pier. But he had no guarantee of laying his hands on that contract if the pier company was not controlled by his fellow local freemasons – and the Pier and Harbour Company was not. In addition, the 1861 Act gave Simpson’s company certain exclusive legal rights for building a pier in Hastings, and put serious constraints on any other scheme, including any backed by Hastings Council.
But the Hastings terms of the 1861 Act were due to expire in July 1867, so in December 1866, with the Pier and Harbour Company dormant, Simpson held a public meeting to promote his own new parliamentary bill. He was now proposing just a ‘pleasure pier’, without a harbour. He offered the setting up and running of the scheme to the people of the town, on condition he was employed as adviser. But Howell again condemned Simpson, talking of ‘promises made and broken’ by him in previous years. Simpson warned that only the old company and Hastings Council could stop his bill becoming an act.
In January 1867 Simpson asked a Hastings Council meeting to approve his new Birch-backed plan, with the pier being sited at White Rock. The council did not do so, and instead supported an alternative project for a White Rock pier put forward by another newly-formed local company. But this came to nothing, and as they council had not opposed Simpson, his bill became the 1867 Hastings Pier Act.
This brought the battle of Hastings Pier to a standstill. Both sides were well dug in, but neither had weapons to defeat the other. Simpson’s new Pier Company, backed by Birch and with national figures as directors, had legal preference over the pier site, yet had little local support, while Howell had lots of backing, but was legally barred from the site.
After two years stalemate and a tight money market, a compromise was reached in the summer of 1869, whereby Simpson agreed to hand over his company to Howell and friends, on condition they kept Birch as engineer and paid all the costs of creating the act and the company.
Howell called a meeting of about 40 leading business people in the Castle Hotel, Wellington Square, on Friday 28 May 1869 to discuss his proposed deal with the Pier Company.
Howell first explained the background to the meeting and then Birch outlined his design ideas. Birch said he had chosen the White Rock site because ‘the best foundation could be found there’ – no rocks, and a thick bed of clay. The working expenses of existing piers – eg, Blackpool, Scarborough and Brighton West – were met by income from refreshment stalls and toy shops on the piers. A large and handsome saloon would be built at the end of the pier, with entrance by an extra fee. Birch thought investors could expect a dividend of eight to ten per cent.
In a general discussion, the meeting made it clear that there had previously been considerable hostility to the out-of-town pier promoters.
The meeting then passed a resolution adopting the project and a local committee was appointed. On 27 September 1869 the shareholders appointed a board of directors made up of local people: John Howell, William Scrivens the Mayor (as chairman), Thomas Brassey MP, George Clement and MC Gausden. Thomas Hide was secretary.
In June 1869 tenders were invited, and these were submitted to a special meeting of shareholders. Unfortunately for John Howell, the contract was awarded to Richard Laidlaw & Son, of Glasgow, one of the top three British firms specialising in piers. Birch had already employed them, including on Brighton West Pier.
The contract price was £23,250, and it was sealed on 9 December 1869.
The Pier is Launched
The first pile was screwed into the seabed at 3am Saturday 18 December 1869. Completion date for the contract was set as 19 March 1871, but it was delayed for more than a year by many problems, and construction difficulties sparked a crisis of confidence in the spring of 1870. The company survived, but by July 1870 it had still not raised all the capital, selling only £14,480-worth of the £10 shares. The last of the shares was not taken up until February 1872.
The design of Hastings Pier by the imaginative and highly competent Birch was seminal in some ways: it was the first British pier to have a grand pavilion, and the first to have it included as an integral part of the design. Until then, pier entertainment had been limited to a band playing in a small bandstand exposed to wind and rain, but the new Hastings Pier showed concerts, musicals and plays could be performed in comfort – and profitably. Many other piers soon followed Hastings.
The original pier was 910 feet long. Its wooden deck was laid on wrought-iron diagonal girders attached to about 360 cast-iron columns. Each column had a screw blade at its bottom end and was literally screwed into the ground. This was done by a large capstan mounted on a moveable wooden platform. About ten or a dozen men would push the capstan arms, trudging round and round the deck of the platform a few feet above the seabed.
The first 100 feet of the pier at its shoreward started at 130 feet wide, with two separate ‘toll house’ entrances on the east and west sides. The pier narrowed at the 100 feet point to 45 feet wide, and ran as such for the next 500 feet, forming the main ‘promenade deck’.
At the seaward end, the last 300 feet of the pier expanded to 195 feet to accommodate the ornate pavilion built in oriental style, with onion domes and tall finials. The pavilion was capable of housing 2,000 people, and measured 150 feet long, 100 feet wide and 30 feet high. The pavilion (aka saloon, concert hall) was then the only building on the pier, apart from the two toll houses, which were also oriental in style, being tiny domed octagonal boxes.
