Before the pier was built, passengers had the uncomfortable experience of coming ashore on the back of a porter and then, depending on the state of the tide, having to walk as far as half a mile across wet sand before reaching the town.

The need for a pier was obvious, especially if the town was to attract the wealthy and fashionable visitors who were beginning to patronise other seaside resorts.

c. cccxlvi) authorised the Ryde Pier Company to extend the tramway to the Isle of Wight Railway's St John's Road station.

c. cxxxvi) combined the two schemes into a single extension of the tramway, and permitted conversion to mechanically-powered vehicles.

[3] It was severely damaged on 18 January 1881, when four ships, the Eclipse, Havelock, John Ward and Lucknow, were driven through it, destroying 200 feet (61 m) of the pier.

In 1895, a concert pavilion was constructed at the pier-head, and over the next sixteen years, the original wooden piles were replaced with cast iron.

It was at Ryde Pier that the Empress Eugénie landed from Sir John Burgoyne's yacht "The Gazelle", after her flight from Paris in 1870.

The concert pavilion was at the centre of the narrative in Philip Norman's book, Babycham Night; the author's family ran this venue when it was known as the Seagull Ballroom in the 1950s, and his relatives produced the eponymous perry.

The pavilion was later demolished, but a few of the rotting piles are still visible around the edge of an extended car parking area constructed in 2010.

In autumn 2010 the whole length was fitted with a temporary deck to provide a walkway, during re-building works on the Promenade Pier.

Wightlink foot passengers were allowed to use Island Line train services along the pier free of charge.

[10] In 2020, as part of a wider regeneration of Ryde Esplanade train and bus station, a plan to reinstate the disused tramway pier as a pedestrian and cyclist route was announced with works due to be completed by the end of March 2023.

[11][12] Funding restrictions subsequently reduced the width of the new deck to 3m, which resulted in cyclist usage being eliminated from the plans.

It was promoted by the Stokes Bay Pier and Railway Company to provide a landing for a rival ferry service from Gosport.

Until the construction of the marina in the 1980s, the outline of the shore-end abutment could be made out in the sea wall near Ryde Pavilion, and at low spring tide, the stumps of the piles could be seen in the sand offshore.

Its position across the end of the steep final section of Union Street created a difficult 90-degree turn for drivers.