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.

Brighton Speed Trials

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

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

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

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

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

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!

Guest: Anzac’s Brighton Beach, Gallipoli

On the Gallipoli Peninsula in north-west Turkey, there is a beach whose name echoes far from home. Known to soldiers of the First World War as Brighton Beach, it lies on a long curve of sand between the headland of Gaba Tepe and the narrow inlet of Anzac Cove. The name was never official but it stuck, a reminder of how men carried fragments of familiar landscapes into the most alien of settings. More than a century later the shoreline is quiet, its role in the campaign less famous than other places nearby, but it remains part of the story of Gallipoli.

To get there, walk south from Shrapnel Valley Cemetery, rejoin the main beach road and follow it for approximately half a kilometre. Ahead stretches the promontory of Gaba Tepe, and to your right lies the shoreline the ANZAC troops called Brighton Beach - originally designated ‘Z Beach’. In The Story of Anzac, Charles Bean recorded that the 3rd Australian Infantry Brigade - the intended Covering Force - was to land here on 25 April 1915 and advance inland to strategic ridges. But as history shows, the actual landings occurred further to the north.

The terrain facing inland from Brighton Beach was noticeably flatter and less rugged than the dramatic cliffs around North Beach and ANZAC Cove. It’s widely accepted that had the troops landed here, casualties would have been higher: the Turkish guns at Gaba Tepe and artillery further back at a location later nicknamed the ‘Olive Grove’ posed a grave threat to any incoming forces.

In the days following the initial landings, Brighton Beach became something of a logistical backwater. Under heavy shelling and sniper fire, men occasionally risked the water there, drawn to its relative serenity as a swimming area. A stores depot emerged at the mouth of Shrapnel Gully, heaped with supplies and hidden behind stacks of crates, timber, barbed wire and engineering stores. The Indian Mule Cart Company also established base here, transporting supplies inland under hazardous conditions. In one extraordinary incident on 22 May 1915, a white flag appeared at Gaba Tepe opposite Brighton Beach - prompting soldiers to improvise a truce using a beach towel raised as a flag.

Today, Brighton Beach stands in peaceful contrast to its wartime past. The shoreline is open and inviting, framed by gentle slopes and the distant headland of Gaba Tepe. Visitors can walk the same coast road used by soldiers and pause where stores once piled high against the dunes. It is now one of the few officially sanctioned swimming spots on the peninsula, a place where locals and travellers cool off in summer. Families picnic on the sand, tour buses stop nearby, and signs mark the site’s historic associations. The water is clear, the beach is quiet, and apart from the occasional memorial plaque there is little to suggest the noise and danger that once dominated this tranquil corner of the Dardanelles.

Ace Cafe Reunion

The Ace Cafe Reunion returned to Brighton today, bringing thousands of bikers to Madeira Drive for a spectacle that has become one of the city’s most distinctive annual gatherings. The event began in 1994 when Ace Cafe London, a legendary biker hangout on the North Circular, marked its rebirth after decades of closure by organising a ride-out to the seafront. Since then, every September, the Ace Cafe Reunion has seen riders thunder down from the capital to the coast, recreating the Rocker spirit of the 1950s and 60s.

The Ace itself first opened in 1938 as a transport cafe serving lorry drivers, but its position beside a major arterial road made it a natural magnet for motorcyclists. After the war, it became synonymous with Rockers, leather jackets, jukeboxes and the rise of teenage rebellion. Racing from cafe to cafe along the North Circular became notorious, and when the Ace closed in 1969, it passed into legend. Its relaunching in 1994, and the annual Brighton ride-out, cemented its place in modern motorcycling culture. (The three Harley-Davidsons parked on the pavement in the photo above are: yellow on left - Street Glide/Electra Glide; green in middle - Softail Fat Bob; and red on right - Sportster trike conversion.)

Madeira Drive has long been associated with motor events, from the 1905 Brighton Speed Trials to Mods and Rockers in the 1960s - see Mods and Rockers clash in the 60s. The reunion has sometimes stirred memories of those rivalries, especially when police have warned about antisocial riding or unofficial late-night gatherings spilling over. But the day itself is now an organised celebration, complete with trade stands, live music, and bikes of every possible make and style lined up along the seafront.

