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00:01Britain's history is recorded in its monuments.
00:05Even before the Normans came and built their castles across the country,
00:08successive generations have left their mark on the landscape,
00:12in the landmarks they've left behind.
00:15But now those landmarks are crumbling.
00:18There's a section there which is quite bad.
00:20Centuries of wear and tear have taken their toll on these precious buildings.
00:24More of the structural members were suffering from corrosion than we expected.
00:28It's moss growing inside, so then the water backs up, then falls internally.
00:33They need constant care and maintenance in all kinds of conditions.
00:39You can see dust coming up. A hundred years old dust.
00:42Revealing treasures that have been hidden for centuries.
00:45We're unearthing the original bridge.
00:47All over the country, teams of highly skilled people are dedicating their lives
00:52to keeping our heritage standing.
00:54We need to be aware that we are a part of a cycle that's been going on for centuries.
00:59These are Britain's landmark fixers.
01:02And this is not just their story.
01:04They've jogged nearly 6,000 holes for drill.
01:07How marvellous.
01:08But the story of the buildings they look after.
01:11Off the Essex coastline of South East England is an icon of the British seaside.
01:28South End Pier.
01:30Stretching out to sea for 1.3 miles, it's the world's longest pleasure pier.
01:36And a marvel of Victorian engineering.
01:39The Victorians are the best builders in the world.
01:42It has been a victim of fire.
01:44A ship's crashed into it.
01:46And the sea is even beginning to eat it away.
01:49Built during the Victorian tourist boom,
01:51it was a haven for weary Londoners to escape the city's grime
01:55and stroll in the fresh sea air.
01:58Funfares, donkey rides, ice creams, a good day out.
02:01A pier is part of the trappings of the classic British summer holiday.
02:06It's a British institution.
02:08But this once great pier has seen better days.
02:12It has been somewhat neglected over the years.
02:15Now, a major new multi-million pound plan has been launched by South End Council
02:20to restore the pier.
02:22How far do you want it?
02:23It'll take a team of experts...
02:25..battling the elements...
02:28You never know what you're going to get in this estuary.
02:30It was 50 mile an hour winds yesterday.
02:32..the ravages of time...
02:34Not particularly good condition.
02:36..and tide...
02:37It just shows you the harsh environmental conditions.
02:39..to breathe new life into this iconic landmark.
02:43For over a hundred years, South End Pier has jutted
02:53into the saltwaters of the Thames estuary.
02:57It's pier engineer Gary Stickland's job
03:00to make sure the pier remains structurally sound.
03:03We're doing regular surveys, weather and tidal dependent.
03:06Fresh observing any defects in the steelwork.
03:09How are you doing?
03:11Low tide is the best time to make an inspection
03:14and Gary is joined by structural engineer Keith Walker.
03:18Came down the other day, Gary, and cleared off the barnacles
03:20and you'll see that the pile is as good as new underneath.
03:24Sunk deep into the mud of the Thames estuary
03:27are approximately 2,000 cast-iron pillars known as piles
03:32which support the giant pier.
03:34A pile is basically a column which is driven into the ground
03:37in some means to support the load on the structure.
03:40It's a very simple and easy way of producing foundations,
03:46especially when it's difficult to put those foundations down.
03:50Right, avoid getting stuck in the mud.
03:52In this case, where you're trying to build a structure
03:55on top of mudflats, which is quite a waterlogged material,
03:58it'll be quite soft, you want to use a screw pile.
04:02And it's screwed in until it can't be screwed any more.
04:05This then spreads the load into the mud.
04:08Because the helical shape of the screw pile
04:11provides a lot of surface area for those forces to spread out
04:15and therefore stabilise the structure.
04:20The original pier, constructed in 1830, wasn't made of iron.
04:24It was made of wood.
04:26But this decayed too easily.
04:28So by 1890, they had replaced it with the metal pier we see today.
04:35You can see the original pre-1900 cast iron piles.
04:38They're really in good condition.
04:39They've been through two tides every day.
04:41A couple of world wars and wear and tear is pretty good.
04:44It's almost as good as new looking at the base fabric.
04:47If you scrape the barnacles off the cast iron under the pier,
04:52the chances are it would look almost as good as new.
04:55And that's because in the water, away from the air,
04:59it's not being affected by as much oxygen.
05:02And it's oxygen that rusts.
05:04It's oxygen that does the real damage.
05:06So, in fact, it's better for this to be hidden under the sea
05:11than it is to be exposed to the elements above.
05:15But iron, air and water don't mix well.
05:19And it's Gary and Keith's never-ending task
05:22to ensure that the pier doesn't get worn away by the sea.
