Swanage's Victorian

Victorian era

The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...

 pier

Pier

A pier is a raised structure, including bridge and building supports and walkways, over water, typically supported by widely spread piles or pillars...

 is over 100 years old and is one of two built, although it is the only one that survives complete today. The pier extends into the southern end of Swanage Bay near Swanage

Swanage

Swanage is a coastal town and civil parish in the south east of Dorset, England. It is situated at the eastern end of the Isle of Purbeck, approximately 10 km south of Poole and 40 km east of Dorchester. The parish has a population of 10,124 . Nearby are Ballard Down and Old Harry Rocks,...

, a small town in the south east of Dorset, England. It is situated on the eastern coast of the Isle of Purbeck

Isle of Purbeck

The Isle of Purbeck, not a true island but a peninsula, is in the county of Dorset, England. It is bordered by the English Channel to the south and east, where steep cliffs fall to the sea; and by the marshy lands of the River Frome and Poole Harbour to the north. Its western boundary is less well...

, approximately 10km south of Poole

Poole

Poole is a large coastal town and seaport in the county of Dorset, on the south coast of England. The town is east of Dorchester, and Bournemouth adjoins Poole to the east. The Borough of Poole was made a unitary authority in 1997, gaining administrative independence from Dorset County Council...

 and 40km east of Dorchester in the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

.

History

The original Swanage Pier was built between 1859 and 1861 for use primarily by the local stone quarrying industry, and included a tramway

Swanage Pier Tramway

The Swanage Pier Tramway was a narrow gauge tramway in the port town of Swanage, in the English county of Dorset.From the 12th century, the Swanage area was well known for the quarrying of Purbeck Marble, actually a hard wearing form of limestone...

 which ran the length of the pier and some way along the seafront. The old tracks can be seen to this day, inset into the seafront walkways.

When local businessman George Burt

George Burt (Britain)

George Burt was a public-works contractor and businessman from Swanage, England, who managed the construction company Mowlem, founded by his uncle John Mowlem....

 introduced regular steamer services between Swanage and nearby towns Poole and Bournemouth in 1874, a need became apparent for a second pier to be built primarily for use by passenger steamers. Construction on the new pier began in 1895, and by 1896 was first used by a steamer. The pier was officially opened for traffic in 1897. While regular steamer services ran on the new pier, up until 1966, the older original pier declined along with the stone industry it served some years earlier. Today all that remains of the old pier are some of the timber piles.

After steamer services discontinued in 1966 the remaining pleasure pier also began to fall into disrepair. After a failed attempt to restore the pier by a development firm in 1986, Swanage Pier Trust took over ownership of the pier in 1993.

The Trust took on the task of raising over £1,000,000 needed to carry out major restoration work on the piers piles and timbers and ironwork fittings.

The pier today

Today the pier is open to the public once again with some small scale ferry services running mainly to Poole Quay. The pier also hosts a successful diving school, the oldest in the UK, and is visited annually by historic steamers including the Waverley

PS Waverley

PS Waverley is the last seagoing passenger carrying paddle steamer in the world. Built in 1946, she sailed from Craigendoran on the Firth of Clyde to Arrochar on Loch Long until 1973...

 paddle steamer and the MV Balmoral.

The pier is a popular training site for new and qualified divers because it is one of the few sheltered sea diving sites on the south coast, it has easy access from adjacent car parks, it has depths of only 5 metres and it has a nearby dive shop. The MCS South East group use the pier as the location for the training dives during their Marine identification and underwater photography courses due to the wide range of marine life found under the pier.

External links

• History of Swanage Pier
• Supporters of Swanage Pier
• http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=Swanage+Pier&s=intPictures of Swanage Pier - Flickr
  Flickr
  Flickr is an image hosting and video hosting website, web services suite, and online community that was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and acquired by Yahoo! in 2005. In addition to being a popular website for users to share and embed personal photographs, the service is widely used by bloggers to...
  
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