Quirky traditions abound. It is said that the first year’s Brighton run ended with bikes parked so tightly on Madeira Drive that some riders couldn’t retrieve theirs until nightfall. Another year saw complaints about burnouts on the promenade leaving black scars on the tarmac. More recently, council restrictions and road closures have occasionally caused tension between organisers and the city, but the event remains a highlight in Brighton’s busy calendar, attracting international visitors as well as locals.

Today, as a band played from a truck stage and the sun lit up the line of machines stretching towards the Palace Pier, it was easy to see why the reunion endures. The Ace Cafe’s story is one of survival and reinvention, and each September in Brighton it finds fresh expression in the roar of engines on the seafront.

Deluge on Brighton

If you’ve ever stood on the promenade and watched a squall gallop in from the west, you already know Brighton can be gloriously contrary. That mix of charm and cheek is exactly what an anonymous 1840s writer - hiding behind the classical pen-name ‘Arion’ - bottled for a Victorian magazine called Blackwood’s. No one now can say who ‘Arion’ really was; the signature was a wink, the voice the point. What matters is the mood: Brighton as a place that can blow your hat off one minute and have you laughing about it the next.

Half a century later, Lewis Saul Benjamin (pen name, Lewis Melville) gathered some of Brighton’s best tales and reprinted Arion’s verses in his 1909 book Brighton - Its History, its Follies, and its Fashion, keeping their quickstep rhythm and salt-spray humour intact. Read today (the book is freely available at Internet Archive), they feel like dispatches from any wet weekend here: gaslights won’t stay lit, the Downs shove you back to town, and everyone looks a bit drowned but somehow game for it. Below is the first half of Brighton in Storm as Benjamin preserved it - proof that our weather has always had a starring role. (This - unattributed - image is dated 1835 and has been used courtesy of Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove.)

Brighton in Storm

So, this is your summer

To meet a new comer!

The sky’s black enough to benight one.

From Mondays to Mondays,

(Above all, on Sundays,)

It pours down its deluge on Brighton.

If I walk on the cliff,

From the sea comes a whiff,

That whirls off my hat, though a tight one;

If I stroll through the streets,

Every soul that one meets

Looks like a drown’d weasel, in Brighton.

If I stir in the day

I’m half-buried in clay,

And, ’twixt sand, salt, and chalk, I’m a white one;

If I slip out at night,

Not a glimpse of gas-light

The tempest will suffer, in Brighton.

If I ride on the Downs

A hurricane frowns—

I’m off, ’tis quite useless to fight one;

On one of those days

I fairly missed stays,

And came by the life-boat to Brighton.

For my dreams of gay gambols,

My waterside rambles,

Serenades, promenades, to delight one;

With an old telescope

In my window I mope,

From sunrise to sunset in Brighton.

Then, as for the shows,

I see none but wet clothes,

Umbrellas, and faces that fright one;

Fat squires with lean daughters,

By salt and spa waters

All come to be plump’d up in Brighton.

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.

Brighton’s grand dame

One hundred and thirty-five years ago this summer, on 26 July 1890, the grand Hotel Metropole swung open its doors. It was the largest and most prestigious hotel outside London, with over 700 bedrooms and a 500-seat dining hall. The opening was so spectacular that a luxury train carried 1,500 visitors from Victoria and Brighton’s King’s Road was carpeted with red Hassocks sand. In the run-up, rumour had run riot - some said the Metropole would boast 4,000 bedrooms, others that its electric lighting could illuminate the entire town.

The Metropole was the vision of hotel magnate Frederick Gordon, known as the ‘Napoleon of the Hotel World’, who wanted a showpiece to crown his chain. He turned to Alfred Waterhouse, the celebrated architect of the Natural History Museum, whose use of red brick and terracotta gave Brighton’s seafront a startling contrast to the familiar white stucco. Together they created a building that was both vast and imposing, a statement of modern luxury that set out to eclipse anything the resort had seen before.

In its early years, the Metropole was a glittering hub for stage-struck society: Julia James and the Dare sisters, Zena and Phyllis; Vesta Tilley, the famed male impersonator (see The St Aubyns performers); Lillie Langtry, the Jersey Lily; Countess Poulett in her sumptuous finery - all taking tea under chandeliers and whispering success, scandal, and style. And in August 1917, Princess Louise, Queen Victoria’s artistic daughter, stayed for ten days, blending royal grace with genuine empathy as she comforted wounded soldiers.

