Drops and jolts

Galaxia at Brighton Palace Pier, now over 20 years old, opened in May 2004. This is a Jump & Smile style ride manufactured by the Italian firm Sartori Rides to its Techno Jump design, able to accommodate up to 42 riders per cycle. Over the years, Galaxia has become one of Brighton pier’s landmark attractions, with its rainbow-lit arms rising above the deck and blue cars spinning visitors through sudden drops and jolts while offering sea views.

Enthusiast sites and visitor blogs have described the ride as a mid-range thrill compared with the more extreme boosters on the pier, noting it as a good choice for those less keen on heights. Some riders, however, have commented on the over-shoulder harnesses being uncomfortable and the motion feeling rough compared with smoother coasters. On one fan forum it was memorably summed up as a ‘crappy coaster . . . but what a stunning location’.

In its two decades of service the ride has remained a consistent part of the pier’s fairground offer, promoted by the operators with the promise of ‘lifts, drops and spins you around at speed, so strap in, hold on and take in the views as you whizz round’. Despite the challenges of constant exposure to salt air, high winds and heavy seasonal use, Galaxia has retained its place among the pier’s most popular thrill rides, demonstrating both the durability of the Techno Jump design and its role in sustaining Brighton’s long tradition of seafront entertainment.

Other examples of Sartori’s Techno Jump model can be found at several parks and fairs worldwide, each trading under its own name. Fantasy Island in Ingoldmells, Lincolnshire, has operated a version since 2004, while Tivoli World in Benalmádena, Spain, installed one in 2005. A travelling unit owned by the Piccaluga family appeared on Clacton Pier between 2004 and 2016 before returning to the Italian fair circuit, and a larger 14-arm portable model has toured in Mexico under the name Alegre Fantasia. The same ride type is also produced by other manufacturers under titles such as Smashing Jump or Hang-Jump, but the Brighton Galaxia remains the UK’s most prominent permanent Sartori installation.

Remembering the Wheel

This week 14 years ago today - on Monday 24 October to coincide with school half-term - the Brighton Wheel formally began turning on Dalton’s Bastion, east of the Palace Pier. The privately funded, 45-metre transportable wheel - variously branded the ‘Brighton O’, the ‘Wheel of Excellence’ and simply the ‘Brighton Wheel’ - was promoted by Paramount Attractions and cost about £6m. 

Temporary planning permission, granted in April 2011, allowed operation until May 2016 and set opening hours from 10am to late evening in the East Cliff conservation area. A Highway Licence followed in August; the German-built R50-SP wheel, fresh from service at the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, was shipped to Brighton in September while foundations were laid at the seafront site.

Construction saw the partial removal and later reinstatement requirement for listed railings above the site, and sparked local debate about overlooking and heritage impact balanced against economic benefits. The finished installation had 35 standard gondolas plus a VIP pod, a stated 12-minute, three-revolution ride cycle, and typical operating hours of 10am-11pm. Promoters projected about 250,000 riders a year and said around 30 jobs would be created.

Operationally, the Wheel settled quickly into the visitor landscape as a mid-priced panoramic ride east of the pier. But its permission was explicitly time-limited and linked to plans for the i360 ‘vertical pier’ on the west seafront. (See i360 stranded sky high - with sky-high debts).
In 2015 the council rejected a request to extend the Wheel’s stay, and so it made its final rotations on 8 May 2016. Dismantling beginning that same week. The structure was advertised for sale and then put into storage, with no confirmed buyer announced locally. After closure, the site at Dalton’s Bastion was repurposed for a permanent seafront zip-wire (see The windy stairs.)

A large fairground wheel did, however, make a brief comeback: a similar but different structure was hired for the Brighton Christmas Festival in late 2021 and set up on the Old Steine. But it was the Brighton Wheel on Madeira Drive that has left an imprint on the city’s seafront story. More details can be found at Wikipedia and the Brighton Toy Museum. A defunct Brighton Wheel Facebook page can still be visited (and is the source of the night time image above). A time-lapse series of photographs of the The Rise And Fall Of The Brighton Wheel can be found on Jason Arnopps’ website.

