Category: Essex

I love a nice pier, there’s something quite exotic about walking out over the sea whilst peering (no pun intended) through the holes in the wood at the waves crashing below. Harwich’s pier doesn’t quite have the water underneath which is being flung against the sand by the power of the moon, but it still allows for a little walk out.

The pier has a kink in the middle of it, towards the right is where the entrance is located and off to the left is where the landing area is for the ferry across to Felixstowe. There’s a little cafe located at the entrance to the pier, as well as small tourist information facility which is operated by the Harwich Society.

This is what the pier looked like at the end of the nineteenth century, but today the spur going off to the left is missing which is because it burnt down in July 1923. A fair number of sources give the date as 1927, but it was Friday 13th July 1923, perhaps there’s something in these omens. This section of the pier had been closed off during the First World War, although fishermen often jumped the barrier, but the planned repairs caused by a lack of maintenance were aborted when it caught fire.

There’s Felixstowe in the background.

The pier’s information sign and it mentions that it opened on 2 July 1853 and originally cost ha’penny to enter, hence the name.

Some of the artwork located, or perhaps temporarily dumped, on the bridge. It’s Esturiana and is a community artwork which is apparently a sign of local creativity. I can’t write that I’m particularly engaged by it as I’m struggling to understand the story it’s trying to tell, but everyone likes different things and at least they’ve put a sign up to explain to visitors who created it.

More recently, there was nearly another disaster when in August 2020 there was a fire which fortunately didn’t spread as the fire brigade were alerted promptly and they were able to quell the flames. There’s been some recent restoration work to stop bits of the pier falling down, so its future seems secure. These are really not ideal structures to have to look after, they are quickly damaged by the elements, but at least this pier has survived albeit not as much as there once was.

There’s more information about this rather charming little pier at https://www.harwich-society.co.uk/maritime-heritage-trail/hapenny-pier-visitors-centre/.

I’ve decided that I can establish a reasonable information about a town or city by the sort of library that it maintains. This one, located opposite the town’s JD Wetherspoon pub, is open five days a week including until 19:00 on one evening. For anyone who likes challenges, guess what this building used to be. The answer is further down the post.

It has tables, so that’s a win for me, and there’s also a relatively substantial local history collection. There was quite an argument going on between a visitor and the librarian, the former claiming they had paid a book fine and the latter stating very firmly that their system showed that they hadn’t. I was a little disappointed not to see the matter resolved, but there’s a limit to how long I’m prepared to wait in a library to see how a customer service issue unfolds. I like a bit of drama with my library visit, it adds something just that bit intangible.

There was some sort of recycling display in the corner to add a little something to the whole arrangement. As for the library, it seemed quiet and comfortable with plenty of books, I didn’t have much to complain about at all. Nothing overly inspiring, but it was open when I wanted to go in it, so that’s sufficient given the current national cutbacks.

There’s an interesting story that I can’t quite understand which is that the denizens of Harwich in 1903 rejected a £3,000 sum from Andrew Carnegie to build themselves a library. This philanthropist funded 3,000 libraries around the world and I haven’t come across an instance where his offer was rejected, although I’m sure it must have happened in numerous locations. The local newspaper commented that “Andrew Carnegie must sometimes feel sad at the inexplicable conduct of some unenlightened people” and that seems a fair summary of the situation. A local vote showed that 235 residents wanted a library and 536 didn’t. I assume that’s because Carnegie required the local ratepayers to take responsibility for the institution and the taxpayers didn’t want that hassle. The local newspapers show that for the next thirty years there was anger from residents writing to say they needed a public library and why wasn’t the council providing them one.

And, for the answer to my question earlier on, it was a bus station. Congratulations to anyone who guessed from the frontage of the building.

I pondered, as this is the sort of thing I decide I need to think about, the problems that councils must have with signage such as this. They have to make it so that the breakwater is clearly out of bounds, but not so much that people have to walk around the signage and risk falling in getting onto it. This does seem a genuinely dangerous thing to walk on, there are photos of the waves pounding it from both sides.

Whilst I’m making reference to danger, I was interested to discover that a fair few sailing craft have hit this breakwater when the tide was high, which seems far from ideal (or sub-optimal as other Julian says). The port of Felixstowe is visible in the background of the photo above.

There’s more Felixstowe, which takes me back to when I walked 50 miles as part of the LDWA Shotley Peninsular walk.

And here’s some more sea photos….. What a treat for the end of a Easter Bank Holiday for both my readers.

Someone like Dave Morgan would decide that he’d go for the option on the left as there would be a nice walk to them……

An entire blog post about a pond, but if there had been more Good Beer Guide pubs in Harwich then I might have been otherwise distracted…. The ducks on this pond have had a challenging time over recent years, they went mysteriously missing in 2011 and had to be replaced with a new cluster of ducks.

I think it’s an interesting pond though and not just because of its duckhouse, a word perhaps forever synonymous now with the late Conservative MP Peter Viggers and his Parliamentary expenses. I was intrigued as it has some heritage to it, the pond was once part of the ditch that surrounded the medieval town of Harwich.

The location of the pond can’t be made out in this early eighteenth century drawing of the town, but it gives an indication of how the ditches were used to help defend Harwich.