05:26The sea is a section there which is quite bad.
05:28The moisture gets into the material,
05:30breaks rust until it becomes weak
05:32and ends up falling off into the sea bed.
05:34It just shows the harsh environmental conditions.
05:37When iron is exposed to oxygen and moisture,
05:40a chemical reaction happens and turns the actual iron
05:43into an oxide compound.
05:45And in this case, the combination of seawater and oxygen
05:48is rusting the steel away.
05:51When that rust continues to get thicker and thicker,
05:54it actually starts peeling away from the material.
05:57So, if you imagine kind of ripping the pages off a book,
06:01as you take away that material,
06:03the book gets thinner and thinner.
06:04And that's what happens to the steel.
06:06It gets thinner, which makes it weaker.
06:11You can see the bottom of that short length of steel.
06:13The bottom plate is completely eroded away.
06:15It's almost, you can see daylight for it.
06:17So, that'd be one of the ones on our list to pick up as quite urgent.
06:20That's created quite a weakness in that area.
06:22Basically, we'll replace those because that's holding the pier quite stable.
06:25It stopped it from moving from left to right.
06:31Stretching 1.3 miles into the sea,
06:34the pier is one long walkway with a docking station at the sea end
06:39and an ornate brick entry building and ticket office opening onto the shore.
06:44By the mid 20th century, all that remained of the Victorian buildings was a glass pavilion
06:51that had once acted as a restaurant and waiting room for the pier's passengers.
06:56But that was destroyed by fire in 1959.
07:08The Victorian iron beams that make up the pier are more than 100 years old.
07:13But as part of the pier's historic fabric,
07:15it's Gary's duty to try and preserve as many as he can.
07:19So, where we're removing the Victorian riveted beams,
07:22we're trying to reuse them elsewhere on the pier.
07:25The blessing of historic England, English heritage.
07:30He does this using an ultrasonic probe that measures the thickness of the metal.
07:37It's a very active piece of kit.
07:39It sends a pulse of material, it sends a signal back.
07:42After examining the whole beam top to bottom, Gary is happy with its quality.
07:47On the whole, they look quite good.
07:49And they're suitable to go to the next person.
07:51So, restoration should be quite straightforward.
07:55Any beams that pass the test are sent to the yard,
07:58where Graham Danson and his colleague, Graham Morley, work to restore them.
08:04It's a laborious process,
08:06which involves removing the old corroded rivets and steel plates from the beams
08:11and replacing them with new, modern bolts.
08:14The rivets are a special type of fastener that are used to put two different plates of metal or steel together.
08:24They've got a dome on one end and then a long shaft,
08:27almost a bit like a nail, but this is just a cylindrical shaft.
08:31You push them through a hole while they're hot,
08:34and then you whack the other end and basically create a second dome.
08:38And this creates almost like a dumbbell shape which clamps together pieces of metal.
08:43All those rivets have had to be taken off, knocked out, then the plate taken off.
08:49And then we've had to wait for the new plates coming, sit this on the plate,
08:53and then we've got to try and match that to that as near as we can to old style,
09:01because obviously we don't use rivets nowadays.
09:03The only real choice you have is to drill through the shaft of the rivet,
09:08basically destroy it and pop the dome bits off.
09:12So what they're doing is, I'll catch it here, a bolt.
09:15See, when that goes in and it's all done and all painted up,
09:19it'll look like a rivet and it'll look near enough original to the old.
09:28It's a listed building, it has to go in as it was.
09:31But if you don't do that thing anymore, you can't put it exactly the same,
09:35you can make it as near as you can, which is basically what we're doing.
09:40We're trying our hardest to get it back, so it's pleasing on the eye.
09:46Complicating an already difficult job is the beam's age.
09:50This material is original, so there's more carbon in this and it makes it harder.
09:56This stuff that they make nowadays is atrocious.
10:01They used to make it stronger.
10:03We've been on piers, some of them beams are under a year old.
10:06You couldn't put a beam in nowadays that they make and it lasts 100 years.
10:11It's a different quality.
10:13Standard of material's gone down.
10:15Having a higher carbon content in steel makes the beams a bit harder,
10:20maybe therefore a bit stronger.
10:22It also makes the beams a bit more brittle and therefore more difficult
10:26to actually fix or to modify in later times.
10:30We now know really what is the right amount of carbon for the right thing,
10:35whereas the Victorians I think were doing it more intuitively and less scientifically.
10:39And to complicate things further, each rivet can only be replaced by hand.
10:44There's 360 volts in each and then there's five more to do,
10:49so he took nearly 6,000 holes to drill.
