Remembering the Old Lady

Half a century ago today, Brighton’s West Pier, affectionately known as the Old Lady, closed to the public for ever - and quite possibly she has become more famous and loved since then. Opened in October 1866, the 1,115-foot iron promenade designed by Eugenius Birch was built on screw-piled columns and laced with a light lattice so seas could run through it rather than break it. Early visitors paid at paired toll houses and strolled past octagonal kiosks and serpent-entwined gas lamp standards whose motif echoed the Royal Pavilion’s interiors. 

By the mid-1870s a central bandstand helped turn air-taking into entertainment, and in the 1880s weather screens and a substantial pier-head pavilion arrived. Steamers berthed on the south side from the 1890s, and on one peak summer’s day in 1898 nine vessels were alongside at once. Eugenius’s son Peregrine Birch oversaw an 1893 pier-head enlargement and pavilion, and Clayton & Black’s grand concert hall of 1916 completed a half-century of building. 

Attendance surged after the First World War with more than two million paying visitors recorded in 1919, a high-water mark for the resort economy. The pier also carried a bathing station at the north-east corner of the head, a detail often missed in later photographs. In April 1900 tragedy struck close inshore when a naval boat swamped near the pier and seven bluejackets from HMS Desperate were drowned; the men are buried locally.

The West Pier was the first pleasure pier to be protected at the highest level: listed in 1969 and upgraded to Grade I in 1982. It doubled as a film set, notably for Oh! What a Lovely War! in 1968. Ownership changes and post-war decline brought tight finances; a local company failed in the mid-1970s as repair orders loomed. The city declined to buy the asset and on 30 September 1975 the pier closed completely to the public. The company went into liquidation and the structure vested in the Crown before the newly formed West Pier Trust later acquired it for a peppercorn £100, beginning decades of advocacy and plans.

Exposure then accelerated the damage. A section fell in 1984 and the Great Storm of 1987 shook more loose. For safety the shore link was removed in 1991, isolating the seaward buildings. National Lottery support of £14m in 1998 raised hopes of full restoration with a commercial partner, but storms in late 2002 brought partial collapses, and two separate fires in March and May 2003 devastated both pavilion and concert hall. Further winter losses followed in 2013-14. Limited demolition around the root cleared the way for the i360 project in 2010, while the offshore ironwork gradually separated into the familiar twin rust-red islands.

Even as a ruin the pier gathered new life. In winter months vast starling murmurations began to wheel between the Palace Pier and the West Pier’s skeleton before carpeting the lower chords at dusk, turning the wreck into a wildlife stage. The Trust shifted to conservation-education: rescuing an original octagonal kiosk in 1996, seeking funds to restore it as a seafront learning centre, mounting exhibitions from historic archives, and occasionally auctioning recovered fragments to support its work. The ruin remains on Historic England’s At Risk register, with official advice long concluding that full restoration of the original structure is now beyond practical means.

Fifty years to the day since the gates were finally shut, the West Pier’s story still reads as a précis of Britain’s seaside age: engineering bravura, civic showmanship, mass leisure, precarious economics, and an afterlife as cultural memory and accidental sculpture. The serpent lamps are gone, the concert hall is sea-room for cormorants, but the outline still sketches Brighton’s horizon and the city’s abiding argument with the sea.

Here is a very brief list of some of the shows and acts that appeared over her 109 years open to the public.

1870s-1920s

Marie Lloyd, one of the most famous music-hall stars of her day; touring orchestras and conductors such as Sir Henry Wood; summer seasons of operetta, Gilbert & Sullivan productions, pantomimes; notable aquatic acts like daredevil divers and novelty acts including James Doughty and his performing dogs

1930s-1950s

Popular light entertainment, seaside variety and dance bands. Big names in British comedy such as George Robey and Stanley Holloway

1960s-1970s

Pink Floyd in 1972, The Who in 1964, Jimi Hendrix in 1966, The Rolling Stones in the early 1960s, Genesis, Deep Purple, and The Kinks.

Selected sources and links; West Pier Trust, My Brighton and Hove, Wikipedia. Images courtesy of Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove.

Brighton beach tragedy

 Published this day, 29 September, in 1908 in the Mid-Sussex Times:

‘The Brighton Borough Coroner held an inquest on Saturday on the body of Charles Robert Wearne, aged 18, who was found shot on the beach on Friday night. According to the evidence given by Mr. Hammond Wearne, of Fourth Avenue, Hove, and Mr. Cecil Henry Croft, tutor, of Maude House, Tonbridge, the deceased lad was the son of Mr. Harry Wearne, a paper manufacturer, of Alsace, and received a liberal allowance. 

After three years’ tuition under Mr. Croft, young Wearne was sent to a German University to complete his education. In August last he came to England for brief stay with Mr. Croft. At the termination of this short stay at Tonbridge he went to London, where he was met by his father, who was making arrangements for him to start business in the establishment of a London agent. On Monday, however, the father received a letter from his son saying he had left London for ever, and threatening to blow out his brains if he were followed. 

It was supposed he sent his boxes to West Worthing and inquiries were at once instituted, but without avail. Information obtained revealed that he came to Brighton, putting up at an hotel in the Queen’s Road. He seemed to be perfectly happy, and on Thursday purchased a bicycle. It was known he had £20 in his pocket when he left London. When the body was removed to the mortuary the following letter was found in the clothing:

“Whoever finds this would be doing a great favour to me, and I know he will be repaid some day, if it be not before he gets to heaven. I have committed suicide because I could not live, although it was terribly hard to leave my parents and friends I loved so deeply. If they knew the truth, I know they would almost die, so I beg you to have it put in the papers that I died accidentally. 

I am residing at Queen’s Road, where I have all my belongings, including a beautiful new bicycle. I want all my belongings sent to H. F. Wearne, Manor House, Tonbridge, Kent. There is £1 in the left drawer of the wardrobe or chest of drawers, which will pay for the luggage to be sent. If you desire money or anything, I beg you, in my name, to go to E. S. Theobald, Esq., 22 Oxford Street, Newman Street, London, who is my father’s agent, and you will get all you want, I guarantee. . . . For reimbursement of all money apply to E. S. Theobald, Esq. Yours truly (signed) O. Wearne.” 

