The veteran run to Brighton

At sunrise this morning, more than 400 pre-1905 motor cars were scheduled to set off from Hyde Park for the 98th London to Brighton Veteran Car Run, the world’s longest-running motoring event. The run commemorates the original ‘Emancipation Run’ of 14 November 1896, which celebrated the passing of the Locomotives on Highways Act. That law raised the speed limit for light locomotives from four to fourteen miles per hour and abolished the requirement for a man with a red flag to walk ahead of every vehicle.

Organised by the Royal Automobile Club, this year’s event covered a route of about sixty miles, following the traditional course from London through Croydon, Redhill, Crawley and Burgess Hill before descending into Brighton. It is not a race: the event is open only to vehicles built before 1905, and every entrant who crosses the finish line within daylight is considered a victor. The finishing stretch took the cars directly onto the Brighton seafront, Madeira Drive once again serving as the ceremonial end-point. 

The run’s tradition of finishing on Madeira Drive dates back to the early 1900s, when the event was revived after the First World War. Over the decades it has only rarely been interrupted - by fuel shortages, war, and once by the pandemic. This year’s run also honoured the 125th anniversary of the Royal Automobile Club’s 1000-Mile Trial of 1900, another milestone in the story of early motoring. 

This mornings first arrival on Madeira Drive was vehicle number 046, a 1900 Renaux tricycle driven by Clive Pettit (picture at top). The lightweight three-wheeler crossed the finish line just before 11 a.m., its simple design and reliability giving it an early advantage on the 60-mile run. The second vehicle and the first four-wheeled car to reach the seafront was number 018, an 1898 Stephens dogcart (pictured above), which rolled in at exactly 11 - later than usual, possibly because of early morning bad weather.

The run has acquired its own folklore. Many entrants and passengers dress in Edwardian costume; breakdowns are frequent and often met with good humour and clouds of steam; and the sound of sputtering engines and brass horns evokes the infancy of motoring. The 1953 film Genevieve (see film still) has immortalised the event’s charm and chaos, and even today the scene of creaking, smoke-puffing machines rolling into Brighton beneath the cliffs of Madeira Drive retains something of that cinematic magic. 

Among the machines entered in this year’s London to Brighton Veteran Car Run are: 

- an 1894 Benz, a single-cylinder 1.5 horsepower pioneer from Germany driven by Hermann Layher, its exposed brass fittings and carriage-style tiller steering embodying the dawn of motoring; 

- an 1898 Léon Bollée, the elegant French tricar whose sloping body and chain drive reflecte the ingenuity of fin-de-siècle engineering;

- the British Motor Museum’s 1899 Wolseley, one of the earliest four-wheelers designed by Herbert Austin;

- a newly restored Opel Darracq making its debut, representing a rare Franco-German collaboration from the earliest years of the automobile.

Brighton Swimming Club

On 4 May 1860 a handful of regular sea-bathers met at the Jolly Fisherman in Market Street and founded Brighton Swimming Club, today recognised as the country’s oldest continuously running swimming club. The pioneers had been bathing from the beach near the Lion Mansions on Grand Junction Parade in the late 1850s; by formalising their group they introduced subscriptions, rules and early safety practices to what had been an informal pastime. Founder members included George Brown and the celebrated one-legged swimmer and lifesaver John Henry Camp, whose motto, ‘I dare the waves a life to save’, reflected the club’s public-spirited character.

Through the 1860s and 1870s the club became a fixture of Brighton’s seafront life. Its members staged crowd-pleasing aquatic displays off the West Pier, including the much-reported raft ‘tea parties’, and they helped normalise sea swimming as recreation rather than therapy. Photographers recorded the swimmers’ culture, from informal 1860s beach portraits in drawers and top hats to later team images outside the club’s King’s Road Arches headquarters, where the address numbers changed over time as the seafront was renumbered. Membership grew rapidly from a dozen to several dozen within three years, mirroring Brighton’s boom as a resort.

By the early 1910s Brighton’s enthusiasm for sea swimming had become fully institutionalised. The Palace Pier built a £6,000 bathing station on piles of greenheart oak, complete with curtained changing cabins, rafts and spectator seating. When the new facility opened in June 1913, the Brighton Herald reported that the Brighton Swimming Club had been granted its own private quarters beneath the pier, ‘handsomely equipped’ and inaugurated with a special fête. Members staged diving and ornamental swimming displays, with prizes for fancy diving and a 65-foot high dive by the visiting champion Professor Oscar Dickman of Australia. The paper called it ‘one of the most attractive swimming resorts ever seen in Brighton’, a mark of how far the club had evolved from an informal gathering of hardy bathers to a centrepiece of civic leisure.

Traditions established in the Victorian period proved remarkably durable. The club’s Christmas Day swim is documented back to the 1880s and became a hardy local ritual, interrupted only by beach closures in wartime. From the later 19th century, as public baths opened, the club broadened beyond salt water to embrace pool training and competition, while still maintaining its daily sea section. Water polo, diving and what would become artistic swimming all found a home in the club’s expanding programme. Women’s swimming developed alongside, with a separate Brighton Ladies Swimming Club founded on 2 December 1891; that organisation evolved into today’s Brighton Dolphin SC. By the early 20th century mixed bathing had become acceptable in Brighton, but the distinct women’s club shows how the city nurtured female swimmers on their own terms as participation widened.

The inter-war years added a signature race to the calendar. In 1936 Brighton Corporation donated a trophy for an annual West Pier to Palace Pier swim, and the ‘Pier to Pier’ became a midsummer highlight. Competitors once dived from the West Pier itself; since that pier’s closure the start moved to the adjacent beach. Apart from wartime and occasional rough-sea cancellations, the race has run ever since, drawing Olympians, Channel swimmers and club stalwarts to cover roughly a kilometre along the front.