During the Second World War, the hotel pivoted from luxury to service. It housed RAF aircrew and Australian and New Zealand forces, becoming a wartime hub with hospitality leagues, chaplains, dentists, thousands of grateful servicemen, and fresh New Zealand tinned oysters. In July 1945, it even became a Red Cross centre to repatriate POWs, offering warm baths, clean uniforms, de-briefings and tender reunions.

Post-war, the Metropole staged a glamorous revival: in 1947 Winston Churchill and Clementine dined there after he received the Freedom of Brighton, and that signed menu remains in the hotel’s library. The 1950s and 60s saw it flourish as a VIP hotspot - Shirley Bassey, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, Princess Margaret, Margot Fonteyn, Ian Fleming - graced its casino which once hosted 800 guests a night.

From today’s vantage - 135 years down the line - the Metropole still stands as Brighton’s grand dame. Its original façade remains unmistakable; the building’s integrity continues despite 1960s extensions. The south-facing bedrooms still look out over the beach, offering views that have changed little since 1890, apart from the line of wind turbines on the horizon and the melancholy remains of the West Pier slowly crumbling into the sea. It remains the largest residential conference hotel in the South of England, with 340 bedrooms, now operating under the DoubleTree by Hilton brand since 2023.

More on the hotel can be found at Wikipedia, or at Judy Middleton’s excellent Hove in the past website.

Through Dammo’s eyes

Following on from the Brighton Mod Weekender, two exhibitions are giving Brighton a chance to look at Mod culture in fresh detail. On the beach front, beside the i360 and the Upside Down House, the photographer David Clarke - known to the Mod community as Dammo - is showing Through My Eyes, a free outdoor display of his work. 

The exhibition sits between the shingle and the traffic, where the promenade railings overlook the sea, so that anyone strolling past or pausing for an ice cream finds themselves drawn into the images. Running until the end of August, it charts twenty years of the Brighton Mod Weekender, from scooter ride-outs to sharply dressed gatherings, and captures how a once-fringe revival has matured into a fixture of the city’s summer. Clarke’s images are not posed studio portraits but candid records of Mods in their element, whether standing by the railings in the wind or reflected in the chrome of a Vespa.

Inside Brighton Museum & Art Gallery, a parallel exhibition takes a deeper dive into the roots of the movement. The In Crowd: Mod Fashion & Style 1958-66 brings together garments, photographs, ephemera and music that defined the original scene. From Italian-cut suits to miniskirts, from Motown singles to Lambretta brochures, the show aims to immerse visitors in the years when the Mod aesthetic was first forged. The curators emphasise that Mod was as much about attitude as appearance, with a spirit of youthful confidence shaping fashion choices and nightlife.

Although both exhibitions centre on Mod identity, their approaches differ. Clarke’s photography celebrates the Brighton revival, with an eye on the community that has kept scooters on Madeira Drive most Augusts since 2005. The museum’s survey looks back to an earlier moment, before Quadrophenia and before the myth-making, when Mod was still a modernist youth movement in the making. Together, they offer a conversation across sixty years: how a style born in late-1950s London became heritage on the south coast, and how today’s enthusiasts carry the look forward.

The contrast between the two is deliberate. Clarke’s work meets passers-by in the open air, integrated into the ebb and flow of promenade life, while the museum requires a step indoors into a curated, reflective space. One is part of the spectacle, the other a retrospective. For the Mod faithful, the seafront show is also a chance to find themselves in the pictures: Clarke has been a regular on the front line of ride-outs and has built up an archive unmatched in its scope. Meanwhile, the museum exhibition situates Mod within broader shifts in British design and music, drawing links with jazz clubs, Carnaby Street boutiques and the global rise of youth culture.

A boy, a yacht and a cat

On this day in 1951 the Daily Mirror published the tale of a boy, a yacht and a cat. ‘Shivering and soaked to the skin,’ it began, twelve-year-old Roger Maitland stood on the deck of his father’s topsail schooner Rustler as heavy seas drove her toward the shingle. When the anchor cable parted and a tow proved hopeless, Roger tucked the kitten inside his jacket and swam for the shore while holidaymakers cheered. ‘I was not afraid,’ he said afterwards; ‘The kitten got frightened and clawed my face.’ The Daily Mirror set out the scene in tight detail: the beach some sixty yards away; his father, Kenneth Maitland, and family friend Fred Austin also abandoning the vessel; and the Shoreham lifeboat with a hawser aboard but unable to pull her clear.

