Bognor Regis Pier

A pleasure pier, built in 1865 for the Bognor Promenade Company Ltd, with significant additions and alterations in the 20th century. The shore end was enlarged in 1912, designed by G C Smith, adding a large pavilion housing a theatre, an arcade with shops, a theatre, and a picture house. Subsequent alterations occurred in the mid- and late 20th century. The pier is constructed from iron posts with wooden decking and cast-iron railings. The pavilions at the shore end are roughcast, with roofs of slate, roofing felt, and felt tiles. The arcade facing the promenade is two storeys high with a hipped roof, featuring a central round-headed pediment with a round-headed window flanked by ornate pilasters with swags. Surrounding this are two further three-light mullioned and transomed casements, and a central single-light window containing good Art Nouveau-style stained glass. The ground floor is supported by five piers, topped with a triglyph frieze and modern shop fronts and doors. The side elevations include blank round-headed pediments, pilasters, friezes, and cornices. A former theatre is located to the rear. This section features two square towers on the landward side, each with flagpoles. The towers have keyed round-headed arches with bracketed hood moulds, originally with oculi, now a door (left tower) and a window (right tower). Modillioned cornices are present. At the centre, the former entrance is masked by a flat-roofed addition and features a keyed oculus within a segmental pediment on brackets. The side elevations of this part display pedimented gables with oculi in bracketed architraves above mullioned and transomed windows. A former open-fronted arcade below a first-floor balcony has been walled, but original columns have been retained. Internally, the theatre has two staircases; one retains its original handrail while the other has wall panelling and a ceiling cornice. A late 20th-century suspended floor was inserted into the former auditorium at circle balcony height, but the decorative balcony front, featuring plaster cherubs, swags, and cartouches, still exists. Decorative plasterwork adorns the auditorium walls, vaulted ceiling, dome, and proscenium arch. Original first-floor glazed double doors are set within architraves, with a projection box also present. The former picture-house/concert hall retains a vaulted ceiling with some star-shaped light fittings, disc decoration to supporting columns, a curtain pelmet, and a projection box. The pier has suffered damage over time, with a former small pavilion collapsing into the sea in 1965, a wooden stage tower dismantled in 1972, and storm damage in 1999 resulting in a foreshortened pier.