People watch a forest fire in Funchal, Madeira Island, Portugal, 09 August 2016. The fire has led to the evacuation of 400 people. Portugal remains on high alert as a wave of wildfires has swept the country with around 350 isolated fires affecting swathes of the countryside. (Photo by Gregório Cunha/EPA)

British band Florence and the Machine performs at the Bilbao BBK Live festival in Bilbao, Spain, early 13 July 2018. Bilbao BBK Live festival runs from 12 July to 14 July 2018. (Photo by Miguel Tona/EPA/EFE)

People enjoy the beach as they look at a forest fire in La Croix-Valmer, near Saint-Tropez, on July 25, 2017. Firefighters battle blazes that have consumed swathes of land in southeastern France for a second day, with one inferno out of control near the chic resort of Saint-Tropez, emergency services say. (Photo by Valery Hache/AFP Photo)

Argentine Spanish model Georgina Rodriguez arrives on September 1, 2022 for the screening of the film “Tar” presented in the Venezia 79 competition at the 79th Venice International Film Festival at Lido di Venezia in Venice, Italy. (Photo by Guglielmo Mangiapane/Reuters)

A child of a migrant worker drinks water as his mother holds him while waiting in a queue for transport to reach to a railway station to board a train to their home state of northern Uttar Pradesh, after a limited reopening of India's giant rail network following a nearly seven-week lockdown to slow the spreading of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Ahmedabad, India, May 15, 2020. (Photo by Amit Dave/Reuters)

Fisherman Jose Miguel Perez, whose nickname is “Taliban”, navigates the oil infested waters of Lake Maracaibo, near Cabimas, Venezuela, May 21, 2019. Nobody lives as closely with the environmental fallout of Venezuela's collapsing oil industry as the fishermen who scratch out an existence on the blackened, sticky shores of Lake Maracaibo. (Photo by Rodrigo Abd/AP Photo)

A reveler playfully sticks out her tongue during a street pre-carnival party by the “Cordao do Boitata” Block, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Sunday, February 12, 2023. Revelers are taking to the streets for the open-air block parties, leading up to Carnival's official Feb. 17th opening. (Photo by Bruna Prado/AP Photo)

While the lido was described as bringing “modernism to the masses” on the British coast it was just the latest example of a trend that had been developing since Victorian times – transforming seaside towns into resorts for leisure and entertainment. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, the fashion was for local authorities to build great piers stretching from the promenade out into the sea. The Eastbourne Pier, pictured here in May 1931, was erected between 1866 and 1870 to an ingenious design by Eugenius Birch, which saw the structure sitting on special cups allowing the supporting struts to “move” in bad weather. Arranged on the pier's 1,000-foot length were kiosks, a theatre, a ballroom and a camera obscura. 1931. (Photo by Aerofilms Collection via “A History of Britain From Above”)