As part of its celebrations for ‘Year of the Pier 2023’ the National Piers Society has curated a travelling exhibition of Golden Era railway posters featuring piers. These nostalgic images, most of which date from the 1920s to the 1950s, promote a stylised and sun-drenched vision of the Great British Seaside when pleasure piers still played an important part in holiday infrastructure as landing stages for paddle steamers.
With the full exhibition featuring more than 50 poster images, visitors are invited to take a tour around the piers of England, Scotland and Wales as depicted by some of the best commercial artists of the twentieth century including Charles Pears, Tom Purvis and Frank Henry Mason. See how your favourite resorts once looked and enjoy the artistic licence that helped sell them to the masses of railway travellers in the past.
These glorious travel posters date from an era before cars took over as the main form of holiday transport and British resorts had yet to feel the full impact of competition from cheap foreign package deals. By the time the National Piers Society was founded under Sir John Betjeman in 1979, many piers were in trouble and needed the voice of a dedicated national organisation to back local supporters trying to save these structures for the future. In the Piers on Posters exhibition, you will find some of our lost lamented piers alongside many of the 63 wonderful piers that survive today. .png)
The exhibition is free to enter and will be touring the following piers:
- Claremont Pier, Lowestoft - 22 April – 13 May
- Britannia Pier, Great Yarmouth - 15 May – 2 June
- Grand Pier, Weston-super-Mare - 6 June – 25 June
- Swanage Pier - 1 July – 15 July
- Pavilion Theatre Atrium, Worthing Pier - weekends of 22/23 July and 29/30 July, 10am-4pm
- The Jolly Roger, Clacton Pier - 5 August – 29 August
The National Piers Society would like to thank Richard Furness, expert author of the Poster to Poster
book series, for the use of images from his collection and Barry Thompson, railway enthusiast and National Piers Society member, for compiling the selection and providing the text.