Brighton Palace Pier was opened in 1899, as a replacement for the Chain Pier. A condition of its construction was that the Chain Pier be demolished, but builders were saved this task when a storm resulted in its collapse in 1896. The Palace Pier was, then, one of two which stood out from Brighton’s seaside promenade for several decades, until its neighbour (the West Pier) closed in 1975, and burned down in a series of fires during 2002 and 2003.

From the Palace Pier you can see the site of the Chain Pier on one side, and the skeletal wreckage of the West Pier on the other. The Palace Pier is the lone survivor between the two. It remains popular with the public, with more than four million people treading its wooden boards each year.

Where once it bore the weight of a theatre and a pavilion, the Pier is now home to more modern entertainments, including a video arcade and a series of fairground rides. All of this is suspended on a platform of wood and metal which stretches out more the 500 metres over the choppy waters of the English Channel – a fragile finger pointing towards distant lands. With the ruins of previous piers within sight of the Palace, one has to wonder how long this extraordinary structure might last.

1. Gate

A cast iron gate bars entrance to the pier during nighttime hours. Above it is mounted a stubby clocktower, the paint peeling, the hands rusted. Gulls squawk and flap overhead. Stand here on the boundary for a moment and inhale the scent of popcorn, of warm wet hotdogs, or candyfloss and other sickly sweet treats.

Then take a step forward. Leave the ground behind and set out along the pier – a road to nowhere that takes off into space like an incomplete bridge. Note the way in which the world bifurcates. Noise and footsteps and people and dogs up here. Gravel and water and space below.

2. Surface Texture

The pier is wooden. A single layer of boards over the metal superstructure, some weathered and some bright and new. Rusted nails. The occasional unnerving trapdoor. As you walk out over the water, note that you can look down through the cracks and see the foam frothing below. Drop something from your pocket here and it might well be lost forever.

3. Machinery

It is longer than it seems at first, more and more of it unfurling in front of you as you walk. At the end it widens out and becomes a fairground. Gigantic, whirling, blaring structures anchored into the wood and metal of the pier. The weight of them must be astronomical. As you watch arms rotate and pistons fire, it is impossible not to imagine them tearing from their moorings and toppling into the sea.

4. History

A plaque informs you that in earlier years the pier was managed by a Piermaster – someone with a nautical background, chosen for their experience at sea. It’s a decision that seems ludicrously quaint, now, when the pier is so clearly a business. It seems to merit a Manager rather than a Captain. Perhaps in days gone by maintaining such a structure was more of an endeavour, akin to a trip into the dangerous unknown.

5. Arcade

The domed building that dominates the midpoint of the pier is an arcade. Step from the brightness outside (crashing water, squawking gulls, chattering voices, and distant fairground music) to the dim interior (blaring electronic music, the clatter of coin into slots, shouts of excitement and laughter). The ching-ching-ching of a slot machine imitating a payout.

The inside of the dome is so vast and so solid that it is easy to forget where you are. Beneath your feet there are not solid foundations. Not tonnes of earth. Not poured concrete and sunken steel beams. Beneath you, even here, there is cold and crashing water, empty space, foam.

6. Return

As you return to solid land you are wrapped in different noises. Car engines and waves breaking on gravel, and the comical boing of the bungee-assisted trampolines at the top of the beach. You are back amongst it all, the world no longer a thing you can turn and look back at, but something that is on all sides of you.

Descend down concrete steps. The gravel of the beach comes in several grades. Strata of fist-sized stones give way to a shingle of sharp rocky chips. Walk down the beach. Walk to the very edge of the water. Here the first rusted piles of the pier plunge into the Earth. Depending on the tide you may be able to get close enough to touch them. If you do they will feel strong, immovable, reassuringly solid.