26 CONTEXT 175 : MARCH 2023 End’. However, from the outset and despite royal visitors (Royal Terrace was so named after Princess Caroline visited in 1804), the resort initially failed to attract the fashionable society intended. The coming of the railway in 1856 turned the fortunes of the resort around, with Scratton leasing out further land to railway developer Peto, Brassey and Betts to develop the Cliff Town Estate. Strict design controls on the first phase of development have left us today with a unified series of terraced housing laid out around pleasant open spaces and gardens. ‘Old South End’ to the east was developed as the more commercial part of the resort, which gained its first pier in 1833. The pier had been extended by 1848 to become the longest pleasure pier in the world. The fishing and maritime trade functions of Southend continued alongside the developing resort at this time, characterised by the small weatherboarded cottages dating from the early-19th century, facing the seafront in the Eastern Esplanade Conservation Area. New attractions on the seafront were developed for visitors, along with new hotels and guesthouses, including the vast Hotel Metropole (now the Palace Hotel) adjacent to the pier, built in 1901 (now in the Clifftown Conservation Area). The grand amusement park of the Kursaal, designated as another of the conservation areas, was built in 1890. It originally contained a dining hall, theatre, concert and dancing hall, bar, arcade, hippodrome and menagerie. The seafront promenade was laid out and new housing spread over the surrounding area. Several of Southend’s conservation areas reflect residential growth in this period, includingWarrior Square, Milton,The Leas, Crowstone, Leigh and Leigh Cliff, all characterised by late Victorian and Edwardian housing and shops. The newly designated Hamlet Court Road Conservation Area also demonstrates an up-market commercial high street that developed to serve residents away from the original resort centre. The Chapmanslord Conservation Area is a distinctive conservation area that reflects a different style of early-20th-century housing development; it was created by the Chapmanslord Houses built on principles of the garden city movement in the Chapmanslord Conservation Area The Kursaal, built in 1890 as a grand amusement park
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