In the 19th century, Southend's status as a seaside resort grew after a visit from the Princess of Wales, Caroline of Brunswick, and the construction of both the pier and railway, allowing easier access from London.

[8] At this time, Pratt, Watt & Louden transferred the lease to Thomas Holland, a builder and solicitor from Grays Inn, however his finances were not sound and he was soon selling off building materials.

[19] Due to this, local dignitaries led by the former Lord Mayor of the City of London Sir William Heygate, campaigned in the early 1820s to gain permission from parliament to build a pier.

[23] In 1859, the Grove Field area was leased to Sir Morton Peto, and with a consortium which included Thomas Brassey, the contractors for the railway construction, hired architects Banks & Barry to design Clifftown.

[5] The first houses were made available for sale in 1871, with even the smaller properties offering a glimpse of the sea, and eventually the development would include the Clifftown Congregational Church, the Nelson Road shopping parade and Prittlewell Square, Southend's first park.

[22][15] However the growth of Southend saw a Local Board of Health be created in 1866,[25] and the large steam powered Middleton brewery was opened by Henry Luker & Co in 1869 to serve a growing population.

[49] Shortly after the declaration of war, the British government began the internment of German citizens and several thousand were held on three ships, the Royal Edward, Saxonia and the Ivernia which were moored off the pier until May 1915.

[74][75] In 1939, the Royal Navy had commandeered Southend Pier, renaming it HMS Leigh,[76] with the army building a concrete platform on the Prince George extension to house anti-aircraft guns.

[82] The town was believed to be the most heavily defended place in Essex, ranging from three and half miles of anti-tank cubes on the seafront, machine gun and anti-aircraft posts, road blocks and barrage balloons.

[75][83] On 31 May 1940, six cockle fishing boats: the Endeavour, Letitia, Defender, Reliance, Renown and the Resolute were joined by the Southend lifeboat Greater London at the pier on their way to assist at the Dunkirk evacuation.

[90] An air raid in February 1941 destroyed the London Hotel in the High Street,[91] while the foreshore was often used by German bomber aircraft as a dumping ground for their bomb loads during the war if their primary target was not possible to hit.

[96][97] In 1944, while towing a Mulberry harbour caisson to Goole in Hampshire, it was found to be leaking so it was brought into the Thames Estuary off Thorpe Bay to be checked, but after being left by the tugs, it moved partially into the channel, and without support of the mudflat snapped in half and remains there to this day.

[98] Further disaster happened when in August 1944, the liberty ship SS Richard Montgomery, with over 6,000 tonnes of explosive on board, lost its mooring off the Isle of Sheppey, opposite Southend, in strong winds and wedged itself onto the mudflat, breaking its back.

The Chelmsford Chronicle reported that the public returned in their droves, with 79,000 visitors turning up in the first nineteen days, though it wasn't until 30 September that the pier was officially derequisitioned by the Navy.

[102] The town, which had been heavily fortified, slowly started to remove the defences during 1945, however the dust and noise attracted unhappiness with the holidaymakers, with two elderly ladies complaining to the police that it should be stopped while they were on their vacation for the week.

[117][118] The Miles Report of 1944 had already identified Victoria Avenue as the perfect location for office development,[119] and the council in 1960 finally started work on a new Civic Centre on land previously purchased to build a new further education college.

[129] The council used compulsory purchase orders to buy up many of the properties along the planned route and work started in 1966,[128] with the first section opening in 1967 with the first high pressure sodium street lamps in Britain.

[166] In 1995, the owners of Peter Pan's Playground purchased the land East of the pier and started to expand, creating Adventure Island,[167] being rated best-value amusement park in Britain in 2024.

[186] The seven kilometres of cliffs from Hadleigh Castle to Southend Pier consist of London Clay overlaid in the Ice age by sand, gravel and river alluvium.

[67] In 1960, EKCO merged with Pye to form British Electronic Industries Ltd, but due to several financial issues, the television and radio manufacturing on the site was closed in 1966 with the loss of 800 jobs.

In 1989, the company was renamed as Signet Ltd in 1989, along with a change to allow member banks to process their own customers as part of a Competition and Monopolies Commission review into credit cards.

[290] In 1998, the company experienced financial difficulties, closing their Southend factory before their shares being suspended on the London Stock Exchange, announcing a £3.7 million loss in the first half of 1998.

In 1879, the Southend Water Bill was passed to incorporate the company to allow it to raise the necessary cash to expand the supply to the growing town, and to be able to charge rates per home based on the properties value.

The investigation, led by Dr. R. Bruce Low, concluded that the water quality was good, but it was poor sanitation, with issues with the identified with the town's sewer system and discharge onto the beach.

[456] In 1912, Sir Charles Nicholson purchased the building to save it from demolition, living there until 1932, when it was sold to Southend Corporation who in 1935 opened it as the Mayor's parlour and civic house.

In the four months that Talk of the South has been operational, its results have proved so tremendously successful that managing director Manzi now feels sure that the cabaret that has been previously missing from the area has not only been required, but indeed needed, for some considerable time.

[531] Media theorist Dick Hebdige stated that punk originated from "a whole range of heterogeneous youth styles: glitter rock, American proto-punk, London pub-rock, Southend R & B bands, Northern soul and reggae".

It was run by Oliver "Blitz" Abbott & Rhys Webb of The Horrors, and the underground club night played an eclectic mix from Post Punk to Acid House, 1960s Psychedelia to Electro.

[539] The city is mentioned in a number of songs including Elton John's track Bitter Fingers,[540] Picture Book by The Kinks,[541] and in Billy Bragg's hymn to Essex, A13, Trunk Road to the sea, a British version of Route 66, where the final line of the chorus is "Southend's the end".

In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, after being saved from death in the vacuum of space, Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect find themselves in a distorted version of Southend (a consequence of the starship Heart of Gold's Infinite Improbability Drive).