War brought the only sustained break in the club’s daily sea routine, when beaches were mined and barred. Peace restored the rhythms of early-morning swims, competitions and community service, with club volunteers continuing the long tradition of watchfulness on a lively, sometimes treacherous shore. In the 21st century the surge of interest in open-water swimming put Brighton’s oldest sporting institution back at the centre of a national trend, while heritage work under the ‘Floating Memories’ banner secured and interpreted archives stretching to the club’s first minute books.

Today, the club’s sea-swimming section operates from its long-established base, The Arch, on the lower promenade east of Palace Pier. Open every day of the year, it provides showers, changing space and board storage for members who swim daily in all seasons. Annual membership begins each April, with fees covering upkeep of the seafront facilities; when capacity is reached a waiting list applies. The section’s swimmers range from casual dippers to long-distance enthusiasts, many training for events such as the Pier to Pier race or Channel crossings. Despite the expansion of pool-based squads and other disciplines, the daily ritual of entering the sea from the club’s Arch headquarters remains the institution’s core tradition and the living link to its 1860 origins.

See also Sussex Women bathing allowed! and Photo History for more detail and photographs (inc the sepia image above).

Houdini’s West Pier stunt

The extraordinary escapologist Harry Houdini died 99 years ago today, on 31 October 1926. He appeared several times in Brighton and, on at least one occasion, performed a spectacular stunt from the West Pier. Many years later a young Ronald Cunningham - who would become The Great Omani - came across a second-hand copy of The Secrets of Houdini which inspired him to follow in the master’s footsteps - even to the extent of repeating the same stunt from the West Pier on the fiftieth anniversary of Houdini’s death.

Born Erik Weisz in Budapest in 1874, Houdini rose from vaudeville beginnings to become the world’s most famous escape artist, thrilling crowds with feats of endurance and ingenuity. In December 1904 he topped the bill at the Brighton Hippodrome, and local tradition records that as part of his visit he staged a shackled leap into the Channel from the West Pier, a publicity stunt that packed the promenade with spectators. He remained underwater for close to two minutes before surfacing free of chains.

The only source I can find for this event is a memoir written by Omani. In the memoir, he says he once met a retired theatre electrician, Bert Croyle, who claimed to have worked with Houdini and seen the West Pier stunt. I’ll let Omani tell the tale (from The Crowd Roars, QueenSpark Books, 1998).

Chapter: A salute to Houdini

Once it was my privilege to meet an elderly gentleman in his late seventies, by the name of Bert Croyle. In his early days he had worked in London as head electrician in many of the big variety theatres. He had worked with many famous artists and vaudeville stars of yesterday. Me knew the Ching Ling Soo, who met an untimely death on stage when presenting the ‘catching a ballet in the mouth’ trick. He also knew and had worked with the legendary Great Houdini. He told me that Houdini was a very pleasant and polite man to work with, though conceited and at times very temperamental. But then what great artist isn’t temperamental? 

During his tour of England, it appears Houdini had visited Brighton and had appeared top of the bill at the Brighton Hippodrome. Sadly, like many other theatres, the Hippodrome is now a Bingo Hall. Only the ghosts of yesterday tread the boards to the phantom music of bygone days. One day, Bert Croyle and I were sitting down sipping a glass of wine when he suddenly said. ‘You know. I actually saw Houdini perform his famous death jump from West Pier. This was a publicity stunt to advertise his show at the Brighton Hippodrome. He was handcuffed, chained and padlocked and jumped from the pier into the sea and escaped underwater in about two minutes. The pier was packed. What a showman he was that night. As always with Houdini, the theatre was sold out. I asked Bert how long ago it was that Houdini performed on the West Pier. ‘About fifty years ago,’ he replied. ‘Right,’ I said, you’ve just given me an idea for my next stunt. I will perform Houdini’s jump from where he performed it on the West Pier, with handcuffs and chains, as he performed it fifty years ago. I will present it as a salute to the memory of the world’s all time greatest escapologist.’ 

This was a very good story and I had agreed to sell it to a well known London agency called Features International as an exclusive. The morning before the stunt was due to take place, Bert Croyle and I had an interview with one of the BBC radio stations and we discussed the forthcoming stunt. One question the interviewer asked Bert was ‘Do you think that Omani is as good as Houdini? He has done some amazing things.’ Bert hesitated, turned to me and asked what I thought. ‘Simple,’ I said, ‘Houdini was the greatest of all time. Long after our names are forgotten he will still be a legend.’ ‘You may be right,’ said Bert, ‘but Omani is the best we have got today.’ 

Several years had passed since I had performed on the West Pier. It had changed owners and now belonged to the Métropole Hotel, Brighton. The morning of the stunt arrived and Frank Durham, a director of Features International, and his camera-girl arrived to pick me up at my house. With my suitcase packed with manacles, chains and a pair of bathing trunks, I got into his car and we headed for the West Pier.

On arrival we were in for a shock. A battery of about a dozen cameramen and reporters were waiting for us. A gathering of the media such as one might expect had the rumour got around that Dolly Parton was going to appear topless!’

See also The Great Omani. Picture credits: Wikipedia, Brighton Hippodrome, and ChatGPT.

Drops and jolts

Galaxia at Brighton Palace Pier, now over 20 years old, opened in May 2004. This is a Jump & Smile style ride manufactured by the Italian firm Sartori Rides to its Techno Jump design, able to accommodate up to 42 riders per cycle. Over the years, Galaxia has become one of Brighton pier’s landmark attractions, with its rainbow-lit arms rising above the deck and blue cars spinning visitors through sudden drops and jolts while offering sea views.

Enthusiast sites and visitor blogs have described the ride as a mid-range thrill compared with the more extreme boosters on the pier, noting it as a good choice for those less keen on heights. Some riders, however, have commented on the over-shoulder harnesses being uncomfortable and the motion feeling rough compared with smoother coasters. On one fan forum it was memorably summed up as a ‘crappy coaster . . . but what a stunning location’.

