Pier Makes Comeback in Britain
Jul 10, 2001, 11:15 am
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Pier Makes Comeback in Britain
Pier Makes Comeback in Britain
On a sunny summer day in this seaside town, ice cream-toting couples promenade along the pier above the roiling North Sea. Union Jacks flutter from white wooden buildings on the timber deck.
It's an archetypal English scene -- and a minor miracle. Southwold's new pleasure pier is the first to be built in Britain in almost 50 years.
``Nobody thought it would happen,'' said Chris Iredale, who bought the battered stump of the pier in 1987. ``I think the local council thought they were pandering to a whim. They couldn't believe it when we got the crane and started work.''
Pleasure piers -- jetties lined with amusement arcades, gift shops and ice cream stands -- are as much a part of the British seaside as bracing winds and sticks of rock candy.
Their pleasure is simple, summed up by the poet John Betjeman as ``a walk on the sea without the disadvantage of being seasick.''
But piers have been in decline, battered by storms, neglect and -- most crushingly -- cheap airfares to the sunny Mediterranean.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/worl...-Pleasure.html
On a sunny summer day in this seaside town, ice cream-toting couples promenade along the pier above the roiling North Sea. Union Jacks flutter from white wooden buildings on the timber deck.
It's an archetypal English scene -- and a minor miracle. Southwold's new pleasure pier is the first to be built in Britain in almost 50 years.
``Nobody thought it would happen,'' said Chris Iredale, who bought the battered stump of the pier in 1987. ``I think the local council thought they were pandering to a whim. They couldn't believe it when we got the crane and started work.''
Pleasure piers -- jetties lined with amusement arcades, gift shops and ice cream stands -- are as much a part of the British seaside as bracing winds and sticks of rock candy.
Their pleasure is simple, summed up by the poet John Betjeman as ``a walk on the sea without the disadvantage of being seasick.''
But piers have been in decline, battered by storms, neglect and -- most crushingly -- cheap airfares to the sunny Mediterranean.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/worl...-Pleasure.html
