City in Essex, England
Southend-on-Sea
Southend-on-Sea has the longest pleasure pier in the world, so long it needs its own railway. It also hides a princely Anglo-Saxon burial chamber.
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Key information
- County
- Essex
- Nation
- England
- Population
- about 181,000 (2021 Census)
- Known for
- The world's longest pleasure pier, Adventure Island, cockles, big tides and a very long seafront
- What locals are called
- Southenders
- Famous people
- Helen Mirren (grew up in Westcliff), Sir David Amess
- Football clubs
- Southend United (the Shrimpers)
About Southend-on-Sea
A pier so long it needs a train
Southend Pier stretches 1.34 miles (2.16 km) into the Thames Estuary, which makes it the longest pleasure pier in the world. The tide here goes out so far that the original wooden pier of 1830 had to keep creeping outwards just to reach deep water. The iron replacement opened in 1889 and was extended in 1898. Walking the full length is a proper outing, so a railway has run along it since 1890, when it opened with electric trains. Diesel trains arrived in 1986, and new battery-electric trains came in 2022. Today's trains carry passengers to the pier head, where there's a café, a lifeboat station and views across to Kent. The pier has had a rough time. Fires in 1976 and 2005 wrecked parts of it, and ships have crashed into it over the years. Each time Southenders have patched it up and carried on.
The day Londoners found the seaside
Southend began as a handful of fishermen's cottages at the south end of the old village of Prittlewell, hence the name. The 19th century turned it into a resort. The railway arrived in 1856, and Londoners, particularly from the East End, poured out of the capital for a day by the sea. Southend became the original 'kiss-me-quick' destination. The Golden Mile of seafront filled up with amusement arcades, rides, ballrooms and ice-cream stalls. The Kursaal, an entertainment complex that opened in 1901, set the tone, and Adventure Island, the amusement park beside the pier, still carries on the tradition. The Southend Illuminations were a famous seafront attraction in their day, and the beach still turns into a vast mud-and-sand playground whenever the tide retreats.
A prince under the suburbs
In 2003, archaeologists from Museum of London Archaeology uncovered something extraordinary at Prittlewell: an intact Anglo-Saxon burial chamber from roughly AD 575–605. They were investigating the site ahead of a proposed road-widening scheme. Inside were gold-foil crosses, a folding stool, drinking horns and a Byzantine copper flagon from the eastern Mediterranean. The 'Prittlewell princely burial' is thought to belong to a high-status member of the East Saxon royal family. The occupant remains unidentified, though one proposed candidate is Seaxa, brother of King Saebert. It turned a quiet suburban road into one of Britain's most important early medieval finds, and the discoveries are now shown at Southend's museum. It also proves the area was wealthy and well connected well over a thousand years before the first deckchair arrived.
Cockles, whelks and Leigh's sheds
Southend's food is shellfish, eaten from a paper tray with plenty of vinegar. Cockles, whelks, prawns and jellied eels are all on the menu. The best of it is at Old Leigh, a former fishing village now part of Southend, where weatherboarded cockle sheds stand on the waterfront and boats still land their catch. There's an Italian streak too. Families who settled here to run ice-cream businesses made a proper 99 a seaside institution. Fish and chips are best eaten on the seafront wall, preferably while keeping a close eye on the seagulls.
Shrimpers, a wartime pier and a new city
Southend United have been known as the Shrimpers since the club formed in 1906. They play at Roots Hall and endured the heartbreak of dropping out of the Football League in 2021, after more than a century in it. During the Second World War the pier was requisitioned by the navy as HMS Leigh and became a key control point for convoys leaving the Thames. Southend's airport, which began as a flying field in 1914, now handles passenger flights to Europe. Helen Mirren, who grew up in Westcliff and went to school in Southend, is its most famous daughter. In October 2021 the government announced that Southend would become a city in tribute to Sir David Amess, the town's long-serving MP, who was killed that month. City status was granted in 2022.