In its two decades of service the ride has remained a consistent part of the pier’s fairground offer, promoted by the operators with the promise of ‘lifts, drops and spins you around at speed, so strap in, hold on and take in the views as you whizz round’. Despite the challenges of constant exposure to salt air, high winds and heavy seasonal use, Galaxia has retained its place among the pier’s most popular thrill rides, demonstrating both the durability of the Techno Jump design and its role in sustaining Brighton’s long tradition of seafront entertainment.

Other examples of Sartori’s Techno Jump model can be found at several parks and fairs worldwide, each trading under its own name. Fantasy Island in Ingoldmells, Lincolnshire, has operated a version since 2004, while Tivoli World in Benalmádena, Spain, installed one in 2005. A travelling unit owned by the Piccaluga family appeared on Clacton Pier between 2004 and 2016 before returning to the Italian fair circuit, and a larger 14-arm portable model has toured in Mexico under the name Alegre Fantasia. The same ride type is also produced by other manufacturers under titles such as Smashing Jump or Hang-Jump, but the Brighton Galaxia remains the UK’s most prominent permanent Sartori installation.

Deaf Mosaic

The arches along Brighton seafront recently hosted a striking exhibition, Deaf Mosaic, which celebrates deaf culture and the many ways deaf people contribute to society. Created by award-winning photographer Stephen Iliffe, the project brings together 35 portraits of deaf people from all walks of life, each accompanied by their story. The exhibition was on show at the Brighton Seafront Gallery, 54 Kings Road, last September, forming part of Flarewave 2025, a deaf-led arts festival supported by Arts Council England and Brighton & Hove City Council.

Iliffe, who is himself deaf, has worked to challenge stereotypes by rejecting the outdated medical view of deafness and affirming the ‘social model’ instead - that barriers come not from deafness itself but from the structures of hearing society. His work has already been exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery and Kings Cross.

Two of the portraits on display carry a particularly strong connection to the city’s seafront. One features TV chef Scott Garthwaite, better known as Punk Chef, who poses outside his food van with the words ‘Punk Chef’ in bold pink across the windscreen. He recalls that when he first entered the profession, ‘kitchen chefs didn’t see my abilities, only my deafness’. He has since had the last laugh, working in top restaurants and becoming an award-winning television chef. The image is set against the wide horizon of Brighton beach, with the remains of the West Pier visible in the background.

Another portrait shows long-distance swimmer Andrew Rees fresh from the water, with Brighton Palace Pier behind him. Rees, a management accountant, trains by swimming between the two piers, but he is also a Channel veteran. In 2016 he became the first deaf person to swim the 34km from Dover to Calais, enduring gale-force winds, rough seas and shoals of jellyfish. ‘Nothing great is easy’ was his motto, he explains, and after 15 hours in the water he finally made it to France.

Both portraits encapsulate the exhibition’s central message: that with the right support, deaf people can achieve anything. Brighton’s seafront, with its open vistas and historic landmarks, can be viewed as a fitting stage for these affirmations of resilience and talent.

Slow in the Wintry Morn

This day in 1806 died Charlotte Smith, the poet and novelist whose Elegiac Sonnets established her as a leading voice of early Romanticism. One of her most famous works is The Emigrants, a long poem published in 1793 and set explicitly on the cliffs to the east of Brighton, then known as Brighthelmstone. Its combination of personal melancholy, political sympathy, and local coastal imagery made it one of the most striking poetic responses to the turbulence of the French Revolution and the transformation of the Sussex seashore.

Smith was born Charlotte Turner in London in 1749, the daughter of a wealthy merchant family. Married at 15 to Benjamin Smith, she endured an unhappy union marked by financial ruin and repeated imprisonment for debt. To support her twelve children she turned to writing, publishing Elegiac Sonnets in 1784 while her husband was in the King’s Bench Prison. The book became a sensation, going through multiple editions and influencing Wordsworth and Coleridge. Over the following two decades she produced both poetry and a string of innovative novels that engaged with contemporary politics, women’s rights, and the injustices of the legal system.

Despite chronic illness and poverty, Smith continued to write until her death at Tilford, Surrey, on 28 October 1806. Among her most enduring works is The Emigrants, written during the war with revolutionary France. It is addressed to her friend William Cowper, whose own Task had inspired her, and takes as its scene the Sussex coast overlooking Brighton. In the poem’s two ‘books’ (around 80 pages in total), she meditates on the plight of French exiles driven to England, weaving their suffering into her own reflections on war, tyranny, and compassion. 

Here are the first few lines of the first ‘book’. It opens with a note - ‘Scene, on the Cliffs to the Eastward of the Town of Brighthelmstone in Sussex. Time, a Morning in November, 1792’ - and begins with a powerful evocation of the pebbled beach and troubled Channel.

The Emigrants

Slow in the Wintry Morn, the struggling light
Throws a faint gleam upon the troubled waves;
Their foaming tops, as they approach the shore
And the broad surf that never ceasing breaks
On the innumerous pebbles, catch the beams
Of the pale Sun, that with reluctance gives
To this cold northern Isle, its shorten’d day.
Alas! how few the morning wakes to joy!
How many murmur at oblivious night
For leaving them so soon; for bearing thus
Their fancied bliss (the only bliss they taste!),
On her black wings away! - Changing the dreams
That sooth’d their sorrows, for calamities
(And every day brings its own sad proportion)
For doubts, diseases, abject dread of Death,
And faithless friends, and fame and fortune lost;
Fancied or real wants; and wounded pride,
That views the day star, but to curse his beams. . .

Find the plaques on the pier

Next time you walk out along Brighton Palace Pier, don’t just look up at the rides or out to the sea. Look down. On the edge of the boards beneath your feet runs a discreet line of small brass and bronze plates. They are easy to miss, almost hidden from view, much aged and weathered, but together they form a civic and personal trail stretching the length of the pier.