The Coroner questioned Mr. Hammond Wearne and Mr. Croft as to whether they could offer any reason for the suicide, but both said they were quite unable to account for it. Certainly he was not in want of money, and they knew of no romantic attachment. The father was said to be on his way to America. The jury returned a verdict of suicide, adding that there was no evidence to show the state of the deceased lad’s mind.’

The Blue Coat

The most common question put to me by friends and tourists alike is not about the quality of the mackerel (excellent), nor about my years at sea (endless, damp, unprofitable). It is always: ‘Where did you get that blue coat?’ So, I’ve put together - for my friend Alasdair Grey - three answers.

The Official Version: Awarded by the Admiralty in recognition of ‘valour under maritime duress.’ [Report No. 17, Admiralty Archive, 1923, now missing*] The medals rusted away, but the coat endured, which suggests it was made of sterner stuff than empire.

The Local Version: Won in a card game against a fishmonger’s nephew who styled himself ‘Neptune’s heir.’ [See Fig. 1 for an artist’s impression of the game, in which five haddocks sit in judgment.] The nephew lost, I gained, Brighton gained a coat.

The Domestic Version: My late wife stitched it from curtains ‘borrowed’ from the Theatre Royal. She swore the colour was ‘ocean blue’. I called it ‘constable drowned’. Either way, she was right that it lasted longer than the marriage.

Notes on Structure and Material

Buttons: variable. Brass to visitors, barnacle to locals, invisible to those too drunk to notice.

Lining: allegedly woven from kelp fibres. Tastes faintly of iodine.

Weight: increases each year, suggesting the coat is absorbing stories, salt, and disbelief in equal measure.**

In conclusion, the coat has no single origin. It is sewn from stories, stitched with memory, dyed in Brighton rain. When you ask me how I got it, I answer truthfully: by accident, by invention, and by being asked the question often enough that the coat itself began to exist.

* A Brighton Archive librarian insists there is no such report. The same librarian owns a suspiciously similar blue coat.

** A scientific study has been proposed but abandoned due to the coat’s refusal to leave its wearer.

One single anchovy

Found on the beach: a single small anchovy, its silver flanks and dark back glinting among the shingle. At first sight, one might mistake it for whitebait (which can often be beach-stranded en masse this time of year), but that term refers to the fry (juvenile) of sprat, herring, sardine or anchovy taken at only a few centimetres long. This specimen is a near-adult European anchovy Engraulis encrasicolus, identified by its projecting lower jaw, large eye and elongated body. Famous as the salty little fish you find on pizzas, anchovies are small and oily with a strong flavour. Widely used in Mediterranean cooking, they are also a key ingredient in Worcestershire Sauce. 

The European anchovy spawns from spring to autumn, releasing planktonic eggs that hatch within one to three days. The larvae feed on plankton and grow rapidly, reaching around ten centimetres within a year. Sexual maturity comes at about twelve centimetres, and most individuals live no longer than three years. They form large coastal shoals, moving to shallower water in summer and deeper in winter, and are a key forage species for seabirds, larger fish and marine mammals.

Commercially they are fished across the Mediterranean and Atlantic using purse seines and trawls, and are marketed fresh, dried, salted, smoked, canned and frozen. They are also processed into fishmeal and oil. Its strong flavour, developed especially in salting, has given it an enduring place in European cuisine. In the Mediterranean it is a major fishery; in British waters it is less heavily taken, but records exist along the Channel coast. The UK shore-caught record stands at a modest forty-nine grams off Hastings. The maximum recorded length is about twenty centimetres, although most range between ten and fifteen.

In 2009 - according to a report on the British Sea Fishing website - unusual climatic conditions brought exceptional numbers of European anchovies to the south west coast of England. Local trawlers quickly switched to the species and were landing tons each day in what was described as an anchovy ‘gold rush’. More on anchovies can be found at Wikipedia, Fishbase, and the Cornwall Good Seafood Guide.

Temple cafe at Black Rock

The little Regency folly at Black Rock known as the Temple has reopened as a café, nearly two centuries after it was built as part of Brighton’s seafront embellishments. First constructed in 1835 to the design of William Kendall, the architect who laid out Madeira Drive and the Esplanade, the Temple was conceived as a classical garden shelter for residents of Lewes Crescent and Sussex Square.

Kendall’s work along the eastern seafront also included the Reading Room, restored last year and reopened in November as a refectory (see ‘Fantastic new refectory’). Together these structures once framed a coherent set of seaside amenities, built into the cliff slopes and intended for genteel recreation. The Temple, with its three-bay round-arched arcade and Tuscan pilasters, has long been recognised as a Grade II listed building.

Time had not been kind to the Temple. It was used for military purposes during the Second World War, then fell into decades of neglect. For years it stood derelict, its architectural detailing obscured by decay. Only recently has the building been restored with glazing, services and a terrace to make it fit for public use once again (see the Brighton & Hove Council press release).

The new café is operated by Philip Cundall, already known in Kemptown for his Portland café. He said he hoped the Temple would become ‘a place where locals and visitors can relax with good coffee and enjoy some of the best sea views in Brighton.’ Opening hours are weekdays 7.30 am to 2.30 pm and weekends 9.30 am to 3.30 pm.

The project is part of the wider regeneration of Black Rock, which has introduced new boardwalks, play and sports facilities alongside the restoration of historic structures. Councillor Julie Cattell, chair of the council’s culture and tourism committee, welcomed the opening: ‘It is fantastic to see this historic building brought back to life. The Temple has stood empty for too long and now adds another attraction to our seafront.’

