Deck chair history!

For how long have there been deck chairs on Palace Pier and Brighton Beach, or anywhere for that matter? Although folding chairs have ancient origins - they were known to have been used by Roman magistrates and to have been found in Egyptian tombs - the deck chair we know and love today only goes back to around the turn of the 19th/20th centuries - see Wikipedia. The earliest photograph/image I can find online dates back only to 1901.

Before then, the deck chair traces its origins to campaign furniture - i.e. portable, collapsible furniture used by military officers in the 18th and 19th centuries. These early designs were lightweight and designed for travel, often featuring wooden frames and fabric or leather seats. By the mid-19th century, shipbuilders adapted the concept for ocean liners and naval vessels, creating a sturdy yet collapsible wooden chair with a fabric sling. These chairs were used on the decks of passenger ships, hence the name ‘deck chair’. They allowed travellers to recline comfortably while enjoying the sea breeze.

But, it was the British inventor John Thomas Moore who, in 1886, patented an adjustable and portable folding chair and began producing them in Macclesfield from 1887. Photographs of Brighton Beach (as this one) from 1880-1890 (found in Victorian and Edwardian Brighton from old photographs by John Betjeman and J. S. Gray) show ordinary house chairs on the beach (rentable for 1p) but no sign of deck chairs. Indeed, the earliest photograph I can find online with deck chairs on a beach is at the Francis Frith website (a 1901 postcard of Filey sands and another from 1906 of Margate).

By this period, deck chairs were becoming a staple of leisure culture, not only on beaches but also in parks, gardens, and cruise ships. The famous Titanic had deck chairs available for first-class passengers. The striped fabric commonly associated with deck chairs became fashionable during this time. With the rise of plastic furniture in the 1960s and 70s, though, the traditional wooden deck chair saw a decline. However, in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, there was a revival of vintage seaside aesthetics, bringing back classic deck chairs to beaches, festivals, and garden settings. Today, deck chairs are not just nostalgic beach accessories but are also popular for outdoor events, garden furniture, and even art installations.

Although deck chairs on Brighton’s pebbles have long cost an arm and a leg to rent (look at today’s prices!), they have been free to use on Palace Pier for a long time, since 1984 in fact, when the pier was bought by the Noble Organisation. Under the then new management, entry fees to the pier were abolished, and complimentary deckchairs were introduced to encourage visitors.