[1] The pier was built during the 1860s to attract tourists and provide a ferry port for rail passengers to South Wales.

Two of the spans collapsed during stress testing in 1970 and demolition was proposed, but local fund raising and heritage grants allowed the pier to be dismantled for restoration and reassembled.

[2] The shore at Clevedon is a mixture of pebbled beaches and low rocky cliffs, with the old harbour being at the western edge of the town at the mouth of the Land Yeo river.

The minerals identified at the site include: haematite, chalcopyrite, tennantite, galena, tetrahedrite, bornite, pyrite, marcasite, enargite and sphalerite.

It was also proposed that a pier could form part of a route from London to South Wales with the use of steamers to cross the Severn Estuary.

Construction of the pier started at a cost of £10,000, with John William Grover and Richard Ward as the engineers and Hans Price as the architect.

The legs were constructed from Barlow rail which had previously been used on Isambard Kingdom Brunel's South Wales Railway, with wood planks for the decking.

[10] The number of rail passengers crossing to South Wales, which had been envisaged, was reduced after the opening of the Severn Tunnel in 1886.

[11][12] The paddle steamer Waverley first visited the pier to take on passengers in 1886, and along with sister ships of the White Funnel Fleet belonging to P and A Campbell provided excursions around the Bristol Channel.

Other ships of the fleet including Ravenswood, Westward Ho, Cambria and Britannia regularly called at Clevedon.

[16] On 16 October 1970, spans 7 and 8 of the pier collapsed during stress testing,[17] which had been introduced in the 1950s as a requirement for obtaining insurance cover.

The district council applied for permission to demolish the pier in 1979, but a public enquiry the following year ruled that it should be retained.

[22] The landing stage at the end of the pier is used throughout the summer season (June to September) by the Waverley and her sister ship, the Balmoral, and is a popular spot for angling.

[25] An appeal was launched in 2012 to raise £1.6 million for a new visitor centre and educational facility,[26] an additional £800,000 of grants have been applied for to cover the cost of repainting the legs of the structure.

[34] The Severn Estuary has one of the highest tidal ranges in the world, up to 48 ft (15 m),[35][36][37] second only to the Bay of Fundy in Eastern Canada.