Dying days for roundabout

These are the last days for Brighton’s very own - and rather puny - aquarium roundabout. In early January the city will begin dismantling the small circular traffic island that has shaped movement between Old Steine, Madeira Drive, Marine Parade and Grand Junction Road for more than a century. Indeed, the junction’s roots go back to the 1870s, when Brighton first turned this stretch of shoreline into a grand engineered gateway - now its removal marks the latest phase of the remodelling of Valley Gardens.

The roundabout exists because the Brighton Aquarium, designed by Eugenius Birch, required a new lower promenade, widened sea wall and reconfigured approach roads during construction in 1869-1872. Where the upper Old Steine route dropped to meet the new lower seafront road, a broad, open junction formed at the foot of Marine Parade. At first it was little more than a multi-arm meeting of roads beside the sunken aquarium building and the Chain Pier site, but it quickly became a busy node for cabs, omnibuses and, later, electric trams terminating at the Old Steine stops.

By the 1920s and 1930s rising motor traffic demanded a more formal layout. Photographs from around 1940 already show a functioning roundabout with a central island and circulating flow in front of the Royal Albion Hotel and the aquarium façade, making it one of Brighton’s earliest purpose-built gyratories. After the war it grew into a critical traffic device: the A23 arrived directly into it from London, the A259 wrapped around it along the seafront, and a further arm fed Madeira Drive. Through the 1960s and 1970s engineers widened the circle, added splitter islands, marked lanes, and eventually installed pedestrian crossings and a left-turn bypass, giving the junction the busy, vehicle-dominated form familiar for decades.

By the early 21st century it was handling buses, taxis, cyclists, heavy pedestrian flows to the Palace Pier and large volumes of seafront traffic - a complex, sometimes congested environment often cited as difficult for pedestrians and cyclists (myself included). Its future became tied to the Valley Gardens project, approved in principle in 2013 and written into the 2016 City Plan as a key site needing safer, clearer links between the Royal Pavilion, Old Steine and the beach. Phase 1 and 2 reshaped the roads north of the Steine; Phase 3, underway since late 2024, advances to the seafront itself.

The adopted design replaces the roundabout with a signal-controlled crossroads using linked ‘smart’ lights, wider pavements, continuous cycle tracks and a more legible pedestrian route to the pier. January 2026 was chosen as the quietest time of year, with overnight closures planned for roughly two weeks while the circular island and the approaches are physically removed. On site, preparatory works and signage now cover the old cobbled verge - the first visible steps in dismantling a junction that has stood since the early motor age and which has, over 150 years, evolved from a Victorian civil-engineering by-product into Brighton’s primary seafront gateway.

Sources include My Brighton and Hove.

A home for fishermen

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

In memory of the Palace Theatre

One hundred and thirty years ago - on 4 December 1896 - a violent winter storm tore through Brighton and shattered the already-condemned Royal Suspension Chain Pier, its timbers battering the under-construction Palace Pier and scattering wreckage along the seafront. The loss cleared the last obstacles to completing the new pleasure pier - and with it the Palace Pier Theatre, the end-of-the-pier playhouse that would dominate Brighton’s skyline and seaside entertainment for much of the 20th century.

The Brighton Marine Palace and Pier Company had begun work in 1891, but money and engineering problems meant the pier opened in stages. A 1,760-foot promenade deck with oriental domes and minarets welcomed its first visitors on 20 May 1899. The ‘marine palace’ proper - a large pier-head pavilion with a 1,500-seat hall ringed by dining, smoking and reading rooms - was finished in early 1901, and opened on 3 April with a concert by the Pavilion Orchestra and the town’s Sacred Harmonic Society for some 1,500 guests.

Initially more concert hall than playhouse, the pavilion was remodelled in 1910-1911 as a full theatre and café. Its Moorish exterior - arcades, minarets, a great domed roof - remained, but inside it gained raked seating, a deep stage and improved backstage areas. With around 1,300-1,500 seats looking out over a proscenium arch set above the sea, the reworked Palace Pier Theatre specialised in variety and music-hall attractions. Brighton quickly became a key date on the national circuits: both Stan Laurel and Charlie Chaplin honed early routines here before leaving for America.