A bad day for the Palace Pier

On this day (19 October) in 1973, the seaward head of Palace Pier was catastrophically damaged during a violent gale. A seventy-tonne barge, being used to dismantle the old landing stage, broke free amid strong westerly winds and heavy seas. Dragging its moorings, the vessel was hurled against the pier and repeatedly struck the theatre pavilion at the pier head, causing devastating structural damage - see Wikipedia and Heritage Gateway.

At the time of the incident the pier head’s construction consisted of cast-iron screw-piles supporting a lattice of steel girders and rolled-steel joists, over which wooden deck planking was laid. The theatre pavilion sat on this structure, offering seating for around 1,500 to 1,800 patrons, and was reached via a broad deck extension over the sea. The barge impact was concentrated on the theatre and its supporting ironwork, causing failure of key structural members and partial collapse of the deck immediately seaward of the pavilion. However, the helter skelter, the ‘crazy maze’, a first aid post, a telephone box, and a bar cellar were all wrecked, and 25 of the pier’s piles were smashed.

The collision unleashed debris of heavy steel girders, cast-iron columns and wooden deck planks. Some deck sections became detached and sank, while large members dangled or fell onto the beach below (see below). The damage cost was estimated in contemporaneous reports at around £100,000 (in 1973 value) for structural repairs.

Emergency response involved sealing off the pier head to the public immediately. Maintenance crews and demolition contractors worked in hazardous, wave-swept conditions to stabilise the damaged end. Temporary shores and supports were installed beneath the damaged deck. The stranded barge was subsequently re-moored and removed only after the gale abated. The landing stage, long unused, was demolished in 1975, no longer viable after the impact.

In the aftermath the theatre pavilion was never reopened; the functional use of that section shifted away from theatre and concert use towards amusement arcade and ride-based layout. The event represents a technical turning point: structural loss of the theatre and support framing accelerated the pier’s transformation in use and reinforced the vulnerability of marine-based structures to drift-load impacts in gale conditions.

The images above have been taken from a striking video freely available on YouTube - The Storm of 1973 That Ravaged Brighton Pier by Tom Goes Nomad. Here is one viewer’s (@phaasch) comment on the video: ‘Wonderful feature, with some brilliant photographs. I remember all this so well. I was 13 at the time. The day after the storm, the beach all the way to Black Rock was a mass of wreckage, mostly pitch pine decking, silver painted onion domes, and bits of Moorish arches. It was a pitiful sight amongst the grey and the spray. But it was rebuilt, and I remember going into the theatre auditorium just once, and being knocked out by its beauty. The seats were dark blue plush, the decorations gilt and white.

But the worst thing was the coming back. One winter’s afternoon in 1986 I drove down from London with a girlfriend. I wanted to show her the town where I grew up. As we came along Marine Parade, the Pier came into view, and the theatre had gone. Vanished. No one ever said where to, just gone. I know we later sat on the beach in the dying yellow light of December, and I felt part of my childhood slip away. The rest of Brighton followed, bit by bit, over the coming years. Its an alien place, now.’

New Hove beach huts

Brighton & Hove City Council has just received a planning application to install ten new beach huts on the Western Esplanade, directly south of Hove Lagoon. According to the application form, the huts will match the style of the long lines already seen on Hove promenade, but fill in gaps between them. The council proposes to purchase them from Kairos Global, a company which trialled a seasonal set of huts on Kings Esplanade near the Meeting Place café - see New temp beach huts for renting. Once installed, the new huts will be sold on the open market to Brighton & Hove residents.

The block and location plans show the huts arranged in a row against the seawall overlooking the lagoon. Each hut is to be built in timber with shiplap panelling, measuring just under two metres wide by nearly three metres deep, with inward-opening doors and a simple pitched roof. The site occupies an 80 square metre strip of promenade, filling empty gaps between existing huts, extending the continuous line westwards.

