The only intact Grade I listed pier in the country was built from scrap metal. Clevedon Pier’s designers, John Grover and Richard Ward, bought 37 tons of it from Isambard Kingdom Brunel's failed South Wales Railway in the form of unwanted Barlow rails. The rails were bolted together and worked into in the elegant but strong curves needed to support the pier, which would stretch 255 metres into the powerful currents of the Bristol Channel. In 1869, the end result was a Victorian pier, taller, slimmer and probably stronger than any other.