22 WEST PIER, BRIGHTON Architect Eric Cockain recounts the birth, success and decline of one of Brighton's best known landmarks. This is very much a story about one of the strongest building materials, iron, in all its useful forms: cast iron (smelted direct from ores, contains carbon which resists corrosion, brittle), wrought iron (refined by stirring when molten, malleable) and mild steel (iron purified further by alloying it with other metals). It is a naturally abundant material, rarely worked up on site, most craft skills being employed within the foundry or extrusion mill. Sections of traditionally successful shapes are merely joined together on the construction site. The applied craft in using this material lies in the cunning exhibited at nodes where separate members meet and are connected together using gussets, rivets and bolts. The more iron is refined, the more it tends to corrode, especially in salty environments; but the more it gains in tensile strength and elasticity. West Pier is the fulfilment of iron as a building material. Cast iron founds and lifts the platform, it is run into moulds to form cast iron elevational details of profound grace; wrought iron girders and rods connect columns and provide intermediate support for the wooden decks and impart final structural rigidity with diagonally opposed ties between all elements. As a child, I walked West Pier with those about to fight a world war. In the John Lloyd supervising emergency repairs after a 1983 autumn storm. late 1930s it was the snobbish sister ro the more raucous Palace Pier and its patrons were elegant and, in their own eyes, rather superior. I abandoned family and career so that I could live and work in constant sight of this great white ghost. My Regency Square, one-man practice was founded in July 1979 (and foundered in 1982), when the pier still had all its lustre, its overall gleam, its promise of certain continuity. Visit it now and you will see that it is a rusting, breached and abandoned glory which fretfully complains "Shame on you all". This is the finest pleasure pier the world has ever known, and it dies. Listed Grade I, even though now dishevelled, its quality is incontrovertible. John Lloyd framed in tracery pattern of southern pavilion. In 1979, confidence sprang from the sturdy fact that John Russell Lloyd (a relative of Bertrand Russell), was devoting his enthusiasm, his family fortune and his whole life towards saving West Pier. It was a crusade everyone wanted to join. The Poet Laureate, Sir John Betjeman, readily accepted the title of President of the Brighton West Pier Society Ltd, which John invented. Spike Milligan eagerly joined in as its First Vice President. The company', as the society became known, would have the pier conveyed to it for £100 as soon as it found £500,000 to add to the £300,000 allocated by Brighton Council in 1978. It really was only a matter of time. A national appeal was planned. I had to be part of this. I bought a residence next door but one to John Lloyd. I saw how West Pier consumed his every hour. I met, married and live happily with his housekeeper Christine. I was official photographer at his birthday party, admired the intricate icing sugar image of West Pier on his cake and toasted another milestone in his campaign. The national appeal was in the making when, in 1980, John and The Company decided to support the scheme by Alan Hawes which was the subject of a breathtaking exhibition at the Planning Department of the Council. Coloured drawings and a large, incredible model showed a giant ferris wheel on the pier's root platform. This monster was to be surrounded by lusty fairground rides and side-shows. The scheme was duly approved. We were there! Time passed. So did Mr Hawes and his scheme. Back to John Lloyd and his dwindling coffers. At his own expense he maintained the pier. He made it secure, he boarded it up and, whenever a panel became loose or tilted, he stitched it together using steel cables. Under his steam it was kept intact. It was magnificent. Local papers hinted that he had lost his drive, and hey presto, he was gone. This deeply sincere and generous man, whose passion for the pier had been sustained over years of endeavour, was suddenly replaced by a new driving force which reeked of efficiency. In 1987 Building Design, together with the International Union of Architects, organised an ideas competition for the pier. Sixty-three entries from all over the world were submitted, mine included. Simon Allford, who proposed tripling the length of the pier, was the clear winner. My entry was fourth alongside a handful of others. We received £50 and a certificate. I was delighted. My competition survey showed that the pier at this time was as secure as John Lloyd had left it. By 1989 the new driving force, The West Pier Trust (the only possible title following the demise of grander sounding bodies) had landed a maintenance grant from English Heritage. The Trust then backed a scheme prepared by local architects, Architecture and Planning Partnership, whereby all the buildings on the pier were to be demolished and then re-built. Additional buildings at the shore end of the pier were indicated. English Heritage followed its own rules and, correctly, withdrew the maintenance grant. A spokesman for Burrell Foley Associates, who had drawn up a similar scheme but who intended to restore existing buildings in situ in return for a mighty horseshoe of buildings, again at the shore end, was quoted as saying "The Trust is totally inadequate and it has no idea how to go about this project. It is a bunch of amateurs." Really! The Trust has restored and re-planked the entrance platform but two CONTEXT 29
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