The West Pier

The West Pier in Brighton is a Grade I listed pier built between 1865 and 1866 by Eusebius Birch. It features a structure made of cast-iron columns that support beams and girders, with diagonal bracing and lighter struts. The pier suffered significant damage during the hurricane in October 1987, and the causeway connecting King's Road to the former concert hall was demolished in 1991, along with the kiosk at the north end of the concert hall. The main surviving structures include the former concert hall, the former theatre, and kiosks at the north end of the theatre.

The concert hall has an oval plan and showcases a continuous arcade of elliptically-arched tripartite windows set between pilasters, adorned with decorative voussoirs. It features a parapet embellished with cartouches, swags, and urns on pilasters, along with a coved roof that has dormers on either side and a continuous toplight with pedimented ends, from which a decorative balustrade of scrolled profiles descends to the parapet.

At the northern end of the former theatre, there are octagonal kiosks made of cast- and wrought-iron with lead roofs. These kiosks have cast-iron columns on bases and a round-arched arcade between them, with details that originally resembled a Palladian window. They also feature brackets supporting deep eaves and a shallow coved roof with a lantern. A smaller kiosk with an ogee roof is located to the west of the theatre. The theatre itself is three storeys high, with a verandah on the ground floor to the west and a roof that is coved in two stages. Small towers with ogee roofs flank the north end, and there is a three-storey porch wing situated between them. The interior has not been inspected.