10:53How marvellous.
10:55Maintaining the pier is an ongoing process.
10:58But its unique nature has seen visitors flock to Southend
11:02since the start of the Victorian leisure boom.
11:05To understand why Southend Pier was such a draw to the Victorians,
11:08you have to think about a Victorian city in the early 19th century.
11:12The smog, the smoke, the smells. It was utterly revolting.
11:17So the idea of going to the seaside to get some fresh air.
11:20My gosh, of course. Let's all go to Southend right now.
11:24And there's a reason why you travelled there by boat.
11:27The British seaside took off before the age of railways,
11:30so people got to the seaside by boat.
11:33Southend is on the Thames estuary,
11:36which means it doesn't have its own harbour.
11:38It's entirely a beach.
11:40The tide goes right the way out.
11:42It's a mile of flat, wet mud.
11:44The net result is that no boat is getting close to the shore.
11:48So the solution the Victorians came up with was,
11:51let's build a pier that's a mile long.
11:54But on such a long pier, some beams cannot be saved.
11:59And replacing them is a task in itself.
12:12It's early morning at Southend.
12:16You're ready to go when you are.
12:18The beams that cannot be saved are replaced by a shipment of new steel.
12:23What have you got on here today?
12:27Just the top plates for the riveted beams?
12:29Yeah, the top plates are the rivets.
12:32Gary is on hand as the new steel beams arrive.
12:39My role is to keep the pier, structure your sound,
12:41and deal with any repair and maintenance issues
12:43with my other engineering colleagues.
12:45Each beam measures nine metres and weighs almost a tonne.
12:49Pull the slough there, come down on the head.
12:53It has to be carefully loaded and transported down the pier to be installed.
12:58It's hard work, it's difficult, it's complex.
13:01But I quite relish working over the sea on the pier.
13:04In charge of the installation team is steel erector Mick Holmes.
13:08It's all about the preparation.
13:10Once you get all your prepped and burn out the old bolts and get it all ready.
13:13The actual getting the steel out and putting it back in again, it's quite quick.
13:17The closed pier presents a small window of opportunity for the team to get the replacement done.
13:23It's going to wait for the train at the moment.
13:25It can be a bit of a pain, but you'll learn to live with it.
13:29We're just going to take this beam out.
13:31It's no use any more, so put the brand new beam in, bolt it down.
13:36We just lift everything up, slide everything out and put it back in using the frame and then using pull lifts and chain blocks underneath just to traverse things where they need to be.
13:50There are over 4,000 beams of different types on the pier.
13:54They take care not to damage the replacements.
13:57We use the colour chains on the old steel or we use the slings on the new steel so we don't damage the paint.
14:03Unlike the original Victorian iron, these modern beams have been galvanised.
14:09Galvanising steel is a great idea in places like South End Pier, which is a very moist environment and of course it's exposed to air.
14:19You place a layer of zinc on top of the steel.
14:22It creates a physical barrier between the face of the steel and the air.
14:27So it stops the steel from being exposed to oxygen and moisture.
14:32Stop it from rusting and make sure that it will last for many years.
14:35Just putting fresh bolts in now.
14:39It's going to bolt down the wind and bolt to the existing just for the time being.
14:42This will be coming out in the future anyway, so...
14:44They've been galvanised and painted for 40 years, I would say.
14:55Perhaps even longer.
14:57I'll not see it perish anyway.
15:02Today, the Great British Pier offers something for everyone.
15:06But back when they were being built in the Victorian era, they were very much an exclusive destination.
15:14Prior to the 19th century, visiting seaside resorts was generally restricted to the upper classes,
15:19whose doctors told them that visiting the seaside was very healthy.
15:24And South End is one of the places that's close to London where they can get away and recuperate.
15:29With visits from so many leading people, seaside resorts inevitably became profoundly fashionable.
15:36Ultimately, it was about putting on the best clothes you have, walking up and down the pier, lording it over everybody.
15:42So it became an area where people would promenade.
15:45And where did you go on holiday this year? Why, I went to South End Pier, walked the length of it, look at me.
15:50Oh, well, we got the train.
15:52Wow.
15:54The advent of the railways had a profound impact on the pier.
15:56Everything changed in the 1850s, when the London, Tilbury and South End Railway arrived.
16:03Now, a much wider demographic could reach the seaside town.
16:06Working class people were enjoying rising wages and they had more leisure.
16:11Bank holidays were particularly crucial here.
16:14And this brings a new kind of tourist to South End, the day tripper.
16:20How are you going to encourage them to spend more money?
16:22But the pier itself isn't very attractive, so let's make it an actual experience.