Also at the seaward end were low-level landing stages on the east and south sides, which were later enlarged to take big steamers.
The contractors discovered that there was a submerged ancient forest at the seaward end of the pier. In July 1871, as piles were being screwed for the pier head, one broke on hitting a large oak tree. Several smaller trees had already been taken up and many others were scattered about, reported the Hastings News. The massive two ton trunk, 24 feet long and three feet wide, was put on display in Alexandra Park. It is now believed that this was part of the forest that ran all along this part of the Sussex coast about four thousand years ago.
The pier was formally opened by the Earl of Granville, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, on 6 August 1872, the first-ever statutory bank holiday. The bank holidays were to bring many more working class people to the British seaside, a new generation of trippers seeking fun not health, and escaping from the stifling confines of Victorian urban life.
On opening day, South East Railway lay on a special train from London to Hastings, bringing the earl and shareholders, plus other interested people. A procession formed at the station, with the mayor, the two MPs, coastguards, rifle volunteers and fire brigade, led by the band of the Royal Marines Artillery. First they went to the Queens Hotel to meet the directors and from there to the pier. But there was heavy rain and strong winds for much of the day. Gun salutes were fired from the pier-head and by Thomas Brassey MP’s yacht Eothen, lying close by. The company then sat down to lunch in the pavilion at the pier-head, with 630 seats. At the lunch the Earl called the town’s new acquisition ‘a peerless pier – a pier without a peer’.
The pier was an immediate success, attracting 482,000 people in its first year, a much bigger number than expected. A major draw was the band playing every day.
But bad management of the pier also soon became a cause for concern, a foretaste of what was to happen from the 1980s onwards. John Howell, sulking over his failure to win the contract, had been interrupting Laidlaw during their work, creating a bad feeling. The Pier Company then refused to pay Laidlaw £2,000 for extra work it carried out, whereupon Laidlaw took the company to court and won the case in an expensive lawsuit.
Some shareholders saw Howell as the bad egg in all this. He was found to have been given a contract by his fellow directors to install toilets at ten times what shareholders thought was the right price. At the 1875 company AGM, shareholders said they were being ‘treated by the directors like strangers and beggars instead of fellow townsmen’.
The First 40 Years
In its early years the pier’s prime role was to provide musical entertainment and theatre in the pavilion, with space and facilities for promenaders and anglers. Its large expanse of open decking was a parade for the better-off people, who could pay the tollgate fee. Here they could be seen in their fancy attire by the poorer folk watching them in envy from the seafront.
Up to the 1970s the pier was to be one of the town’s leading musical and theatrical centres, with performers such as Marie Lloyd, Harry Lauder, George Robey and the Rolling Stones. The pier was also to be a popular venue for other events: political meetings, charity fairs, etc, plus its bingo, amusement machines and restaurant used to attract many people.
Regular steamer services were introduced in 1884. A new landing stage was built in 1885, and another in 1890. The steamers continued until the start of the Second World War in 1939, but attempts to revive them afterwards were unsuccessful. However, there were occasional steamer services until the 1980s, when the landing stages became unusable through lack of maintenance.
In October 1896 gale damage to the new St Leonards Pier smashed its timber landing stage into pieces, and beams were driven along the coast to hit Hastings Pier, damaging its ironwork structure.
Until 1910, no other attractions were built on the pier. The only significant change, apart from the steamers, was the reroofing and enlarging of the pavilion in 1899. Then in April 1910 the annual general meeting of the Pier Company heard there was no dividend, and the causes of failure were described. A miserable offer of purchase from the St Leonards Pier was refused. Instead the directors decided to invest in new facilities that would bring other types of people onto the decks.
The first building to go up, roughly a third of the way down the pier, was the American Bowling Alley, erected in the autumn of 1910. The alley was swallowed up by the major development all over the pier in the 1930s, but the dome in the middle of its roof can still be seen. Later that year and into 1911 a large joywheel roundabout was put up next to the promenade, and a shooting gallery with amusement machines was built on the pier’s west side near the pavilion.
Nearly half a century later the pier company directors realised they had been acting without the necessary legal powers in erecting these, and all subsequent buildings. The original statute allowing the construction of the pier - the 1867 Hastings Pier Act - had only given permission for it to be used as a promenade, with a pavilion and pleasure boat facilities. A new act of Parliament had to be obtained in 1960 - the 1960 Hastings Pier Act - extending the company’s powers to cover all buildings, except the pavilion .
