Some 160 years go today - on 7 December 1865 - a home for fisherman on Brighton Beach was opened. The late 1850s had seen behaviour around the fishing boats become a local scandal - contemporary accounts talk about ‘quarrelling, swearing and drunkenness’ among the men in the beer-shops by the shore. A small group of philanthropists, thus, notably Montague Gore and Captain Hall, proposed a ‘Home’ where fishermen could gather warm and dry, away from the pubs.
In 1859 they took their idea to the mayor, Dr Cordy Burrows, who called a public meeting. As a result, one of the brick arches built into the cliff ‘under the parade at the bottom of Ship Street’ was rented and fitted up as the Fishermen’s Home: floored, white-washed, with a glazed entrance, heating, tables and benches, coloured prints and charts on the walls, newspapers, periodicals and a small lending library. It could hold about eighty men. Smoking was allowed, but drink and cards were banned; hot coffee was provided free to members.
To keep the men interested, the committee laid on talks and entertainments. The most important of these were Edward Jesse’s ‘Lectures on Natural History’, delivered in the Home and later published; a Victorian reviewer notes that the room was packed ‘to overflowing’ and credits Jesse’s talks with helping to shift the fishermen’s habits from the ale-house to the Home. John Ackerson Erredge’s History of Brighthelmston also notes that Jesse ‘took an active part in the establishment of the Fishermen’s Home’, and that a bust of him was later placed in the Pavilion in recognition.
The Brighton History Timeline for the 1860s includes an entry for 7 December 1865 - ‘The Fishermen’s Home on the beach is formally opened’. It is most likely this was one of the Kings Road seafront arches immediately west of the Palace Pier, at the foot of Ship Street - the same run of arches that now form the Brighton Fishing Quarter and include the Brighton Fishing Museum at 201 Kings Road Arches. Modern descriptions of the museum place it ‘within the seafront arches between the Palace Pier and the i360, at the bottom of Ship Street,’ which matches exactly the Victorian description of the Fishermen’s Home’s original arch.
Sources: Brighton Gazette 6 October 1859, Brighton Examiner 12 October 1859, Brighton Gazette 7 December 1865
John Ackerson Erredge, The History of Brighthelmston, or Brighton as I View it and Others Knew it
Lectures on Natural History; Delivered at the ‘Fisherman’s Home’ Brighton
Image (which is dated to the 1860s but does not show the home) courtesy of Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove
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