16:28So the pier becomes much more egalitarian and the Victorians invent this wider demographic who's visiting.
16:35Everything that we now think of as seaside fun attractions.
16:37East of the pier there was those sweet Victorian seaside activities that we know so well, donkey rides, swings.
16:48Punch and Judy shows, ice creams.
16:51Funfares, bright lights.
16:53There might have been some lewd bathing, who knows.
16:56The pier's heritage is preserved in the old workshops beneath the station.
17:06Richard, let's go and look in this train.
17:08There's full of staff and it's been locked up for years.
17:11No idea what's in it.
17:13Staffed by a team of volunteers, the pier museum was off limits during the pandemic.
17:18The museum has been closed for two years now, nearly.
17:23There we go.
17:25So we're freshening it up.
17:27Well, we put that on there.
17:28We're going to improve some of the static displays.
17:31The museum reflects the history of the town and the pier.
17:36Oh, I haven't seen that before.
17:37Centrepiece of the museum's collection is one very special locomotive.
17:43This is the oldest train we have in the museum.
17:46This was one of the very first electric railways in the country, running down South End Pier in 1995.
17:52As it grew, the very length of the pier became a problem, as much as an attraction.
17:59Visitors arriving at the pier, they didn't want to walk 1.3 miles down a sandblasted pier.
18:05Particularly in Victorian garb, which is not the most comfortable.
18:09So the solution, in 1890, was the world's very first electric pier railway.
18:15And they put a train that ran part of the length of the pier, just to take out that massive chunk of time that it must have taken to get to the end.
18:24These were very early electric trains, and there was a lot of concern among the people who rode on them,
18:29that water, which was underneath, and electricity, which was in the train, didn't mix.
18:37And they were very worried that they would get electrocuted.
18:41Not all the trains in the museum carried just tourists.
18:44These trains in both wars have played a very important part of the life of the pier.
18:50In the First World War, there were three prison ships moored off the end of the pier, and these took the prisoners out to those ships.
19:00During the Second World War, it took a million and a half troops down the pier to join their boats.
19:05And all the troops were taken down the pier in this sort of thing.
19:10World War II saw South End Pier transform into a military strong point.
19:15South End is located on the Thames Estuary.
19:18It's a really useful point because it lets you out into the North Sea, it lets you down to the Channel, and it can be protected.
19:24On the 9th of September 1939, the pier went into military service again.
19:28It was taken over by the Royal Navy and renamed HMS Lee, and it served as a very important mustering point for convoys for the Thames Estuary.
19:37It's the only real point that you can moor up ships that close to London in the Thames Estuary.
19:43So it became enormously significant during great events of the Second World War, like D-Day, like Dunkirk.
19:48Because the pier is a docking station in wartime and beyond, it's lined with wooden fenders.
20:02But those fenders suffer from constant wear and tear.
20:07Not in particularly good condition. Same on the outside as well.
20:11Inside the timber will be fairly hollow, especially just the surface breaking down.
20:14So because you have the ship's berth here, you need to make sure it's in good condition because it could potentially topple over on top of the ship.
20:22The timbers suffer constant battering by boats.
20:26Piers, especially Victorian piers, are brittle structures. Their columns are made of cast iron.
20:31So you have to have something between that and the ship which is coming alongside.
20:35Pier fenders are like wooden bumpers. They can absorb impact.
20:39So if a ship bumps up against it, then it can absorb that force, a bit like a car bumper.
20:44In strong winds and tired conditions, the boat will hit the pier at quite a force.
20:49So the idea of the fenders is to protect the ship and the pier as well.
20:55Marine fenders last around 80 years, but every year on the pier, around five will need replacing.
21:03But they can't use any old timber.
21:04Because it's a grade two listed building, you can't just replace rotten timber with a lesser component.
21:11So we use recycled timber generally where we can, particularly on fenders.
21:15So what the next stage is, take this away, put it to one side, and we have the new fender timbers delivered on barge.
21:20Gary sources his replacement fenders from Ashwell's in Essex, who specialise in reclaimed tropical timbers.
21:38It's got to be Green Heart.
21:42Run by Janine and Deb Davies-Tutt, it's one of the few places in Britain that can supply timber matching South End's original construction.
21:50How about this one up here?
21:53We've worked at South End Council for the last 20 odd years, supplying timber for the foreshore and for various structures that need repairing, jetties and things like that.
22:02So what we're looking for today is a 350 square Green Heart timber.
22:07It's a 5.75.
22:09That we can trim up for a fender at the end of South End Pier.
22:13Green Heart timber was harvested in Guyana where it grows.
22:16Like the one at the back behind.