Fun at the hub

This Saturday, Brighton & Hove City Council is launching - with entertainment, games and giveaways - a new visitor information hub inside the Brighton i360. Meanwhile, today in fact, there are some kind of shenanigans happening in and on the i360’s iconic half-mirrored pod

The visitor information hub is situated in the i360’s gift shop area on the lower seafront level, it will operate daily between 10:30 am and 5:00 pm and will be officially opened at midday on 27 September by Mayor Amanda Grimshaw. To mark the occasion, a family fun day including entertainment, games and giveaways is planned from 11 am to 4 pm. The hub is a joint effort between the Brighton & Hove Tourism Alliance, the i360 itself, and Visit Brighton.

But what about these shenanigans? At first I noticed a lot of climbing equipment inside the resting pod, but a few minutes later the pod had risen to the upper terrace level where there were a dozen or more action men (I think they were all men) all wearing or holding climbing equipment and wearing ‘Secret Compass’ t-shirts. Some were climbing atop the pod, and fixing a long rope ladder, others were doing things inside the pod. The whole terrace was closed off, but I managed to stop one person on his way into terrace. 

I asked, ‘what’s going on?’ His response was short and sweet, ‘I can’t tell you.’ 

‘But what is going on is very public,’ I insisted, ‘is there some kind of event later?’

‘I can’t tell you a thing,’ he repeated. 

A secret company indeed.

My only clue was the company name on the t-shirts, and so I got googling. Secret Compass is an international company that specialises in expedition logistics, risk management and extreme filming support. Its presence could point to a number of possibilities: publicity stunts, installing equipment, or assisting with film work. But also it frequently supplies climbers, medics and technical riggers for work in hard-to-reach places, whether in remote mountains or on urban landmarks. In the past, for example, it has provided climbers and riggers for television shoots on London’s Shard and in the mountains of Afghanistan. Given its track record working with television and film crews, a media project seems the most likely explanation.

Brighton’s oldest pier

This week in 1822, work began on Captain Samuel Brown’s Royal Suspension Chain Pier, the town’s first true pier and a bold answer to Brighton’s surf that made boat landings treacherous. Brown, a naval engineer fresh from his Trinity Chain Pier in Edinburgh, drove the first piles on 18 September 1822. The 1,134-foot structure opened on 25 November 1823: four towers carried swept iron chains, a 13-foot-wide timber promenade ran out over the sea, and a toll gate on the esplanade kept order. 

The pier was conceived as a packet-boat stage to France and quickly doubled as a promenade lined with amusements: a camera obscura at the head, a reading-room and library, kiosks and a weighing machine, military bands, even shower baths. William IV came to admire it; Turner and Constable painted it (see Constable on the beach, and The Pavilion pivots 90°). Early blows, however, came with storms in 1824, 1833 and 1836. Here is a diary entry by Gideon Algernon Mantell, a surgeon famous for his diary (and for his fossil collection).

29 October 1836 - ‘A dreadful hurricane from the SSW at about eleven AM it was terrific - houses unroofed - trees torn up by the roots: chimney-pots and chimneys blown in every direction - sea mountains high. Went to the Pier, and was present when violent oscillations began to be produced by the hurricane: the whole lines of platforms and chains were thrown into undulations, and the suspension bridges appeared like an enormous serpent writing in agony - at length one of the bridges gave way, and planks, beams, iron rods - all were hurled instantaneously into the boiling surge! The tension of the bridge being thus set at liberty, the remaining bridges gradually became motionless; the damage done to this beautiful structure cannot be much less than £1,000. Some persons were killed by the falling of chimneys and lead blown off the houses.’ For more on Mantell, see Brighton in Diaries.

Steamer trade ebbed to more sheltered Newhaven, so managers turned to entertainment and spectacle. The town grew around it: the Aquarium arrived to the west in the 1870s; the West Pier opened in 1866 and pulled crowds; by the 1890s a grand new Palace Pier was authorised on condition the ageing Chain Pier be dismantled. It closed in October 1896, already tired, its oak piles and ironwork strained after seven decades of gales.

On 4 December 1896 the Channel finished the job. A fierce winter storm tore the old pier to pieces and hurled wreckage along the front, battering the half-built Palace Pier. Brighton salvaged what it could and kept the memory close to shore. The dainty Gothic toll kiosks were later re-erected at the Palace Pier entrance; the signal cannon that once boomed a steamer’s arrival still sits on the deck; masonry footings cling to the beach and, at the very lowest tides in recent years, the stumps of piles have shown and gone again under shifting shingle. 

Sources (text): Wikipedia, National Piers Society, Institute of Civil Engineers; (images) The Regency Society (aquatint drawn and published by Joseph Cordwell, 1823-1824) and John Huddlestone’s The Brighton Story.

We gave it away to the crabs

Piers are stepping-stones
out of this world, a line of poetry
flung out to sea on a whim,
a dazzle of sea lights
glimpsed between floorboards.

This is the opening stanza to Hugo Williams’s poem i.m. The West Pier (1866-2003), first published in the London Review of Books four years ago today. It’s an affectionate portrait of the old pier but far from sentimental, capturing instead the tension between seaside gaiety and slow decay, and placing the ruined structure firmly in the realm of memory and mortality.

Williams, born in Windsor in 1942, is the son of actor Hugh Williams and model-actress Margaret Vyner. Educated at Lockers Park and then Eton, he began publishing poems while still at school and went on to build a career marked by wit, intimacy and a finely-tuned autobiographical eye. His first collection, Symptoms of Loss, appeared in 1965, and over the decades he became recognised as one of Britain’s most distinctive voices, blending humour, candour and a conversational ease with themes of family, memory, illness and love affairs. His marriage to Hermine Demoriane has provided a recurring source of inspiration, as have the lives and deaths of his siblings, and his later years brought powerful reflections on dialysis and transplant surgery.

Williams’s books include Love-Life, which won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, Billy’s Rain, which took the T. S. Eliot Prize, and Collected Poems, which secured him the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry. Although most of his life has been rooted in London, he has long contributed travel writing, journalism and poetry that reach into England’s coastal imagination. His work often circles themes of seaside towns, childhood holidays and the shifting moods of shorelines, placing him within a tradition of poets for whom Brighton and other resorts serve as shorthand for both freedom and transience.

