The battle to save Hastings' cursed pier

Under the glare of low autumn sunshine, the broad timber of Hastings pier hovers over the English Channel like the empty deck of a vast ship. The sun hangs off the end like a glitter ball, painting a shimmering path to the horizon. At the end of the pier’s recycled planks, 266 metres into the sea, I feel that the pier might untether itself from land and carry me off to France.

Opened in 1872 on one of Britain’s first Bank Holidays, the fortunes of Hastings pier have, like many of Britain’s seaside piers, pinballed between success and failure. Lows – devastating storms, fire and periods of neglect and closure – are interspersed with decades of boom and chest-thumping highs that have included a RIBA prize and hard-fought wins by local campaign groups intent on raising the pier from the ashes.

Off the back of the pier the rusted remnants of landing stages used by pleasure boats and paddle steamers poke out from the water. So popular were steamer rides that the landing stages were expanded to enable four boats to dock at once. Ballrooms and concert halls have hosted everyone from Punch and Judy to Pink Floyd and The Clash.

Its most recent re-incarnation came in 2016, when a re-built pier opened years after a devastating fire, in 2010. In 2017 it scooped the RIBA Stirling Prize, winning plaudits for its open space, uncluttered by the usual pier accoutrements.

Five years on and the pier is again headed down the proverbial Big Dipper. Earlier this month, owning company Lions Hastings Pier Ltd announced it was going into administration.

Locals Jason Wilson and Brian McNeilly, who I met on the seafront, were saddened, though not surprised. In 2012 they watched its buildings go up in smoke. 

“At one time it was sold for a pound,” says former rugby player, Brian. They recall the days of the Gritti Palace (a popular watering hole), and the birdmen who would attempt to “fly” off the pier. “I was going to do it once,” says Brian, “But I got too drunk.”

Hastings Pier Charity, which oversaw the (mostly Heritage Lottery funded) post-fire restoration and ran the pier from 2016–17 didn’t get to take the new pier to its second and crucial income-generating phase. 

“We had the most structurally sound pier in Britain but it needed an indoor space where money could be made,” said Jess Steele, OBE and chief executive of Hastings Commons.

In 2018, facing a funding shortfall, HPC went into administration and the pier was sold for £50,000 to an Eastbourne hotelier, Sheikh Abid Gulzar, the director of Lions Hastings Pier Ltd.

Hastings is often described as a town of three parts: new town – harsh planning, fast food, disposable fashion; Old Town – a tangle of twitten-linked streets wedged between two cliffs and home to independent shops, historic cottages and eclectic boozers; and St Leonards – the upstart that puts the B in bohemian and is heavy on the kale.

The ruins of Britain’s first Norman Castle, built by William the Conqueror in 1067, and which crown the city’s West Hill, are often overlooked. For £6.25 you can walk around the ruins, poke your head into the dungeons, watch an AV film and look down over Old Town.

Views aside, it’s underwhelming. The castle receives about 35,000 visitors a year. Dover Castle, down the road, gets 350,000. 

Councillor Andy Batsford, Cabinet lead for Health and Culture at Hastings Borough Council, says a planned overhaul of the entire visitor experience, to the tune of £3.5 million, will bring the castle back to life. “It’s not just about 1066,” he says. “There are other stories to tell.”

Batsford refers to the reimagined castle experience as the final piece in a jigsaw puzzle that includes the castle, the evergreen Old Town, the pier and St Leonards. “It has always been our policy to cajole people along the seafront,” he says.

Hastings has a youthful vibe, a big skate culture (Source Park, by the pier, claims to be the world’s largest underground skate park) and music in its DNA. Local band HotWax are this month’s NME’s cover stars. The Carlisle, a legendary rock and biker pub, is a gig hotspot. “Everyone and their granny can go along and join in,” says John Bownas, manager at Love Hastings [the name adopted by Hastings Business Improvement District] and editor of the Hastings Flyer.

The pier sits neatly between Hastings and St Leonards. Artsy and eccentric, the latter is finally getting its moment in the sun. “Central St Leonards now has the highest number of people working in the creative industries outside of London,” says Bownas.