22:19It was a British colony at the time, so there was easy access to it, and it was innovative to their engineering.
22:25Green Heart's brilliant in maritime projects because it is so dense.
22:29It has a very slightly oily structure to it, but it's resistant to this marine attack.
22:34It's resistant to abrasion.
22:36This is why we should be good enough to survive all the weather out in the middle of the Thames estuary.
22:40Am I near 7 yet?
22:41Yep.
22:427.1.
22:437.1.
22:44Fab.
22:45Yeah.
22:46Because it's tropical, it's grown very slowly and very straight, and so therefore with the straight grain, it gives it its durability.
22:54Let go?
22:55Get it, yep.
22:56It's so heavy and so dense that a 2 inch by 2 inch section in direct contact with the soil will last for over 25 years.
23:02That's without any chemicals.
23:03The reason why we use hardwoods is gribble. Gribble is a small worm which will eat its way into most timbers. That's why we had copper bottom clad boats. Green Heart timbers are very good at resisting gribble and resistant to attack from marine worm.
23:20We've got a few over the back there. We'll just pop round the other side and have a little measure on them.
23:23It doesn't get eaten because it's got its own natural defense system in its veins as such, and that keeps the termites away and all the other little critters that might want to eat it.
23:31Sea groins. You can see where the boards were attached when it was in the sea. It's part of our colonial heritage. Most of the rivers and the sea defenses in the UK are made from this material.
23:43OK. These woods would have been at the thick end of 200 years old by the time they actually got here after being cut down and sailed across.
23:52Deb and Jen sourced their Green Heart from sites that are being modernized all over England.
23:58This material here is from the Woolwich Ferry, so hopefully we'll give them a second use and a second home, or even a third home, because that's happened before now.
24:05This big old lump here has gone on a long journey to get to these shores, and it's supported our infrastructure all these years.
24:13And yes, OK, so it's had to be pulled out maybe for steel to go in, but it's worth, you know, its legacy should go on.
24:20And it will go on, because it's so durable it's not going to go anywhere.
24:25After selecting the right wood, next it will be shaped into the correct size.
24:32He's cutting the Green Heart we've just selected. He uses water to lubricate the timber, because it's very hard and very dense and very dry,
24:40so it needs that water lubrication to keep the blade cool. The blade itself is only five teeth, which is quite unusual.
24:47It's an Australian mill we had to import, because it's the only thing we could find that would actually cut this dense timber.
24:53Lovely, so we're going to do another skim, yeah?
24:57We have metal detectors, and as long as it's clean, we can then cut it.
25:03Often as not, we know exactly where any metal is, where the timber's been used.
25:07It's been used as a groin timber. It'll have lots of little metal screws that have kept the groin boards onto the pile.
25:13So we'd need to check all that before you even get near this machine.
25:19And then we'll check the lens, make sure she's bang on what they need, and we'll get it shipped over to Gary down at the pier at Southend.
25:25Trains have formed an integral part of Southend Pier since their first installation in 1890.
25:41Ian has been a train driver on the pier for the past 12 years.
25:46Oh, it's a fantastic job, yeah, I absolutely love it.
25:50I think the train and the pier basically go hand in hand.
25:57The reaction of small children, they all want to go on the train and have a ride on it.
26:01People just love trains, they love all this stuff, and it goes really well with the pier.
26:07But after 35 years of service, the ageing diesels Sir John Betjeman and the Sir William Haygate are coming to the end of the line.
26:17The difficulty with these trains now is they are hard to maintain.
26:21Some of the parts for them are quite difficult to get hold of, so it is really about time to change them.
26:29Two brand new eco-friendly battery-powered trains are due to arrive in the coming weeks.
26:35They're going to be smoother, they're going to be a lot quieter.
26:39We're going to be able to carry more public on the trains.
26:42You know, this is going to be a plus to the pier.
26:48The new trains are being built up in Warwickshire by transport company Seven Lamb.
26:54Production manager Paul Perry is responsible for the day-to-day running of the operation.
27:00As a company, we take an immense amount of pride in the fact that we're coming full circle in a funny sort of way.
27:04We've built the original one and now we're building its replacement.
27:07The two trains ordered by Southend are nearing the end of their build.
27:12The major fabrication work is done now, so it's becoming much more about and starting to bolt it together.
27:17OK, guys, going to get the cab on today, onto train one.
27:21OK, so we're getting the cab in position now.
27:23We're going to slide it down so it sits nice on its mountains.
27:26And what we're looking for now is a nice, good fit.
27:30We want the bolts to go in nice and steadily.
27:32We want the fit and finish to be absolutely perfect.