From the start the pier-head building was used inventively. Alongside orchestral series and choral festivals, it was showing moving pictures by 1907. Film impresario James J. Russell secured exclusive rights in November 1909 to screen certain Kinemacolor films in Brighton, making the pier one of the town’s earliest regular cinema venues. Programmes mixed films with live variety long before that became common elsewhere, with audiences stepping straight from the promenade into songs, sketches and coloured films while the Channel rolled beneath the piles.

Between the wars the theatre settled into the classic end-of-the-pier pattern: long summer seasons, touring plays and one-week engagements testing new work. It became an important pre-London try-out house, with productions such as ‘Dr Syn’ (1926), ‘Dr Angelus’ and ‘Cosh Boy’ running here before wider tours or West End success. Legitimate drama and variety sat side by side, feeding promenade crowds into matinees and two-house nights.

The theatre closed during the Second World War, reopening in 1946 to resume summer shows. The post-war years are often remembered as its heyday. Performers’ memoirs list comedian Tommy Trinder, Elsie and Doris Waters, Dick Emery, Gertie Gitana and Gracie Fields among those appearing in pier revues or nostalgic ‘Music Hall at the Palace’ bills. Variety and panto regulars such as Bob and Alf Pearson and Nat Jackley featured in a 1973 ‘Music Hall at the Palace’ programme - one of the last surviving records of its casting. For performers like Margery Manners, the Palace Pier stage remained a prestigious stop alongside venues such as the Palladium and Liverpool’s Royal Court.

By the 1950s and 1960s the theatre followed a steady rhythm: brisk summer variety, winter and spring runs of plays and thrillers, and occasional cinema or special events. Local exhibitors, including Myles Byrne - later associated with the Brighton Film Theatre - helped run it as part of a wider circuit of cinemas and live venues. For audiences the setting was as memorable as the bill: walking out along the boards, buying a programme in the sea breeze, then stepping through Moorish arches into a plush, enclosed auditorium with the tide surging below.

The end was abrupt. In 1973 a storm tore a 70-ton barge from its moorings at the landing stage; driven by waves, it smashed into the pier-head and ripped away deck and ironwork around the theatre. Badly damaged, the building never reopened. Brighton theatre historians date its working life as 1901-1940 and 1946-1973, with the 1973 storm effectively closing it for good. When the pier was sold to the Noble Organisation in 1984, permission to remove the derelict theatre was granted on the understanding that a new one would be built. Instead, in 1986 the old auditorium was demolished and replaced by a tubular-steel geodesic ‘Pleasure Dome’ of amusement machines, the pier-head beyond filled with rides and rollercoasters - a clear shift from live performance to fairground operations.

The programme cover above is taken from Palace Pier by Albert Bullock and Peter Medcalf; and the two other images are from  Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove. Sources and more pictures: Arthur Lloyd, Brighton Pier, Wikipedia.

The Fortune of War

Tucked into the Kings Road Arches between the piers, the Fortune of War has traded in some form on the beach since the 1870s, when Louis Pagani ran a refreshment bar on the lower esplanade, serving beer straight onto the shingle. By 1882 it was firmly established as a licensed beer house in one of the new arches, part of the council’s effort to let out the lower promenade to traders who could serve Brighton’s booming excursion crowds. Early accounts describe a simple open-fronted bar with drinkers spilling across the pebbles.

The pub’s nautical identity came later. The present upturned-boat interior - the curved ribs, heavy timber and rope rails - emerged gradually through twentieth-century refits. By the post-war years the ‘ship’s-hull bar’ was already a Brighton curiosity, sitting amid fishermen’s craft, deckchair concessions and the daily bustle of the working beach. In the 1950s and 1960s it became part of a busy strip of seafront music bars remembered for accordions, drums and early rock and roll played almost on the tide line.

The pub survived later waves of nightclub competition by trading on its eccentricity and location. By the 1990s it was often described as the last true beach-side pub in Brighton, a below-deck refuge outlasting themed neighbours along Kings Road. Ownership had by then settled with the company now known as Laine Pub Company, the major local operator whose Brighton portfolio also includes several of the city’s best-known venues. Day-to-day management has been handled on site, most notably by Laurence Hill, who by 2015 had run the pub for more than six years and publicly aligned it with the local Living Wage campaign.

In 2014 the Fortune of War was forced to close temporarily after structural issues in the arches above prompted emergency engineering works to the road and promenade. It reopened with renewed emphasis on DJs, live music and seasonal outdoor service, strengthening its long-standing claim to being Brighton’s oldest beach-level pub. Its ‘beer garden’ remains the central stretch of shingle, animated from midday to late night through the summer.