Williams’s poem i.m. The West Pier (1866-2003) was first published in the London Review of Books (Vol. 43, No. 18, dated 23 September 2021), and can be freely read on the LRB website. It later appeared in book/pamphlet form in The West Pier, published by New Walk Editions in 2022.

The poem is considered an elegy to the Brighton beach ruins of the West Pier. Written in his typically spare and understated style, Williams evokes the pier as a decaying skeleton of its former grandeur, a structure whose collapse into the sea mirrors the erosion of memory and time. The poem treats the West Pier as both a civic monument and a personal touchstone, registering its slow disintegration not with nostalgia but with a wry acceptance of impermanence. In Williams’s hands, the pier becomes an image of loss that is as much about the inevitability of decline in human life as it is about the destruction of a beloved seaside structure. See also: the Sphinx Review; The London Magazine; and my own reflections on the ruins (written before I knew of Williams’s poem) - see In a silvery sea of time.

The portrait of Williams is a screenshot taken from a video of him talking to camera last year, when the T. S. Eliot Prize team invited him into a film studio to reflect on having won the T. S. Eliot Prize five years earlier.

i.m. The West Pier (1866-2003) by Hugo Williams

Piers are stepping-stones

out of this world, a line of poetry

flung out to sea on a whim,

a dazzle of sea lights

glimpsed between floorboards.

For 50p you can study eternity

through a telescope

and never have to go there,

only promenade to nowhere and back

in an atmosphere of ice cream

We used to take the speedboat ride

between the two piers,

pulling the canvas up to our chins

when the spray flew in our faces.

Now we stand and stare

at the remains of our innocence,

twisted girders piled up

in a heap of dead holidays,

while Brighton limps out to sea

on its one good leg.

*

There it is over there,

a little rusty island moored off-shore,

the empty cage of its dome

lying lower in the water

every time I come down.

Where are the luminous dolphins

on the merry-go-round?

Buffalo Bill’s Wild West?

We could have saved the old pier,

but we gave it away to the crabs

and put up a giant pogo-stick

on the seafront,

a middle finger to its memory.

Now only seagulls cry

in what’s left of the concert hall,

only storms shift the scenery.

It sinks below the horizon,

a black and tangled sunset

surrounded by bubbles.

Madame Esmeralda, gypsy fortune-teller,

presses her lips to the glass

of her waterlogged cubicle

and gurgles her apologies

for getting it all so wrong.

Where a lamppost and the i360 compete for depth

Welcome to the zombie pool

Where you might like to cool

Welcome to the depth and down

Where illusions learn to frown

Welcome to the blinding light

Where you might like to write

Welcome to the grime and lies 

Where all exposure dies

Welcome to unbending poles

Where you might find our souls

Welcome to the rigid climb

Where there is but an anti-time 

Welcome people, come in, come in

You all might like to win

Welcome to the looking glass

Of dreams, that scream, en masse

Women bathing allowed!

On this weekend in 1896, The Illustrated London News reported ‘the opening of the bathing from the end of Brighton pier to swimmers of our sex.’ It marked a milestone in women’s freedom on the English coast, and the article added a heartfelt plea for more facilities for female swimmers across the country.

‘A delightful piece of news for all whose it may concern,’ the paper declared, ‘is the opening of the bathing from the end of the Brighton pier to swimmers of our sex. The pleasure of diving into fifty feet of water needs to be felt to be understood. It is good to see that there are plenty of women able to take advantage of the concession: daily, up till ten o’clock, the cabins are in constant demand, and it has become a popular amusement for visitors to go to watch ten or a dozen ladies swimming about with perfect freedom and strength of limb.’

Until the 1890s, women at Brighton had been confined largely to bathing machines and segregated areas of beach, often under strict supervision. Mixed bathing was still controversial, and even when ladies’ clubs existed, they often lacked proper facilities. Brighton Swimming Club, founded in 1860, did not admit women until 1891, and then only to a separate ‘Ladies’ Section’ that swam under rules of modesty and restricted hours. The ILN article describes how remarkable it was that women could now dive from the pier-head into deep water, a privilege long taken for granted by men.

The article went on to say:‘For poor girls, facilities for learning to swim in large towns are still imperfect as compared to those open to boys. With a little cost and trouble, provision might be made for women swimming in the lakes of our public parks, as men and boys do. Even those who live near rate-supported baths find that these are only open to girls at low prices for two or three hours a week, whereas boys can bathe for twopence or threepence at any time. Brighton may lead on to reforms for the masses in this matter.’

Nationally, the paper’s plea was well judged. In London and other large towns, campaigners argued that swimming was not just recreation but healthful exercise and even a lifesaving skill that every girl should be allowed to learn. The Brighton initiative, reported approvingly in 1896, was taken as a model that might encourage reform elsewhere.

Brighton would later become home to champion women swimmers such as Hilda James and Mercedes Gleitze in the early 20th century, but the scene described that September - ten or twelve women ‘swimming about with perfect freedom’ under the gaze of visitors - was a small revolution in itself.

NB: I have used two images to illustrate this piece but neither are directly related to the text about bathing from the pier. The Illustrated London News cover pre-dates by a year the edition used as a source for this story. Moreover, the famous image - Mermaids at Brighton - by William Heath, c. 1829, predates it by 70 years. 

The Shingle Shoe

The tide was low and the Palace Pier lights scribbled crooked patterns on the water. DS Marlowe was off duty, collar open, killing time with the gulls when she walked up out of the dusk - tall, blonde, the kind of woman Brighton didn’t attract unless London had grown too hot.

She carried a shoe. Not a heel, not a pump, but a mesh beach shoe, damp with salt. She held it out like an exhibit.

‘You’re a detective,’ she said, cool as a gin at half-past midnight. ‘Then you’ll know this isn’t just lost property.’

