West End Pier

A Memory of Morecambe.

I remember the Pier just before it changed in the late sixties when the arcade was built at the entrance. Before that it was a walkway divided by a wooden fence which can be seen clearly in this picture. As a child I would play on the sand close to the pier and I recall that the dancing was very popular. They always used to play 'A Walk in the Black Forest' and 'Let's Have a Ceilidh' and hearing these tunes always sets off this memory. Roller skating was also very popular for a while.
After the arcade was built there was a toll of 6d (about 3p) to walk further down the pier. The arcade came in very handy when the tide made the beach inaccessible and I remember playing my first electronic game here (the one with the table tennis bats moving up and down the screen).
I was saddened in 1974 when I saw on the TV news that the pier had been lost in a storm. It seemed to me to be a watershed in the decline of Morecambe as a holiday resort. It is a great shame that the Central Pier fell into such decline that it was also lost.