A New Era
A key event in the pier’s history took place in 1914, when the company sold a quarter of it to Hastings Council. Today, this is the section from the edge of the promenade to the frontage of the main pier buildings.
The purchase of 220 feet of the pier was part of a large-scale ‘Improvement Scheme’ adopted by the council in 1913, aimed at turning the White Rock area into the centre of the town’s tourist attractions. During that year the council began shaping the former estate of the Brisco family into White Rock Gardens as we know them today, and also purchased the East Sussex Hospital opposite the pier to replace it with ‘winter gardens’ (this was to be the White Rock Pavilion, now called the Theatre, built in 1927).
The 1913 scheme and the other Hastings Council improvements along all the seafront between the wars transformed Hastings into a thriving and popular seaside resort by the late 1930s. It was a far more successful form of public investment than the expensive ‘regeneration’ project launched in the late 1990s that has so far failed to produce any significant changes on the seafront.
A major part of the 1913 scheme which unfortunately never came to fruition was to site a big new building containing a museum, art gallery and library in the White Rock Gardens, overlooking the sea.
The 1913 scheme originated in a plan to buy the shoreward end of the pier, enlarge it and install a large bandstand on it. The council had been discussing the idea with the Pier Company directors throughout 1912, reaching an agreement in January 1913. This prompted councillors to look at all the pier’s surrounding area, resulting in the adoption of the Improvement Scheme in December 1913.
But during public discussion on the scheme many people suggested putting the bandstand in White Rock Gardens, which the council already owned, and where there was plenty of room. However, councillors controversially decided to push ahead with siting it on the pier.
The council agreed to buy 220 feet of the pier for £7,100, and to acquire enough of the surrounding land to make a box 220 feet square. The council also had a 12-month option with the company to buy all of the rest of the pier for just £10,000, but this never came to fruition.
Widening the shoreward end of the pier required parliamentary approval, and this took until August 1914, when royal assent was given to the Hastings Corporation (Pier) Order 1914. This authorized the council ‘to acquire the shore end of the Hastings Pier and adjoining property and to utilize the site for extending or widening the esplanade’.
Until then, the first 100 feet of the pier had been a cone, with its base of about 130 feet abutting the promenade. Its two sides then funnelled seaward in a curve for 100 feet, where the cone became the 45 feet wide main promenade deck of the pier. The council agreed to spend £12,300 to make it four times the size, as we see it today.
This enlarged area of the pier was known as the ‘parade extension’ (it is now also called the ‘apron’). The council’s aim was to build a large circular bandstand in the middle of it, with two flanking curved bandstand shelters, seating 650 people each, plus room for another 2,000 in deckchairs in the open space. The Pier Company was planning to use the proceeds of the sale to improve the rest of the pier by erecting shops, a restaurant and a new arcade at the new entrance, and providing shelter out to the very decorative pavilion.
The 220 feet of the pier changed hands in September 1914, just as the First World War broke out. The war delayed much of the 1913 scheme, but the parade extension went ahead immediately. The tollgates and the four-year old joywheel were removed and by the end of 1914 new columns and girders were being installed.
The official opening ceremony of the new extension took place on 19 April 1916. By chance, the weather was almost identical to that on opening day of the pier in 1872 – driving rain and strong wind. The ceremony took place in and around the new bandstand, which had just been finished.
Over the following four months the two shelters were put up, along with a well-designed building which formed the pier company’s frontage onto the council’s extension.
By mid-summer 1916 the new-looking Hastings Pier was in operation. Visitors first saw the bandstand and shelters, then passed through the new entrance foyer with its café and shops, before strolling along the open deck, past the bowling alley and rifle range, to admire the splendid pavilion and watch the steamboats and anglers.
Then on 15 July 1917, the much-praised pavilion was destroyed in a huge blaze. The fire followed a concert held for Canadian troops stationed in the town, and it was believed that one of their discarded cigarettes was responsible. The Hastings Observer described it as ‘A wonderful Sunday afternoon spectacle’ which burnt with a ‘grandeur which was almost indescribable’.
After the fire the Pier Company had to restore what was left of the severely damaged seaward end of the pier, build a new pavilion there and add as much as possible to the attractions at the new entrance on the parade extension.
But it was not until July 1922 that the replacement pavilion opened. This much larger, shed-like building, seating 1,400 people, was far less attractive than the original pavilion, and was often cruelly called an ‘aircraft hanger’ or ‘barn’.
In the early 1920s major improvements were carried out on the pier between the new pavilion and the parade extension. Its width was almost doubled in size, from 45 feet to 80 feet and several new buildings were erected. By 1926 the 1916 frontage building had become a large, free-entry arcade, which formed a foyer entrance to the pier from the extension. Here there was a big restaurant, a row of shops and many amusement machines.
