Early history Weston's oldest structure is
Worlebury Camp on
Worlebury Hill which dates from the
Iron Age. Outside the hillfort are many rock-cut burials and fragmentary remains which have been discovered during the course of progressive development on the southern slope of the hill. Two particular clusters of these burials have been identified: one in the Montpelier area, and the other to the north-east of Knightstone Road. Recent researchers suggest that there may have been a major Iron Age cemetery related to the hillfort, in the area near Knightstone Road, the site later chosen for the parish church, suggesting a link to the Iron Age burials. Many of these remains were chance finds during building work in the 19th and early 20th century and were poorly recorded. During archaeological evaluation work in 2005, prior to the construction of a new parish room on the north-western side of St John's church, a crouched inhumation burial, with pottery indicating a mid- to late-
Iron Age date, was discovered within the churchyard, below a series of unmarked post-medieval burials. An occupation site of
Romano-British date was investigated in 2008–2009 as part of a planning application by
Weston College immediately to the west of their School of Science and Art, on the south side of South Terrace. This built on investigations that had already been carried out on the site in the late 1950s which strongly suggested the presence of Romano-British occupation. It is the only site known of this date in central Weston and was probably a small farmstead or hamlet. Finds included a burial of a male individual who had clearly led a very hard life, and had suffered multiple medical conditions which were expressed on his skeletal remains. It is possible that he had been a slave. Defences were built after the
Norman Conquest near the settlements on Worlebury Hill at Worle (today's Castle Batch) and Ashcombe. The medieval church of St John was demolished in 1824 and rebuilt on the same site. The former rectory, now known as Glebe House, is a largely 19th-century structure remodelled from a much older building. Seventeenth-century timbers survive in what was originally the entrance hall. It is Weston-super-Mare's oldest surviving building. The Pigott family of
Brockley were the
lord of the manor of Weston-super-Mare and Ashcombe from 1695. They built a summer residence at Grove House near the church two years later. The Old Thatched Cottage restaurant on the seafront is
listed Grade II. Its official Historic England list entry states that it is 'late 18th century, certainly before 1804'. The building carries the date 1774 but the date of its construction is unknown. Evidence exists that it was definitely built by June 1804.
19th century Weston was a small village of about 30 houses in the early part of the 19th century. They were some from Uphill, the moors between the two villages having some protection from the sea by a line of sand dunes which had grown after the
Bristol Channel floods of 1607. Sea bathing became fashionable in England in the second half of the 18th century and people started to visit to Uphill and Weston for the sea. The town's growth during the 19th century was largely due to its development as a seaside resort. The first hotel was built in 1807–1810. At first it was just 'The Hotel' but later became 'Reeve's Hotel' and is now part of the Royal Hotel. It opened in 1810 but closed from time to time until opening permanently in 1814. A bath house using sea water was opened on Knightstone Island in 1820 which was later linked to the mainland by a causeway. A walkway was built along the dunes in 1826 from Knightstone to the hotel and in 1829 an extension carried it to the end of Regent Street. John Pigott sold off some land for development from 1807 but retained on the hill which was planted with trees in 1823, creating a game reserve and what became Weston Woods. An estate road was opened through the woods on the north side of the hill in 1848; it was open to the public and was a private
toll road for many years. The sale of the estate's land resulted in high-density housing being built south of Watersill Road (now Regent Street) and houses for the middle classes in the Whitecross area which extended to the town boundary at Moorland Road. Large detached villas were built on the southern slopes of Worlebury Hill. Many of the houses and public buildings erected from about 1870 were built from local grey
limestone with details of soft yellow
Bath Stone and
slate roofs. These were designed by local architect
Hans Price. The
Bristol and Exeter Railway opened the first part of its line on 14 June 1841. A station at gave a connection to a
station in the town centre. The railway connected with the
Great Western Railway at and made it easier for visitors from Bristol, the
Midlands, London and further afield to travel to Weston for a day or longer holidays.
Birnbeck Pier was opened in 1867 at the end of Worlebury Hill. Visitors, including many Welsh mining families, came across the
Bristol Channel by
paddle steamer to the pier. In its heyday it offered
amusement arcades, tea rooms,
amusement rides and a photographic studio. Although
listed Grade II* it is now in a derelict state and is classed as 'highly vulnerable' on Historic England's
Heritage at Risk Register. It was designed by
Eugenius Birch with ironwork by the Isca Foundry of
Newport,
Monmouthshire. The Seafront Improvement Scheme started in 1883. This saw the construction of the sea wall and esplanade, starting from Glentworth Bay at Knightstone. As far south as Regent Street it replaced the walkway of 1826 and reclaimed up to from the beach. By 1886 it had been completed south to the town boundary at the sanatorium. This section saw the sand dunes replaced by lawns, although the dunes beyond the sanatorium remain to this day. A further section was built to take it around the end of Worlebury Hill to Anchor Head and Birnbeck Pier. The first
transatlantic telegraph cable of the
Commercial Cable Company was brought ashore at Weston in 1885.
Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor of wireless telegraphy, successfully transmitted radio signals across the Bristol Channel in the spring of 1897, from Penarth (near Cardiff) to
Brean Down, the
promontory at the south end of Weston Bay. A second railway, the
Weston, Clevedon and Portishead Light Railway, opened on 1 December 1897, connecting Weston to
Clevedon, the Weston terminus being at Ashcombe Road. The railway was extended to
Portishead on 7 August 1907 but was closed in 1940.