Most of the plaques are private dedications. For a fee, the pier company would fix them to the decking, allowing families to commemorate loved ones, celebrate weddings, or mark birthdays and anniversaries. This scheme began in the early 2000s as part of the pier’s commercial offer, marketed through the ‘Deck-Squares’ programme. Unlike the large monuments or benches seen elsewhere on the seafront, these tributes are modest and low-lying, forming a quiet memorial gallery where the pier’s fabric becomes the canvas. Scores of them already line the walkway; given the pier’s great length - more than 1,700 feet - the potential runs into the thousands.

In recent years a second strand has joined them. Since 2021 the pier has also carried plaques for winners of the Argus Community Star & Care Awards, the long-running scheme organised by Brighton’s daily newspaper to honour volunteers, carers and community heroes. Categories have included Good Nurse, Mental Health Award, Volunteer of the Year and Local Hero. Usually winners are celebrated at a hotel gala with trophies and publicity, but in partnership with the pier company their names have also been etched into brass and screwed into the decking alongside the private dedications. However, this year, the awards for 2025 have been postponed, with the organisers noting they will advise for 2026.

The effect is curious and rather moving. A memorial to a much-loved grandmother might sit a few feet away from a dedication to a young volunteer recognised for charity work, or a nurse honoured for service in the pandemic. Family affection and civic recognition are absorbed into the same structure, pressed into the pier’s timbers, sharing the same salty air and the same tides below. Together, these plates turn Brighton’s Palace Pier into an accidental archive: part seaside attraction, part public gallery of memory. They are easy to ignore, but once you notice them, you find yourself scanning each one, piecing together fragments of lives and achievements.

Here are my top nine plaques (see also photo montage).

‘In memory of my dear sister Pat who manned the candy floss kiosk throughout the 1953 season’

‘John (Leonard) Scrace 1944 - 2022 Son of Brighton Football Legend (Whitehawk FC) xxx’

‘For our dearest Johnny John Johnny Who always loved the 2p machines and dreamt of winning big. Love you always, Samila, Mish, Miled and family xxx’

‘ADAM JUSTIN BOULTER 11/01/1970 – 03/08/2023 “Au revoir, les Félicieuses.” ’

‘Joss Baker Happy 70th Birthday Brighton Palace Pier, 13.07.25 A magical day of love, laughter and joy shared with family and friends’

‘Jemma and Steve Got engaged on this spot 17th August 2013’

‘In memory of Norman and Jean Foord who met at a dance on the Palace Pier in 1948. Married a year later and settled in Brighton, sharing 65 happy years together.’

‘Celebrating the Life of Raymond Barnard who maintained the pier with love and care’

‘In memory of our mum Elizabeth Oliver who loved Brighton’s casinos 11.01.28 - 28.01.21’

The ball’s still in the air

Here is the 18th of 24 stained glass window designs on the Palace Pier which AI and I are using as inspiration for some of these BrightonBeach365 daily posts - see Stained Glass Window 1 for background. A lively soccer match is underway. In the foreground, a large black-and-white football dominates; to the right, the leg and foot of a player in blue shorts and striped socks is shown in motion, suggesting a kick. Behind the ball and player, a crowd of supporters fills the background, represented in bright blocks of colour - yellow, red, blue, green, and brown - with raised arms and cheering stances, creating the sense of excitement in a stadium atmosphere. The overall style is bold and simplified, with clear outlines and vivid colours.

A limerick starter

A striker with socks blue and white, 

Kicked a ball with incredible might. 

The crowd gave a roar, 

As it sailed to the score, 

And victory gleamed in the light.

The ball’s still in the air (with apologies to Nick Hornby) 

I was standing on Brighton Beach, staring up at this stained-glass window in one of those seafront cafés, the kind that smells of chip fat even after it’s closed. It showed a football frozen in mid-flight, with a crowd behind it looking like they’d just seen God, or at least Peter Ward in his prime. The socks on the kicker were the clincher: blue and white hoops, the Seagulls’ stripes.

And suddenly I was back there, twelve years old, thinking Brighton & Hove Albion were going to change my life. Dad took me to the Goldstone Ground and I saw Gerry Ryan run down the wing like he’d been shot out of a cannon. That was it. I was hooked for good. But football - especially Brighton football - is like the sea here: it looks glorious when the sun’s on it, but most of the time it just drags you under and leaves you coughing up salt.

On the beach that morning, you could almost hear the echoes of promotion parties and relegation heartbreak. I’d been through them all, right down to the protests when we nearly lost the club. We stood outside with banners, shouting until our throats cracked, while inside men in suits plotted how to flog the ground for a Sainsbury’s. It felt hopeless. And yet here we still are, with a stadium on the edge of town, European nights, a place at the grown-ups’ table.

Looking back at that window, I realised why it hit me so hard. The crowd in the glass isn’t celebrating a goal. They’re waiting. The ball’s still in the air, and anything could happen: joy, despair, a dodgy referee’s whistle. It’s Brighton Beach in a nutshell. You sit on the shingle, you watch the horizon, and you think: maybe today the tide turns. Or maybe it just keeps rolling in and out, same as ever.

I finished my tea, wiped the crumbs from my lap, and thought about the next game. It’s ridiculous, really, this endless faith in a team, like waiting for a miracle on a beach that’s seen more storms than summers. But if you’re a Seagull, you don’t stop flying. You can’t.

E-scooters for the seafront

Brighton Beach’s long seafront cycle lane may soon get a lot busier. Brighton & Hove City Council has agreed to apply for government approval to run an e-scooter trial, a move that could soon bring rental scooters to the city’s seafront. At a cabinet meeting on 16 October, councillors voted to seek Department for Transport consent for a scheme that would add up to 300 e-scooters to the existing Beryl bike-share programme. The cabinet report explicitly mentions that the council will ‘prioritise locations on the seafront and seek to maximise convenience for commuters with central sites near car parks, stations and bus stops.’ If successful, the trial would launch in April 2026, with a public consultation and full financial review to be completed before rollout. 