The project will add about 30 square metres of new non-residential floorspace under the category of local community use. No parking spaces, access changes or services are required, and no trees or hedgerows will be affected. A wildlife screening check flagged that the development lies near sensitive coastal habitats and within 10 km of several Sites of Special Scientific Interest. It advised that surveys by a qualified ecologist may be required for species such as bats, birds, amphibians and invertebrates. However, the applicant (the council itself) argued that biodiversity net gain requirements do not apply, since no habitat will be impacted and the scale falls below the threshold.

The council will review consultation responses before making a decision. If planning application BH2025/02164 is approved, the huts will expand Hove’s tradition of brightly painted chalets further west along the seafront, linking with the leisure uses of the lagoon and its watersports centre. See also Brighton and Hove News.

Just opened - Quarters

Brighton’s newest music venue - Quarters - opened on the last weekend of September, taking over a number of beach front arches below Kings Road, the same space, in fact, which had housed several incarnations over the years, from the legendary Zap Club in the 1980s, through Digital and finally The Arch (see Raving and misbehaving).

Quarters arrives under the control of A Man About A Dog, the London-based promoters behind Junction 2, LWE, Boundary Festival and The Prospect Building in Bristol. They have also partnered with Ghostwriter to programme live acts, ensuring that the new venue will not depend solely on DJs but will mix live music with electronic nights.

The Arch’s two main rooms have been reworked into one expansive dance floor, centred on a 360-degree DJ booth. A bespoke L-Acoustics A15 surround sound system has been installed, along with a fresh lighting philosophy that aims to support rather than distract. Seating and chill-out areas have been incorporated, while the promoters talk about a two-phase rebuild that will continue into 2026. In its own publicity, Quarters is not simply a rebrand but a transformation of the space, intended to put Brighton back on the national map for electronic and live music - see also its Facebook page. 

Quarters opened on Friday 26 September with Rossi  headlining and followed on the Saturday by Shy FX. In the weeks ahead names on the bill include DJ EZ, Jyoty, Laurent Garnier, Pendulum, Todd Terje, Andy C, Bou, D.O.D, Everything Everything, Neffa-T and Crazy P. The programme is deliberately broad, mixing house, techno and drum & bass with live bands, and setting out to build long sets, inclusivity and local collaboration into its identity. Tickets are being structured with some allocations as low as five pounds, another gesture towards building a new community around the arches.

Bombing the Grand

This day in 1984 Brighton endured its worst tragedy since the Second World War. In the early hours of 12 October, the Grand Hotel on the seafront was ripped apart by an IRA bomb planted with the intention of assassinating Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and members of her cabinet during the Conservative Party conference. Five people were killed, more than thirty injured, and the blast left one of the city’s great Victorian landmarks deeply.

The Grand, often described as a ‘palace by the sea’, had been one of Brighton’s most distinguished hotels for more than a century. Designed by John Whichcord Jr and opened in 1864, it was built for the wealthy visitors who flocked to the seaside and boasted innovations such as a hydraulically powered lift - the first of its kind outside London. Over the decades it had hosted royalty, politicians and celebrities, standing as a symbol of elegance and prosperity above the shingle beach - see more history at Wikipedia.

At 2:54 am on 12 October 1984, the device planted by Patrick Magee exploded behind the bath panel of room 629, three weeks after he had checked in under a false name. Thatcher and her husband Denis escaped unharmed, but Norman Tebbit and his wife were among those gravely injured, Margaret Tebbit left paralysed for life. The blast tore through several floors of the building, bringing down stairwells and a chimney stack weighing several tons, while police, fire crews and volunteers fought to pull survivors from the rubble.

Despite the devastation, Thatcher insisted that the conference continue. By morning she stood before delegates to declare that the government would not be deflected by terrorism. The Grand closed for two years of reconstruction and reopened in 1986, but the bombing has remained central to its story. For Brighton, it was the single darkest peacetime event since the Blitz, eclipsing any of the fires, accidents or local disasters the city had endured in the postwar decades. (See also an excerpt from Rory Carroll’s book, Killing Thatcher.)

