Kursaal Recognised

A LEIGH resident has successfully nominated an iconic part of Southend’s seaside heritage to be recognised as one of the most important endangered buildings in the country.

Anita Forde says she is: “really delighted” to have got the Kursaal on the Victorian Society’s top ten list for 2024.

She explains: “I was listening to Radio 4 one morning. Gryff Rhys Jones, President of The Victorian Society, was appealing to the nation to nominate Victorian Buildings to be protected.

“I emailed the Society regarding the Kursaal, and explained how important a building it was and what it meant to me, personally.

“My parents met there at a dance in 1959. They were regulars.

“I later went to gigs in the 1970s, with David Essex being the first.”

Since her application, Ms Forde said she had “almost forgotten” the idea, but was delighted when she heard the good news.

This month, the much-loved construction has benefitted from Griff Rhys Jones’ media campaign, singing its praises on Good Morning Britain as well as the Radio 4 Today Programme, ITN news bulletins, Channel 5 News at 5, BBC Radio Essex, and in national newspapers BBC Newsonline, Building Design, and Countrylife.

Griff said: “I love the Kursaal. It was part of my childhood. It’s an exhilarating building. An entertaining building. It is the history and face of Southend.

“It has more embedded value, commercially and collectively as a great entertainment complex than it could ever have as a derelict site.”

The extensive coverage has raised question about the use of the much-dilapidated building’s continued preservation.

Whilst Southend City Council owns the freehold of the land, it is London-based property group AEW that reportedly has a 200-year lease on the 1901 building, with its iconic glass dome, designed by George Campbell Sherrin, and which featured on a Royal Mail special stamp in 2011.

What was once a bustling site of 20-acre gaiety and early fairground rides is now a closed site, with a Tesco Express occupying a small portion of its northern premises.

Thought to be to have been the world’s first purpose-built amusement park with a circus, ballroom, arcade, dining hall, billiard room, a zoo, and an ice rink, its name stems from the German for “cure hall” – in reference to the ‘spa’ elements of an old banqueting and ballroom, nut perhaps a nod to the restorative facets of carnival and holidays, notwithstanding the amusing and colloquial name of it as the ‘curse-all’.

Ms Forde, who was a Leigh Town Council committee member until 2023, said that this achievement must galvanise feelings to restore the city’s most important building.

She said: “As part of the City’s future plan, they should be buying the lease back, and improve Southend Seafront!

“This campaign will help drum up support. I think we should make it a music venue again, give people an alternative to all the pubs and clubs that are closing. This could be such an important place again for residents.”

Griff affirmed: “Southend is not a faded seaside town – it is so busy, it just crazy that someone can’t find a use for it. It’s down to the owners and the authorities to act.”

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