American model and media personality Kendall Jenner attends the Gucci women's Spring Summer 2024 collection presented in Milan, Italy, Friday, September 22, 2023. (Photo by Luca Bruno/AP Photo)

Two miniature pigs, Brad Pigg and Gordon Hamsey, train for racing season at Monk Park Farm near Thirsk, North Yorkshire, UK on March 18, 2025. (Photo by James Glossop/Times Media Ltd)

People pass by a light decoration during Valentine’s Day in Tirana, Albania, on February 14, 2024. (Photo by Florion Goga/Reuters)

A woman poses for a photo in front of an installation to promote the film “Godzilla Minus One”, which won the Oscar for best visual effects at the Academy Awards in Los Angeles, outside a popular shopping centre and official development in the Hibiya area of Tokyo on March 11, 2024. (Photo by Richard A. Brooks/AFP Photo)

The singer Jennifer Lopez during her concert at the Movistar Arena, on July 13, 2025, in Madrid, Spain. The international artist, a native of New York, performs in Madrid as part of her tour “Up all night Live in 2025”. Jennifer Lopez has sold more than 80 million albums to date, accumulated more than fifteen billion plays and has nearly 28 million monthly listeners on Spotify alone. Among the awards she has won throughout her career are the American Music Awards, MTV Video Music Awards, or the Latin Grammy Awards. (Photo by Ricardo Rubio/Europa Press via The Mega Agency)

Visitors hold mobile devicecs in front of the golden burial mask of King Tutankhamun during the first day for visitors after the official opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza, Egypt, Tuesday, November 4, 2025. (Photo by Amr Nabil/AP Photo)

Revellers get into the spirit of the 40th annual Zomercarnaval – summer carnival – in Rotterdam on July 28, 2024. The two-day event is such in integral part of Netherlands tradition it was added to Unesco’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list last year. (Phoot by James Petermeier/ZUMA Press Wire)

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”)