As for the beach directly opposite, there is no evidence it was formally closed. Accounts recall onlookers gathering along the promenade and sea wall to witness the scene and the rescue effort. The beach itself, calm and indifferent beneath the autumn dawn, provided a stark contrast to the chaos above, a silent backdrop to one of the most shocking moments in Brighton’s modern history.

The 1907 postcard of The Grand is used courtesy of Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove; and the other two images are taken from Wikipedia.

From Bing Crosby to feminism!

On the evening of this day in 1977, Bing Crosby, then 74 and one of the most famous entertainers of the twentieth century, stepped onto the stage of the brand-new Brighton Centre. He had sold hundreds of millions of records, starred in over 70 films, and his relaxed crooning voice had defined an era - indeed Wikipedia calls him the world’s first multimedia star. The Brighton concert, just days before his sudden death in Spain, turned out to be his final public performance.

The Brighton Centre had opened - in prime position opposite the beach - only three weeks earlier. Designed by Russell Diplock & Associates, it rose in raw concrete and glass on the seafront, part of the city’s drive to secure conference trade and off-season visitors. From the start, though, it divided opinion. Admirers pointed to the steady flow of business it brought and the way it kept hotels and restaurants busy year-round, while detractors complained bitterly about its bulk, its brutalist lines and the loss of the older buildings cleared to make way for it. 

Despite the controversy, the Brighton Centre quickly established itself as one of the country’s premier venues - Crosby was only one of many famous names who performed there: Queen played in 1979, The Who thundered through the same year, and Bob Marley brought the Uprising Tour in 1980. The Jam chose it for their farewell concert in December 1982. And it has been as prominent in the political world as it has been among musical artistes: for decades, the venue has welcomed party political conferences transforming the city into a temporary seat of national debate.

Today, almost half a century on, the centre is hosting the FiLiA Women’s Rights Conference 2025. Some 2,400 delegates and more than 250 speakers are expected with the aim of discussing women’s rights, global feminism, violence against women, health, migration and related topics. Apparently some topics are controversial: outside, in the streets, there have been protests: a trans-led direct action group calling itself Bash Back claimed responsibility for smashing windows and spraying graffiti. It is accusing the conference of hosting ‘some of the most vicious transphobia in pop politics’. (See BBC News for more.)

Likely delays to arches work

Work to restore the first 27 arches of Madeira Terrace is now unlikely to finish by summer 2026, as originally hoped (see Progress on the Madeira arches), after testing revealed that a small number of cast-iron elements failed initial stress tests, prompting further investigation. J.T. Mackley & Co, the contractor appointed by Brighton & Hove City Council, began work last November, and the council had anticipated public use by summer 2026. 

Earlier this week Mackley’s contract manager, Mike Clegg, spoke at a public meeting (see Brighton and Hove News). There have been some issues with cast iron strengths not coming up to strength, he said, meaning ‘further testing and potentially strengthening up of those items’ is required. Although tests on two columns this week had been ‘very promising’, he admitted that the testing process is now currently out of sequence. He estimated that 10 to 20 percent of the cast-iron elements have been tested so far, and the team remains hopeful that all can be restored rather than replaced. 

The wall repairs, initially beset by a failed reattachment method, are concluding this week, he said, after the adoption of an alternative technique that proved quicker and cheaper. Meanwhile, work on the new lift is progressing smoothly: the ramp, part of its hydraulic mechanism, has been delivered to site, and piling work is underway. He added that the laundry room in the wall (see Return of the laundry arch), formerly used as a sound studio and once connected to a hotel, has been cleared, including the removal of asbestos, to permit safety inspections by highways.