The plan is part of what transport experts call ‘micromobility’ - small, lightweight vehicles such as bikes, e-bikes and scooters designed for short urban journeys. According to the CoMoUK Annual Shared Micromobility Report, more than 40 million journeys were made on shared bikes, e-bikes and e-scooters in the UK in 2023, with around one in five scooter trips replacing a car journey. The Council argues that giving residents and visitors a regulated hire option could cut emissions, reduce traffic, and displace the use of illegal private scooters.

Under the scheme, up to 75 scooters would be introduced each week until the full fleet is in place. The operating zone would be smaller than the bike-share area, excluding the Undercliff and private land without consent. Thirty new parking bays are proposed, located along the seafront and at transport hubs, to prevent obstruction on pavements. Charges would be higher than for e-bikes, with an unlock fee and per-minute rate. Safety measures include speed caps, no-go zones, possible curfews between midnight and 5am on weekends, licence checks, helmet promotion and access audits of parking sites to protect disabled users.

The council report reminds councillors that privately owned e-scooters remain illegal to use on public roads and pavements except as part of authorised trials. The document then notes that many people are already using them around Brighton despite the ban, creating safety concerns and enforcement difficulties (see Brighton and Hove Police on Facebook). The trial is pitched as a way to provide a safe, regulated alternative, with proper insurance, speed limits, and parking controls - and to reduce demand for illegal private scooters. Moreover, the report highlights that most scooter collisions involve private machines, with hire schemes showing a far better safety record. Data from other trials suggests that e-scooters not only replace car journeys but can also complement public transport, making them an important tool for cutting congestion in busy coastal areas.

The application deadline is 21 October, with a decision expected in January 2026. A three-month mobilisation would then precede the launch. The scooters will be funded and owned by Beryl, and the Council anticipates no additional budget costs, with any surplus offsetting existing borrowing on the bike-share scheme.

Remembering the Wheel

This week 14 years ago today - on Monday 24 October to coincide with school half-term - the Brighton Wheel formally began turning on Dalton’s Bastion, east of the Palace Pier. The privately funded, 45-metre transportable wheel - variously branded the ‘Brighton O’, the ‘Wheel of Excellence’ and simply the ‘Brighton Wheel’ - was promoted by Paramount Attractions and cost about £6m. 

Temporary planning permission, granted in April 2011, allowed operation until May 2016 and set opening hours from 10am to late evening in the East Cliff conservation area. A Highway Licence followed in August; the German-built R50-SP wheel, fresh from service at the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, was shipped to Brighton in September while foundations were laid at the seafront site.

Construction saw the partial removal and later reinstatement requirement for listed railings above the site, and sparked local debate about overlooking and heritage impact balanced against economic benefits. The finished installation had 35 standard gondolas plus a VIP pod, a stated 12-minute, three-revolution ride cycle, and typical operating hours of 10am-11pm. Promoters projected about 250,000 riders a year and said around 30 jobs would be created.

Operationally, the Wheel settled quickly into the visitor landscape as a mid-priced panoramic ride east of the pier. But its permission was explicitly time-limited and linked to plans for the i360 ‘vertical pier’ on the west seafront. (See i360 stranded sky high - with sky-high debts).
In 2015 the council rejected a request to extend the Wheel’s stay, and so it made its final rotations on 8 May 2016. Dismantling beginning that same week. The structure was advertised for sale and then put into storage, with no confirmed buyer announced locally. After closure, the site at Dalton’s Bastion was repurposed for a permanent seafront zip-wire (see The windy stairs.)

A large fairground wheel did, however, make a brief comeback: a similar but different structure was hired for the Brighton Christmas Festival in late 2021 and set up on the Old Steine. But it was the Brighton Wheel on Madeira Drive that has left an imprint on the city’s seafront story. More details can be found at Wikipedia and the Brighton Toy Museum. A defunct Brighton Wheel Facebook page can still be visited (and is the source of the night time image above). A time-lapse series of photographs of the The Rise And Fall Of The Brighton Wheel can be found on Jason Arnopps’ website.

Brighton Beach Scumbags

This day in 1991, Steven Berkoff’s play Brighton Beach Scumbags opened at the Sallis Benney Theatre in Brighton. Directed by George Dillon, it was the inaugural production for the Brighton-based Theatre Events team and quickly gained notoriety for its raw depiction of two East End couples on a seaside outing. The play’s unflinching treatment of casual homophobia, class prejudice and sexual tension caused a stir in the city, while its setting gave Brighton audiences a distorted mirror of their own seafront culture.

Berkoff, born in Stepney in 1937, trained at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art and went on to build a reputation as one of the most distinctive and provocative voices in British theatre. After working in repertory, he founded the London Theatre Group in the 1960s and began writing and performing plays marked by a visceral physicality and a confrontational use of language. Works such as East (1975), West (1980) and Greek (1980) established him as both playwright and performer, while his career on screen brought memorable roles in films such as A Clockwork Orange, Octopussy and Beverly Hills Cop. His stage adaptations of Kafka and his Shakespeare productions have also drawn international acclaim.

Brighton, though, was not just a convenient setting for Scumbags. Berkoff’s own early memories of the town were affectionate. In his memoir Diary of a Juvenile Delinquent (JR Books, 2010) he writes: ‘Now that the war was over we were able to travel and get around a bit. One day Dad rented a car to take us all on a trip to|Brighton and as it drew past the pavilion, I was gobsmacked at my first glance of the deep blue sea; it was also a perfect summer’s day. We were booked into a pleasant, cheap-and-cheerful B&B and the landlords, a young woman and her husband, looked after us really well - so much so that we all wanted to stay a few more days while Dad went back to Luton since he probably had to work (you never knew with him). We walked everywhere in an idyllic post-war [Brighton] played ‘housy-housy’ on the pier and took the miniature Volk’s railway to Black Rock swimming pool. It was a marvellous lido and this was a blissful time in a typical English summer. (Just above Black Rock is the so-elegant Lewes Crescent, where 40 years hence I would be sitting on my own balcony, watching the sunset from the first-floor flat of a splendid Regency house.)’