At the seaward side of the arcade was a tollgate, through which the paying visitor would find major attractions. Immediately on the west side was the new 645-seat ‘Shore Pavilion’ theatre, which housed the Court Players and later the bingo hall. Walking to seaward, next came an amusements centre, the 1910 American Bowling Alley, a tea room, a bar and a refreshment kiosk. The rifle range had been removed.
In the early 1930s all the new buildings fronting onto the parade extension were revamped in art-deco style. The Shore Pavilion theatre was rebuilt, reopening in 1934 with two large minarets, increased seating of 740 and a ‘modern’ design and colour scheme. The pavilion was greatly improved, with many features added. A camera obscura was erected about halfway along the pier.
The 1930s were the heyday of the pier. In the first week of August 1931, a staggering 56,000 people passed through the turnstiles (the population of Hastings was then 66,000). There was dancing every night, daytime concerts, stunt diving, speedboat trips and even a searchlight fitted to the end of the pier for youngsters engaged in night-time swimming.
But in 1938 there was considerable storm damage to the seaward end, with significant loss of seabed. The repairs cost over £22,000 and business was severely restricted by the necessary closure of the pavilion during the repairs
After the War
For most of the Second World War the pier was closed to the public. On 22 May 1940 refugees from France and Belgium in a Belgian steam tug were landed on the pier. Two of the men aboard brought 13 million Belgian francs, funds of the Belgian Railway. The refugees were then taken to the Municipal Hospital. Early in the war the pier was requisitioned for training purposes, and a 25 yard section of it, immediately to seaward of the bowling alley, was demolished in order to stop the pier being used as a landing platform by the enemy.
Restoration of the pier began soon after the end of the war. The demolished section was replaced in 1946, with the theatre and restaurant reopening in June that year. Solariums were built in 1951 and 1956. The bowling alley had been owned by the separate American Bowling Alley Company Ltd, but in the 1950s this was wound up and the alley became the property of the Pier Company.
Through the 1950s the pier’s many attractions proved very popular again. But then the Pier Company realised there was a problem with them.
The original statute allowing the building of the pier – the 1867 Hastings Pier Act – had only given permission for it to be used as a promenade, with a pavilion on the end, and facilities for pleasure boats. The act had not allowed the addition of anything else. It was only in the late 1950s that the company realised it had to do something about the fact that all the other attractions that they had built on the pier were beyond their remit. So the 1960 Hastings Pier Act was steered through parliament by a local solicitor, John Lester, who was also on the board of directors.
A second problem that emerged at that time was the parade extension, the shoreward end of the pier that had bought from the Pier Company in 1914 and then made much bigger. The extension is the area that remained open through the summer of 2006.
In the early 1950s discussion started with Hastings Council as to the desirability of the Pier Company again acquiring ownership of the extension, following the friction that there had sometimes been with the council between the wars. But before these talks came to a conclusion Hastings Council erected on it the Triodome in 1966 to house the Hastings Embroidery, a focal point of the 1066 Battle of Hastings anniversary celebrations.
The large fixed bandstand that had stood in the middle of the parade extension since 1916 was demolished in April 1961 and was replaced by a moveable one, but this was despatched to Warrior Square in 1966 to make way for the Triodome.
Finally, in 1968, after two years of negotiations, the parade extension (plus Triodome) became the property of the Pier Company again. But the company that had sold part of the pier to the town hall for a tidy sum in 1914 was being handed it back for nothing – plus at least £20,000 to carry out the work on the pier structure that the council had failed to do.
Mr Lester, a Pier Company director for many years, today recalls that the council officers in the 1960s who were trying to look after the council’s part of the pier had at least had some personal concern about the matter, whereas their successors showed little interest, setting a bad precedent for the future.
The Triodome was converted into an amusement arcade in 1969, and the bandstand shelters into shops and kiosks.
The Last of the Good Times
In the 1960s the pier was still a thriving and diverse business, Its ballroom was very popular (and profitable), not least because its liberal fire regulations allowed huge numbers of teenagers to be crammed into it to see top music groups like the Who, Jimi Hendrix, the Hollies, Pink Floyd, Gary Glitter, Tom Jones and Gene Vincent. The Rolling Stones appeared four times, including the Saturday immediately before the major mods and rockers riots in Hastings on August Bank Monday, 1964.
In the early 1970s the pier still had a theatre, concert hall, bingo, amusement arcades, angling facilities, bars, a speedboat, steamer trips, kiosks, refreshment rooms and even a zoo (which closed in late 1974, with a charity buying some of its creatures, including ten hens and 20 rats).
