Deal Pier
The current pier is the third to be built at Deal.
The first pier at was built in 1838. Planned to extend to 445 feet, just 250 feet was completed. A few steamers called in, but the pier decayed until it was finally washed away in 1857 and its remains were sold for £50.
Work on a new longer pier began in 1863 and it was opened the following year. A reading room and salt baths were added in the 1870s and a pier-head pavilion in 1886. Ships collided into it in 1873 and 1884, although each time, the damage was repaired. This pier lasted considerably longer than the first
On 29th January 1940, the Dutch vessel ‘Nora’, having been beached following damage by a mine, drifted against the pier, destroying 200 feet of ironwork. Subsequently the rest of the pier was demolished, leaving only the tollhouses, which were in turn demolished when the latest incarnation was built and officially opened in 1957.
In 1998 a 300cm high bronze statue, ‘Embracing the Sea’, by sculptor John Buck was commissioned for the entrance to the pier. It depicts a man wrestling with four large fish, evidently a popular pastime in that part of Kent.
