Found just east of the Palace Pier, half-submerged in the pebbles and facing out to sea, a strange piece of driftwood has captured the imagination of beachgoers. At first glance, it’s a gnarled, salt-bleached log - but closer inspection reveals something far more curious. Weathered hollows and ancient cracks form what many claim resembles a vast, watching eye.
Locals have taken to calling it ‘the eye as old as time’, and the name has stuck, partly for its poetic ring, partly because the formation feels oddly deliberate. Smooth rings surround a deep hollow, like iris and pupil, worn not by carving tools but by tide, time, and wind. The shape is uncanny, as though the beach itself is peering out from beneath the stones.
One long since retired fisherman - Silas Finn - recalls a local legend claiming that whenever such an eye appears on Brighton Beach, change is coming. He remembers a similar shape washed ashore in October 1973 - just before the terrible barge accident that destroyed the pier theatre - and another just before the Great Storm of 1987.
In the past, most have dismissed the legends but others have theorised ‘the eye as old as time’ is part of a vast, submerged creature of folklore, returning infrequently and briefly to survey the coast. Others consider it marks a shift in the beach itself - that Brighton’s shoreline, long tamed by groynes and breakwaters, may be awakening to older rhythms.
As of this afternoon, the driftlog still lies where it landed, above the tideline, unclaimed. Children poke at it, walkers sit for a moment, dogs - alas - pee on it, but more than one wizened old soul is sure to hold its gaze, and read into the future.
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