“The handsome Pier which your lordship has so kindly consented to open may be taken as an additional proof of the desire of the residents of this place to render their town as attractive and beneficial as possible to the numerous visitors who are in the habit of resorting thither.
It was certainly a singular thing with respect to an enterprise of this novel character, which would have been almost impossible 50 years ago, and if steam and electricity had not brought Hastings so near the metropolis. It was originally intended to associate a harbour with the pier, but that part of the scheme had been abandoned.
It happened he [Earl Granville, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports] had not seen many of the most modern piers, but, as far as his experience went, he had never seen a more beautiful work designed for enjoyment, recreation, and restoration of health. It appeared to him that this was a peerless pier – a pier without a peer, excepting, perhaps, the unfortunate peer who had the honour of addressing them.
He would only add further that he trusted the pier would give enjoyment, recreation, and restoration of health not to hundreds, not to thousands, but to millions of their fellow-countrymen, that it would give some reasonable profit at all events to the shareholders, who had actuated not so much by purely commercial motives as by an honourable public spirit, and that it would confer all the advantages upon that ancient town and delightful watering-place which the promoters of the undertaking had a right to expect.”
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