In 1976 the pier was listed as Grade II.
But the story of the pier all began to change in the early 1980s, when decline set in. In 1983 the Pier Company sold the pier for £196,000 to Hamberglow Ltd, a company formed by two of the pier’s largest concessionaires. These were John Shrive, of Manns Amusement that had two arcades on the pier, and Peter Fisher, of Fisher Enterprises that ran the bingo and social club.
The pier had been for sale for several years, and solicitor John Lester, then chairman of the Hastings Pier Company, in 1983 recommended his 185 shareholders should sell because revenue was falling while maintenance costs were increasing. The future looked gloomy. ‘The company’s main asset is an 111-year old structure needing constant attention because of its age and vulnerability to the sea,’ the well-known and widely-respected Mr Lester said at the time.
He later emphasised that the company had always maintained the pier properly. It employed specialist surveyors Coode and Partners to carry out an annual inspection of the understructure, the recommendations of which were then implemented. But it appears that the new owners of the pier from 1983 did not continue this policy, laying the stage for the future disaster.
Shrive and Fisher tried to relaunch the pier following their 1983 takeover, but with little success. The pier had become tatty in many areas, so they redecorated the restaurant and renovated the run-down ballroom foyer and toilets. But their ideas for a new pub, an ice cream parlour, circus, model village, aquarium and wrestling were all to come to nothing. And the plan to make the Triodome taller and better was abandoned, and the giant aluminium structure was soon pulled down. Its site has remained clear ever since.
Shrive and Fisher were local businessmen with insufficient capital to carry out the big investment the pier needed. Hastings Pier had to be made as attractive as Eastbourne Pier and Brighton’s Palace Pier - both owned by big companies - to boost the visitors and income. But all the two amusements men could do was patch up the worst of the problems and hope for the best.
By 1984 it became clear that the pier urgently needed major investment. Shrive and Fisher aimed to build new attractions, including a pub, but to do this they had to obtain parliamentary approval, through the private 1985 Hastings Pier Act. A new private limited company was set up – the Hastings Pier Company Ltd – re-using the name of the original statutory pier company.
But when the Pier Company asked Hastings Council for a £200,000 grant in December 1984 councillors threw out the request after only a few minutes discussing it.
In 1989 the company admitted it had been in the red for the past two years, and said that grants from any source were needed if it was to do any more than just keep the business ticking over. By then its main attractions were the bingo hall (with as many as 250 people on a good Saturday night), angling, the ballroom with its 60s nostalgia nights, the four bars, the café, amusements machines and the ‘palmist and clairvoyant’ who could predict your future – for a small fee.
The Pier Preservation Society was started in November 1990. Its aim was to restore the 1930s art deco frontage. The driving force behind the society were Louise Neech and Bill and Denise Clements who ran shops on the pier.
But the society was wound up three years later. It had managed to obtain the offer of a £28,000 grant from the European Commission towards the £100,000 cost of the restoration, and Hastings Council offered £10,000. But English Heritage refused to help because the pier was private property. Society chair Louise Neech said: ‘The main problem all the way along the line is that it is owned by a private company’.
In 1993 storms caused £100,000 damage to the pier.
In the autumn of 1996 the pier was put up for sale. A bid was made to the Millennium Lottery Commission, but it was rejected in January 1997.
Then on Wednesday 13 October 1999 the pier closed suddenly when the Pier Company went into voluntary liquidation. Chairman Tony Cruse, an accountant, said the company had acted on the advice of insolvency experts. He said the pier had had a very poor season, especially in August when the weather was bad. There were fewer holidaymakers or daytrippers coming to Hastings, resulting in a reduced number of pier visitors. In addition, the company had still not covered the costs of setting up the Ocean Club several months before. The company had also had to pay a £20,000 excess on an insurance policy following storm damage. Mr Cruse had been associated with the pier since the early 1970s and other company people had also been connected for a long time. ‘For all of us it is a day of immense sadness and disappointment.’
Storms on 24 October 1999 caused considerable damage. Company liquidator Stephen Katz said after the creditors meeting on 27 October that the company debt was £160,000. He said health and safety were paramount, with areas of the pier not safe for the public following the storm. He would carry out emergency repairs and put the pier up for sale.
The closure highlighted the poor state of the pier’s below-deck structure, which Hastings Council officers estimated would cost upwards of £6 million to restore. The National Piers Society urged the council to form a trust which would then be eligible for lottery cash, as had happened at Swanage and Colwyn Bay.
