People take pictures with cherry blossoms in a park on March 23, 2022 in Beijing, China. (Photo by Andrea Verdelli/Getty Images)

A doll dressed in Ukraine's national dress lies on the floor amid broken glass inside a kindergarten destroyed by a missile strike, in Kyiv on July 10, 2024, amid the Russian invasion in Ukraine. Russia struck cities across Ukraine on July 8, 2024, with a missile barrage that killed 33 people and ripped open a children's hospital in Kyiv. (Photo by Anatolii Stepanov/AFP Photo)

A fisherman with a close bond to cormorants uses the flock of birds to catch big fish in Li river in Guilin, China. The aquatic birds can be seen perching on a bamboo raft before swooping into the calm water to grasp hold of prey. (Photo by Julia Wimmerlin/Solnet News & Photo Agency)

A man tries to extinguish an advertisement board set on fire during a demonstration of French labour union members and workers, as France faces its 38th consecutive day of strike against French government's pensions reform plans, in Paris, France on January 11, 2020. (Photo by Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters)

Revellers help a man crowdsurf as they watch The Slaves perform on The Other Stage at the Glastonbury Festival of Music and Performing Arts on Worthy Farm near the village of Pilton in Somerset, South West England, on June 30, 2019. (Photo by Oli Scarff/AFP Photo)

A Shi'ite Muslim man bleeds after tapping his forehead with a razor during a Muharram procession to mark Ashoura in Nabatieh town, southern Lebanon November 4, 2014. Ashoura, which falls on the 10th day of the Islamic month of Muharram, commemorates the death of Imam Hussein, grandson of Prophet Mohammad, who was killed in the seventh century battle of Kerbala. (Photo by Ali Hashisho/Reuters)

In this Monday, July 25, 2016 photo, skydiver Luke Aikins smiles as he jumps from a helicopter during his training in Simi Valley, Calif. After months of training, this elite skydiver says he's ready to leave his chute in the plane when he bails out 25,000 feet above Simi Valley on Saturday. That's right, no parachute, no wingsuit and no fellow skydiver with an extra one to hand him in mid-air. (Photo by Jae C. Hong/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”)