11731

 

II  

Designated  

31/07/1991  

29/10/1999  

Mumbles Pier, including Lifeboat Station and Slipway  

 

Swansea  

Mumbles  

Swansea  

Mumbles Head  

263123  

187431  

 

Sited just W of Mumbles Head; pointing NE across Swansea Bay.  

Maritime  

 

Built in 1897-8 by W Sutcliffe Marsh, engineer and Mayoh and Haley, contractors. The ironwork was supplied by Widnes Foundry Co. The pier was breached during World War II but was re-opened with a new landing stage in 1956, when the Lifeboat station and slipway were also added. The present entrance is an addition, replacing the original turnstile. The pier was the terminus for the Swansea & Mumbles Railway which had its origins as the first regular passenger rail service in the world. In 1865 the Llanelly Railway obtained permission to build a Mumbles branch and pier but it was never completed. The promoter of the existing pier was Sir John Jones Jenkins of the Rhondda and Swansea Bay Railway. The Act authorising its construction was passed in 1889, work began in 1892 and the pier was opened on 10 May 1898. Mumbles Pier quickly became a very popular place of recreation for Victorian and Edwardian society.  

A pier 255m long built on a sub-structure of cast-iron piles below a deck carried on steel-framed lattice girders. The deck is laid with planks and has a cast iron parapet with open foliage panels. On each side are 3 refuges, of which the larger pair at the seaward end originally housed pavilions. At the seaward end the pier broadens (originally with a bandstand in the centre) with benches around the edges, the backs of which have cast iron intertwined dolphins. In the centre is a row of iron fluted gas lamps cast by Revo of Tipton. The entrance to the pier has simple wood-panelled towers and arch painted white, gates and turnstiles. On the S side of the entrance the parapet continues on concrete posts and terminates in concrete steps to the foreshore. At the seaward end is a lower landing stage for pleasure steamers. It stands on timber posts and was rebuilt in 1956. Midway along the N side of the pier is a lattice girder walkway to the lifeboat station. The walkway, lifeboat station and the slipway are all supported by concrete piles. The lifeboat station is of clap-board construction under a pitched roof with projecting eaves, all painted maroon. It has T-shaped windows. The walkway leads to a doorway flanked by windows, while further R at lower level is a pair of windows. The W (landward side) has 4 T-shaped windows. The E side has double sliding doors to the slipway, beneath a pair of T-shaped casements in the gable.  

 

Listed principally for its special interest as one of only 6 iron piers to survive in Wales, of which this is the third longest.