27:35Once the cab is in place, Paul brings in company director Patrick to inspect the current build.
27:40The Southend project is fantastic.
27:42I mean, personally, it's a bit of a romance story for me.
27:45It's Seven Lamb is a family business and I was, albeit I was only probably about ten when the current trains were delivered.
27:53I do recollect being there, we've got some photos of me with my parents on Southend Pier taken in front of the existing trains.
28:00So the existing trains are 33, 34 years old.
28:03So this is a once in a generational change.
28:06We don't anticipate changing these trains again any time soon.
28:10So I think from that perspective, it really is a very special project.
28:13We were very excited to be awarded it.
28:15The final one or two little issues that we were working through.
28:18There's a couple of bits of paint finish here and there like this that we'll have to touch up.
28:21Not a problem. The guys will get onto that.
28:23Generally sits quite nicely. The bolt holes are all lining up really well.
28:26I think it's looking really good.
28:28Once we get the windows in, it'll look fantastic.
28:30Yeah.
28:31So we've just got to get the dashboard in and all the controls, get the floor in and the seating in it.
28:35It's really nice when you get the nose on though to be able to actually see that view now that we're going to be able to see through the train.
28:40With the amount of glass that we've got on this one, it's going to be fabulous I think as you're travelling down the pier.
28:44Yeah.
28:45And you'll be able to see out through the front, which again you can't do at the moment.
28:48It's really, really exciting to see this coming to an end.
28:51You know, we are really on that last leg now.
28:54I'm really excited to be getting these trains out in the next couple of weeks and getting them down to Southend and ultimately getting them open to members of the public to enjoy as much as we've enjoyed creating them.
29:06The new trains are clearly going to be a vast improvement.
29:10There's just one slight concern.
29:12The new trains are heavier than the existing ones, so the team needs to reinforce the pier before the new trains arrive.
29:19To do this, they need to replace the weaker components located under the railway line.
29:25The main issue is the pile caps that top each leg of the pier.
29:30A pile cap is the top part of the pile on which the load is placed.
29:34The pile cap channels the forces that are coming from the structure above down into the pile.
29:39So on another early morning at Southend, the pier's engineers head out to do repairs.
29:46We have to do it between the hours of 7 and 10 o'clock in the morning before the train gets running.
29:53Because obviously the train has a lot of weight in it.
29:56If you had a structure that was sitting on top of a pile, which is a very narrow point,
30:03then you'd get very high concentration of forces at that point.
30:07And what the pile cap does is to spread that out so it's not such a focus point.
30:12So for a larger train, heavier train, you need to keep that pile cap as large as possible
30:18so the load is brought down and sent to the pile easily and they need to be in good condition.
30:25That's even more important with new rolling stock on its way.
30:28This has to be done because we have new trains coming and they're slightly heavier
30:32so the engineers have decided to change all the caps up and down the pier
30:36to eliminate that extra weight which is going on the trains.
30:39It's up to steel erector and rope specialist Mick Holmes to get the job done.
30:44The steel packs across here, over time rust expands them so basically that lifts up
30:50and it's got to go somewhere so the pressure comes onto the cast and cast is quite brittle.
30:54So it'll cut across there, usually slice at one of these corners where the weakest point is where the bolt hole is.
30:59Once the corner's gone then obviously you've got your train running along it so it's got to be right.
31:04It's changed. So many. A couple of hundred. Easy.
31:13These pile caps which are degraded had to be cut out and replaced so the loads are transmitted equally into the columns, into the piles.
31:21We're not doing power cap repairs on all of these. A lot of them we're just jacking them up and cleaning the power cap face off.
31:26If we take the rust off it and get it quite new then you're not going to get that expansion again.
31:31Yeah. Easy.
31:33The corners aren't going to break again. But every now and again we do come across the fractured one and that's when we've got to change them.
31:38Above, Gary watches over the repair.
31:43So basically I'm top man for the lads in case there's an emergency.
31:47Something happens down there and that's why we're wearing harnesses.
31:51We can winch them back up and get them to safety and then we can get them out and take them to emergency service if that was required.
31:57While two hydraulic jacks support the beams, the old pile cap is removed.
32:04I would say there's probably maybe four to five ton with a combined weight of both these two here.
32:11As part of the repair, Mick hammers off the rust that has built up over the years.
32:18Obviously we don't want the train coming over. This is why we're coming early in the morning.
32:22Soon, the new cap is installed.
32:29It's important to get it nice and secure, especially with the Tencent train going over the top of it.
32:34Even more so when the train's full.
32:37Once all the caps are done, the pier will be ready to receive its new trains.
32:42On to the next one.
