Tollesbury Pier

Beyond the station the track ran out to a wooden pier on the estuary. It was never the gateway its promoters imagined, and after the extension closed it was left to decay. The Second World War gave it a grim second life: the line here was taken over by the War Department, and in 1940 part of the pier was deliberately blown up as an anti-invasion precaution. A thick concrete pill-box was built at the land end of the pier, and the overgrown rails were used by a handful of locomotives servicing the mobile guns strung along the Blackwater. What little remained was cleared when the line was lifted in 1951, and the great floods of 1953 washed away the rest. The wide view over the water is the real monument now.