Saved! (temporarily)
In August 2000 the pier was bought from the receiver by wealthy Ian Stuart. Following what he called his ‘six-figure’ bid, Stuart purchased it using his Hampshire-based company Something Different whose parent company was the Andorran-registered Mundial Invest SA. For 16 years, Stuart, aged 50, had lived in Andorra in what he called ‘the biggest and highest property in the country’ with his native-born wife and business-partner Nuria, the main shareholder in Mundial.
The Hastings Observer described Stuart as a ‘laid-back, straight-talking businessman’. It went on: ‘The millionaire’s story is a fascinating real-life rags-to-riches fairytale. Born in Somerset and educated in Gosport, the young entrepreneur earned his first few pennies picking worms out a creek and selling them for bait. He left home at 15 and headed for the bright lights of London to seek his fortune. After a short spell sleeping rough in train stations, Ian Stuart landed his first job as a carpet salesman. From there, he went on to start his own carpet business and then there was no stopping him.
‘Ian and Nuria have spent the past seven years transforming a ruined Napoleonic fort into an idyllic island retreat. No Man’s Land, which stands in the Solent, is currently up for sale – priced £10 million.’
Stuart wanted to steer clear of the tacky amusement arcade and candy floss image of piers. He envisaged a modern, yet traditional attraction, with something to suit everyone.
Major above-deck renovation began in early September 2000, before the sale was completed – and before Stuart had planning permission for changes to the Grade II listed sub-structure. The work carried on right through the winter of 2000/1, but only came up for official approval on 30 March 2001. Then the council’s planning board had to decide whether they could give the go-ahead to alterations that had already taken place. Council officers described the pier as looking bland, mediocre, unadventurous and more like a supermarket. There were complaints from the public about the loss of some of the old features.
But the planning board – made up of councillors from all three parties – rubber-stamped the controversial changes.
Stuart injected much cash into the pier, despite fears that it may have come to the end of its economic life because of the uncertain returns there would be on the high capital costs. He made the pier look attractive, and gave it a new dynamic feeling. Accommodation was let to a variety of users, including Meridian TV and Vodafone, by marine consultancy company Vail Williams.
After being closed for 18 months, the pier reopened on Bank Holiday Monday, 5 May 2001. But not all the shops had been leased, and the pub-restaurant, ballroom and bingo hall were still not ready. Stuart tried to take over the former White Rock Ice Rink – originally the White Rock Baths – adjoining the pier, but this came to nothing.
However in all this work on the pier, little was done to the below-deck structure, a crucial factor for the future.
For the next five years the pier had many ups and downs. However, there were no significant attractions on the seaward end of the pier, so few visitors went much further than the promenade extension. This meant that many of the various shops and units suffered poor turnovers, prompting frequent changes in tenants, and leaving many places unlet.
In 2004 the pier changed hands, at a legal level if nothing else. An offshore company called Ravenclaw Investment Inc became the new owner. Little was known about it for sure, except that it was registered in Panama. Rumours said that it had about six shareholders, with Stuart playing a prominent role, and his wife as chairman.
The Beginning of the End?
The first warning of today’s crisis with the pier came in January 2005, when the council received a report prepared by an engineer on behalf of a potential purchaser of the pier. The report showed a considerable amount of repair work, costing up to £1.2 million, was needed to guarantee the pier’s future in the short to medium term.
Also in January 2005, Ravenclaw created a new company - Boss Management Ltd, based in Barnsley – which took on that role, if only in name.
From then onwards, Hastings Council officers of both the building control and environmental services departments engaged in lengthy written, telephone and face-to-face discussion with the owners and agents, trying to ensure Ravenclaw set up a proper regime of maintenance and repair. But there was seldom any response.
In December 2005 officers became so concerned about the condition of the pier that they sought the support and advice of the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). As a result, in February 2006 the council told Ravenclaw they required a list of all identified structural faults; a prioritised schedule of works; a bad-weather procedure; and an inspection regime following extreme events. This again was followed by lengthy discussions with no result.
On 28 March 2006 the council wrote to the agents notifying them enforcement action was being considered with HSE. Then on 5 April a council officer inspecting the bottom of the pier lightly touched part of the structure – and it fell off. The next day the council said it would be putting up warning notices under the pier.
Improvement notices were served on Boss Management and Ravenclaw on 16 May 2006, requiring a full structural survey of the pier under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, and any remedial work identified to be carried out. This had to be completed by 21 July, but at the time of writing this (March 2007) Ravenclaw had not carried out that survey.
On 12 June 2006 Hastings Council became aware that despite its concerns large events were continuing to be booked for the pier ballroom over the coming months. At its own expense, the council commissioned marine engineers Giffords to inspect two areas on the main route to the ballroom.
