Southend Timeline

Cinema in Princes Hall -  In Tyler's Avenue just behind the London Pub which cornered onto the High Street, sat this small 400 seater cinema, opening in 1908, it was one of the earliest in the town, but had a short life compared to others closing in 1929.

Marine Parade Leigh Laid Out - Running along the cliff line of the River Thames. The formal gardens, run for over 1.5km on a narrow plateau alongside Marine Parade, laid out in 1908 by the Urban District Council of Leigh.  the area covers 63 acres.

The Pier Extends - The upper deck to the Pier extension was officially opened.  It had 600 permanent seats and room for 500 deckchairs.  The lower deck had room for 6,000 to 8,000, useful in bad weather and when the steamboats called.  There was also a bandstand decked out in white and gold plus six shops.  The necessity to build this more substantial staging point for passengers awaiting steamships was due to the number that kept falling off the end.  A case of health & safety doing good for the pier.

Theatre De Luxe Opens - Long before LJ Dixons and WH Smith lived the Theatre De Luxe, on the same site in Victoria Circus.

Major Tramway Extension - The success of the Southend tram service was demonstrated in 1908 with a major easterly extension of the service, taking trams along a new track from the Minerva Pub to Bryant Avenue a distance of around 3/4 of a mile.  Extensions onwards to the Halfway House were already on the table.

Tramways Double Up - As the most popular form of public transport within Southend the capacity of track needed in places to be doubled up along the roads. The first section occurred on one of the major arteries the London/Leigh Road.

Christmas Day Football - Forget Boxing Day matches as you would have them today.  In 1908 Southend United spent their Christmas morning playing Portsmouth at Roots Hall, a large crowd turned up to watch the game which had plenty of goals unfortunately not to benefit the Blues as Portsmouth went on to win 6-2. The image below shows the match in progress.