October 1970 was a bad month for England's only two Grade-I listed piers.

Visitors were finally barred from the southern end of Brighton's ornate but already crumbling West Pier because it had become too dangerous.

At Clevedon in Somerset, a pair of the graceful 100-year-old iron arches that supported its pier's promenade decks crashed into the sea.

Both seemed doomed as demolition-happy councils raced to get the two great Victorian extravagances off their hands and out of their budget books.

In Brighton and in Clevedon, fierce local campaigns sprang up as people fought to save both piers and return them to their 19th Century glory.

Thirty years later, the West Pier is still shedding its decks and pavilions into the sea.

Clevedon Pier, meanwhile, is fully restored, attracts about 70,000 visitors a year to the quiet seaside town and is the jewel in the crown of the Somerset coast.

Clevedon Pier, opened on Easter Monday 1869, juts 840ft into a browning sea, where the River Severn gradually becomes the Bristol Channel.

It was simple, uncluttered and the promenading decks were supported by 14 elegantly curved arches made from tracks salvaged from one of Brunel's railways.

When the £4 million restoration was completed in 1998, it had been returned as close as possible to its original Victorian design, something that last year helped it join the West Pier as a Grade-I listed building.

Frank Thomson, who manages the pier for the Clevedon Pier and Heritage Trust, said money-making additions had been rejected in favour of authenticity.

He said: "It is exactly as it used to be so it makes it very hard to raise cash. If I could have a restaurant at the end that would be more income.

"We plumped for using, as far as possible, all the original materials and that has probably helped us getting Grade I."

The whole pier, including the two arches which collapsed into the sea, was dismantled in 1985 and taken ashore, where the components were painstakingly repaired.

Three years later, the main promenading decks were reassembled and most of the pier reopened. Ten years after that, in 1998, the project was completed when the pierhead and small pavilion were returned to use.

Mr Thomson said: "I think the biggest difference between the two piers, they don't look at all similar, is one is made from wrought iron from Brunel's old railway so it was easier to take out of the sea and repair.

"We have not got any large buildings on the top of the pier, we have just got a pavilion at the end. Ours was a purely promenading pier."

About half the money needed to restore Clevedon Pier came from public bodies. It did not have development potential and was never able to attract private sector backing.

Instead, the trust had to invent its own money making schemes. Once part of the pier reopened, there was a steady income for the decade until the restoration was finished.

The trust raised about £400,000 from selling deck planks. There are 22,000 small brass plates on the pier's decks, recording the names of people who bought planks.

On busy Sundays, many of the visitors can be seen hunched over, searching out their own piece of the pier.

The impact on Clevedon once the pier was partly re-opened was huge.

In 1990, the seafront was run down and going nowhere but within two years, almost every building was being restored or spruced up for the thousands of new visitors.

Niall Phillips, an architect who has chaired the Clevedon trust for the last 13 years, guessed the altogether bigger West Pier might attract as many as 200,000 people a year.

He said: "I think the impact would be absolutely vast. It is a phenomenally valuable building, there is nothing like it anywhere in the world really."

Ironically, he believes private sector money, unavailable at Clevedon but seen here as essential, might actually hinder the restoration.

He said: "The private commercial development adds an element of complexity and controversy, which will delay the project.

"I think at Brighton, it is time for the local authority, English Heritage and the Heritage Lottery Fund to get their heads together and provide the capital costs."

The West Pier restoration is expected to cost about £30 million, £14 million from the lottery and £16 million from developer St Modwen, which wants to erect the seafront buildings that have soured the latest restoration scheme.

The West Pier Trust is still unsure how it will tackle the project or how long it will take, uncertainties made more acute by last weekend's collapse.

Some of the techniques used at Clevedon could be repeated here, although Eugenius Birch's West Pier uses a mixture of wrought iron and cast iron.

There is a locally poor precedent for removing the pier and repairing it on dry land, after the Palace Pier's theatre disappeared for similar reasons, never to be seen again.

Mr Phillips said: "What we found at Clevedon was once you got started and people started seeing things really happen it got momentum.

"What is necessary is urgent action not urgent temporary repairs but urgent getting on with it."