Marlowe took it. Light as air, but wrong. A seam bulged in the sole. He split it open and felt metal: a key, old, salt-stained.

‘Found it under the pier,’ she said. ‘Thought you might make sense of it.’

By the time he looked up, she was walking away along the promenade, heels striking sparks. He should have dropped the shoe in the nearest bin. Instead, he turned the key over all night, seeing her face in the smoke of his cigarette.

Next morning he prowled the arches and under the pier. The key fitted a rust-eaten locker, waiting like a mouth half-open. Inside was the twin shoe, heavy. Out spilled a bundle of banknotes, banded and damp, and tucked in the mesh a photograph: the blonde, younger, smiling beside Harry Klyne - the local conman who twenty years earlier had bled three bookies dry before vanishing with half a fortune.

Marlowe barely had time to curse before the cosh landed and the world went black, blacker. The beach hit him in the teeth. When he came round, the notes and the photo were gone. Only the empty shoe sat grinning at him.

She’d set him up, sure. But why show her face? Why drop a detective into Harry’s pocket? His head rang with answers he didn’t like.

Klyne had once held court at The Blue Parrot, a smoky dive on Middle Street where the piano never stayed in tune and the gin was cheaper than the women’s perfume. Marlowe pushed through the door, the band hammering something half-jazz, half-dirge.

She was there. Alone at a table, whisky glass sweating in her hand. The blonde looked up and gave him a smile that could cut Brighton in two.

‘So you found the locker,’ she said.

‘And the cosh,’ Marlowe growled, sliding into the chair opposite. ‘Neat play. You use detectives often, or just when Harry’s on your heels?’

Her laugh was low, bitter. ‘Harry’s always on my heels. I stole the key from him, thought I could buy myself a way out. But Harry’s coming, I couldn’t stop him, and when he walks through that door I need to be three streets gone.’

Marlowe lit a cigarette, watched the smoke curl. ‘And the money?’

She leaned close, breath hot with whisky. ‘Long gone, darling. Like me.’

Then she was up, coat over her arm, heels clicking through the blue haze. Marlowe sat there with the smoke and the piano and the empty chair, knowing the only thing he’d earned was the echo of her perfume.

On Brighton Beach, you don’t find shoes. They find you. 

(With apologies, of course, to Raymond Chandler.)

Sussex Diving Club

September is when Sussex Diving Club begins its autumn training cycle - a handy peg to look back at nearly half a century of local scuba. The club was founded in 1979 as BSAC Branch 1016 and today counts roughly fifty active members who split their year between winter socials and planning, spring pool work, and summer evenings or weekends on the wrecks and reefs off Brighton. The rhythm hasn’t changed much since the early years: trainees start in autumn and aim to be ocean-ready by early summer, while the old hands mentor, skipper, and keep the calendar moving.

Brighton Beach is not just a backdrop. Shore dives happen right off the Palace Pier in 5-9 metres with crabs, blennies and shoaling bass weaving through the pier’s tangle; on the right tides it’s an easy there-and-back swim from the shingle. Offshore, the club’s own site list shows ‘Palace Pier Reef’ ridges a short run from Brighton, plus a spread of novice-to-technical wrecks.

Among them is the Miown, a French steam trawler lost in 1914. Its cargo of cement bags set hard on the seabed, and today those solidified stacks resemble reef blocks, colonised by conger and lobster. Closer to Brighton lies the Inverclyde, a merchantman sunk by German aircraft in 1942. Sitting in thirty metres, its boilers, hull plates and steering gear are still visible, a reminder of wartime losses within sight of the Palace Pier. See also the Brighton-based Channel Diving website.

In 1979, the club formalised under BSAC and began running member-led trips off the Sussex coast. Through the 1980s and 1990s the local repertoire settled into a Brighton-Shoreham-Newhaven triangle, mixing evening reef dips with weekend wreck runs. By the 2000s the pattern of an annual UK club holiday and occasional expeditions further afield was established, while training broadened to include boat handling, oxygen administration and marine-conservation add-ons. In the 2010s, social media made the undersea Sussex more visible, but the core remained stubbornly clubby: volunteer-run dives, autumn intakes, and a summer diary pinned to tides and visibility. There are plenty of photos and videos on the club's Facebook page.

A frilly crimson ruffle

Found on the beach: a frilly crimson tuft washed ashore, striking against the pebbles like a splash of paint. This is Chondrus crispus, better known as Irish moss or carrageen, one of the most distinctive of the red seaweeds. Its fronds are flat and forked, often 2-15 cm long, with tips that curl into a lacework of ruffles. The colour varies from greenish through deep red to purple, depending on age, light and water conditions. 

Like many algae, Chondrus has a complex life cycle that alternates between two diploid generations and a haploid gametophyte phase. Fertilised female fronds develop tiny cystocarps where spores form, and these are carried back into the sea to grow into new plants. This alternation of generations, shared across the red algae, means the seaweed thrives in different conditions and ensures its persistence around the rocky Atlantic coasts of Europe and North America.

Though small, Chondrus crispus has long had a large presence in coastal life. In Ireland it was gathered and boiled in milk to make a sweet blancmange, while in the 19th century it was sold as a remedy for coughs and chest ailments. Its processed extract - carrageenan - is now a global commodity, valued for its ability to gel and thicken. 

Food scientists prize the seaweed’s stabilising properties, and it turns up in ice cream, custard, yoghurt, beer, toothpaste and even some cosmetics. Dried and rehydrated, it can still be cooked into traditional puddings or soups; eaten raw, it carries the taste of the tide. Foragers warn that it should only be taken from clean waters and not picked from beach wrack,

Traditionally, Irish moss is hand-raked or gathered by hand at low tide from rocky intertidal zones. In some places, small boats were used to drag rakes or nets over the seaweed beds. Harvesting is usually concentrated in late spring and summer when growth is fastest. Collectors often follow local licensing or community rules to avoid damaging the beds. Once gathered, the seaweed is washed in seawater to remove sand and shells, then spread out on beaches or fields to dry in the sun. This drying both preserves the seaweed and enhances the gel strength of carrageenan.