32:44But bearing the new train's weight is just one thing on the list.
32:48Gary also has to make sure that the pier is protected from fire.
33:01The Southend Pier must be one of the most unluckiest piers in the world.
33:06It's had fires. It's even had a ship crash into it.
33:11The pier, given its length, is actually in the middle of a major shipping lane.
33:16The trouble is, when you build a pier that is 1.3 miles out into the Thames Estuary, you do have a lot of passing traffic.
33:26And inevitably, one ship went straight into the pier itself and cut it in two.
33:32Perhaps the one person with most reason to remember the evening was a man who was sitting quietly in the loos of the pier toilets at the moment of the impact.
33:43Watching one of the walls disappear on a ship into the sea in the darkness.
33:48He did manage to get off the pier, thankfully, but not before the ship had torn a 70-foot hole in the pier.
33:53Fire, however, has been the pier's greatest enemy.
34:00You might think that a structure built over water had an inbuilt protection against fire, but that's absolutely not the case.
34:06There have been a high number of fires at Britain's seaside piers, and Southend is among them.
34:11There's a fire in 1959, which is in the pavilion towards the end of the pier.
34:16There's a big fire in 1976, there's another one in 1995, and there's a final one in 2005.
34:25In fact, fire is such a hazard that in 2011, Southend Council installed a new, state-of-the-art sprinkler and fire hydrant system.
34:34You can't just put a fire engine on a pier and drive it along to the end.
34:41So some piers will have a main supply running underneath the pier, and they'll supply the water to fight fires.
34:48To draw water from the sea, you may have quite a distance between the height of the pier and the water itself.
34:54And at low water, especially around Southend, you've got a mud flat.
34:58So it would be impossible to draw water into the right place where you need it.
35:00So you need something big to push the water down there to get it to the end.
35:05So we're just basically going to check over the cuttings of the diesel pumps, just to test that they're cutting in at the correct pressure.
35:11The diesel pumps ensure that water is driven down the length of the pier, ready for any fire.
35:18So we're going to isolate this valve here, then I'm going to open the drain valve.
35:22You'll see the pressure drop in to what the pump cuts in at.
35:25The new system can produce over 3,000 litres of water per minute, and push enough water to fill more than 500 baths onto the pier head when needed.
35:38This goes into a ring main that flows the full length of the pier.
35:42Run out the pumps, everything seems fine with them, there's no problems.
35:46So on a pier as large as Southend, you need to have a fully charged main with circulating water in it.
35:52There are tap-off points down the pier onto which a fire hose can be connected to fight the fire at a distance.
35:58The tap-off point will look like an ordinary fire hydrant with a curved piece of pipe with perhaps a brass cap on the end of it.
36:04But for that to work, the hydrant installed on the tap-off point has to be watertight.
36:11We've got a hydrant that's leaking at the moment, it's only changed the valve.
36:15So we shut the isolation valve to stop any water coming through.
36:20We're just draining the water off of the main, so once the water's released we can take the valve off and replace it.
36:26Finding ways of protecting the pier from fire has been a pressing concern since 1976.
36:35What the fire of 1976 shows is how difficult it is to control a fire on a pier.
36:41It was a perfect storm because the wind was at just the right speed to fan the flames, but there wasn't enough water to put it out.
36:47So at one point this guy Ladislav Mirbl, who was a crop sprayer, got his plane, filled it with water and doused the flames of the fire with his aircraft.
36:58Unfortunately, none of this worked. It's said that the flames were 40 foot higher and could be seen from the Kent coast.
37:04So what the fire of 1976 shows is what you actually need is not sort of firemen coming from the outside, but you need a system on the pier itself.
37:13With the leaking hydrant removed, the new one can be fitted.
37:19All right, that's all done now, so turn the wall back on and it should be all back to normal.
37:24Just give it a quick flush through, just check with how it's all working okay.
37:31The timing couldn't be better, because half a mile out to sea, one of the more flammable components off the pier is coming into dock.
37:39The replacement fenders from Ashwell's timber yard are finally being delivered.
37:45So basically today I've got a large crane coming in to drop it off, and then we'll be coming out at a later date.
37:53In charge of delivering the fenders is skipper Gareth Locke.
37:57It was about quarter to twelve last night we set off, and we left Ethics Marina over at Wallersey Island.
38:05During the Victorian period, the river was a vital transport. Materials were delivered by boat, because it was simple to offload.
38:12The boat, a flat bottom boat carrying the materials, would be driven ashore at high water, and the materials offloaded at low water.
38:18And in the early days of pier building, they would have been offloaded by horse and cart, and then they'd been brought round onto the pier.