20th century A proposal for the
Weston, Clevedon and Portishead Light Railway to run along the streets of the town to the sea front failed to materialise, Local traders, unhappy that visitors arriving at Birnbeck Pier were not coming into the centre of the town, built a new pier closer to the main streets. Opened in 1904, and known as the
Grand Pier, it was designed to be long. Several cinemas opened after 1911, the one near the Town Hall being rebuilt as the
Odeon Cinema (now the Plaza) in 1935 using a distinctive
moderne style. The
Winter Gardens Pavilion opened between the High Street and sea front in 1927, and in 1929 work was completed on the Marine Lake. A causeway was built across Glentworth Bay and facilities provided on the shore to create an area where sea bathing would be available at all states of the tide. The
Open Air Pool (now the Tropicana), with its arched concrete diving board, opened in 1937 midway between the Grand Pier and the Sanatorium. Weston Airfield opened in 1936, just outside the town on Locking Moor. Commercial flights were operated by Western Airways until
World War II, the most popular being to Cardiff which flew twice an hour at busy periods. The site was also operated as
RAF Weston-super-Mare by No. 24 Group. It served as a flying candidates selection and initial training facility, and as a relief airport during the war, latterly as the
Polish Air Force Staff College from April 1944 to April 1946. Several factories were set up near the airfield, both on the Winterstoke Road in Oldmixon and nearer Locking, which became the targets for air raids. The
Bristol Aeroplane Company diversified production after the war and started to build helicopters in 1956. The factory was taken over by
Westland Helicopters in 1960 and the company operated in Weston until 2002, although production finished in 1987. The airfield closed in 1978 but Westland's bought it for training pilots. The factories around the airfield attracted air raids and the town was also on the return route of bombers targeting Bristol and was itself bombed by the
Luftwaffe. The first bombs fell in June 1940, but the worst attacks were in January 1941 and June 1942. Large areas of the town were destroyed, particularly Orchard Street and the Boulevard. On 3 and 4 January 1941,
incendiary bombs fell on the town. The
Air Ministry set up a "
Q-station" decoy at
Bleadon in an attempt to divert the bombers to an unpopulated area. In all, 110 civilians lost their lives through enemy action in the borough.
United States Army troops were billeted in the area in the later part of the war but were moved elsewhere in the run-up to
D-Day. Birnbeck Pier was taken over for weapons development as 'HMS Birnbeck'. During the war more than 10,000
evacuees were accommodated in the town; however, only 130 spent four or more years in the town. Milton was absorbed into the Weston-super-Mare Urban District in 1902 and residential areas expanded eastwards along the Locking Road and Milton Road. England's first council
housing estate, enabled by the
Housing, Town Planning, &c. Act 1919, was built at Milton Green in 1919. Further estates followed with Milton Brow on the hill and Bournville, which started to be developed in the south of the town before World War II. The town expanded again in 1932 when
Worle and
Uphill were absorbed. By 2009, Weston was home to around 11% of
drug rehabilitation places in the UK, and
North Somerset Council proposed an accreditation system examining the quality of counselling, staff training, transparency of referral arrangements, along with measures of the treatment's effectiveness and site inspections. There was a reduction in the number of rehabilitation facilities in the town by 2012, with the number of patient beds having nearly halved. A structure known as
Silica was installed at Big Lamp Corner during 2006. It is a piece of public art, an advertising sign, a retail kiosk selling newspapers and hot food, as well as a bus shelter. It was criticised by local residents who liken it to a carrot or a space ship, although it is meant to symbolise man's harmony with the sea. It was part of North Somerset Council's civic pride initiative that has sought to revitalise Weston-super-Mare's public spaces after a period of decline. There were also improvements to the street scene around Grove Park. A £34 million redevelopment of the promenade was completed in 2010. Scour protection and a splash wall were constructed between Knightstone and Oxford Street. Pier Square was pedestrianised, and Marine Lake was refurbished. The
Grand Pier's pavilion was destroyed by a fire on 28 July 2008. Work to build a new pavilion started in 2009 and it reopened on 23 October 2010.
Birnbeck Pier was closed in 1994 and
Weston-super-Mare lifeboat station, which had been at Birnbeck since 1882, moved to temporary facilities at Knightstone in 2013. After several private schemes to reopen the pier failed,
North Somerset Council bought the pier in July 2023 with the intention of repairing it and returning the lifeboat station Birnbeck, although the
Royal National Lifeboat Institution later withdrew from the project due to concerns about financing the repairs and maintaining the pier when they were complete. Weston was chosen in March 2017 as one of the 10 successful bids for the first phase of the creation of Heritage Action Zones (HAZ), a scheme where
Historic England works with local partners in places with significant historic environment to use that heritage to help build economic growth and other opportunities in the locality. Over a three-year period the Heritage Action Zone aimed to boost economic growth and researched Weston's heritage and urban development, by reviewing Weston's listed buildings, using
aerial photographs, undertaking a historic characterisation of Weston-super-Mare, its land and sea environs and a report on the architecture of the town, which culminated with the publication in 2020 of a new book
Weston-super-Mare The town and its seaside heritage. ==Governance==