Clevedon Pier: Levels 3 and 4 Landing Stage Repairs

Grade Ilisted Victorian pier

EJ McGrath Construction Ltd carried out the Levels 3 and 4 landing stage repairs at the Pier Head of Clevedon Pier in 2025 for the Clevedon Pier & Heritage Trust. The enquiry came in through Fenton Holloway Ltd, and we built the works to a design by Adam Magrill, their conservation-accredited engineer. Clevedon Pier is a Grade I listed Victorian pier on the Severn Estuary, one of very few Grade I listed piers in the country, so the job was as much about protecting the historic structure as making the landings sound again.

The brief

The two lower landing stages, right at the seaward end of the pier, had reached the end of their life. The timber decking to Levels 3 and 4 was weathered and decayed, with boards worn, gaps opening up between them and some planks already lost. The bearers underneath had rotted and the steel below needed cleaning and protecting. Our job was to strip the old decking back, renew the bearers and boards, prepare and paint the steel, and refix the deck, all without disturbing the original Victorian ironwork around it.

What we did

• Stripped out the old decking board by board across both the Level 3 and Level 4 landings.
• Prepared the tops of the steel beams to ISO St2 by hand and power tool cleaning, then put on two coats of Sigmashield 880 before any new timber went down.
• Fitted new recycled plastic lumber bearers, a rot-free material we use in permanently wet spots, bolted to the steel with M16 tension control bolts pre-loaded with a shear wrench and the torque recorded.
• Laid new strength-graded C24 timber deck boards, fixed down with A2 stainless steel coach screws recessed just below the surface.
• Kept and reused the original Victorian cast ironwork: the diamond-lattice grating, the balustrades and handrails, and the cast iron benches, which went back onto the finished deck.
• Kept full quality records throughout, including paint application record sheets and photo logs.
• Self-delivered all the labour, plant, supervision and temporary access, and took all waste away under our own licensed waste carrier status.

Working around the tide

This was full marine works from start to finish, and the whole programme was driven by the tide. The Severn Estuary has one of the largest tidal ranges in the world. Our supervisor planned the work a week at a time around the tide windows: tides above 7.6m overtop the Level 3 landing and tides above 11.1m overtop Level 4, so the lower deck was only reachable around low water. We never painted within seven hours of an overtopping tide, and we checked the forecast before any coating went on.

Getting down to the lower landings was a job in itself. The Trust removed a floor in the structure above so our team could reach them, and long lengths of timber and plastic board were lowered over the edge by hand as a two-man lift. We decked out a temporary platform in 25mm ply and worked directly over the water, at height, in full body harnesses clipped to beam-clamp anchor points with fall-arrest blocks, and self-inflating buoyancy aids on at all times.

The pier is Grade I listed and stays open to the public, so the work had to be conservation-sensitive and properly fenced off. We worked around the original cast iron grating, balustrades and trestle legs, and used a gated compound, a gateman and clear signage to keep visitors well away from the works.

The outcome

Both landing stages went back with new, safe decks and the pier’s Victorian character intact. The cast iron grating, balustrades and benches were reinstated as they were, sitting on new decking suited to a salt-water location: rot-free recycled plastic bearers below, strength-graded timber boards on top, all on freshly protected steel. It is another marine job for EJ McGrath at Clevedon, following our sea wall repairs at Clevedon Marine Lake.