For further information see the Marine Life Information Network, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and Totally Wild UK (our main goal is to excite people with the amazing flavours to be found in the wild).

Brighton buys the Pavilion

This year marks the 175th anniversary of the Royal Pavilion being bought by the town’s commissioners, thanks to the passage of the Brighton Pavilion Purchase Bill of 1850. The acquisition was a pivotal moment in Brighton’s civic history, transforming a royal pleasure palace into a public asset and setting a precedent for municipal custodianship of cultural landmarks.

Though the Pavilion sits a few hundred yards inland, its fortunes have always been bound up with the beach. Built in stages between 1787 and 1823 for the Prince Regent, later George IV, the domes and minarets quickly became the seaside skyline against which visitors strolled and bathed. Engravings from the early 19th century show the Pavilion’s onion domes rising just beyond the fishermen’s boats drawn up on the shingle. For fashionable Londoners coming to the coast, the Pavilion and the beach were inseparable halves of the same experience – oriental fantasy inland, salt spray and sea-bathing without.

By the 1840s, Queen Victoria had little interest in either. She disliked the lack of privacy in a town where crowds gathered on the promenade and the beach in view of the palace windows. When she abandoned the Pavilion in favour of Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, Brighton suddenly faced the risk of losing its most exotic landmark. Had the Crown sold it for private development, the visual dialogue between Pavilion and beach - palace towers looking seaward over fishermen’s nets and bathing machines - might have been lost.

Instead, civic leaders stepped in. The Brighton Pavilion Purchase Bill, passed in 1850, enabled the town to acquire the site for £53,000. It was the first time a royal palace had been sold to a local authority for public use, and the deal secured not only the building but the seafront identity it helped anchor. Just as the beach was being reshaped with terraces, railings, and new promenades, so too the Pavilion was reborn as a civic showpiece rather than a private retreat.

The Pavilion’s story since then has mirrored the life of the seafront. It has housed civil offices, wartime hospitals for troops brought ashore, and now stands as one of Britain’s most visited seaside attractions. Managed today by Brighton & Hove City Council, the building remains part of the same civic inheritance as the piers, Madeira Terraces, and seafront lawns. In 2025, 175 years after Brighton secured its fairy-tale palace, the Royal Pavilion continues to reflect both the grandeur of its royal past and the democratic vision that bound it forever to the beach.

The image at the top is an aquatint engraving by George Hunt after the Brighton artist Edward Fox. The digital image, taken from the Regency Society website, is owned by the Society of Brighton Print Collectors. The other image, a watercolour, is Brighthelmston, Sussex, by JMW Turner which can be found at Brighton Museum. See The Pavilion pivots 90° for more about this picture which, unusually (and wrongly), shows the Pavilion facing the seafront.

The Brighton steamer

Here is the 16th 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. The image shows a stylised seascape in shades of blue, white and beige. At its centre is a ship with a single tall funnel and two long decks lined with rows of square windows, suggesting a passenger steamer. The vessel has a solid, rounded hull that sits low in the water, built for carrying people rather than speed. It is sailing from right to left across dark blue waves, with broad cloud shapes filling the sky above. In the foreground, sandy tones and angled forms evoke the shoreline or harbour wall, giving the impression of the ship either departing or arriving at the coast.

A limerick starter

A bright little steamer at sea

Steered a bit too close to the quay.

The captain cried, ‘Blimey

The chalk’s right before me!’

Then dodged it with surprising esprit.

The Brighton steamer (in the style of Joseph Conrad)

The Brighton steamer lay broadside to the cliffs, its hull dark against the pallor of chalk and cloud. A late tide heaved against the shingle, uneasy, as though uncertain of its errand. The vessel, with her one funnel trailing a faint stain of smoke, seemed strangely inert, half-marooned in that restless light, yet she pressed on, slow and deliberate, past the line of the pier.

I watched her from the stones, the weight of her passage pressing upon me as though I were myself embarked. Those rows of windows, dull squares under the whitening sky, were like so many blind eyes - passengers hidden, yet expectant. One imagines them sensing, as I did, the menace of the shore: the pale cliff rearing to the east, sheer and implacable, indifferent to all the little confusions of men.

It is not the sea that alarms me, for the sea, even in its sudden wrath, is honest. No, it is the coast, the narrowing margin where water and rock conspire against the traveller, where a false bearing or a moment’s pride may grind out years of labour in an instant. I thought of the master on his bridge, his hands idle on the rail, gazing ahead with the obstinacy of command, knowing that any falter of judgment would lay bare the futility of his journey.

The ship moved on, a shadow sliding under the immensity of cloud, past the bright disorder of the town’s terraces, into the channel’s uncertain breadth. I turned away then, yet her slow form remained before me, imprinted like a memory of some choice deferred, a fate hovering just beyond reach of the beach and its stones.

Skyline’s Brighton bike event

A crisp Sunday morning yesterday saw over four thousand or so cyclists gather at Clapham Common to start the Skyline London‑to‑Brighton Cycle Ride. Riders set off in staggered waves, carrying energy and strong fundraising ambitions. The 55‑mile route wound through leafy Surrey lanes, passing Banstead and Haywards Heath before climbing the mile‑long Ditchling Beacon atop the South Downs. Cresting the Beacon rewarded participants with sweeping views and a fast descent to Madeira Drive on Brighton’s seafront, where cheering crowds and medals awaited.

Skyline’s event has run for about fifteen years, operating under the Skyline Events banner, a charity-focused organiser that partners with many different causes. Riders pay a registration fee (currently £55) and commit to a minimum fundraising target (usually £150) for their charity of choice. The route, now well-established, typically moves from city streets to quieter country lanes, up and over the South Downs, and on to the finish in Brighton. Logistics include comprehensive sign‑posting, resident notifications along managed sections, mechanical support, and first aid. While the ride has grown in size and visibility, it remains smaller and more inclusive than the long-running BHF equivalent.