As for the name Fortune of War, this comes from an old seafaring and military phrase capturing the sheer luck that governed life on campaign or at sea, a fatalistic acceptance that storms, battles, wrecks, or windfalls could change a man’s prospects overnight. Pubs with the name clustered in port towns and garrison districts from the 18th century onwards, and Brighton’s own beach-level version long traded on that heritage, its arches and terraces nodding to the hazards and hopes bound up with Channel fishing, merchant crews, and the town’s maritime identity.

Sources: Camra, The Guardian, My Brighton and Hove, Living Wage (source of the portrait above), Restaurants Brighton, and Wikipedia.

If you seek his monument . . .

Two hundred and seventy-five years ago, in 1750, Richard Russell, not yet famous, published De Tabe Glandulari, the treatise that would change both his career and the fate of Brighton. Its argument - that seawater, taken internally and externally, could treat diseases of the glands - propelled a little-known Sussex physician into national prominence. More significantly for Brighton, it directed medical attention to a town then struggling with erosion, collapsing cliff lines and a declining fishing economy. Russell’s decision to base his cure specifically on Brighton’s beach gave the town its first sustained influx of visitors.

Born in 1687, Russell studied medicine at the University of Leyden. He returned to England, practising in his home town Lewes from the 1720s. By the 1740s he had become convinced of the therapeutic power of the sea. De Tabe Glandulari was the outcome: a detailed Latin defence of marine treatment that was swiftly translated into English and circulated well beyond Sussex. It was the first substantial medical work to promote both the drinking of seawater and immersion in it, and it was unusually pointed in praising Brighthelmstone’s marine environment over inland spa cures.

Demand for Russell’s regimen soon overwhelmed his Lewes practice. By 1753 he had moved permanently to Brighthelmstone, purchasing a marshy plot on the Steine for £40 and building the town’s largest house. It had direct access to the beach, dedicated rooms for convalescents and south-facing windows intended to maximise exposure to sea air. Around it grew Brighton’s first recognisable health quarter, complete with bathing attendants, suppliers of warm seawater and the earliest stirrings of fashionable patronage. Figures of rank began appearing among his patients, giving the town a social standing it had never previously enjoyed.

Russell’s reputation rose accordingly. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1752, he became one of the most prominent provincial physicians of his generation, and his treatise passed through multiple editions. His will later required his son William to assume the surname Kempe in order to inherit family property, an unusual stipulation noted at the time. Russell died in 1759 and was buried at South Malling near Lewes. His practice was taken over by Dr Anthony Relhan, and his large house on the Steine evolved into what is now the Royal Albion Hotel. 

This hotel was very badly damaged by a fire in 2023. Of what remains, part was demolished for safety reasons, and the rest remains closed off and covered in scaffolding, Nevertheless, it’s just possible to spy the commemorative plaque for Russell which says: ‘If you seek his monument, look around.’ Brighton’s identity as a centre for sea air, convalescence and coastal recreation began with Russell and remains to this day.

For more on Russell see Wikipedia (which is also the source of the portrait above), an entry in Tim Carder’s Encyclopaedia of Brighton which can viewed online at My Brighton & Hove, and Brighton Journal. 

Deep sea angling in Hove

At the far western end of Brighton Beach, where Hove meets Portslade-by-Sea, and where the millionaires enjoy their private patches of pebbles, there’s a distinctive looking building - a Martello tower? - with shack attached. Small boats are tied up alongside, and there are notices advising one not to talk to winch operators except in an emergency. This is the Hove Deep Sea Anglers Club, well over a century old now, and going strong.

The club was founded in 1909 by a Hove policeman with the aim of enabling local residents to take small boats from the beach and fish offshore. At a time when beach-launched craft were common along the Sussex coast, the club provided a formal base for what had become a popular pastime on the Hove foreshore. Its early wooden hut, erected in 1922 on the Western Esplanade, marked the club’s first permanent home.

Over the decades, Hove Deep Sea Anglers became known not just for fishing, but for colourful camaraderie and elaborate tales. Annual dinners in the 1920s featured the reading of classic verses like the Fisherman’s Prayer, and the evening was often filled with jokes and friendly banter. One legendary member, Alderman A. W. F. Varley, was renowned for winning over fifty prizes for sailing, rowing, fishing, and even cycling, which made him something of a local celebrity.