The Telegraph, the same day, added the practical coda: after failed attempts to refloat her that tide, Rustler was hauled higher up the beach by a lorry to await the next rise. A photograph in The Journal of the Royal National Life-boat Institution - captioned ‘Shoreham life-boat and the yacht Rustler - shows the schooner grinding in the surf with the lifeboat standing by.

A year later, the wreck was still a Brighton landmark. Ernie Charman’s diary places him on the promenade on Sunday 24 August 1952, photographing Rustler beached between the piers as crowds filed past. His note fixes the date; the memories it prompted show how fast the vessel became part of seafront life.

Local recollections found at My Brighton and Hove fill in what happened next. ‘The Rustler could not be refloated,’ one reader remembers; ‘dozens of volunteers shovelling stones away from the ship,’ recalls another. Several contributors say children were allowed aboard: ‘we climbed on board, I was eight years old,’ wrote Terry Hyde; ‘the man let us on board to play . . . it was fabulous,’ remembered Rosemary Brazill. As the fabric failed, accounts say the remains were eventually burned and beachcombers picked through the cooling timbers for copper and bronze.

The Mod Weekender

Thousands of scooters and sharply dressed Mods descended on Brighton this Bank Holiday weekend, with Madeira Drive once again the focal point of the annual Mod Weekender. Lines of Vespas and Lambrettas, many lavishly customised with chrome, lights and Union Jacks, stretched along the promenade, while the beach and seafront filled with spectators and photographers. For many, the weekend has become a living tribute to the subculture that defined the 1960s and found one of its most enduring homes in Brighton.

The Brighton Mod Weekender was established in 2005 by The New Untouchables, a London-based collective of DJs, promoters and enthusiasts committed to keeping Mod culture alive. The group had long been organising club nights and events centred on Northern Soul, ska, rhythm and blues, and 1960s beat music. Bringing their efforts to Brighton in the mid-2000s was both symbolic and practical: the city was immortalised in the 1979 film Quadrophenia and already had a global reputation as the spiritual home of the Mods. (See also Mods and Rockers clash in the 60s.)

The inaugural event in 2005 drew hundreds of scooters and enthusiasts, with daytime meet-ups on the seafront and late-night parties at venues such as the Komedia. Over the years it has grown into one of the largest gatherings of its kind, attracting visitors from across Britain and Europe. Scooter ride-outs to Beachy Head and beyond became part of the ritual, as did competitions for the best customised bikes, while the weekend marketplace offered records, clothing and memorabilia. The event also helped shift Brighton’s civic stance: once a city that banned Mods from its pier in the 1960s, it has since embraced them as part of its heritage and tourist identity.

The Weekender has not been without its defining moments. In 2014, thousands of Mods marked the 50th anniversary of the infamous 1964 seaside clashes with Rockers, filling Brighton’s streets with scooters in what local media described as the largest gathering since those heady days. In 2019, the seaside saw record crowds again, just before the pandemic forced a pause in 2020. When the event returned, the emphasis on heritage was clearer than ever, with exhibitions, photographic retrospectives and fashion shows anchoring the programme alongside the music and scooters.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Brighton Mod Weekender, and the celebrations have been extensive. Yesterday and today Madeira Drive was packed with scooters, while crowds lined the seafront to watch the ride-outs and browse the stalls.

Intrepidly into the sea

This month marks 170 years since the final monthly number of William Makepeace Thackeray’s The Newcomes appeared in August 1855, an anniversary that recalls the novelist’s life and his enduring ties with Brighton - above all the pages that put Brighton’s beach, pier and sea-air squarely into Victorian fiction. In Vanity Fair he sketches the resort as ‘a clean Naples with genteel lazzaroni’, while in The Newcomes he steps onto the Chain Pier and, in a few gleeful lines, all but lets the surf spray the page.

Thackeray was born in Calcutta on 18 July 1811, sent to England as a child, and educated at Charterhouse and Cambridge (he left without taking a degree). After a short flirtation with art and a loss of much of his inheritance, he turned to journalism and illustration, writing for Fraser’s Magazine and later Punch, where The Book of Snobs made his name. He married Isabella Shawe in 1836; the marriage was shadowed by her severe mental illness, and he raised their daughters - Anne (later the novelist Anne Thackeray Ritchie) and Harriet Marian - largely on his own. His major novels followed in quick succession: Vanity Fair (1847-48), Pendennis (1848-50), Henry Esmond (1852), The Newcomes (1853-55) and The Virginians (1857-59). In 1860 he became the first editor of the Cornhill Magazine. He died in London on 24 December 1863 and was buried at Kensal Green. (See Wikipedia for more on Thackeray’s life and this sketched self-portrait.)

