We went to a lecture about the history of the West Pier last night which was very interesting. Jackie Marsh-Hobbs has a great selection of photos from its past (She is willing to do these talks for free to interested groups). I learnt quite a lot about the West Pier, and piers in general including that they used to do Bicycle diving from it (until someone died), it had mines put on it and all along the beach during the Second World War and it had a rifle range which used live ammunition. We bought a copy of Walking on Water by Fred Gray to learn more about the historical story of this once beautiful structure.
One of my regrets about the West Pier was that the first summer we lived in Brighton, they did the last hard hat tours of it for £10. That would have been quite an experience, but as with a lot of things we put it on the “we’ll do it next year” list.