That mixture of nostalgia and confrontation runs through Brighton Beach Scumbags, premiered on 23 October 1991 (and revived in 2009 by Loft Theatre). The characters revel in their trips to the beach while simultaneously turning it into a stage for crude outbursts, prejudices and fears. A synopsis of the play can be found at the RDG website. The following extract, from Plays 2 (Faber, 1994), captures the tone:

DINAH: Oh yeah, before you come we had a drink ‘cause we always went there you know, always made a bee-line ‘cause you could sit outside, when we courted Derek and I would drink there . . . got the train from Victoria, a quid return, a quid, went swimming by Black Rock, by the cliffs, lovely it was . . . it was then . . .

DEREK: Oh it was a treat, definitely a treat, walk to Rotters, Rottingdean, tea and scones, jam and butter and cream.

DINAH: Sat outside, it was a bit Continental, or we had a plate of fish and chips.

DEREK: Yeah, and we swam cause we loved swimmin then until one day we saw that turd swimmin in the water, well I could never get in there again . . . never.

DINAH: Horrid!

DEREK: Never!

DINAH: Just horrid.

DEREK: I did say at the time that it was probably an isolated turd, not a fucking sign like of sewage seepage, probably a one-off turd by some little bastard who couldn’t hold it, but I never got in there again.

DINAH: Horrid, it just floated past my ear.

DEREK: Before that we’d love a swim, just let the waves grab you and throw you abaht a bit, love it that, triffic, a wave would pick you up like a dog wiv a bone and bung you down again on the shingle, cor didnarf sting at time but it was handsome, then we’d got for a tandoori in the Lanes, triffic place, did a right handsome prawn vindaloo!

Seahorse on fire

A fire broke out at The Seahorse on Brighton seafront in the early hours of this morning. According to Brighton and Hove News, crews from East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service were called at 00.16 to reports of a blaze in a bin-store beside the venue. Two engines from Preston Circus attended and firefighters wearing breathing apparatus used a hose-reel jet to bring the flames under control, with the incident declared over by 00.45. No casualties were reported. 

Sussex Police were also on the scene and an investigation is under way into whether the blaze was started deliberately. The Seahorse, situated in the King’s Road Arches next to the i360, is one of the most prominent restaurant and events spaces on Brighton’s seafront. 

The building dates from 1951 when it was constructed as part of the Festival of Britain redevelopment of the promenade. It was long known as Alfresco, run by the Colasurdo family from 1996 until 2018, when the lease was sold to the City Pub Company - see Coapt. After refurbishment it traded for a time as the Brighton Beach Club before being rebranded as The Seahorse, offering a restaurant and bar over two levels with a large terrace and panoramic sea views.

The incident was brought under control quickly, limiting damage to the external store. With police treating the blaze as suspicious, the outcome of the investigation will be closely watched by other seafront businesses.

Two years of decadence

And there they were by the Brighton wall, under the rust-green iron of the boardwalk, sprawled out in the million-year pebbles, shoes kicked off like wreckage, tangled together the way kids do when the night before still hums in their blood. The mural above them, some half-face phantom in faded paint, eyes wide with knowing, words bleeding below - Two Years of Decadence - like a prophecy, like a joke, like a sentence we’re all already serving.

And the girl - she wasn’t tangled, no - she leaned off to the side, back against the cold flint wall, listening to her secret music, head tilted to the wide sea nobody could see from here, the sea that keeps time with all the broken beats of the city. She was cool, black coat wrapped around her, headscarf tight, like she’d been here forever, like she knew all the stories the gulls scream and the iron forgets.

It was all there: the damp stink of stone, the sound of a vans clattering above, the faint taste of salt and fried oil drifting from the pier, and the silence between kids who don’t need words, just bodies and the breathing hush of the sea nearby. Decadence? Hell, decadence is just the name the world gives you when you’re young and don’t care and you love too hard to bother about tomorrow.

And the mural - who painted it, who left it to fade? Maybe some kid from a different decade, maybe a dreamer who saw the same wreckage and thought: this is worth marking, this deserves a shrine. Two years, two minutes, two beats of the heart. All the same. The waves will come in and erase it anyway, like everything else.

(Written by ChatGPT in the footsteps of Jack Kerouac.)

Yoga, breath, and spines aligned

For those who like their yoga al fresco, Brighton’s beach offers a mix of weekly classes and one-off events along the seafront, from Hove Lawns to east of Brighton Pier. Local operators list regular outdoor sessions during fair weather, typically switching indoors or cancelling when wind and rain close in. One provider’s current schedule shows Monday morning flows on the pebbles behind the Meeting Point Café, a Thursday evening session on Hove Lawns opposite Brunswick Square, and additional park or seafront slots mid-week. A separate sunrise strand runs weekly through the summer at Rockwater in Hove, with a fallback to the indoor lodge if conditions turn. 

The city’s volunteer-led scene also includes an annual ‘Yoga on the Beach’ day beside the i360, featuring back-to-back classes from local teachers and suggested-donation pricing to raise funds for community wellbeing projects. Tourism listings continue to flag beach and outdoor yoga as a Brighton staple, and commercial platforms are advertising 2025 dates and times, suggesting steady demand for sea-air sessions as autumn sets in. See Brighton Yoga, Studio iO, Brighton Natural Health Foundation; and here’s a ditty to pass the time, by ChatGPT.

Yoga on the pebbles

On Brighton’s stones, the mats are spread,
A stretch of spines, a lift of head.
Gulls keep off - know the score,
Those spiky fences guard this shore.

The pebbles jab, but none complain,
They breathe it out, release the pain.
The sea rolls in with measured tone,
A metronome of waves on stone.

Cobra rises, shoulders tall,
A chorus line along the wall.
The water bottles gleam in rows,
As steadfast as the students’ pose.

The sea rolls in, a patient guide,
It hums its mantra, tide by tide.
So Brighton’s beach becomes a shrine,
For yoga, breath, and spines aligned.