The club has several record catches in its logbooks. The story goes that one angler landed a salmon so large that, as he recounted, ‘even I may never need to lie’. In recent memory, there have been memorable weekends where boats returned so laden with fish that spontaneous beachside barbecues erupted, with the catch turned into a feast for all. Not all adventures ended with triumph: a famous Safety First demonstration in 1933 saw the Shoreham lifeboat ‘rescue’ a boat lent by the club secretary, giving the club a moment in local lore and sending up a cheer among members for its commitment to safety and spectacle.

The club’s history includes some lively disputes, particularly with neighbouring clubs during annual competitions. Once, a neighbouring club accused Hove anglers of ‘over-baiting,’ sparking a good-natured war of words that lasted for months. Another time, the mistaken identity of the club’s circular extension - often thought to be a Martello tower but not actually built until the 1980s - became a running joke among members, with playful bets taken on how many tourists would ask about its ‘Napoleonic’ origins each summer.

In late October 1996, high winds hit the Sussex coast early in the morning, parts of the clubhouse were demolished, the roof caved in, several walls collapsed, the snooker room was levelled and the interior of the club was under two feet of water. Fortunately, so the club’s own history states, ‘the bar survived unscathed, much to the relief of the 450 members’ and the repair bill amounted to around £20,000.

Today, the club maintains a fleet of around a dozen boats, launched most weekends of the year. It stands as a long-standing landmark and one of the last reminders of the era when small-boat fishing was a prominent leisure pursuit directly connected to the beach. Alongside its angling programme, the club hosts lunches, bar events, darts and snooker leagues, poker nights and seasonal gatherings, sustaining a membership that mixes long-standing families with new recruits drawn by its maritime heritage - often lured by tales of monster catches, fierce competitions, and a touch of chaos in local lore.

Main sources: Judy Middleton’s excellent Hove in the Past, and Hove Deep Sea Anglers.

Beach hut Facebook group

At this year’s Hove Beach Hut Association AGM at the Hove Club, held a few days ago, committee member Cathy Biggs told members that the association would not run or advertise the winter open evening on 13 December because there had not been enough interest. For an event many hutters describe as a Christmas institution, the decision marks a pause in one of Hove’s most visible seafront traditions and throws a spotlight back on the group itself - what it does, how it started, and what worries its members now.

The association grew out of a sharp clash with Brighton & Hove City Council in 2018, when the council proposed a 10 per cent levy on hut sales, replacing a flat £82 charge. With Hove councillor Robert Nemeth acting as figurehead, owners organised, argued that the new ‘tax’ was unfair, and saw the plan dropped in July that year. By May 2019 they had turned that campaign into a permanent body. An AGM at the Gather Inn adopted a constitution, elected Biggs as chair and set early priorities: tackling vandalism and break-ins, lobbying on unsafe cycling on the prom, and dreaming up social events that would show huts as part of the community rather than a private enclave.

Since then the association has become a routine presence in the local affairs. Its representatives appear in West Hove Forum minutes and council reports on coastal defence schemes, licensing and the new King Alfred leisure centre, feeding back hut owners’ views on everything from lifeguard cover to the impact of new groynes and seawall works. Consultation documents on the 2024 beach-hut licence and transfer fee explicitly reference the strength of responses channelled through meetings and AGMs, confirming the association as the default body the council deals with when it wants to know what hutters think.

The public face of all this is the Facebook group, now with roughly 2,600 members. Its ‘about’ line promises ‘a place for interesting stories’ and a meeting point for anyone who cares about Hove’s iconic huts, and the feed bears that out. Owners swap recommendations for carpenters, hut painters and handymen, ask how to repaint roofs or whether to use undercoat, and dissect insurance quotes that have doubled in a year. Posts explain hut pricing in plain language - location, condition, fees already paid and the time of year - and sales come and go between Rockwater and the lagoon, often with dry comments about lampposts, loos and dog beaches. New owners ask how to fit out the tiny interiors; others advise on bolt-cutters for seized locks, or the best way to stop a door swelling tight.

But the same channel carries a steady stream of wider concerns. Hutters share links about major coastal protection and groyne projects, the King Alfred rebuild and its impact on seafront facilities, and a proposed e-scooter trial where councillors reassure them that scooters will be electronically fenced off the prom. Toilets and taps are recurring flashpoints: members complain about seafront loos opening late and closing early in high season, or taps at Rockwater and Hove Lagoon being turned off just as year-round swimmers and hutters most need them. There are posts about suspected break-ins near the lagoon and frustrations over the handover of lifeguard duties to the RNLI. Parking rows surface too, most recently around ice-cream vans driving and stopping immediately in front of huts, with councillors pointing members towards Operation Crackdown for reporting dangerous or antisocial driving.

