Weston-Super-Mare Birnbeck Pier – £111K Grant Awarded
Government funding, under the name “Heritage at Risk Capital Fund”, has been awarded by Historic England to the Birnbeck Pier Regeneration Project to the value of £111,000. This serves to fund the restoration of the toll house and the adjoining “Shell Shop”, situated on the lower terrace (beneath “Pier View”) adjacent to the pier abutment. This element of the project is important since it will deliver an essential facility for visitor information and interaction; potentially hosting exhibitions even long before the overall restoration project reaches a conclusion. See the second link for general information about the fund.
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Bangor Garth Pier – Fundraising for Final Restoration Phase
The Friends of Bangor Garth Pier officially launched a £40,000 fundraising appeal for the completion of the structural restoration works which Bangor City Council have been delivering since 2017. The target of £40,000 would be matched by the Council. Once this is completed, then Bangor Pier can finally be confidently declared to be in good structural form throughout (except for the ruinous landing stage). At the time of writing, the fund has passed 20% (after only three days), showing that the pier’s patrons and admirers certainly see it as an essential attraction to Bangor.
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Fundraising Link

Great Yarmouth Britannia Pier – New Digital Signage Completed
The long-awaited digital signage has finally been installed on the new frontage of the Britannia Pier. This has taken several months since the opening of the modernised building, and the envisioned frontage will only be fully materialised once the ground-level kiosks are rebuilt at the end of the year, but the broad blank facade at the head of the building now makes more sense than it did in previous months. Overall an inventive addition to the building, more space efficient than the previous fixed signage, but hopefully it is not made too blinding at night, as much digital signage tends to be!
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Roker Pier – Full Pier Reopening
Following a comprehensive structural repair project which has been ongoing since April, Roker Pier was officially re-opened by Sunderland City Council on Tuesday morning. This work was made necessary after storms in 2023 caused extensive damage to the masonry and railings along the pier, and it has been closed to the public since then. The reaction has, of course, been very positive – and there were dolphins to be seen too.
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Brighton Palace Pier; the End of the Pier Show – A Review
It is promising to see new enterprise in pier entertainment, and even more exciting to find that it has been excecuted to the highest of quality; as this review reveals. The season run is very short, but since this is the first time the pier has experimented with this type of entertainment in many decades, it could be seen as a trial run. Hopefully it will be a permenant fixture for future Summer seasons.
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Llandudno Pier – A Visitor’s Report to the Pier of the Year 2025
A positive and well-written report following a family’s visit to the pier recently. This includes many photographs depicting the present tenants of the kiosks (always useful to know; the pier seems notably well-stocked in bath bombs and country & western records at present!). In all the photographs, Llandudno Pier certainly appears to be behaving like a good little Pier of the Year; the railings freshly blued and a shiny new banner proclaiming the award (bedecked with NPS logos edited to read “Pier of the Year” at the expense of our name… naughty!). However, ll else appears sparkling at Llandudno – good work!
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Clacton – Amusements Technician’s 50 Year Career
Clacton Pier have amongst their staff an amusement machine technician who has been working in the field for 50 years – this article is about his reflections on his career and the changes evident in the field over time. His time employed at Clacton Pier itself has been relatively short; only 10 years.
The article continues by stating that the pier amusements opened in 1978, on the former site of the Ocean Theatre. Norman Jacobs’ excellent book on Clacton Pier gives more information. Of course, amusements were present on the pier long before 1978. After originating in a dedicated amusements hall and then incorporated into the new “circus” building in 1938, they were then situated in the former “Blue Lagoon” bar, on the right side of the pier frontage. After the closure of the Ocean Theatre in 1977, it was initially converted into a “Ghost Safari” ride, and then into the present-day amusements in c.1982. The former amusements were in turn converted into a nightclub and bar, and even more amusements were added to the former circus building on the left side of the frontage. The history is complex, as it is for the pier overall. The elephantine page count of 220 in Norman’s book tells much of the richness of Clacton Pier’s history; perhaps it is the richest pier history of all.
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Eastbourne and Hastings Piers – Legal Proceedings Against Owner
Normally I would hesitate including details of legal proceedings against an individual in this newsletter, but this instance forms a profound development in the recent history of both Eastbourne and Hastings Piers and may well have an impact on their futures; therefore pier enthusiasts should be made aware of it.
Sheikh Abid Gulzar, owner of Eastbourne and Hastings Piers, has been accused of numerous counts of fraud against a private water company, relating to his hotel operations, and will go on trial at the end of September 2026.
This development has been covered by both local and national news; links to both are included although the Times article is behind a paywall (the content has been reproduced on a recent post on the Facebook Group “Where do we go from pier?”, for those interested). In the third link, for the sake of balance of argument, is a statement prepared by Gulzar’s friend and colleague Lord Brett McLean, defending Gulzar and criticising the press.

