Brighton Beach - western end

Walk westward along the pebbles of Brighton Beach, past the piers and the i360, and you will eventually reach a somewhat rusty metal fence barring your way - marking the western end of the public beach (see also How long is Brighton Beach). It’s not impossible to climb over the fence, or walk around at lower tide times, but a tatty blue sign announces it is a ‘Private Beach’ and asks whoever happens to reach the railings to ‘Please kindly respect our privacy’. You can see the backs of the much-extended and windowed terrace of expensive houses stretching towards Shoreham, with the power station chimney in the far distance.

The houses here at the western end - all actually closer to the sea than any other residences along Brighton Beach - have long since been nicknamed Millionaire’s Row, though their postal address is Western Esplanade. Originally termed Aldrington Beach Bungalows, the area comprised simple seaside retreats. By the 1920s, these properties were officially designated as Hove Seaside Villas. Unlike typical public seafronts, they were developed on private land, featuring a private road and unique access to private beaches down to the low water mark - a distinction that sets them apart from most other coastal properties. The privilege was later formalised through legal agreements, and these were further solidified with the council in 1984.

Western Esplanade has been (and/or still is) home to numerous celebrities and prominent figures: Fatboy Slim (Norman Cook), Zoe Ball, Adele, Paul McCartney and Heather Mills, comedian David Walliams, and actor Nick Berry. A few properties have changed hands in recent years confirming the Millionaire’s Row tag: 4 Western Esplanade sold for £3.25 in 2022, 2a Western Esplanade sold for £1.5m in 2023, and 8 Western Esplanade sold for £2.9m last year.  

These beach houses are set to benefit from a major £35m project - Brighton Marina to River Adur Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management Scheme - involving Adur District Council, Shoreham Port, the Environment Agency, and the Western Esplanade Management Company (acting for the Millionaire’s Row owners).  See also Brighton and Hove News.

The scheme is aimed at enhancing coastal defences along the 10km stretch between Brighton Marina and the River Adur with the primary goal of mitigating the risks posed by climate change and rising sea levels to residential houses (i.e. Millionaire’s Row) and commercial properties (including Shoreham Sewage Pumping Station and Shoreham Power Station) along the coastline. It involves constructing rock revetments, repairing and strengthening flood walls and defences (some 15,000 tonnes of granite rocks to be heaped on the beach), replacing inadequate structures, and installing new timber groynes.

Coming soon: Brighton Beach - eastern end

200, 100, 80, or 8 billion?

Time, I thought this morning, to consider how many pebbles there are on Brighton Beach. I decided to make my own calculation before doing any online research or employing my AI friends.

This is how I did it. 

The beach is four miles long, lets say 6.5km - see How long is Brighton Beach

At the lowest tides, there is widespread sand, so this provides a boundary to the seaward edge of the beach and to the depth of pebbles onshore.

The width of the beach at low tide might average out along the length at, say 50m; and the depth of the pebbles might vary from 0 (at lowest tides) to, say, 10 metres - making an average depth of pebbles to be 5 metres.

The total volume of pebbles therefore is 6,500 x 50 x 5.

Average size of a single pebble. This is more difficult. The pebbles vary from shingle to fist-sized. So I’ll make two calculations, one based on large average pebble size, 0.04 m cubed (0.000064), and one based on a lower pebble size, 0.02 m cubed (0.000008).

Using the large pebble size I calculate the total number of pebbles at 25,390,625,000 i.e roughy 25 billion; using the small pebble size I get 203,125,000,000 i.e. roughly 200 billion.

Next I went to Perplexity, which gave me this calculation.

Beach volume: 6,400 m (length) x 50 m (width) x 1 m (depth) = 320,000 cubic meters,

Volume of a single pebble: (4/3) x π x (0.01 m)³ ≈ 0.000004189 cubic meters,

Estimated number of pebbles: 320,000 / 0.000004189 ≈ 76.4 billion,

Therefore, it says, a reasonable estimate for the number of pebbles would be in the range of 70-80 billion.

And to ChatGPT

The beach is about 5.5 km (5500 m) long.

The average width of the pebble-covered area is around 50 m.

The average depth of pebbles is 0.5 m.

Pebbles are packed with an estimated 50 percent void space (air gaps).

The average size of a pebble is around 2 cm in diameter, meaning each pebble takes up roughly 8 cubic cm (0.000008 cubic meters).

Total volume of pebbles: 5500 × 50 × 0.5=137500

Adjusting for void space: 137500 × 0.5=68750 of actual pebbles

Number of pebbles: 68750 ÷ 0.000008 = 8,593,750,000

And, finally, I did a quick search of the Argus website where I found an article dating back to 1999 about Dr Cornwell, 63-year-old physics lecturer, who had estimated the total number of pebbles as 100 billion. ‘It would take,’ he said ‘one man about 2,500 years counting at one a second to add them all up.’ He also noted, the article said, that there are ten trillion times as many atoms in a pebble as there are pebbles on Brighton Beach!

In summary, my highest estimate is 200 billion, a scientist’s calculation is 100 billion, and two AI’s give respectively 80 and 8 billion. Clearly, much depends on the original assumptions, particularly of average pebble volume and pebble depth. But 200 billion is a mind-boggling number.

