Clacton on Sea Essex hotels:

Fun pier with 13 fairground rides, arcades, shops, cafes, restaurants, side shows, a pub with children's play area, and sea aquarium. The pub is open all year. Rides and attractions are open from Easter to 30 Sep. Clacton Pier was one of the first buildings to be built in the new town of Clacton-on-Sea, by Peter Schuyler Bruff. He was an engineer and the manager of the Eastern Union Railway. It opened in July 1877. As there was no railway in Clacton at that time and the roads were merely dirt tracks, the Pier was the only way to get both goods and visitors into the town. This was the first step towards turning Clacton into the holiday resort it then became, with the Pier also helping to build some of the town's first major buildings. The novelty of the Pier for promenading soon became popular with the vast number of day-trippers arriving from London on paddle steamers. To cater for all these new visitors, a number of small cafe's and kiosks began to open. The Pier was fast becoming an actual leisure facility in itself. Its most popular attraction at that time was the Jolly Roger Theatre at the end. This was to be the birth of the British Seaside Holiday as we still know it today, with the help of Billy Butlin opening a Holiday Park in Clacton in the 1930's.