The end of the pier

click photo to enlarge
2008 was a bad year for Britain's piers. In July the end of the 104 year old Grand Pier at Weston-super-Mare was devastated by fire. Then in September the landward buildings of the pier at Fleetwood, Lancashire, a slightly younger structure dating from 1910, was burnt out. Of the two piers Weston's older structure is a great loss that certainly warrants repairing and renovating. Fleetwood's pier, which I know very well, was not however, a thing of beauty, and the remains should be cleared away. The promontory on which it stands will be improved by its removal.

It seems ironic that structures resting on metal over boundless water should so often be consumed by fire, but it has been a reasonably regular occurrence down the years. When I was a child the Lancashire resort of Morecambe was my frequent seaside destination. The town had a pier at that time. In earlier times it had two, but the West End Pier had lost its pavilion to fire in 1915, and subsequent storms slowly destroyed the rest. The Central Pier, that I remember, had pavilions known as "The Taj Mahal of the North". They burned down in 1933, so when I saw it the structure was truncated and had newer, less grand buildings. However, these too succumbed to fire and storms and the pier is no more.

The story of St Anne's pier farther down the Lancashire coast is depressingly similar. When it opened in 1885 it was 914 feet long with a "Moorish" pavilion. However, fires of 1974 and 1982 resulted in the seaward end being demolished and its length reduced to the present 600 feet. Thankfully it still has its Tudor-style buildings at the landward end, and a stretch of new building extends seaward from that. Today's photograph shows part of the old wooden tip of the pier with ornate, openwork, tapering metal columns with balls on top. Were they lights I wonder? I photographed them on a December day with the low sun throwing shadows across the sand, and the sky a mixture of deep blue, turquoise and grey.

Here is another of my photographs of this structure.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 19mm (38mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/640
ISO: 200
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Queen's Terrace, Fleetwood, Lancashire

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John Wood the Elder (1704-1754) was the first English architect to bring to England the Renaissance idea of a terrace of houses designed in the form of a symmetrical facade composed to suggest a single, palatial building. His works at Queen's Square, Bath, were on a grand scale, and provided fine houses for the well-to-do of the city. Other architects in England took up the idea which continued into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Queen's Terrace at Fleetwood, Lancashire is an example that was completed in 1844. It was built by the architect, Decimus Burton (1800-1881) as part of the design for the newly created town. Along with the North Euston Hotel, other imposing buildings, impressive lighthouses, a radial street plan, public parks, a railway station and a docks estate, the Queen's Terrace was designed to add substance and style to the bold venture. It was to be the first building that visitors would see after disembarking from the train. However, the money ran out and only parts of the grand vision were built.

The three-storey, ashlar facade of Queen's Terrace has a projecting, pedimented centre with pedimented windows, and pavilion-style wings that are also pedimented, though here the windows are less emphasised. The ground floor is slightly elevated above a basement level, and is reached by steps that lead to the doors. Iron railings form a perimeter at pavement level, and ornate metal-work forms a balcony along the length of the first floor of the building. Money was spent to make the main elevation impressive, though interestingly no columns were used. Inferior materials were used elsewhere. The final result is a building that is undoubtedly impressive in terms of size and style. It has adapted to many uses over the years and currently houses flats and offices.

The scale of the building makes it a challenge to photograph. This is my best effort. It required quite a bit of work correcting converging verticals. I liked the way the raking morning light was illuminating the facade, and how the strong perspective was emphasised by the windows and metal-work of the building.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 12mm (24mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/320
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Looking for beauty

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Visitors to photography forums will have heard people bemoaning the fact that the area in which they live isn't photogenic, and that they have to travel miles to get good images. It's hard to have sympathy with this view, or the mindset of someone who wants to take photographs of conventionally beautiful places, but is unwilling to recognise, or look for, the different kind of beauty that will undoubtedly exist where they live.

When I lived in Lancashire I regularly walked along both banks of the River Wyre where it widens into an estuary that flows into the Irish Sea at Fleetwood. It's a flat location that, on one side, has the debris of 150 years spread along its banks - the rotting hulks of wooden ships, old sea walls and their newer replacements, industrial sites that have closed, the wrecked remains of a once thriving fishing industry, newer chemical manufacturing plants and a municipal dump. The other side is more rural, with saltmarsh, pastures, cereal fields, a golf course and nature reserve. As I walked the area I found plenty of subjects at which I could point my camera. Many weren't beautiful in the usual sense, but did offer a harder sort of attractiveness, as well as undoubted fascination. In this sometimes bleak area I usually got my best landscape shots when there was an interesting sky. A photography lesson that it took me a while to learn is that just as a sunset can make any subject look wonderful, a sky with cloud and light can add drama, beauty and contrast to the most unpromising scene, even an expanse of cold, flat winter water and a factory with a tall chimney.

This contre jour shot looking upstream from Knott End uses the factory on the left as balance for the sun on the right. The distant blocks of flats and Blackpool Tower add a few more details to the flat horizon.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 62mm (124mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/1000
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -2.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Railings and sacrifice

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The casualties of the Second World War were many. Tens of millions of civilians died, as did millions serving in the armed forces. Cities, towns and villages were destroyed and damaged. Historic buildings, houses and workplaces fell to the indiscriminate blast of artillery shell and bomb. But for the populations under attack or occupation these were only some of the privations to be suffered. Food was in short supply. Every day the best and the worst of friends and neighbours was exposed by the stress of war. And unexpected small changes in routines, and in the appearance of surroundings, daily told of the struggle that was taking place across much of the world.

In Britain, from the outbreak of war, everyone carried a gas-mask. Sand bags were placed in locations that would be susceptible to blast damage, and lines of tape criss-crossed windows to counter the deadly flying shards that they would produce if a bomb burst nearby. If this didn't remind everyone that there was a war on, the arrival, in 1940, of gangs of men to cut down the iron railings that bordered house gardens, parks, public buildings and churches, certainly did. This measure was taken to increase the supply of the metal needed to make the weapons necessary to fight the war. It also had the psychological effect of making everyone believe that they, and their communities, were "doing their bit." However, one effect of this measure was to change the face of Britains towns and cities. Selected historic buildings were exempted from the order, but elsewhere the railings fell to the saw and blowtorch like wheat to the scythe. Towns and cities must have looked denuded. In the 1950s an urban myth went around that Winston Churchill had taken this action solely for the sake of morale, and that the railings had actually been dumped in the sea at Land's End. It was never true, but many believed it!

The church of St Peter, Fleetwood, Lancashire, a building by the noted architect, Decimus Burton, had its churchyard railings taken away during the war. Old photographs show them to be fine, sturdy shafts with foliate tops. For the six decades after the end of the war the church stood with only a low wall and the filled sockets of the old railings between its churchyard and the surrounding streets. Then, in 2005, as part of a wider refurbishment, new railings based on the original pattern, were installed. They look a fine sight, and give a visual "lift" to the building. I took this photograph of the church from one of the three corner entrances to the triangular churchyard. The remaining Victorian lantern holder seemed a good frame for the building, and I used a wide zoom lens at 22mm (35mm equivalent) to show the railings wrapping round the site. The camera was set to Aperture Priority (f8 at 1/160 second), ISO 100 and -0.7EV.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen