TODAY we look back at a visit to a landmark by a household name soap actress.

Helen Worth has played Gail Platt in Coronation Street, set in Manchester, for the past 40 years.

Viewers have grown to love her as one of the most recognisable cast members in the programme and she received the Outstanding Achievement Award at the British Soap Awards in 2014.

Pictured above during two separate visits to Brighton, Helen can be seen signing autographs for fans on the Palace Pier in 1984.

She is shown again with a young boy in the city in 1988.

Helen was born in Wakefield, Yorkshire, and was educated at private school before going on to learn her craft at drama school.

The actress’s mother was killed in a road accident during a visit to Brighton.

Also featured today are lifeboat workers and various lifeboat-related buildings.

A lifeboat can be seen on the beach at Hastings at some point in the early 1960s.

Eastbourne Lifeboat Museum, where a group of workers are pictured outside in the 1980s, was originally used as a boathouse.

It became the first RNLI museum in the UK in 1937 after years of lifeboats being stored there for use by local crews.

Lifeboats were stored in the boathouse until 1924, when the James Stevens No 6 lifeboat which was no longer in use was left there as an exhibition piece.

Other lifeboat workers pictured here include Richard William Lower, a former boatbuilder and member of Newhaven’s lifeboat crew.

Newhaven’s first lifeboat station opened in 1803.