In the weeks ahead, some cast-iron elements will be returned for reassembly. The restored stretch is being designed so that empty bays on either side act as buffers, in case adjacent unrestored sections collapse. Councillor Julie Cattell said that a stakeholder meeting will be held to decide future commercial use of the restored arches, which will be fitted with electricity. The council’s project manager Abigail Hone noted the next phase of restoration may depend on funding, and highlighted that the cost to restore the 27 bays now stands at £12.1 million, with the Royal Terrace steps and two adjacent bays already quoted at £2 million.

At the end of the Brighton and Hove News article, a commenter under the name ClareMac wrote: ‘Quelle surprise – delays! Councillor comments also make clear that commercialisation of the terraces is at the heart of the council’s plans, not heritage.’

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.

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.

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.

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 starlings have gone mad

Today marks the 16th anniversary of the publication of The Death of Bunny Munro - Nick Cave’s darkly comic novel partly set in Brighton. One particular passage focuses on the burning down of the West Pier.

Cave, an Australian singer, songwriter, novelist and screenwriter, has been closely associated with Brighton since the early 2000s. Having lived for years in Hove with his wife Susie Bick and their children, Cave was often seen around the city and became a familiar if sometimes reclusive presence. 

Brighton has figured in both his music and his fiction: he wrote and recorded albums here, and its seafront and piers became woven into The Death of Bunny Munro. His time in the city was also marked by personal tragedy, most notably the death of his son Arthur in 2015, after which Cave and his family later relocated to London and Los Angeles.

The Death of Bunny Munro, published on 8 September 2009, follows the disintegrating life of a Brighton-based door-to-door cosmetics salesman. Bunny, a compulsive womaniser and alcoholic, is left to care for his young son after his wife’s suicide. As he spirals into chaos, his grotesque behaviour and addictions clash with moments of tenderness toward his child. The novel mixes bleak comedy, surreal imagery and local detail, casting Brighton in a lurid and unsettling light. Here is one extract from the book.

Bunny . . . says, ‘Libby, baby, where do we live?’

‘Brighton.’

‘And where is Brighton?’ he says, running a finger along the row of miniature bottles of liquor arranged on the bedside table and choosing a Smirnoff.

‘Down south.’

‘Which is about as far away from “up north” as you can get without falling into the bloody sea. Now, sweetie, turn off the TV, take your Tegretol, take a sleeping tablet—shit, take two sleeping tablets—and I’ll be back tomorrow. Early.’

‘The pier is burning down,’ says Libby.

‘What?’

‘The West Pier, it’s burning down. I can smell the smoke from here.’

‘The West Pier?’

Bunny empties the tiny bottle of vodka down his throat, lights another cigarette, and rises from the bed. The room heaves as Bunny is hit by the realisation that he is very drunk. With arms held out to the side and on tiptoe, Bunny moonwalks across the room to the window. He lurches, stumbles and Tarzans the faded chintz curtains until he finds his balance and steadies himself. He draws them open extravagantly and vulcanised daylight and the screaming of birds deranges the room. Bunny’s pupils contract painfully as he grimaces through the window, into the light. He sees a dark cloud of starlings, twittering madly over the flaming, smoking hulk of the West Pier that stands, helpless, in the sea across from the hotel. He wonders why he hadn’t seen this before and then wonders how long he has been in this room, then remembers his wife and hears her say, ‘Bunny, are you there?’

‘Yeah,’ says Bunny, transfixed by the sight of the burning pier and the thousand screaming birds.

‘The starlings have gone mad. It’s such a horrible thing. Their little babies burning in their nests. I can’t bear it, Bun,’ says Libby, the high violin rising.

The photograph of the West Pier above is credited to Terry Applin and can be found at The Argus.

The Crazy Mouse

This year marks a quarter of a century since the Crazy Mouse first arrived on Brighton Pier. Installed in 2000 by Reverchon of France, it quickly established itself as a landmark attraction, standing at the seaward end with its tangled lattice of track and sharp hairpin bends visible from the promenade and beach.