On the promenade just beyond the pier’s entrance I dip into Bottle Alley, a long, 1930s-built covered walkway, which pops out at the Warrior Square. Its concrete walls are embedded with pieces of coloured glass and at night the alley, whose roof is supported by 113 coloured columns, becomes a light installation. When sunshine pours through its seaside “windows” the sloping shadows and symmetry are hypnotic.

At a hatch in the wall I order a coffee. Conor Pearson introduces himself and before the milk has begun steaming, he’s telling me about the menu at his new seafood bar and explaining how he dug the holes in the concrete wall to make a bijou space where he serves boat-to-plate oysters, charcuterie plates and seafood stews. A few metres away his neighbour, Starsky and Hatch, offers poke bowls and harissa and cream cheese sourdough crumpets.

Before its re-incarnation as Selkie Seafood Bar the space housed (most recently) kayaks and a loo. “It hadn’t been used for 90 years,” says Pearson.

“On one cycle ride I can fill up my trailer with fish from along the beach, my cheese from Cheese on Sea and my meat from Beak & Tail.” He says there’s a special kind of energy in Hastings but is saddened by the pier’s demise.

“It’s a big asset to the town,” he says. “So much passion and effort has gone into saving it. It makes the community spirit feel futile. Hastings is at a turning point and it would be a shame to see it nose dive just before things take off.”

At America Ground, a deprived but historical area near the site of the original Saxon settlement of “Hasting”, another gem is being polished. Trinity Triangle Heritage Action Zone (TTHAZ) is led by Hastings Commons and funded by Historic England. Commons chief executive Jess Steele has taken a pioneering approach to community-led regeneration. “Regeneration without gentrification,” is her mantra.

The Commons is turning disused heritage buildings into community assets – affordable housing, work spaces and inclusive leisure spaces. Cheese on Sea, which is located here, serves “cheese in a cave” built into the cliff. 

“It’s about darning the historical fabric and putting it back together carefully,” she says as we head up to the work-in-progress roof terrace of the Observer Building. Left to decay in the 1980s, the building once housed the print works and editorial office of the Hastings Observer newspaper. 

Its 1924 Henry Ward terracotta-glazed façade is obscured by scaffolding but a co-working space is fully operational and work is about to start on 15 rent-capped flats. There are also plans for a public bar and terrace which will afford panoramic views of the town, castle and sea.

In Old Town, outside The Albion, I order a crab pasty with a side of chilli jam from a food truck. The pub is opposite Hastings Adventure Golf, which hosts the World Crazy Golf Championships, and is a prime people watching spot.

Landlord Bob Tipler is the co-founder of the Hastings’ annual winter music festival, Fat Tuesday. Tipler says the pier is important to local business. “It has a ripple effect,” he says. “Everyone benefits from it being successful.”

Our table fills. Another local, called Trapper, remembers watching Madness play when the pier reopened in 2016. “Suggs laid the final plank,” he says.

Madness frontman Suggs was born in Hastings. And Trapper, it transpires, was a member of punk band Peter & The Test Tube Babies.

Before leaving I take one final stroll on the pier. When events company Piertown brought bands, live acts, cabaret, local brewers and street-food traders to the decks this summer, it created Sussex’s biggest beer garden. Now, there is nothing to detain me except a life-affirming breeze and the view.

Architects come and go but maintaining a pier is an expensive business. An info panel tells me that each weight-bearing column (there are 316) under the structure supports 36 tonnes. The life expectancy of each steel truss (70 were replaced in the last overhaul) is 50 years.

Steele, who was involved in the pier’s regeneration, says that at least two abrasion guards, the concrete “legwarmers” that protect columns from daily scouring, need replacing.

As the pier is privately owned there are limits to what action the council can take, but Councillor Batsford is upbeat. “A company going into administration is pretty standard procedure,” he said. “Once it’s a year-round venue it will fly as a business.”

Pearson, too, signed off with optimism. “It’s disheartening but not hopeless. There’s still a sense of what might be.” 

I recall some graffiti I saw on the other side of the sea wall at Selkie. “Life is good, hope is real,” it read. 

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