By way of trying to visualise the number 200 billion here are some comparisons.

- If you laid £1 coins end-to-end, 200 billion coins would stretch for over 1,800,000 miles, nearly 75 times around the Earth.

- If you stacked £1 coins, the pile would reach over 13,000 miles high, almost halfway to the moon.

- 200 billion is a number comparable to the number of stars in a galaxy.

161, what have you done?

Strolling along the wide Hove esplanade is always a pleasure. This morning, there was a roaring wild sea on the one side, with many a pebbles having been thrown up on the walkway, scattered, and of course the uniformly aligned and very colourful beach huts on the other. It’s hard not to notice that despite a rainbow selection of colours on the doors, there’s little in the way of pattern. All doors are either a single colour or have vertical stripes of varied or less varied colours. 

However, I found one exception this morning - beach hut 161. My immediate thought was - what have you done? Yes, it has stripes, but there’s another pattern going on too. Is that a selection of coloured pebbles scattered across the stripes, trying to organise themselves into vertical lines, trying hard to comply with the rules?

Brighton & Hove Council, of course, has a regulation on the look of beach huts. Pre-2021, they all had to be exactly the same colour, but the rules were changed so that now the roof and upper sides must be painted in a specific turquoise colour, while the Plinth and lower sides must be painted in a specific red colour. Doors, however, can be painted in any single solid colour or vertically striped in multiple colours. Good luck 161, in your endeavours to fit in and yet not fit in.

Meanwhile, it you are thinking of getting your hands on a Hove beach hut, you would probably need to pay upwards of £20,000, that’s if you can find any for sale. Moreover, there’s an annual license fee currently standing at around £500, and a transfer fee which has recently increased to 10% of the sale price or four times the annual licence fee, whichever is higher. Renting could be an option but that would cost you £1,731.89 annually!

How long is Brighton Beach?

Before I go any further with this blog, I need to define exactly what I mean by Brighton Beach, and what I see as its extent, both east and west. I thought this would be a quick, easy task, but not so. How long, for example, is Brighton Beach? Or should I be asking how long is Brighton & Hove Beach? ChatGPT tells me 1.8 miles for the first question, 8.5 miles for the second. Perplexity also answers the second question as around 8 miles but gives me 4-5.6 miles for the first. Brighton & Hove City Council (via Google) gives me 4 miles for the second question.

Part of the problem is that the coastline within the boundaries of Brighton & Hove City stretches from Rottingdean in the east to a little way along Southwick Beach (which is mostly in Shoreham). As the crow flies along the coast, that’s 8 miles. But a first problem arises because Rottingdean is rarely referred to as part of Brighton since, geographically, it is separated by countryside. Moreover, the coast between Rottingdean and Brighton is all rocky with access along an undercliff promenade. To my mind, none of that stretch can be included in any definition of Brighton Beach.

So, for me, Brighton Beach starts beyond the west side of the Marina at the place historically called Black Rock. Going west along the pebbles, Brighton Beach certainly continues as far as the historic boundary with Hove, at the Peace Statue. That’s just over 2 miles. 

A further nearly 2 miles west brings us to a natural end to the beach at Hove Lagoon, at the far end of the Hove gardens and esplanade. Yes, this stretch can legitimately be called Hove Beach, but I take the view that it can also be considered part of Brighton Beach. 

Thus - and the council was right - the length of Brighton Beach (that I will cover in this blog) is 4 miles, from Black Rock to Hove Lagoon. (Just west of the lagoon, by the way, is Millionaires Row, a select group of large houses that - very unusually - have their own private beach. Beyond them, to the west is the often deserted Southwick Beach sandwiched between Shoreham Harbour and the sea. Confusingly, the eastern end is within the borders of Brighton & Hove City, though it is managed by Shoreham Port.)

I’ve lived in Brighton for nearly 20 years but never known (till researching this article) that the beach is divided up into about 20 sections each with their locality name. I don’t believe they are used very often, and they may well change from time to time. Nevertheless, here’s a list of the beach sections as best I could determine, moving west from Hove lagoon. 

Boundary: Located near the western boundary of Hove, this area marks the transition from Hove to Portslade.

Norfolk: Close to Norfolk Square.

Bedford: Near Bedford Square, associated with the site of the historic Bedford Hotel.

Metropole: Around the Hilton Brighton Metropole Hotel.

Grand: Adjacent to The Grand Brighton Hotel, a key landmark.

Centre: Central, encompassing the busiest stretch of the seafront.

King’s: Associated with King’s Road, running parallel to the beach.

Old Ship: Near the historic Old Ship Hotel.

Palace Pier: Centered around the Brighton Palace Pier.

Aquarium: Near Sea Life Brighton, just east of the Palace Pier.

Volk’s: Along the route of Volk’s Electric Railway.

Albion: Possibly related to the Albion area or nearby landmarks.

Athina: Named after local businesses or landmarks in this area.

Paston: Around Paston Place and Madeira Terraces.

Banjo: Named after the Banjo Groyne, east of the central areas.

Duke’s: Associated with Duke’s Mound and nearby eastern beach sections.

Cliff: Designated nudist beach, near the cliffs.

Crescent: Refers to a quieter section of the beach near the eastern end.

Black Rock: The easternmost section, near Brighton Marina.