Boscombe Pier is the plainer, shorter counterpart to Bournemouth Pier a mile west along the sand — no arcade, no attractions bolted to the end, just a clean run of Victorian decking out over Poole Bay. That restraint is much of the appeal. It is where Boscombe’s surfers and paddleboarders put in, and on a still morning it is one of the better spots in town simply to stand and watch the sea.
The pier and its history
A company was formed to build the pier in 1886, and it opened on 28 July 1889 — six hundred feet of iron and timber to a design by Archibald Smith. The early years were hard, and the council took it over in 1904, adding buildings at the entrance and pier-head along with a landing stage for the pleasure steamers. A restaurant and the Mermaid Theatre followed at the seaward end in 1961. The Grade II listed entrance building and the pier neck were restored in 2007, and after new decking, lighting, a windbreak and a fishing and viewing platform had replaced the derelict amusement hall, the pier reopened in May 2008.
Surf, chimes and the water
For a few years Boscombe was known nationally for its surf reef, the first artificial reef built in the Northern Hemisphere, which opened just off the pier in 2009. It closed in 2011 after the structure began to break up and was later re-cast as a coastal activity zone for diving, windsurfing and kite surfing. One quieter legacy of that era survives on the pier itself: a musical walkway added in 2014, whose eighty-eight chimes play “I Do Like To Be Beside the Seaside” when they are struck in the right order.
Where it is
The pier stands at the foot of Boscombe, directly opposite the entrance to Boscombe Chine Gardens, with Boscombe beach stretching away on either side. Its bigger neighbour, Bournemouth Pier, is a level walk along the promenade to the west, so the two make an easy pairing on foot or by land train.
Good to know
Walking the pier is free and it is open access, with cafés, toilets and the beach close at hand. The end platform is used for fishing and for taking in the bay, and the seafront here is the centre of Boscombe’s watersports. For more along the coast, see the wider things to do and the other attractions within walking distance.
