Wigan Pier

At first glance the whole notion of Wigan - sited some 200 odd miles from the coast - housing a pier sounds preposterous.  So, it is apt that the notion of the Lancashire town having one is rooted in a joke made by visitor to the place.  When, in 1891, asked what a large wooden and metal structure alongside the canal in the centre of Wigan was, the wag replied "That's Wigan Pier". 

The structure was, in fact, a jetty for loading coal onto barges from the local mines. 

The joke was perpetuated by George Formby, Snr in his music hall comedy routine of the time, with the consequence that George Orwell, when he arrived in the town on his poverty tour in 1937, he believed the pier to be a real place.  And was most disappointed not to find it, for the jetty had been dismantled a few years earlier.  

A reconstruction of the tippler (the mechanism for tipping coal into the barges) from the rail trucks, was installed in 1986.  And even then, no-one was completely sure where the original "pier" had been sited.

Reconstruction of the tippler.