Peggy Dowie is chairman of the Southend Pier Museum Trust and has been involved with the project to set up the museum since its inception in the early 1980s. We asked her to share her wealth of knowledge with us.

• The museum sprang from a campaign to save the pier itself.

“There were those of us who didn’t want the pier to close in 1980 when the council indicated it would close it and, having fought the fight to stop that, we looked at what was behind everybody’s love of the pier and began to explore its heritage. That’s why we started the pier museum.”

• The museum is in an old Victorian workshop.

“This was the workshop of the pier, so all the maintenance to the pier and the trains, as well as bits and pieces in the town such as the Municipal Airport, was done here so it’s a very important building. It’s Grade II listed as part of the pier and was three different rooms made into one so we could bring the trains in that have been salvaged. It was last used in 1978.”

• Very little was known about the pier and its history at this time.

“I went up to the Central Museum and asked to find out about the pier but, to my astonishment, they didn’t know very much. We all started to dig and a gentleman wrote a book about the pier which was very helpful. It was a wonderful little book called ??? which gave us so much information.”

• The museum’s first form was as an exhibition at the central museum.

“In 1986 we had week-long exhibition at the Central Museum where we sold postcards and started to produce old posters the council gave us. Together with the council’s engineers, we had produced our first book. So many people came in who used to work on the pier to tell us their memories, so we invited them all over for one evening that week and were flooded with people, it was wonderful.”

• Prior to opening in 1991, the museum was kitted out by trainees at Ford.

“We had a lot of help from outside, with volunteers coming from London Transport Museum, and trainees from Ford helped us set up the trains. When we got the trains we thought ‘what are we going to do now?’ and it was suggested we contact Ford - thankfully lifting was part of their training.”

• The 1949 pier trains on display were salvaged from a scrapyard.

“We bought two of the trains from a scrapyard in Shoebury for £500 each, one motorised and one trailer car, and one at another scrapyard with seven carriages. We initially proposed they should run down the High Street in town, because it was much longer in those days, and businesses at one point ran down Pier Hill. We had support from BHS, Woolworths, and Marks and Spencer.”

• The 1890 “toast rack” carriage on display in the museum was being used as a shed when it was salvaged.

“A young man said he’d found a toast rack in a garden in Benfleet so three of us went down. This elderly man came to the door and, when I said we heard he had a toast rack in his garden, he looked at me with surprise said he had something. But I knew instantly it had been used as a chicken coop in the past. There was no chassis and the floor was rotten but it was unmistakable.”

• The toast rack had ended up in the garden through a combination of poor and good fortune.

“In 1949, when they were taken out of service, Brighton bought two of them for £20 each. They were being delivered and the lorry broke down and was towed to this garage in Benfleet. The chap who lived in the house next to it was a chicken farmer and went to as what they were doing with these pier trams - and bought them off the lorry driver for £20!”

• The museum has a scale model of the original 1885 pier entrance, which was demolished in 1931.

“A modeler came in shortly after we opened who mostly did trains and buildings and said he thought he would come and see us to see if there was anything we would like or could suggest as a model. I thought immediately of the entrance, so he made this model entirely out of cardboard, which is exactly how it was.”

• The museum also has a large model of a swing band, like the band which played on the pier - but nowhere to put it.

“There used to be a swing band at the end of the pier and this model belonged to a gentleman who died, but the people he left it to in his will didn’t want it, so the executor contacted me and showed me a piece. I said we had nowhere to put it but he said it would look wonderful when it was set up. I would say it’s from the 1930s or 1940s. We just need a cabinet big enough to keep it.”