Visitors crowd an artificial wave swimming pool at a tourist resort to escape the summer heat in Daying county of Suining, Sichuan province, China, July 11, 2015. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)

Children guarded by Hungarian police play on the ground after being detained along with other migrants who illegally crossed from Serbia to Hungary near the village of Asotthalom, Hungary, September 16, 2015. (Photo by Dado Ruvic/Reuters)

A eunuch dances during a rally to mark the congregation of thousands of eunuchs from different parts of India, in Jammu, India, Friday, March 13, 2015. The term eunuchs is used in India to describe transvestites, transsexuals and others who identify themselves as neither male nor female but as a member of a third gender. They traditionally survive by begging, dancing at weddings or blessing newborn babies and are frequently subjected to discrimination. (Photo by Channi Anand/AP Photo)

Young migrants gesture during a day of solidarity organised by local organizations and resdients for asylum seekers at a makeshift camp outside the foreign office in Brussels, Belgium September 6, 2015. Over 150,000 people seeking to enter Europe have reached Hungary this year, most coming through the southern border with Serbia, and many apply for asylum but quickly try to leave for wealthier EU countries. (Photo by Yves Herman/Reuters)

A woman carries her child, both wearing traditional red clothes celebrating the Chinese Lunar New Year in Bangkok February 19, 2015. (Photo by Damir Sagolj/Reuters)

Demonstrators hold masks depicting Colombian citizen Mile Virginia, who was murdered along with photojournalist Ruben Espinosa and three other women, during a protest in Mexico City, August 16, 2015. Espinosa, a prominent Mexican news photographer was among five people found dead in a middle-class neighborhood of the capital on July 31, 2015. Espinosa, who worked for the weekly magazine Proceso and the photo agency Cuartoscuro, had sought shelter in Mexico City earlier this summer saying he had been followed and threatened in the eastern state of Veracruz. (Photo by Tomas Bravo/Reuters)

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”)