Meanwhile, the condition of Eastbourne has again been highlighted in another article, included in the fourth link. This time, a stretch of the timber stringers under the balustrades have come loose and, as the journalist claims fearmongerishly, “hangs over kids playing below”. The highlighted area is on the North side of the former “White Pavilion” deck (now home to the two PVC Palaces), and the affected areas certainly look rotted and insecure, although this alone should not provoke a maintenance crisis for it is not part of the immediate structure. For those who wish to have the full immersive experience, there is even a video of this damaged section of timber in the article!
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Lord McLean’s Statement
Eastbourne – Damage

Penarth Pier – Art Inside, Tombstoning Outside
Penarth Pier Pavilion remains a strong case of good pavilion programming, and is presently holding an exhibition for Welsh landscape artist Christopher Langley. Certainly the grandiose pavilion is an ideal place for such an exhibition.
Meanwhile, police are moniting a frustrating situation whereby some extraordinarily stupid boys are leaping off the pier; the mortal risks are needless to say.
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Roker Pier – A Report on the Reopened Pier and Tours
A journalist from the Sunderland Echo has visited the newly-opened pier and attended a tour of the tunnels and lighthouse, also recently re-instated for public access. It is quite a comprehensive article and if you enjoyed the Llandudno article of last week, you will find this one similarly satisfactory. The photographs inside the lighthouse are particularly interesting.
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Morecambe – Historic Photographs from Lancashire Archives
It is pleasing to see a relevant article from a County Council instead of an online news website for a change. This gives an introduction to the history of Morecambe, with a selection of quite interesting photographs of the seafront and piers, and giving links to relevant sources of local heritage information.
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Southport Pier – The Case for the Pier Restoration
If ever anyone was in any doubt, the virtues of the proposed pier restoration project are here eloquently put in this blog post by Stand Up for Southport founder Andrew Brown. Little is said which has not been said before, in terms of technical progress with fundraising, but overall it forms a comprehensive and uplifting account of the work which is hoped to be completed by Summer 2027.
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Ramsey Queen’s Pier – Restoration Update
A helpful update on restoration progress at the Queen’s Pier. The article notes a period of delays before steel removal and re-installation could take place on bays 9-10, including the first stabilisation bay of the pier. The design problems involved in machinery access to this remote position have now been seemingly resolved, as the article details, and the installation of the new steel for these bays is expected to take place later this year.
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Southsea South Parade Pier – Coastal Defence Proposals
Long-anticipated coastal defence works along the Southsea Coast have now been proposed for the coastal stretch passing the South Parade Pier. Much of the works to the coast have been ongoing for many years (as they were at the 2022 AGM in Southsea). Much of this work will involve a redesigned public realm along the Promenade, and the pier entrance will be impacted by these works to some degree. The shoreward end of the pier will also inevitably be incorporated into the new defence works in some way, although its structure will not be affected.
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Llandudno Pier – Owner’s Objections to Claims of Staff Exploitation
This should be a most important article regarding the modern-day running of seaside piers and hospitality businesses, but, I am sorry to say, FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY.
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Clacton Pier – Potatoes
The Spudman of Tamworth will be selling baked potatoes from his van at Clacton Pier this weekend. Apparently he is of some note on social media and did very well selling his potatoes in Ipswich last May.
Potatoes

Southend Pier – Poppy Appeal an Exceptional Success
The previously-proclaimed proposal for a “poigniant proliferation of poppies on the pier” has produced a peerless pool of poppies for prettifying the pier: the pier is presently popping with poppies (that is enough!)
The photographs in the article indeed show this to be a most substantial undertaking, and the original target of 25,000 knitted poppy donations was generously exceeded by almost 3,000. As highlighted previously, these will all be used to decorate the pier during the days surrounding Rememberance Day and will be in place from the 5th until the 16th November. It should form an exceptional background to the day’s remembrance ceremonies and all involved should be congratulated.
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Bangor Garth Pier – Fundraising Success
As with Southend’s recent public appeal, Bangor Pier’s appeal for £40,000 in donations has been met with a vigorous response from supporters of the pier. The full appeal value was met within the first four weeks, allowing an additional £40,000 to be match-funded from Bangor City Council. The enthusiastic response to this appeal has proved extremely heartening and encouraging for both the Friends of Bangor Garth Pier and Bangor City Council, qualifying the essential status of the pier to Bangor’s culture.
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History of Felixstowe Pier
Felixstowe Pier probably has a less rich history than most other seaside piers in this country (certainly less than nearby Clacton, which I actively highlighted a few weeks ago). It was a timber landing pier, just like those at Lowestoft and Southwold, being built by the Coastal Development Company at a very impressive length (by modern-day standards) of about 800 metres. That length was progressively retreated during wartime demolition work and now the pier is almost entirely of Post-War construction, with an ambitious (again, by modern-day standards!) entrance building of 2017. The article is vividly illustrated with rare photographs provided by Dave Kindred. Or just skip the article entirely (which is mostly rehashings of NPS material, as usual) and look at Dave’s Flickr albums. The second link leads to results for photographs of Felixstowe Pier that are in his collection – they are very good.
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Historic Photographs