The ride’s distinctive appeal has always been its unpredictability. Four-person cars spin freely as they negotiate sudden drops and tight corners, so no two rides are quite the same. A generation of families, teenagers and day-trippers have been thrown backwards, sideways or forwards around its upper levels, the element of chance making the Crazy Mouse as lively and chaotic as its name suggests.

Over the years, Brighton Pier’s amusements have changed repeatedly, with new thrill rides introduced and old favourites taken down, but the Crazy Mouse has endured. Its survival for 25 years makes it now one of the pier’s oldest attractions, the illuminated yellow sign as recognisable as the helter-skelter or the carousel. Other rides have made headlines - such as a 2004 fine after a different coaster was found operating with a missing track section, or a 2019 incident on the Air Race - but the Crazy Mouse has run without serious incident, testament to its durability and design.

As Brighton Palace Pier continues to balance Victorian heritage with modern amusements, the Crazy Mouse holds its place as both a crowd-pleasing roller coaster and a slice of seaside history. A quarter of a century on, it remains what it was in 2000: noisy, unpredictable, and irresistibly fun.

Rayner on the beach

Found on the beach: Angela Rayner! The Daily Mail has published photographs of Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, drinking wine on the beach at Hove and of the Victorian seafront street where she is said to own a flat. The paper described ‘the tawdry saga of Angela Rayner’s £40,000 Stamp Duty dodge over her luxury seaside apartment’ and suggested it deserved the nickname ‘Hovegate’. It claimed the story began when a café-goer spotted her distinctive red hair on the shingle, her appearance made all the more striking by a ‘camouflage’ coat with pink trim.

Rayner, born in Stockport in 1980, Rayner left school at sixteen while pregnant, trained as a care worker, and rose through the union movement before being elected MP for Ashton-under-Lyne in 2015. She became deputy leader of the Labour Party in 2020 and has since established herself as one of Westminster’s most recognisable and outspoken figures.

The Hove flat, bought for around £800,000 in May, drew controversy after Rayner admitted underpaying stamp duty by about £40,000. She said she had relied on legal advice that the property could be treated as her primary residence, having placed her share of a Manchester home into trust for her disabled son. Subsequent guidance showed the higher rate for second homes applied, and she has since contacted HMRC to settle the difference and referred herself to the independent ethics watchdog.

The row intensified yesterday when the Hove property was vandalised, with graffiti branding Rayner a ‘tax evader’ sprayed on walls and boards nearby (see Brighton and Hove News). The attack was condemned by both Downing Street and Labour as unacceptable and unjustifiable. 

For Brighton and Hove, the controversy adds another link between its seafront and national politicians. James Callaghan once kept a flat on the promenade, Norman Tebbit lived in Hove and was injured in the Grand Hotel bombing, and Caroline Lucas has long represented the city from her home nearby. And, of course, politicians of all colours come to the seafront regularly for their party conferences - indeed Rayner won’t have far to go next time the Labour Party Conference is held at the Brighton Centre.

Goodwyn’s Rental and The Old Ship

Three hundred and sixty years ago today, a surveyor named Goodwyn compiled a rental for the town of Brighthelmstone. Known ever since as Goodwyn’s Rental, it is the earliest surviving document to give a detailed account of property ownership along the seafront. Most significantly, it records the Old Ship, a tavern that stood directly on the beach and would later become Brighton’s first great hotel. Owned then by Richard Gilham, the Ship was already well established enough to be recognised in this roll of holdings.

Goodwyn’s Rental rental, dated 30 August 1665, lists some two hundred and twenty properties, covering the length of the town from east to west, but it is those facing the sea that now seem the most evocative. The shingle was not yet hemmed in by groynes or promenades, but the Ship looked south across open water much as it does today, and its mention shows how the town’s fortunes were already tied to the beach. By setting down ownerships and tenancies, Goodwyn’s Rental provides a snapshot of Brighton before the later century’s storms and rebuilding, an early record of the way houses and taverns clustered against the cliff line.