The report was received on Friday 16 June 2006, warning that the structure was unsafe if there was too much load on the deck. The engineers found the situation was far worse than originally expected, with the damage so severe they were surprised the pier was standing at all.
Knowing that there was a large-scale event planned for the next day, the council decided to immediately close the pier beyond its frontage. The council used emergency powers under the 1984 Building Act that Friday to shut the majority of the pier, although not the extended promenade (now known as the ‘apron’).
Ravenclaw and Boss appeared before Hastings Magistrates Court on 21 June. The council was seeking legal confirmation of its closure order, thereby ensuring the main part of the pier stayed shut until all the required structural repairs were done. Dozens of concerned tenants and workers marched in procession from the pier to the court, off Bohemia Road. The tenants to seaward of the apron had been forced to close, and would remain so, while those on the apron could remain open.
Magistrates adjourned the case until 9 August, saying specialist reports into the pier structure should be put together. The council’s report from Giffords of 3 July was damning. It found that the central section of the pier was ‘considered to be very vulnerable to progressive collapse’, and even just a temporary support structure could cost up to £1.2 million. The apron could stay open, but the rest of the pier would have to remain closed.
Then on 12 July Ravenclaw announced it was going to close all the pier from Sunday 16 July. But on 14 July Stylus Sports and some of the pier traders successfully obtained a temporary injunction requiring Ravenclaw to keep the apron open, followed by a permanent injunction on 21 July. But from 14 July Ravenclaw suddenly withdrew all security cover from the site, and Hastings Council took over responsibility. All other services were also withdrawn.
At the court hearing on 9 August Ravenclaw failed to produce a report, so magistrates adjourned the case again, until 12 September. Ravenclaw told the court it was intending to rely on weight tests on the decking, to be carried out by Stylus Sports, which operated the bingo hall and amusement arcade. But these were banned by HSE because of danger fears.
The worst fears about the structure of the pier were confirmed at the 12 September hearing. An expert witness, William Newton, with 35 years experience in the surveying business, said he believed the pier had reached the end of its design life and would need substantial work to make it safe for the public. ‘All piers reach the stage when they need major investment. This pier has reached that point. The structure itself is at risk.’
The judge ruled that Hastings Council had been right in shutting the main part of the pier on 16 June, and it should remain closed. Ravenclaw failed to put forward any evidence to the court, and a pier trader dismissed the company’s legal representation as ‘laughable’. The restrictions imposed by the court on 12 September could, from then on, only be lifted or amended by order of the court.
The 12 September decision put a large question mark over the future of the pier. Would Hastings see a re-enactment of the tragedy of Brighton’s West Pier, where finding a means of saving the pier took too long, and failed?
Cllr Jeremy Birch, who had been leader of the Labour-controlled Hastings Council until the Conservatives won the May 2006 elections, said the council should immediately pay for the structural survey, and then it should serve a listed building order on the owners, requiring them to do the work. ‘If still nothing happens the council must appoint contractors to go in and do the work in default,’ he said in a letter to the Hastings Observer of 22 September. ‘That may well mean the council compulsorily purchasing the pier, but if that is the alternative to it falling into total dereliction, then so be it.’
At the same time, local MP Michael Foster offered to act as a conduit between the council and Ravenclaw in order to get things moving again. In addition, the Castle Ward Forum, an independent group devoted to looking after and improving the town, booked the White Rock Theatre for 11 November for a meeting where all the issues could be discussed by the key figures involved.
Before then, council leader Cllr Peter Pragnell announced on 16 October that ‘the council would continue to press the owners and was examining the options it might have for further action’. He met Mr Harmesh Pooni representing Ravenclaw and Boss Management on 19 October, and promises were made, but nothing positive followed.
Meanwhile, Ravenclaw had lodged an appeal against the 12 September verdict. Council officers suspected that the main reason for this was that the company wanted to avoid having to do anything while it waited to hear if the government would allow Hastings to have a casino, a decision expected by the end of the year. The pier would try to become the location of that casino.
The pier tenants struggled through October to keep their businesses going, but finally gave up on Halloween. The pier closed completely from 1 November 2006. Several large notices were put up on the pier’s promenade railings, saying: ‘Hastings Pier left to rot by Hastings Council’, ‘Where has the £400m regeneration gone?’, ‘Hastings Pier 1869-2006 RIP’ and ‘Wasteful bureaucracy’.
Cllr Pragnell was criticised for the failure of his council to do anything to save the pier. But he said: ‘We have recently met with the owners who assure us a survey will be done. Until then we cannot be sure how much money it will take to make the pier safe.
