St Annes Pier and the Moorish Pavilion

In 1879 the St Annes Land and Building Company agreed to build a pier for the still-young resort. Designed by the civil engineer A. Dowson, it cost £18,000 and opened on 15 June 1885. It gave visitors a place to promenade above the sands and helped establish the public face of St Annes-on-the-Sea.

The original pier was 914 feet long. A mock-Tudor entrance lodge followed in 1899, but the largest transformation came at the beginning of the new century, when the pierhead and neck were enlarged.

The extension opened on 2 April 1904 and cost £30,000. Its centrepiece was the Moorish Pavilion, a concert hall with seating for 1,000 people. Kiosks and a larger pierhead completed a scheme intended to make the pier an entertainment destination as well as a promenade.

The Floral Hall opened in June 1910. Concerts, orchestras, opera and vaudeville became part of pier life. Performers associated with the pier included Gracie Fields, George Formby, Russ Conway and Bob Monkhouse.

In 1972 the Moorish Pavilion was restyled as the Sultan's Palace. Two years later it was destroyed by fire. The Floral Hall was then lost to another fire on 23 July 1982. With restoration funding unavailable, part of the damaged seaward end was removed, leaving the pier much shorter than the Victorian structure.

The surviving pier remains a Grade II listed landmark. Its entrance, deck and pavilions preserve part of the resort's early character, while the lost Moorish Pavilion remains one of the most distinctive buildings in the town's visual memory.