For context, the British Heart Foundation (BHF) London‑to‑Brighton Bike Ride, founded in 1976, attracts up to 14,000 participants and raises over £1 million each year. The BHF ride is a Father’s Day institution, with closed roads and major media coverage. (See 14,000 cyclists on Madeira Drive.) Skyline’s event offers an alternative autumn date and a wider mix of charity partners - such as Great Ormond Street Hospital, Breakthrough T1D, and the MS Society - providing more opportunities for different participants and causes. While the BHF version is known for its scale and road closures, Skyline favours inclusivity and a diverse range of abilities, giving the event a friendlier, less daunting atmosphere.

According to Yahoo News, riders in yesterday’s ride came from all walks of life and raised funds for a wide range of charities. Jonathon Gilchrist, 32, from London, called the ride ‘tough but really fun’, saying Ditchling Beacon was the hardest part and that he was riding in support of Hackney Foodbank with colleagues. Mairi Beasley, 27, also from London and new to cycling, said it was ‘amazing’ and praised the ‘huge sense of community’; she was raising money for Mind UK. Four friends from Wokingham - Simon Fawkes, Steve Simmons, Ian Stewart and Brian Allan - completed the route without stopping at the Beacon and raised £2,500 for Yeldall Manor, a drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre.

Brighton Speed Trials

The Brighton Speed Trials, widely recognised as the world’s oldest motor race and a truly unique part of British sporting heritage, would have been unfolding this weekend were it not for the Brighton & Hove Car Club having permanently axed the event in 2023 - because of mounting costs and growing safety concerns. In 1905, Sir Harry Preston, a visionary entrepreneur (see Brighton Beach as runway), persuaded Brighton’s town council to surface the road by the beach with the then-novel material of tarmac, creating a perfect strip for speed contests at a time when the car was still a freakish newcomer.

The very first trials ran from 19-22 July 1905 as part of Brighton Motor Week, with cars heading west from Black Rock to the aquarium and motorcycles contesting over a standing start mile. The spectacle drew over 400 entries, including Charles Rolls - later of Rolls-Royce fame - and the indomitable Henri Cissac, a Frenchman who set world records for both the flying kilometre and standing mile, chalking up speeds then considered sensational. Dorothy Levitt, the pioneering ‘fastest girl on earth’, made her mark as well. The appetite among the motoring and local population was enormous, but grumbling ratepayers challenged the cost and, after just one memorable week, the Trials fell silent for eighteen years. (The image above is from Wikipedia, and the image below from the Brighton Toy Museum.)

When the starting flag dropped again in 1923, it marked the beginning of a golden era. Now running eastwards, and organised by the Brighton and Hove Motor Cycle and Light Car Club, the Speed Trials attracted hundreds of entrants and ever-growing crowds. By the early thirties, the realisation that Madeira Drive - owned by the Corporation and not subject to national bans on racing - enabled the sport to continue in Brighton even as prohibition bit elsewhere. Legendary duels were fought out on the seafront: Sir Malcolm Campbell, in his supercharged Sunbeam Tiger, pipped John Cobb and his giant Delage in 1932, surging past the finish at 120mph and etching a new car record into the event’s folklore. Motorcycles quickly claimed their share of headlines, too, with heroes like Noel Pope pushing the flying half-mile to ever-more astonishing speeds.

Throughout the twentieth century, the Brighton Speed Trials became known both for their intense spirit of competition and the intimacy of the experience. The course, framing the roar of engines with the sweep of the Channel and overlooked by the terraces, allowed crowds to get close - sometimes breathtakingly so - to drivers and machines that spanned everything from cherished hobby cars to fearsome engineering feats. The event was not without its perils or its interruptions: racing bans, war, the 1970s fuel crisis, and persistent debates about safety and cost all threatened its future. In 2012, a fatal incident led to a fresh council review, and it was only after vigorous campaigning that the Trials returned in 2014.

The enduring appeal of Brighton’s unique sprint lay in its accessibility to amateurs and legends alike and its position at the heart of the motoring calendar, frequently described as the most important speed trial in Britain. It survived for generations not just as a contest of speed, but as an event with a fierce and affectionate following, a living pageant of engineering, camaraderie, and spectacle. By the early 2020s, the Trials continued to draw large fields and fast cars, but mounting costs - new road layouts, revised safety standards, security measures, and logistical demands - combined with financial losses led to their reluctant cancellation after the 2023 edition. Although the event ended with immense sadness from participants, organisers, and supporters, the Brighton Speed Trials’ place in sporting history remains assured. (See also My Brighton and Hove, Wikipedia and Autosport.  For some 1947 photographs see Dacre Stubbs Photo Collection.)

New plans for King Alfred

Brighton & Hove City Council has set out detailed proposals for a new King Alfred Leisure Centre on the Hove seafront, with an estimated budget of up to £65 million. Willmott Dixon has been named as the preferred contractor, and the council intends to keep the current centre open for as long as possible while building takes place. The plans will be reviewed by the Place Overview & Scrutiny Committee on Monday 22 September 2025 and then by Cabinet on Thursday 25 September. If approved, the next steps will include public exhibitions, an online consultation, and submission of a full planning application by the end of the year. Construction is not expected to begin before early 2026, and the new centre is currently forecast to open in spring 2028.

The facilities would represent a major upgrade. The scheme includes an eight-lane 25-metre competition pool with spectator seating, a separate six-lane 25-metre learner pool with a moveable floor, and a splash-pad designed for younger children. There would also be a six-court sports hall meeting Sport England requirements, complete with spectator seating, as well as a health and fitness offer centred on a gym with at least 100 stations, an interactive cycling studio, and multiple studios for group activities. A café and on-site parking are also planned. The council highlights that the current main pool has only six lanes and the existing gym, fitted into a former café, offers just 31 stations.

The new building would be located on the western side of the site, where the present car park is, allowing the existing centre to operate while construction progresses. Two design approaches have been tested: one is a taller scheme with two underground parking levels on a smaller footprint, and the other is a low-rise version with surface parking spread more widely across the site. Parking capacity is intended to be similar to the current provision of about 120 spaces, though final details will be confirmed at the planning stage.

