2-995-695 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Opening of Southport Pier, 1860. 'This light and elegant pier is erected on the extensive sands at Southport...on the Lancashire coast...The salubrity and cleanliness of Southport are now so well appreciated that it is rapidly gaining renown as a fashionable watering-place. The pier...has been erected...from the designs of Mr. James Brunlees, civil engineer, of London. The total length is 1200 yards...commencing at the middle of the Promenade...The superstructure is supported upon cast-iron columns...each column being cast in three lengths...The superstructure itself is formed by a triple row of lattice girders, of fifty feet span and three feet deep, securely braced and covered with a footway of three-inch planking...The sides are protected by a wrought-iron railing, designed especially to prevent the possibility of accidents to children. A platform, with seats at the sea end, one hundred feet long and thirty-two feet wide, with stairs for descending to the sands at low water, will prove a great acquisition to visitors wishing to encounter the breeze at the elevation of the pier, or the milder air at the lower level of the sands. The work...has been very creditably executed by the contractors, Messrs. W. and J. Galloway, of Manchester'. From "Illustrated London News", 1860.