38:26And these barges could well have come all the way down from Glasgow with the car stand on them.
38:31Each timber fender weighs nearly one and a half tonnes.
38:34We've got South End Pier just ahead of us there.
38:37It's too heavy to transport down the pier, so it has to be slowly barged in.
38:42If you can go for the stern line first, reach the starboard side too.
38:46You have to judge the tides the best you can, we need a higher tide state ideally.
38:50We've done this journey a few times, we've worked quite a lot on South End Pier in the past.
38:55The only thing we have got to watch out is the passing ships, with the crane up in the air and timbers swinging around.
39:00If we do get a little bit of wash coming through, it ends up sort of obviously making everything move too much.
39:06And we have got to be really mindful of when we lift and keeping an eye on traffic.
39:10We'll have our stern rope on there then, will that be about right?
39:14You've got to try and get it on first time so the boat doesn't drift too far away or go too far out of position.
39:21Is that all right, Bruce?
39:22Yeah, mate.
39:26I thought I'd get half on.
39:30Where far do you want it?
39:34I'll put them here, I think you'll be there.
39:36Put them in there.
39:37Put them in there.
39:40You've got to come to the side of that light, mate.
39:43Graham, if we can swim round the other way so the angle's facing towards Kent.
39:50It's good, one down, two to go.
39:52Still a bit machined now, I see.
39:53It's good, I see.
39:57Yeah, I have green afters especially.
40:00If you drop this in the sea, you'd lose it if you'd just sink.
40:04At me?
40:05Yeah.
40:07That's it.
40:08All three fenders are up there now.
40:09I think it went quite well.
40:11Long steam back to Wallachy Island now.
40:14The fenders will be stored on the pier deck until the old ones are ready to be removed.
40:20Just ready to be trimmed and finely fitted.
40:22It's a couple of days later and now Mick Holmes and the team are preparing to replace the old fenders.
40:38So the old ones come out and then this morning we've measured this, cut it to length.
40:43We've lifted it over with a crane.
40:45We know that it's well within the working loads and it's more than capable for doing the job.
40:48What we've got to do then is we've got to put a pile it all into the concrete in various spots.
40:59It's a little bit tough hanging over the edges.
41:01Have you got some resin for me?
41:03It's more awkward because you've got a lot of power tools which you're dealing with and stuff like that.
41:06So you're having to lean back on your ropes and you can't get as much footing as you would on land.
41:10I'll block two bars each and then put me some resin in please.
41:14At the moment, just before we put this over, we're going to resin the holes.
41:18And then we're going to lower this over and then we put a threaded bar in.
41:23And then it sets in 10-15 minutes, doesn't it?
41:27Then put the nuts on and tighten it up.
41:31For any excess threaded bar that's coming through, we just finish it off nice and clean.
41:36With this one fitted, they can move on to the next.
41:39Meanwhile, out under the pier, Gary and Keith are taking advantage of the high tide to continue their never-ending vigil.
41:51At different tide conditions, whether it's mid-tide, high tide, low tide, different parts of the pier can start moving.
42:00So it's an odd opportunity to get out and look for any moving components.
42:03We can identify them, mark up and draw them where they are and then place a new tin missel or put new restraints on.
42:08It's a constant process that forms part of their monthly routine.
42:13By the time we leave here, it'll be in a better condition than it is now.
42:17It's very important to get up close because you can't always see hairline cracks or fractures that are still work.
42:22We're going underneath on the boat in close proximity, in good daylight, depending on the seas.
42:29We've got a better understanding of the general condition of the pier.
42:33They have to do this because of the unique nature of the structure they're looking after.
42:39Piers, this great Victorian invention, is absolutely bonkers because no-one in their right mind would build a pier out of steel nowadays.
42:47It's in a highly corrosive environment, 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year.
42:53It's subject to like a mini-earthquake. Every time there's a storm or a tide, it's subject to abrasion.
42:59But that's why Piers are so much fun. It's because they are bonkers. They're absolutely brilliant structures.
43:03And for Gary, looking after this great Victorian folly is what he lives for.
43:09I personally enjoy the work. It's a real raw engineering and I enjoy a challenge.
43:12I've got a passion for it and I like the roughy-toughy side of it, you know, the barges, the engineering, thinking ahead, planning.
43:20So it suits my background. I've always lived in Southend and respect the pier.
43:25And glad to be part of a team restoring it.
43:27A Mancunian candidate gets the great British landmark fixer's treatment next Monday evening at 8.
43:36And also new and exclusive to yesterday-next tonight, scale-extric skills put to the test inside Hornby, a model world.
43:43The model world.