Victorian Bournemouth (75): The Pier

Expensive but valuable status symbol

Introduction

Victorian Bournemouth (75) examines the role played by the Pier during the resort’s second period. Its mentions weave in and out of the press coverage during the town’s first half century. A prized tourist attraction capable of boosting the town’s economy, like a lightning rod it perhaps drew a wider set of issues than its early promoters envisaged.

Victorian Bournemouth (75): beginnings

Wider issues

In 1860 inhabitants of Edmondsham, a settlement lying some 20 miles inland from Bournemouth, thought they heard cannon fire. Panic occurred. The villagers believed that Bournemouth’s new pier had encouraged the French to invade. The incident illustrates how the Pier attracted attention on a scale larger than simple tourism. Indeed, when the trustees of the Gervis Tapps estate promoted its idea, the Admiralty sent two inspectors to make a report. Later, once the Pier had opened, when gaslighting on it became a possibility, concerns arose about how this might interfere with nautical navigation. Some thought to involve Trinity House, responsible for maintaining navigation aids. Possession of a Pier would enhance the resort’s reputation on the wider canvas, helping to position it as a leading watering place. Within Bournemouth, the Pier came near to an obsession, its champions pressing forward despite engineering concerns, destructive storms, and staff problems.

A necessary improvement

The idea for the Pier had featured as an intermittent press theme during Bournemouth’s early period. A social catastrophe, occurring in 1854, however, illustrated in a convincing way the need for a Pier. Intent on attending a bazaar held at Bournemouth to raise funds for the Sanatorium, 200 passengers came from Weymouth on board a steamer. Sea swells, however, prevented their landing and attending the event. Support for the Sanatorium at that time had become a favourite pursuit of affluent people, the type who could without difficulty make known their opinions and exert influence. The Pier became one of the main objectives embedded into the Parliamentary bill prepared to acquire Bournemouth’s Improvement Commission. Once the bill had become law, economic reality clarified the minds of both the new Commissioners and the ratepayers. Improved drainage and roads had the priority on funds. The Pier represented an expensive luxury.

Victorian Bournemouth (75): construction and maintenance

Construction

Colonel Simmonds, chairing the angry ratepayers’ public meeting to discuss the Commission’s first budget, revealed that he had sought expert opinion about the Pier. According to an engineer, constructing it could prove near impossible without huge outlays. Furthermore, some at neighbouring Poole had worries for how the Pier’s position might threaten their harbour’s tidal mechanism. Others, however, derided this, condemning it as an ‘imbecility’. By 1858, the Pier returned to acceptability as a construction project. The town surveyor, Christopher Creeke, used a public meeting to outline plans for a structure 1,000 feet in length and £4,000 in cost. Attendees acclaimed the plan. The Commission accepted a tender offer, the first pile driven in by July 1859. By October, however, the sea had carried away much of the early structure. The project lost almost two years, the new Pier not opening until autumn of 1861. 

Maintenance

Several problems dogged the Pier’s early years. Most of the early structure had consisted of wood, but, within two or three years, rot had appeared, causing damage to the piles. The Commission, now equipped with a Pier sub-committee, debated the merits of painting or tarring the structure. They chose the latter process which completed by summer 1864. A year later, the Commission asked Mr Rennie, who had constructed the Pier, to conduct an inspection and produce a formal report. He confirmed the rotting. At this period, steamboat excursions became popular, taking tourists along the nearby coastal towns to the east and west. The impact of their docking would damage parts of the Pier. Discussions veered between cladding the piles in concrete and replacing them with iron, the latter prevailing. Early in 1867, the sea, once again, intervened. A heavy storm wreaked havoc on much of the Pier’s structure.

Victorian Bournemouth (75): central role in the town’s commerce and society

Commerce

The Pier offered opportunities for the town’s economy to improve. Tolls offered a regular cash stream, having sufficient reliability to provide security with which the Commission could support its borrowing. This happened late in 1858, when the Commission looked to borrow £5,000. Landing charges may have applied to the steam packets which brought large numbers of passengers to Bournemouth at increasing frequency. The Wareham boat that had not landed its passengers carried 200 people. Regular injections of visiting parties involving so many people could not but boost the town’s retail and hospitality trade. As a revenue-generation device, therefore, the Pier could ‘wash its face’ with tolls, as well as offering considerable bounty to the town’s commercial residents. Its existence qualified the town to receive regular loads of visiting tourists, while enabling the steamer companies to benefit by advertising access to the ‘Queen of the Southern watering-places’.

Society

After driving in the first pile, the constructor’s team threw a celebratory evening event at the Belle Vue, signifying the relative public importance that the Pier even though most of it remained on the drawing board. Soon the Belle Vue would change its name to incorporate the Pier. When the Pier opened in autumn 1861 a huge public festival took place. The visit paid by Princess Louisa Caroline to the town, landing at the Pier, achieved considerable media notice. In 1870, the Oddfellows put on a fete, causing crowds to throng not just the streets but the Pier as well. Thus, the structure became an extra road, stretching the town over the sea. The clockmaker, W. B. Row, perceived its social centrality and advertising possibilities, for he donated and installed a clock at the Pier. The Pier, thus, lay at the centre of the towns’ social and commercial life.

Takeaway

Victorian Bournemouth (75) has shown how, against considerable opposition from the sea and gainsayers, the Improvement Commission equipped their town with a Pier. Such an acquisition would have benefitted the town’s reputation and economy. It broadcasted a message of confidence and prosperity: ‘the handsome pier which tells much for the enterprise of the inhabitants’.

References

For references and engagement, please get in touch. Main primary sources: here and here (subscriptions needed). Thanks to Alwyn Ladell for pictures of Bournemouth’s Pier.