A bad day for the Palace Pier

On this day (19 October) in 1973, the seaward head of Palace Pier was catastrophically damaged during a violent gale. A seventy-tonne barge, being used to dismantle the old landing stage, broke free amid strong westerly winds and heavy seas. Dragging its moorings, the vessel was hurled against the pier and repeatedly struck the theatre pavilion at the pier head, causing devastating structural damage - see Wikipedia and Heritage Gateway.

At the time of the incident the pier head’s construction consisted of cast-iron screw-piles supporting a lattice of steel girders and rolled-steel joists, over which wooden deck planking was laid. The theatre pavilion sat on this structure, offering seating for around 1,500 to 1,800 patrons, and was reached via a broad deck extension over the sea. The barge impact was concentrated on the theatre and its supporting ironwork, causing failure of key structural members and partial collapse of the deck immediately seaward of the pavilion. However, the helter skelter, the ‘crazy maze’, a first aid post, a telephone box, and a bar cellar were all wrecked, and 25 of the pier’s piles were smashed.

The collision unleashed debris of heavy steel girders, cast-iron columns and wooden deck planks. Some deck sections became detached and sank, while large members dangled or fell onto the beach below (see below). The damage cost was estimated in contemporaneous reports at around £100,000 (in 1973 value) for structural repairs.

Emergency response involved sealing off the pier head to the public immediately. Maintenance crews and demolition contractors worked in hazardous, wave-swept conditions to stabilise the damaged end. Temporary shores and supports were installed beneath the damaged deck. The stranded barge was subsequently re-moored and removed only after the gale abated. The landing stage, long unused, was demolished in 1975, no longer viable after the impact.

In the aftermath the theatre pavilion was never reopened; the functional use of that section shifted away from theatre and concert use towards amusement arcade and ride-based layout. The event represents a technical turning point: structural loss of the theatre and support framing accelerated the pier’s transformation in use and reinforced the vulnerability of marine-based structures to drift-load impacts in gale conditions.

The images above have been taken from a striking video freely available on YouTube - The Storm of 1973 That Ravaged Brighton Pier by Tom Goes Nomad. Here is one viewer’s (@phaasch) comment on the video: ‘Wonderful feature, with some brilliant photographs. I remember all this so well. I was 13 at the time. The day after the storm, the beach all the way to Black Rock was a mass of wreckage, mostly pitch pine decking, silver painted onion domes, and bits of Moorish arches. It was a pitiful sight amongst the grey and the spray. But it was rebuilt, and I remember going into the theatre auditorium just once, and being knocked out by its beauty. The seats were dark blue plush, the decorations gilt and white.

But the worst thing was the coming back. One winter’s afternoon in 1986 I drove down from London with a girlfriend. I wanted to show her the town where I grew up. As we came along Marine Parade, the Pier came into view, and the theatre had gone. Vanished. No one ever said where to, just gone. I know we later sat on the beach in the dying yellow light of December, and I felt part of my childhood slip away. The rest of Brighton followed, bit by bit, over the coming years. Its an alien place, now.’

New Hove beach huts

Brighton & Hove City Council has just received a planning application to install ten new beach huts on the Western Esplanade, directly south of Hove Lagoon. According to the application form, the huts will match the style of the long lines already seen on Hove promenade, but fill in gaps between them. The council proposes to purchase them from Kairos Global, a company which trialled a seasonal set of huts on Kings Esplanade near the Meeting Place café - see New temp beach huts for renting. Once installed, the new huts will be sold on the open market to Brighton & Hove residents.

The block and location plans show the huts arranged in a row against the seawall overlooking the lagoon. Each hut is to be built in timber with shiplap panelling, measuring just under two metres wide by nearly three metres deep, with inward-opening doors and a simple pitched roof. The site occupies an 80 square metre strip of promenade, filling empty gaps between existing huts, extending the continuous line westwards.

The project will add about 30 square metres of new non-residential floorspace under the category of local community use. No parking spaces, access changes or services are required, and no trees or hedgerows will be affected. A wildlife screening check flagged that the development lies near sensitive coastal habitats and within 10 km of several Sites of Special Scientific Interest. It advised that surveys by a qualified ecologist may be required for species such as bats, birds, amphibians and invertebrates. However, the applicant (the council itself) argued that biodiversity net gain requirements do not apply, since no habitat will be impacted and the scale falls below the threshold.

The council will review consultation responses before making a decision. If planning application BH2025/02164 is approved, the huts will expand Hove’s tradition of brightly painted chalets further west along the seafront, linking with the leisure uses of the lagoon and its watersports centre. See also Brighton and Hove News.

Brighton’s fishing past

Just inside the vaulted arches of the marvellous Brighton Fishing Museum rests Sussex Maid, a clinker-built beach punt that once worked the inshore waters off Brighton and Shoreham. Her black-painted stem proudly bears the registry mark SM 380, the ‘SM’ denoting Shoreham. With her varnished planking and bluff bow, she embodies the traditional form of Sussex beach boats that for generations were launched and hauled directly from the shingle.

The Sussex Maid was built in the 1920s by Courtney & Birkett of Southwick, a noted yard for small fishing craft. She belonged to Brighton fisherman Robert ‘Bobby’ Leach, part of the long-established Leach fishing family, and was worked with nets and lines in the waters off the beach. Although fitted with an auxiliary motor, like other Brighton boats, she would have been hauled up the shingle by capstan and crew.

Beach boats like this were the backbone of Brighton’s fishing community until well into the twentieth century. Their sturdy clinker hulls could withstand the pounding surf, and their crews were experts at reading tides and weather. The Sussex Maid is a rare survivor of that fleet. Retired from service, and now set among nets, lobster pots and photographs, she was preserved as the centrepiece of the Fishing Museum when it opened in 1994, standing as both an exhibit and a memorial to generations of Brighton fishermen.