Delivery will be via the UK Leisure Framework with Alliance Leisure as development consultant (see ‘Big move forward’ for Alfred). GT3 Architects are leading design, supported by Engenuiti on structural and civil engineering, Van Zyl & de Villiers on mechanical and electrical services, and Hadron Consulting providing project management. Willmott Dixon has been working alongside these teams during the pre-construction phase. Funding would come from government grants, council borrowing, and income raised through the sale of part of the site for residential development, with the new centre expected to generate significant revenues in the long term to help offset costs.

The project is the outcome of the council’s Sports Facilities Investment Plan, adopted in 2021, and a Green Book business case developed with national sports bodies and advisors. More than 20 potential sites were assessed, with only two making the shortlist: the current seafront plot and land south of Sainsbury’s at the Old Shoreham Road/A293 junction. Cabinet members agreed in July 2024 to proceed at the existing site. Sport England and Swim England advised against pursuing a 50-metre pool, citing cost and city-wide provision considerations. A consultation in 2024 drew more than 3,600 responses, with a clear preference for keeping the centre on the seafront.

The proposals also emphasise wider design principles. These include ensuring accessibility and inclusivity, such as provision for gender-neutral changing and a Changing Places facility, embedding low and zero-carbon technologies, designing with coastal resilience and long-term durability in mind, and linking the centre with the recently opened Hove Beach Park to create a combined indoor–outdoor attraction on the seafront. The council has made public the above artist’s impressions: pool interior render (with sea views and spectator seating); east elevation at dusk; and south elevation at dusk.

Seafront heritage lighting

Brighton and Hove City Council has announced - via its Facebook page (with video) - that the first of the city’s Victorian seafront lampposts has been lifted from Madeira Drive for specialist restoration. It seems to have taken more than a dozen operatives to do so. Meanwhile, the local newspaper has uncovered that it cost the council £36,000 to clear away tents from the terrace at this same spot - there were more than a dozen operatives for that operation too!

The first of five cast-iron columns was dismantled and removed from Madeira Drive last Wednesday (10 September). It will now be sent to Cast Iron Welding Services before being refitted early next year with a new lantern made by lighting specialists CU Phosco. The council says five columns are being restored in this first phase of the Seafront Heritage Lighting Regeneration Scheme, marking the start of long-delayed work to safeguard the Grade II listed structures. 

Many of the ornate posts, dating back to the late 19th century, have stood in poor condition for years.The lampposts were first installed when the resort was at the height of its Victorian popularity, and their deterioration has come to symbolise neglect along all of Madeira Drive. Their return next year will be the first visible sign of progress in a wider programme to restore the full line of heritage lighting. (See also Ye Olde Victorian lampposts and Progress on the Madeira arches.)

In fact, I witnessed the operation on Wednesday morning. There were more than a dozen operatives at the site (close to the statue of Steve Ovett). I had a similar sense of there being a surfeit of manpower during the operation to remove squatter tents on the terrace at this same spot a month ago - see International shutdown services. Indeed, the Argus reported a few days ago that that operation had cost the council £36,000!

The Pirates of Brighton Beach

On a bright morning when the sea heaved lazily against the shingle, five pirates - long since stranded on the Sussex coast - emerged from their hideout near the Palace Pier. No longer raiders of the Caribbean, they had been reduced to guardians of Brighton’s beach, their adventures woven into the chatter of gulls and the hum of amusement arcades.

First was Barrel-Bill, a thick-armed brute with a scarred face and a fondness for rum. He never went anywhere without hefting a barrel on his shoulder, claiming it contained both his fortune and his doom. Most suspected it was empty, but none dared ask.

Then came Laughing Redcoat, flamboyant in a tattered scarlet jacket, with a grin as wide as the Channel. He wielded a cutlass with careless joy, and though his jokes were bad, his laugh carried across the pebbles, unnerving fishermen at dawn.

Their captain was Hook-Hand Harrigan, grim-eyed in a sea-blue coat. His iron claw clicked ominously as he muttered plans of reclaiming the sea. Some said his hook had been forged from the ironwork of the ruined West Pier.

Lurking in the shadows was Skeleton Sam, a half-dead wretch who had once been left in chains inside the cliffside caves of Kemptown. He bore the look of a revenant, bones showing through ragged clothes, always watching the tide as if waiting for some ghostly ship to return.

And finally there was Dandy Jack, a sly rogue with rings on his fingers and a sky-blue hat perched rakishly on his brow. He fancied himself a gentleman pirate, though his pistol was always primed. He had a talent for mimicry, and often mocked the mayor and council from atop the railings of Madeira Drive.

Their tale took a turn one evening many years ago when the tide receded very low, revealing the barnacled hulk of a shipwreck just east of the Palace Pier. The townsfolk gathered, whispering of treasure. Barrel-Bill declared the wreck to be theirs, ‘by the rights of piracy and the law of the sea!’ Laughing Redcoat clapped his hands with glee, Hook-Hand Harrigan sharpened his hook against the railings, Skeleton Sam let out a ghastly rattle of breath, and Dandy Jack simply grinned, tipping his hat.

But as they set upon the wreck, Brighton’s beach stirred with more than seaweed. Out from the tide crawled shapes of old sailors, long drowned, their bones glittering with salt. Skeleton Sam greeted them like kin. The others froze.

The undead sailors demanded their ship back. Harrigan stood firm, barrel raised, cutlass drawn, pistol cocked. Yet the ghosts would not fight - they demanded a trade.

So it was agreed: the pirates would guard Brighton’s beach forever, keeping watch over the pier, the pebbles, and the restless Channel, so long as the townsfolk kept their memory alive. And to this day, on windy nights, when the sea roars and the pier lights flicker, you might just glimpse Barrel-Bill’s silhouette or hear Laughing Redcoat’s laugh carried on the air.