Timelines Timeline

Welcome to a special article that takes a look at the history of the Southend Timeline The Southend Timeline was created to reflect the fascinating history of Southend-on-Sea. The website was designed and developed as a click and discover website, for example, you could start by clicking on the year you was born, or any other year that was of interest, and find out what happened in town that year, from there you could travel back or forward in time to explore further. The diary style format enabled you to look back year by year or month by month, there was also the option to enjoy the longer in-depth features. "Piers" a pier train, was the original logo and mascot of the Southend Timeline, whilst he retired as the official logo, he did return as the official mascot. Since the launch of the Southend Timeline there have been two sister sites, a chat board, and a unique visitors book that was associated with the website, although these are all now defunct, the Southend Timeline site lives on. Let us go back to the very start of the Southend Timeline story......

History of the Southend Timeline

2009 - 2011 The Adrian Harris Years The Southend Timeline was originally created and launched by Adrian Harris on 18th April 2009, under his ownership, it set a benchmark in what he was striving to achieve, to be one of the most comprehensive and concise local history websites dedicated to charting the history of the Borough of Southend-on-Sea. During Adrians time at the helm of Southend Timeline he was approached by Southend ex-pat Brian Mendez, who lived in Canada. Brian had the idea to set up a visitors book for anyone to sign, be they returning to Southend since moving away, first time visitor, returning visitor, or a local. After much work the joint venture of the visitors book opened for the first time on Thursday 18th November 2010. The physical Sarfend Visitors Book was looked after by the volunteers in the RNLI Lifeboat House & Shop at the end of Southend Pier.

2011 - 2020 The Nick Skinner Years Nick Skinner took over the running of the Southend Timeline from Adrian Harris on Friday 28th January 2011. Since then various Headers/Banners were used over the years.

Launch on Social Media On 18th April 2011 the Southend Timeline was launched into the world of Social Media when it joined the then micro blogging site Twitter, it would be another year before the Southend Timeline launched its very own page on Facebook on 12th April 2012.

Community Archive A new website dedicated to personal stories and memories was launched on 9th July 2013, The Southend Community Archive was online waiting for you to get in touch with your stories and memories of Southend-on-Sea.

Five Years Old 2014 saw the Southend Timeline celebrating 5 years online, a special logo was created to mark the anniversary. There were a few technical difficulties early in the year resulting in the website being off line for over three weeks, these were out of Nicks Skinners control. To compensate for lost service, the host server at the time donated a free two year upgrade which included more online storage and a larger bandwidth allowance. This enabled larger articles to be put together without running the risk of running out of storage or exceeding bandwidth allowance.

Southend Chat On the 1st January 2015 a test of Southend Chat was launched, this was a free service offered by the Southend Timeline in the form of a chat board where you could share a memory, or ask for help in finding that little bit of information you might be looking for.

Sarfend Visitors Book Dedicated Website On 21st September 2012 the Sarfend Visitors Book website was launched, this was to run inline with the book held by the RNLI at the end of the pier. The name Sarfend was taken from the Cockney London pronunciation of Southend, as traditionally Southend was the chosen destination for Londoners at weekends and Bank Holidays.

2020 Passing of Nick Skinner In 2020 Nick Skinner suddenly passed away. Nick had ongoing health issues as he explained on his website, but still to those who knew Nick, the news of his passing was a great shock to us all…..What was to become of Southend Timeline!

2021 Southend Timeline amalgamates with Sea of Change Southend-on-Sea The Sea of Change Southend-on-Sea website was launched early 2010, it was mainly a pictorial site with featured history pages. The site had over 1000 images, many of them owned by Phil Wren who was the copyright holder, Phil built and maintained the site. In November 2020 Rosalind Harman posted on her Facebook page, (Ros Southend Past in photos) asking if anyone would be interested in rescuing the Southend Timeline website and perhaps taking it over. Initial talks began with Rosalind then talks moved to Nick Skinners family, to cut a long story short, the Southend Timeline website was signed over to me (Phil Wren) on the 23rd December 2020. In order to keep things simple, it was decided to amalgamate the two websites, a redesign and build of Southend Timeline would be carried out using the software used for the Sea of Change Southend-on-Sea website, the host would also change for Southend Timeline. The new amalgamated site would be called The New Southend Timeline, with a note on the website banner stating, now incorporating Sea of Change Southend-on-Sea. Also for technical reasons the main url had to be changed to Southendtimeline.co.uk instead of .com. From January 2021 saw the massive task of copying the information from the old Southend Timeline site. After copying, the information was updated, which included the rewriting of a lot of content and adding new pictures. Once each section was done the information was added to the new website, this was compiled offline. Also new features and articles were integrated into the new website. The site was designed with expansion in mind. On January 20th 2021 a test page for the new Southend Timeline was uploaded to the host and appeared live on the internet. Current URL’s The old Southend Timeline website www.southendtimeline.com The new Southend Timeline website www.southendtimeline.co.uk

Sarfend Visitors Book logo is based on the colours of the old 1949 Pier Trains

Southend Community Archive banner shows three scenes from a bygone time

2014 The Southend Timeline 5th Anniversary logo

2014 Festive logo used for Christmas 2014

2015 - 2020 Southend Timeline During this period the hosting company decided to update their operations, the online software and templates used for Southend Timeline were discontinued. This meant that the current Southend Timeline website would not be supported. The website was transferred to new online software but it never quite functioned as before.

Dexter Legon (Dex), Illustrator and Webcomic Creator was commissioned to update “Piers” Southend Timelines long serving mascot. For fun I also decided to create a family for Piers, Petra, his partner, and their two children Pippa and Perry.

Initial drawings of the new Piers

From January 2021, the new site grew in size, local writer Carol Edwards amongst others were asked if they would contribute information to the site, and they were both happy to write articles/features. Sheila Turner was brought in to help with re-writing and typing, as there was so much to do. May 2021 came and although there was still a lot of work to do, the new website was at a stage it could be launched. The official site launch was made on Rosalind Harman’s Facebook page Ros Southend Past in Photos on Thursday 13th May 2021.

Southend Timeline’s long time mascot, with his family left to right, Piers, Pippa, Perry and Petra ©