Famous English Piers Trivia Quiz

Answer: Ryde, Isle of Wight

Ferries carried passengers from Portsmouth to the Isle of Wight long before Ryde Pier was built, but disembarking meant an uncomfortable ride on the back of a porter followed by a half mile stomp across wet sand. With seaside resorts becoming fashionable with well-to-do clientele, a pier was desperately needed if the Isle of Wight was to compete for the growing tourist trade.

Work began in 1813 and the 1,729-foot timber-planked promenade opened the following year. The pier was extended by a further 505 feet in 1833, and has carried passengers and vehicles on and off of ferries at the eastern end of the island ever since.

A concert pavilion opened on the pier in 1895. A tramway was also added, which carried passengers the length of the pier until it closed in 1969.

Answer: Gravesend, Kent

The Gravesend Town Pier was built in 1834 by William Tierney Clark, the civil engineer who had earlier built Hammersmith Bridge, the first suspension bridge across the Thames. This pier also served the Thames, carrying passengers travelling by boat up and down the river. An engineering first, it was built of cast-iron rather than the timber that was customarily used at the time. In just the first seven years after it was opened, the pier served more than three million passengers.

English Heritage, the Lottery fund and Kent County Council pooled resources to restore Gravesend Pier at the beginning of the 21st century.

Answer: Birnbeck Pier

Located in Weston-Super-Mare in northern Somerset, this pier in the Bristol Channel connects the mainland with the 3-acre Birnbeck Island. Since opening in 1867, the pier provided access to steamers for passengers travelling up and down the Bristol Channel until the middle of the 20th century. During WWII, the pier was commissioned for use by the Admiralty, and although it re-opened after the war, far fewer people were travelling by boat and the final excursion left in 1979.

Although closed to the public since 1994, the pier has continued as the home of the Weston-super-Mare Lifeboat Station. It was severely damaged in a storm on December 30, 2015, though, causing part of it to collapse.

Birnbeck is one of three piers in Weston-Super-Mare. The others are the 1,300-foot Grand Pier and the much shorter SeaQuarium aquarium.

Answer: Cromer

The pictured 495-foot long Cromer Pier is located off the Norfolk coast some 25 miles north of Norwich. At the end of the pier stands the Pavilion Theatre. Over the past 40 years, the pier has been used as the location for numerous TV series, notably "Danger UXB" starring Anthony Andrews in 1979, "September Song" with Russ Abbot in 1993 and the 2013 film "Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa".

In his 2015 book, "The Road to Little Dribbling: More Notes from a Small Island", Bill Bryson describes Cromer Pier as "the best and handsomest in the nation".

Answer: Eastbourne

Built in 1870, Eastbourne Pier divides the town's famous seafront into two: high class hotels to the west and modest family hotels and boarding houses to the east. From 1906 until 1939, paddle steamers operated trips along the South Coast and across the Channel to Boulogne. During WWII, machine guns and anti-aircraft batteries were set up on the pier.

Traditional pier theatres operated here until a fire destroyed the last one in 1970. A nightclub and bar were built to replace it, and they remain in operation today. The 2014 fire destroyed the gaming arcade but fire crews managed to save most of the pier itself along with the outer pavilion.

Eastbourne Pier was named as the inaugural 'National Piers Society' Pier of the Year in 1997.

Answer: Llandudno

Named as the 'National Piers Society' Pier of the Year in 2005, Llandudno Pier in North Wales is the departure point for occasional excursions to Douglas in the Isle of Man run by the 'Isle of Man Steam Packet Company'.

The magnificent Pier Pavilion, built adjacent to the entrance to the pier, opened in 1886. A young Henry Wood visited to observe the famous orchestra in action. The Pavilion was destroyed by fire in 1994.

A 2013 TV advertisement for Volkswagen cars featured Llandudno Pier prominently.

Answer: Southend-on-Sea

Poet Laureate Sir John Betjeman said "the Pier is Southend, Southend is the Pier".

The world's longest pleasure pier extends more than 1.3 miles out into the Thames Estuary. When the original wooden pier opened in 1830, a horse-drawn tramway was installed to carry visitors and goods to the pier head. Work to replace it with an iron structure began in 1887 and took two years to complete. At that time too, an electric tramway was installed to replace the horses and, until 1978 four trains of seven carriages each ran on a double track. These were replaced in 1986 with two diesel trains running on a single track with a passing loop.

A fire in 2005 destroyed the original railway station and much of the Old Piet Head. Restoration was carried out almost immediately, and the pier re-opened later then same year. In 2007, Southend Pier was named as 'Pier of the Year'.

Answer: Central Pier, Blackpool

Opened in 1863, the North Pier is both the oldest and the longest ((1,650 feet) of Blackpool's three piers. It is the Central Pier, though, jutting out into the Irish Sea just south of Blackpool's instantly-recognizable tower, that is the most famous.

When it opened in 1868 it was called South Pier, but it was renamed Central Pier when the pier now known as South Pier opened thirty years later. It was here that people have always come for fun, whilst its northern counterpart was set aside for promenading and other forms of genteel relaxation. Here people came to dance and, later, roller-skate, play in the arcades, and ride the fairground attractions.

Considering the catastrophic damage done to other piers around the country by fires, Central Pier has remained relatively unscathed. Fires in 1964 and 1973 both destroyed the theatre building but left the rest of the pier virtually undamaged.

Answer: Clevedon Pier

The civil parish of Clevedon on the north coast of Somerset was a popular destination for tourists in the Victorian era, attracted by saltwater baths and bathing machines on the beach. Clevedon Pier was built in the 1860s to provide an embarkation point for paddle steamer passengers travelling the south of England to Bristol or South Wales.

With a tidal variance of almost 50 feet, the Severn Estuary is second only to the Bay of Fundy in Canada, building a pier here presented engineering challenges. The end of the pier therefore has several levels to allow boats to dock safely irrespective of the time of day.

After just over a century, much of Clevedon Pier collapsed in 1970. It took many years to raise sufficient funds to restore the pier, and it eventually reopened in 1998 and a year later was named 'Pier of the Year'. In 2001, it was designated as a Grade I Listed Building, a status granted only to one other pier (Brighton's West Pier).

Answer: St Anne's-on-the-Sea Pier

The Victorian-era seaside resort of St Anne's-on-the-Sea, which has since joined with neighbouring Lytham to become a single resort, is located south of Blackpool and north of Preston on the Lancashire coast. Today, it is best-known for its championship golf courses.

At only 600 feet, St Anne's Pier is one of Britain's shortest. Opened in 1895, the Moorish Pavilion (destroyed by fire in 1974) was added in 1904. The floral Hall (burned down in 1982) was added in 1910.

Originally a departure point for steamer services to both Blackpool and Liverpool, that aspect of the pier's functionality ended when developments to improve access to the docks at Preston, on the south side of the estuary, left St Anne's Pier on land.