The document is also remarkable for what it says about leisure. Among the listings is reference to a bowling green, providing rare evidence of organised recreation in seventeenth-century Brighton. This was no rustic farming village but a town where visitors and townspeople alike could spend their hours in play. The inclusion of such a facility underlines the breadth of life the surveyor was attempting to capture, not only houses and yards but amenities that gave the town its character.

Read today, Goodwyn’s Rental is more than an account of land and rent. It fixes Brighton’s early connection to its shoreline, records the first great beachfront inn, and reveals that even in 1665 entertainment was part of the town’s appeal. The Old Ship would grow in renown, the bowling green would have successors, and the beachfront would become the defining edge of the town. In its dry listings of tenants and properties, Goodwyn’s Rental holds within it the beginnings of Brighton’s story as a place shaped by the sea and enjoyed for its pleasures.

I’ve used the earliest image of The Old Ship I can find, from A Peep into the Past: Brighton in Olden Time with Glances at the Present by John George Bishop, freely available to read online at Internet Archive. And the image of Goodwyn’s Rental comes from The Keep’s Facebook page.

The Hotel Avocado

On this day a year ago, the comedian Bob Mortimer published his second novel The Hotel Avocado. The book is rooted firmly in Brighton, with much of the action revolving around a fictional seafront hotel in Hove distinguished by a giant avocado sculpture outside its doors. Mortimer’s Brighton is a place of seaside hotels, bus stops, eccentric neighbours and surreal detail, a backdrop that frames his off-beat comic sensibility.

Robert Renwick Mortimer, born in 1959, is best known as one half of the comedy duo Vic and Bob. Raised in Middlesbrough, he studied law before turning to performance, eventually creating Vic Reeves Big Night Out, Shooting Stars and Gone Fishing. Though he lives in Kent, Mortimer has long used Brighton as a location in his fiction, and in The Hotel Avocado it becomes the centre of his comic universe.

The novel - published by Gallery Books and a sequel to his debut The Satsuma Complex - follows Gary Thorn, a diffident solicitor from Peckham. His girlfriend Emily has inherited and is attempting to renovate a Brighton hotel. Gary is caught between his safe but dull life in London - sharing pies and walks with his elderly neighbour Grace and her dog Lassoo - and the pull of Emily’s Brighton Beach project. Matters become more fraught when he crosses paths with the threatening Mr (or Clive) Sequence, who is intent on silencing Gary in a corruption trial. Meanwhile, Emily wrestles with planners over the proposed avocado statue, Gary’s friends embark on ever stranger schemes, and Mortimer shifts the narration through multiple unlikely voices, from Emily to a pigeon.

From the opening chapter of The Hotel Avocado; picture above is by ChatGPT.

‘If you’ve never heard of the Hotel Avocado, then you are way behind me. Miles back, in fact. If you have heard of it, then well done you, but don’t go getting all pumped up about it because I’ve actually seen it. I see it most days. Sometimes from the pavement as I walk past, sometimes from the bus stop opposite when I’m having my lunch. To be honest, I’ll take any vantage point I can. I’m not fussy like some people. There is a chance that you’re someone that has seen it for yourself, in which case we are #equals. Better still, of course, you might be someone who has been inside or even stayed at the hotel. If that’s the case, then I have to concede that you are an Avocado scholar compared to me. Yes, I’ve glanced through the front door and some of its windows (so I’d want credit for that), but I’ve never set a foot over its threshold. That would be the dream. Maybe one day.

For those who are coming to it all ignorant and innocent, let me add some paint to the picture. The hotel is second from the end of a long terrace of hotels and apartment buildings directly facing the sea on the promenade of my town called Brighton on the south coast of England.

It’s a big five-storey Victorian stuccoed building painted a yellowy magnolia and nestled between two identically designed buildings: the Royal Hotel to the left and the Hove View Apartments on the end plot to the right . . . You can forget those two places as far as I’m concerned; it’s the Avocado that steals the show. For one, its windows are always clean, but listen to this (and apologies if you are one of the people who has seen the place): on the front of the hotel is a huge (five metres tall), sliced in half, avocado sculpture.’