Running through the group’s history is the winter open evening. As older members explain, it began as a church-run Advent event: one hut opening each night from 1 to 24 December, a charity effort organised by a local vicar. Rising insurance costs ended that format around the time of Covid, and hutters reinvented it as a single night in December when dozens of huts would open together, decorated and lit along the prom. Brighton & Hove News’s report on the 2022 edition described some 60 huts taking part, hundreds of visitors and collections for local and Ukraine-related charities, with association secretary Peter Revell calling it ‘quite a spectacular’. Online Advent-calendar posts of hut photos and Christmas jokes followed in later years, helping to draw in people who did not own huts at all.

Against that backdrop, this November’s AGM decision not to run or promote a 13 December evening this year feels significant. In the Facebook comments beneath Biggs’s announcement, members lament the loss and call it ‘so disappointing’ and ‘a Christmas institution’, while a few, like Sue Storey, immediately pledge to open their own huts anyway and invite neighbours to do the same. The association itself continues to field consultations, circulate petitions about the floral clock or seafront toilets, and coordinate responses to new hut fees and licence conditions. But the fate of the most visible, most joyful expression of Hove’s hut culture now depends on whether enough owners choose to go it alone on a dark December night, without the familiar banner of the association above the event’s name.

See also 161, what have you done?

Kitchener brings Tokyo to Hove

Earlier this year, a new slice of neon night appeared beside Hove Lagoon. On the seaward wall of Fatboy Slim’s Big Beach Cafe, London street artist Dan Kitchener has painted a vast rainy city scene, all umbrellas and headlights and reflections, so bright it seems to glow even on a flat grey Brighton afternoon. Walkers heading along the promenade towards the beach now pass what looks like a Tokyo crossroads in a storm, spread from pavement level almost to the eaves of the cafe building.

Kitchener’s mural shows a taxi edging through a crowded junction while pedestrians hurry across under clear plastic umbrellas. The buildings loom steeply upwards in forced perspective, their windows and signs rendered as streaks of cyan, magenta, yellow and white. The wet road is the real subject: a mirror of smeared colour where the city lights dissolve into the puddles. Up close you can see the quick, confident spray lines and splatters that create the sense of motion and rain. From a distance, the scene snaps into focus as a cinematic still, like a frame from a late night travel sequence.

The mural was commissioned and paid for by Norman Cook, Fatboy Slim, and donated to the city as a public artwork on his cafe. The Big Beach Cafe’s social media thanked him for having ‘commissioned and very generously donated this incredible piece by Dan Kitchener to the people of Brighton and Hove’, and Kitchener himself posted that he was ‘honoured to have a super colourful mural now permanently on show at the cafe’. The Argus covered the work, in late May and quoted Cook: ‘I persuaded Kitchener who was attending an event at the cafe] to stick around for a couple of days and paint a mural for us on the pristine wall of the newly refurbished toilets. Thanks to everyone who came and watched the painting of the piece, the council for giving us permission for public art, and most of all, the supremely talented Dan Kitchener for gracing our wall with his work. I think you will agree it beautifies the place.” ‘

Dan Kitchener, who signs his work ‘DANK’, was born in 1974 and grew up in Essex. He describes himself as an urban artist working mainly across London and the southeast, and has developed an instantly recognisable style of neon-lit, rain-soaked cityscapes, often based on late-night Tokyo streets. He works freehand, without projectors or stencils, building up layers of spray paint and acrylic to create the blur of headlights, reflections and crowds in motion. His murals now appear on walls in cities from Belfast and Brick Lane to Houston, Miami and Vaasa in Finland, usually at a scale that can dominate an entire building.

See also HOVE LAGOON in murals.

Domes Beneath the Waves

Here is the 19th 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. This image shows a stylised architectural scene dominated by domes and towers. The largest dome rises centrally, flanked by smaller ones, all with bulbous, onion-like shapes that evoke an exotic, palatial skyline. Vertical pillars and arch-shaped windows support the structure, while the sky behind is rendered in soft blue tones that contrast with the golden and amber hues of the domes. The whole composition has a rhythmic balance, with repeating ovals and arches giving it a sense of harmony and grandeur.