‘The cost could run into tens of millions of pounds, and we cannot commit a bottomless pit of taxpayers money. The ball is in Ravenclaw’s court, but we are keeping an eye on them.’
At the packed 11 November meeting, the message: ‘If you won’t save our pier, then we will!’ was hammered into both Hastings Council and the elusive owners of the collapsing Victorian ironwork. Over 200 people in the lower theatre of the White Rock heard more promises from the pier’s offshore landlord Ravenclaw, but these were received with hoots of scepticism. There was still no commitment from the council, with Cllr Pragnell again saying they were waiting to see if Ravenclaw carried out the survey.
Local MP Michael Foster’s proposals received the biggest applause, urging the council to apply for a compulsory purchase order, so that if Ravenclaw failed to do anything, as he feared, then the pier could still be saved before it was too late. ‘Ravenclaw has a proven record of doing nothing,’ he said.
There were two hours of arguments on the platform about who was responsible for the looming disaster, and demands from the audience that somebody must do something. At the end of the meeting, one clear decision emerged: that a trust should be set up to take over the pier if all else failed.
Rebuilding Hopes
In the weeks that followed the 11 November 2006 meeting not much happened in public, as tortuous legal arguments on several issues took place in the background, and council officers tried to make progress with Ravenclaw. Cllr Pragnell and council representatives met Mr Pooni again on 5 December, but nothing positive followed it.
The company remained as elusive as ever, and its fantasy hopes of starting a casino on the pier disappeared when the government did not give Hastings the go-ahead to become a regional casino location.
On 10 February 2007 a second public meeting took place at the White Rock Theatre, organised by the Castle Ward Forum, backed by the Hastings Trust. It was agreed that a campaigning group called the Friends of Hastings Pier should be set up. It would monitor the future developments, and, if necessary, form a charity to seek restoration funding.
Hastings Trust took on the role of initially co-ordinating the group, and another meeting was held on 17 March, this time in the White Rock Hotel. Here a draft constitution was discussed, officers elected and committees set up.
Hastings Council’s Cabinet agreed on 5 March to fund a structural survey of the pier, meeting the cost of around from the ‘seafront strategy’ budget within its capital programme. Cllr Pragnell said: ‘It’s an absolute disgrace that Ravenclaw has done nothing about its obligations. They should be paying for this survey, and it’s shameful we have reached this stage, but I believe this is now the only way forward.’
Council officers said the results of such a survey were essential before any long-term decision on the pier could be taken. While the results were awaited over the following months, the council went back to court.
Ravenclaw had lodged an appeal against Hastings Magistrates Court’s upholding of the council’s actions. But in the week beginning 23 April 2007 the Crown Court dismissed the Ravenclaw appeal. Then on 31 October the council successfully prosecuted Ravenclaw and its agent Boss Management at a case heard in the Crown Court. A jury found them guilty of not maintaining the pier safely, and of non-compliance with a served Improvement Notice requiring a full structure assessment. Each company was fined £40,000 for these offences, which were significant breaches of health and safety legislation. The council was awarded its costs.
But there was no Ravenclaw presence at the October trial, for the company had disappeared over the horizon following the April hearing. After losing the appeal, Ravenclaw became uncontactable, and the pier was effectively abandoned, although legally it still had an owner in Panama.
Despite the pier’s closure from 1 November 2006, its largest tenant, Stylus Sports, was keen to resume trade. Ravenclaw had withdrawn all electricity, waste services and security from the pier, and not paid business rates since May 2006, plus a High Court judgement had given Stylus a substantial provisional settlement of £200,000, with ongoing damages of £20,000 per month. Following the April appeal, Hastings Council helped Stylus come to an agreed safety plan with Hastings Magistrates, and it reopened its part of the pier in July 2007. Stylus invested substantially in making its bingo club, bar and amusements attractive, which gave momentum to the public support for preserving the pier.
The £51,000 Gifford report on the pier’s structure was published in late November 2007. It divided the pier into four sections and worked out the likely costs of repairing them, and then maintaining them for the following ten years. The bill for just repairing the parade extension and the central section (the Stylus location) would be £2.8 million, while the total cost of both repairing and maintaining all the pier structure would probably be more than £17.5 million, allowing for inflation.
The council’s cabinet meeting on 3 December decided to publicise the report and seek comments from the pier tenants, English Heritage and the Friends of Hastings Pier, plus any other interested parties. Over the next few months the Friends began setting themselves up as a form of charity while a local businessman indicated he wished to take it over in some way - and councillors hoped to avoid making any controversial decision until after the two-yearly elections in early May 2008.