Southend-on-Sea
Links
The Southend Timeline - An illustrated timeline from 1800 to the present. Lots of fascinating information and links. the link is correct but you may have trouble connecting.
Sea of change: Southend-on -Sea - a collection of photos old and new which show the modernisation of the town.
Southend-on-sea Borough Council - links to where you can find various historical records
Vision of Britain - Statistics, some photograpsh, some writings ...
The Kursaal - The Kursaal was the big amusement park. Brief history and photos.
National Piers Society - A page of history and lots of links to photos, movies, news ...
Love Southend - a community website. The link is to the blog which has various posts on historical matters.
A family treat as a child was to go to Southend to see the lights. I’m not sure what time of year this was, but it was a double treat, in that there was the excitement of the lights, but it also meant that we were up late at night. We would walk along the front looking at all of them and indulge in cockles and whelks and fish and chips. It was, and maybe still is, a very working class sort of excursion. I suppose it’s a southern and scaled down version of Blackpool. I think we must have gone there occasionally in the daytime too. I remember travelling on the train the length of the pier - it is very long - sometimes walking it, and buying sticks of rock in one of the little shops tucked away in the arches under a bridge near the pier. Then there was also the lift up the cliff - not much of a cliff really but to a small child it was exciting.
I had no idea that my father spent most of his very early years there. Surely he must have said so on one of our visits?
In 1870-72, John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales described Southend on Sea like this:
SOUTHEND, a small town and a chapelry in Prittle-well parish, Essex. The town stands on the Thames estuary, at the terminus of the London, Tilbury, and Southend railway, 3½ miles WNW of Shoeburyness and 3½ S by E of Rochford; dates from a period not earlier than 1800; attracted notice, as a suitable watering-place, from a visit of Queen Caroline and Princess Charlotte in 1804; consists of good streets, with many commodious residences; includes Cliff-Town, which has been separately noticed; carries on a considerable coasting trade; communicates much with London, both by railway and by steamers; communicates also, by steamers, with Gravesend, Rochester, and Sheerness; and has a head post-office, a railway station with telegraph, excellent hotels, good sea-bathing appliances, assembly-rooms, baths, a literary institution and library, a pier 1¼ mile long, a church, an Independent chapel of 1865, a Wesleyan chapel, and a national school. The pier has a railway on it, for passengers to and from the steamers; was constructed at a cost of about £42,000; and was sold to the Eastern Counties railway company for £17,000.—The chapelry was constituted in 1842. Pop. in 1861, 1,716. Houses, 293. The living is a p. curacy in the diocese of Rochester. Value, £50. Patrons, Three Trustees.