A limerick starter

A palace of domes in the sky,

Seemed built for a dream passing by;

Its minarets gleamed,

As if Brighton had dreamed

Of being a Sultan’s Versailles.

Domes Beneath the Waves (with apologies to Salmon Rushdie)

On certain evenings, when the tide withdraws like a curtain from a stage, the domes of the sea begin to rise. Tourists do not see them, of course - their eyes are fixed on the Pavilion up the road, that grand, improbable wedding cake of empire. But the locals, the old strollers of Brighton Beach, know: when the light dips and the gulls turn black against the sun, the reflection in the shallows is not a reflection at all. It is memory - architecture dreaming itself back to the sea.

A boy named Karim sells shells from an upturned ice-cream tub near the Palace Pier. He has heard his grandmother’s stories of domes that float like lanterns under the Channel, relics of the Prince’s folly that slipped from land into myth. One evening, as the beach empties and the gulls fall silent, he wades out where the surf softens into glass. The water trembles with colour - amber, sapphire, milk-white - and beneath his toes he sees, for a heartbeat, a city of gold and glass, breathing.

The domes pulse, as if the Pavilion itself is exhaling through the seabed, sending bubbles that smell faintly of cardamom and salt. Within them swirl voices - Indian servants gossiping about the mad English prince, sea-bathers laughing in the cold, a band tuning for a ball that never quite ends. Karim reaches down; the glow flickers like a lantern in wind.

Then a voice speaks - not to his ears but through his bones. We are the domes that England dreamed, it says. Half built from desire, half from guilt. When you look at us, boy, you look at both.

He blinks, and the light collapses. Only the Pavilion remains behind him, ridiculous and beautiful against the dusk - its turrets dark with evening, its minarets poking holes in the last of the sun. The sea lies flat and grey again, as if nothing has happened. But in the shallows his footprints still glow faintly, like a script written in a language the tide refuses to erase.

Groyne works due to start

Brighton and Hove Council have released further documents concerning the latest phase of the project along Kings Esplanade, Hove, to remove seven existing groynes (six concrete, one timber) and install nine new timber groynes, replenish the shingle beach with 160,000 m³ of marine-dredged material, and raise a 50-metre section of the King Alfred sea wall with reinstated heritage railings. The project forms part of the Brighton Marina to River Adur Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management (FCERM) Scheme, a partnership between Brighton & Hove City Council, Adur District Council, Shoreham Port, the Environment Agency and the Western Esplanade Management Company. See More shingle and better groynes.

The planning application, submitted 28 October 2025 by JBA Consulting for Brighton & Hove City Council, seeks to discharge conditions 4-13 of permission BH2024/02513, including biodiversity, archaeology, and intertidal survey requirements. Together these documents confirm that the Hove frontage is entering a major, environmentally-governed reconstruction phase - balancing climate-defence engineering with commitments to sustainability, ecology, and public amenity. The works - to start in December - will form part of a strategy designed to provide a 1-in-200-year standard of protection for at least fifty years, addressing sea-level rise and erosion pressures.

The Construction Environmental and Social Management Plan (Van Oord, revised 24 October 2025) outlines how the year-long build will proceed from December 2025, with the main compound on Western Lawns and a smaller ‘plant refuge’ near the Southern Water outfall. Noise and vibration will be monitored weekly, and dredged shingle pumped ashore and profiled daily to avoid overnight stockpiles. The plan identifies multiple sensitivities - residential blocks, heritage seafront architecture, bathing-water quality, marine ecology, and a buried medieval settlement - and prescribes detailed mitigation covering noise, dust, lighting, waste, fuel storage, invasive species, and archaeological protection.

An ecological baseline survey by JBA Consulting (September 2025) recorded limited species diversity typical of a high-energy shingle foreshore. Algal and invertebrate colonisation was largely confined to the lower sections of the groynes, where Ulva seaweeds, winkles and barnacles dominated, and small mussel colonies occupied gaps between planks. The report recommends using Integrated Greening of Grey Infrastructure (IGGI) features - rope wraps, honeycomb blocks, and concrete ‘Vertipools’ - to encourage marine growth and deliver biodiversity net gain in line with the Environment Act 2021. These eco-textures will be fitted to the new groynes, partly as an educational resource under the city’s Our City Our World programme.

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.’