Description

768/0/10079 Neck or Entrance Building at Boscombe
08-DEC-04 Pier

GV II
Pier 'neck' or entrance building. 1958-60 by Bournemouth Borough Engineer's Department. Reinforced concrete on bastion encased in rough natural stone. Piers and this bastion on the beach support a concrete slab on level of the roadway in front. Boomerang-shaped plan, with two kiosks either side of entrance to pier, toilets behind and shelters at either end. Sweeping oversailing thin concrete slab roof supported on tapered piers. Full-height timber glazed canopies at either end with square panes set between these piers. Blue tiles to beach elevation of kiosks, with cream tiles to front demarcating the boundaries between each unit. Each kiosk is entered by the staff from the sides, and has a three-bay sales desk to the road, with timber surrounds and soffit panels under narrow horizontal fascia. Three of these retain their lettering of c.1960. Above is a set back fascia and flashgap so that the full sweep of the underside of the roof, inset with square lights, can be appreciated. Steel fence and double gates lead on to the pier, with porters lodges set between angled concrete spars and under wavy thin slab roofs. Lavatories also have c.1960 lettering and tiling at their entrances: both are reached from both the pier and roadway.

Boscombe pier was built in 1888 to the designs of Archibold Smith as a calling place for piers, and was acquired by the Bournemouth Corporation in 1904. It was remodelled in 1927-8 and to repair wartime breaching. The rest of the pier is a mongrel design not of special architectural interest.

However, the neck building is a design of great verve and vivacity that well demonstrates the revitalisation of the British seaside resort in the 1950s. The contemporary style associated with Frank Lloyd Wright's Usonian houses and made popular with Californian homes in the 1940s was well suited to the requirements of an architecture that combined 'sun and fun'. The contemporary style made a feature of expressing different elements or planes of a composition with different materials, and here the combination is honest and each element well detailed. The sweep of the cantilevered, boomerang-shaped roof is a particularly joyous feature. It is a building that would have been despised as being exactly of its date until recently; now it is a building that can be celebrated for that very reason, and a rare example of pier architecture from these years.

Source:
Simon H. Adamson, Seaside Piers, London, Batsford/ Victorian Society, 1977

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26670528

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

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