Much of Brighton’s fishing history has been captured in Catching Stories: Voices from the Brighton Fishing Community (QueenSpark Books, 1996). The project, which began in 1993, sought to preserve the memories and daily realities of a declining local fishing community. Organised thematically rather than by individual life story, the book weaves selected excerpts from transcripts into chapters on beach life, types of fishing, the role of women, the market side of fisheries, and changing technologies and social pressures. It can be freely downloaded from QueenSpark’s website. 

Busking on the seafront - yes please

Brighton’s seafront busking tradition has long been part of its festival character, with musicians and street performers enlivening the promenade, the piers and the Lanes. For decades it has operated largely on a basis of informal tolerance, supported by a voluntary code rather than formal regulation. The city council’s guidance confirms that no licence is required, but it sets limits: no amplification, no drumming, and no more than one hour in any spot between 10am and 10pm. Enforcement has tended to be complaint-led rather than systematic. (Here is Unörthadox playing Madeira Drive earlier this year.)

In 2018, attempts to restrict busking in Pavilion Gardens provoked strong public reaction. Proposals to ban amplification or to introduce audition-based access were criticised as undermining the spontaneity that has always defined street performance. Buskers themselves have often tried to ease tensions by informally sharing pitches in high-traffic areas. Films such as Between Two Piers (see film still below) and networks like Brighton Beach Busking have documented the scene, showing how performance has become embedded in seafront life.

The latest dispute - see Brighton and Hove News - centres on a sign erected by the Upside Down House on the seafront, which warned against amplification and percussion and even threatened instrument seizure. This triggered a petition signed by nearly 600 people, calling for the creation of permanent busking zones, including the right to use amplification and percussion, and for some sheltered performance spots to be introduced. Petitioners also asked for a more explicit recognition that busking is an asset for local businesses and tourism.

When the petition was presented to full council on 13 October, councillor Birgit Miller, with responsibility for culture and tourism, acknowledged the value of busking but said local businesses had complained about excessively loud or prolonged performances. She promised a review of the situation and a reconsideration of the current voluntary code. The debate reflects a familiar Brighton tension between protecting a vibrant cultural tradition and addressing concerns about noise and public space management.

Oops, pier opts to drop o and p

Brighton Pier shows a missing o, a proper noun turned provocation; passers-by stop, point, and pose.

On the promenade, popcorn pops; pigeons patrol; photographers compose panoramas.

Above, rope and poles prop the pale front; below, the pier’s pylons drop shadows on the ocean.

A playful proposal: pop the O and the P back atop the roof and proclaim “BRIGHTON PIER” proudly.

For Hattie

xx

Just opened - Quarters

Brighton’s newest music venue - Quarters - opened on the last weekend of September, taking over a number of beach front arches below Kings Road, the same space, in fact, which had housed several incarnations over the years, from the legendary Zap Club in the 1980s, through Digital and finally The Arch (see Raving and misbehaving).

Quarters arrives under the control of A Man About A Dog, the London-based promoters behind Junction 2, LWE, Boundary Festival and The Prospect Building in Bristol. They have also partnered with Ghostwriter to programme live acts, ensuring that the new venue will not depend solely on DJs but will mix live music with electronic nights.

The Arch’s two main rooms have been reworked into one expansive dance floor, centred on a 360-degree DJ booth. A bespoke L-Acoustics A15 surround sound system has been installed, along with a fresh lighting philosophy that aims to support rather than distract. Seating and chill-out areas have been incorporated, while the promoters talk about a two-phase rebuild that will continue into 2026. In its own publicity, Quarters is not simply a rebrand but a transformation of the space, intended to put Brighton back on the national map for electronic and live music - see also its Facebook page. 

Quarters opened on Friday 26 September with Rossi  headlining and followed on the Saturday by Shy FX. In the weeks ahead names on the bill include DJ EZ, Jyoty, Laurent Garnier, Pendulum, Todd Terje, Andy C, Bou, D.O.D, Everything Everything, Neffa-T and Crazy P. The programme is deliberately broad, mixing house, techno and drum & bass with live bands, and setting out to build long sets, inclusivity and local collaboration into its identity. Tickets are being structured with some allocations as low as five pounds, another gesture towards building a new community around the arches.

The Brighton Behemoth

Found on Brighton Beach - Specimen BRB-2025-021: a weathered mass bearing uncanny zoological features, documented and classified under the provisional name Arboris behemothus. The initial field sketch depicts the living form as imagined by researchers: a hybrid organism with arboreal integument, pachydermal bulk, and a proboscis adapted for both foraging and respiration. While no living specimens have been observed, the morphology reconstructed from the find suggests an evolutionary convergence between megafaunal mammals and coastal flora, raising debate as to whether the remains represent fossilised biology or a natural artefact misinterpreted through pareidolia.

Specimen Data File – BRB-2025-021

Specimen Name: Arboris behemothus (colloquial: Brighton Behemoth)

Classification:

Kingdom: Animalia (disputed, hybrid traits with Plantae)

Phylum: Chordata (?)

Class: Mammalia (arboreal-adapted, extinct)

Order: Indeterminate

Family: Unknown

Discovery location: Brighton Beach, East Sussex, UK

Date of record: 13 October 2025

Collector: Anonymous beach observer

Condition: Semi-fossilised drift specimen, partially mineralised; internal cavities resembling pulmonary or ocular structures

Estimated size: 2.1 m length; 0.9 m maximum width

Surface characteristics:

External ridges resembling dermal armour

Hollow chambers suggesting respiratory or sensory function

Elongated protrusion consistent with feeding apparatus or proboscis

Proposed Origin:

        Arboreal megafauna species adapted to both woodland and coastal marsh environments, extinct c. 12,000 BP

Notable Features:

Cavities arranged in bilateral symmetry, resembling ocular sockets

Protruding snout-like structure

Evidence of prolonged exposure to saline and wave action

Remarks:

This specimen represents either the genuine fossil remains of an unknown taxon. Further study recommended. Or, an extreme case of pareidolia (human tendency to perceive creatures in natural forms).