Grandad and the Pier

This month sees two screenings of a documentary that tells the story of a passion to restore Ramsey’s Queen’s Pier.

Made by Reuben Armstrong, Grandad and the Pier follows Tom Durrant and his fellow volunteers as they seek to bring life back to the pier.

Supported by Culture Vannin, the documentary focuses on one simple question posed by Tom, ‘are we going to save the pier, or are we going to demolish it?’

Detailing the bid to save the pier, the documentary follows the early protests in the 1990s through to the current day where Tom and his fellow volunteers have managed to inspire a community to action to fundraise and give up their time.

Reuben told Gef: ‘When they ceremonially unlocked the gates in 2016, I saw this little clip of him (Tom) with a teenager from Ramsey called Alfie who stood on these steps and held the padlock up to the cheering crowd and I thought wow, something amazing is happening here.

I thought if I can make a film about this, then it’s an excuse to come over to the island a few more times and see my grandad. So in 2016 I wrote down the idea and we pitched it in various places, back and forth, here and there and then in the end, we just thought, let’s just get on and get over there and film it.

That 2018 visit, which included Reuben, Jamie and Jim the soundman saw the team spend nine days on the island with the original idea of doing a short 15 minute film.

While trying to fit the personal project into their work time, it slipped somewhat until the pandemic occurred, which left many of the volunteers in a high risk category.

Despite this, the team behind it got through Covid and returned to work on restoring the pier.  While the bid to restore the pier seems like a plot for a film, Reuben said that this is why he likes making documentaries and telling people’s stories, as “sometimes fact is stranger than fiction”.

He said: ‘This particular set of people in Ramsey have done something really extraordinary and I wanted to capture that, particularly because, I think, the older generations on film and TV aren’t necessarily always represented as being active and ambitious and taking risks and these guys are completely challenging those stereotypes.’

One of the other characters captured in the documentary is Michele Tramontana who is a painter and historian who arrived on the island as a 19-year-old from Sicily who, having fell in love with a Manx girl, ended up running the Queen’s Pier Hotel in Ramsey and has been here ever since.

He tells the story of mass tourism and contrasts that with what Ramsey is missing now.

Reuben said: ‘Michele is almost like ‘Grandfather Past’ if you like, because he can tell you the story of what Ramsay was when the pier was great. My grandad is ‘Grandfather Future’, obsessed with the future, like he always has been, he was always a renewable energy guy and a bit of visionary for this project.

‘Then we’ve also got Stuart McKenzie, who’s been down there for pretty much five years solid in the portacabin, all weathers, project managing this restoration project – he would be ‘Grandfather Present’ if you like. He’s a really experienced marine engineer and he’s been the level head to balance out the romanticism of Michele and then the futuristic ambition of my grandad, Stuart’s held it all together.’

In amongst this, the documentary also meets the women behind the project who have been vital in raising the funds for the scheme, without whom none of what has been achieved would have happened.  ‘The fundraising team have worked as a collective, embodying the teamwork and spirit a project like this needs,’ Reuben says.

The Future

While the documentary does focus on the past and the present life of the pier, part of the story is always about what comes next.

This has seen the team go into Ramsey Grammar School and engage with the students on the work they do, giving them an understanding of how the pier is built and what they want to see it be in the future.

Reuben said: ‘At the current rate, it could take them 100 years to get to the end so it becomes a sort of thing that you are passing between generations and that became a massive theme for the film that we want it to make it about this connection between generations.

‘There’s octogenarians in there and then there’s teenagers in school and you can hear my voice introducing my grandad at beginning, you’ve got generations as far as 75 years apart!

‘The teenagers when we spoke to in Ramsay, they almost couldn’t imagine the pier being open, because he had never been open in their lifetime. So they sort of didn’t know what they were missing.’

The documentary can be said to be 130 years in the making, detailing not just the pier’s history, but the island’s own history, including an incident where it survived being demolished by the skin of its teeth in the 1990s when a Tynwald vote to spend thousands to secure it was narrowly passed, allegedly as some MHKs had popped out the chamber at the wrong, or right, time.

Screenings

Grandad and the Pier will be shown at the Manx Museum on Saturday July 15 and at Port Erin Arts Centre on Wednesday July 19.

Both screenings include a Q&A with Reuben and guests.

You can buy tickets for the Manx Museum here.
You can buy tickets for the Erin Arts Centre here.

For future screenings please head to Reuben and Jamie’s site for the latest info as the film goes on tour across the UK and beyond!

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