The fine large houses at Sandown suffered considerably, but a fragment of glass remaining unbroken. Some boats laying on the beach were taken by the wind and hurled some distance, as if they were cockle shells. Hail stones as large as an egg fell, and at the North-end of Deal the ice was to be seen in pieces half the size of a brickbat.

1863. In the spring of this year, Mr. Hugessen, the respected Member of the united Borough of Deal and Walmer, drove the first pile of the new Iron Pier, opposite the South Esplanade, Beach Street. The success of this speculation is ardently hoped for by every inhabitant who is a well-wisher to Deal. The following is a copy of the inscription emblazoned on the parchment enclosed in a tin case, and deposited in the first column :

THE DEAL AND WALMER PIER COMPANY, (LIMITED), Was incorporated on the 27th September, 1861, and in the ensuing Session an Act of Parliament was obtained, authorizing the erection of a Landing and Promenade Pier to run out from the South Esplanade, Deal.

The most active and energetic promoter and supporter of the undertaking has been Mr. Edward Hayward, Editor of the "Deal and Walmer Telegram," Deal, to whose untiring exertions the inhabitants of Deal and Walmer will mainly owe the advantages of having a Pier.

The structure about to be erected has been designed and will be carried out under the supervision of Eugenius Birch, Esq., Civil Engineer, of 43, Parliament Street, London, and will be of the following dimensions :

The Pier is to be constructed almost entirely of iron, resting

upon iron columns secured in the ground by means of screw

piles, and the contract has been taken by Messrs. R. Laidlaw and Son, an extensive contracting firm of Glasgow, and the screw-piles will be inserted by Mr. J. E. Dowson, contractor, of 4, Victoria Street, Westminster, London, S.W.

The works are this day formally and most auspiciously commenced by the fixture of the first column of the Pier by E. H. Knatchbull Hugessen, Esq., M.P. for Sandwich and Deal, and one of the Lords of the Treasury, in the presence of the Directors and Officers of the Company, whose names are hereunto subscribed, and of a large number of the inhabitants of Deal and Walmer.

Dated at Deal this 8th day of April, 1863.

1863. The Materials of Sandown Castle were sold by the War Office for £565. The old building has been taken down, to within a short distance of the foundation. The flux and reflux of the tide is gradually undermining what remains of it, so that within the space of a few years the greater part of what now remains will disappear altogether. The sea is encroaching on that part of the shore in a surprising manner.

1864.-Certain gentlemen residing in Deal and Walmer, considering the inadequacy of accommodation afforded for entertaining residents and visitors in those rational and amusing pastimes which exist in towns adjacent, determined on erecting a suitable building as should in all respects equal, if not surpass, all others of like nature. Accordingly a Company was formed and money raised, and a structure has been erected that reflects great credit on the promoters of the scheme. John Iggulden, Esq., presented the land, and the whole outlay is somewhere about £2,650. In this institution there is to be found every accommodation for public lectures, assemblies of every description, reading rooms, &c., which cannot fail in conferring on the town the most essential benefits-moral, social and general.

1864, November 8.-Mr. Hugessen, attended by a large Pv fonds. formally opened, for the use of the public, the Iron Pier. The delight manifested by the inhabitants on this occasion, if one may judge of the multitude of people that assembled on the beach and in the street, was equalled only by the demonstration of public feeling when the railway was opened from Deal to London in 1847.-The Pier had been partially opened on the 14th of July.

THE NEW IRON PIER.

Several gentlemen connected with Deal, about the year 1859, met to deliberate on the feasibility of constructing an Iron Pier at Deal, similar to one then recently made at Margate. Mr. Edward Hayward, Publisher of the Deal and Walmer Telegram newspaper, appears to have first introduced the subject and brought it into notice, by his previous acquaintance with the Engineer, and parties who had succeeded so well at the place just mentioned. Several meetings took place and full enquiries were made as to the ability of the town or the trade of it, present and future, to make an adequate return in the shape of annual income as would pay a fair interest on the capital expended. The gentlemen alluded to could not see their way clear, (remembering the disappointment that resulted in the construction of the Wooden Pier in 1838), in entertaining the question, so as to submit the proposal to the consideration of the public as an advantageous speculation and investment. But Mr. Edward Hayward, with great pertinacity, clung to the scheme as one likely to be beneficial to the trade of the town, by accommodating the landing of visitors to Deal by steam vessels arriving from London and France. He succeeded in inducing sundry capitalists to invest their money in the undertaking, and, as a result, we have an Iron Pier extending