Brighton sits in the middle of both the life and the work. Thackeray knew the resort first-hand - letters mention him ‘sitting on the chain pier in a bath chair’, dosing himself with sea-breezes - and he was fond of calling the place ‘Doctor Brighton’, a quackish but kindly physician for overworked Londoners. In July 1859 Thackeray stayed at the Royal Crescent Hotel and produced a small watercolour titled Brighton from The Royal Crescent Hotel, July 17th 1859. Though best known as a novelist and satirist, he had trained as an artist and continued to sketch throughout his life, leaving behind drawings and painted vignettes of the places he visited.

When looking at his fiction, Brighton is less a backdrop than a mood: brisk, gaudy, restorative, faintly satirical. Vanity Fair uses Brighton as a stage where masks slip. Newly married George Osborne and Amelia Sedley take the air on the front; Becky Sharp and Rawdon Crawley work their separate hustles in lodgings, billiard rooms and on the cliff; and as the Waterloo campaign gathers, ‘all the principal personages’ decamp. Thackeray’s aside - Brighton as ‘a clean Naples with genteel lazzaroni’ - is both postcard and pin-prick.

The Newcomes (available to borrow digitally at Internet Archive) brings its readers to the seafront with a panoramic relish, the narrator Arthur Pendennis surveying the parade of bath-chairs, schoolgirls and telescope-wielding day-trippers. The scene catches the democratic sprawl of the beach long before cameras made it commonplace.

‘In Steyne Gardens, Brighton, the lodging-houses are among the most frequented in that city of lodging-houses. These mansions have bow-windows in front, bulging out with gentle prominences, and ornamented with neat verandahs, from which you can behold the tide of human-kind as it flows up and down the Steyne, and that blue ocean over which Britannia is said to rule, stretching brightly away eastward and westward. The chain-pier, as everybody knows, runs intrepidly into the sea, which sometimes, in fine weather, bathes its feet with laughing wavelets, and anon, on stormy days, dashes over its sides with roaring foam. Here, for the sum of twopence, you can go out to sea and pace this vast deck without need of a steward with a basin. You can watch the sun setting in splendour over Worthing, or illuminating with its rising glories the ups and downs of Rottingdean. You see the citizen with his family inveigled into the shallops of the mercenary native mariner, and fancy that the motion cannot be pleasant; and how the hirer of the boat, otium et oppidi laudi et rura sui, haply sighs for ease, and prefers Richmond or Hampstead. You behold a hundred bathing-machines put to sea; and your naughty fancy depicts the beauteous splashing under their white awnings. Beneath the rippled sands (stay, are they rippled sands or shingly beach?) the prawn-boy seeks the delicious material of your breakfast. Breakfast - meal in London almost unknown, greedily devoured in Brighton! In ten vessels now near the shore the sleepless mariner has ventured forth to seize the delicate whiting, the greedy and foolish mackerel, and the homely sole. Hark to the twanging horn! it is the early coach going out to London.’

The blessing of the sea

Brighton’s seafront witnessed a striking fusion of ritual, performance and protest this afternoon at the annual ‘Blessing of the Sea’. Clergy in white robes stood at the Doughnut Groyne beside the Palace Pier, leading prayers over the waters while a banner proclaimed ‘The sea is rising and so are we’. A few feet away, the Red Rebels of Extinction Rebellion moved in silent procession, their scarlet veils lifted in slow gestures of lament and warning. The scene unfolded beneath a cloudless August sky, the green bronze ‘Afloat’ sculpture framing both the pier and the gathering of worshippers. (See also Hamish Black’s Afloat.)

This year’s service was announced by the Diocese of Chichester on Instagram and widely shared on local forums such as Anthony Murley’s post to the Brighton & Hove Notice Board. Organisers called it both a Christian rite and an act of ecological witness, recognising the sea as a source of sustenance, beauty and peril. The clergy’s words of blessing were joined by calls for responsibility toward the coast at a time of rising tides and intensifying storms.

The ceremony is not without precedent. Brighton’s fishing town ancestors sought blessings over their nets each spring, a custom enshrined in the 1580 Book of all the Auncient Customs and revived in the late twentieth century as the ‘Blessing of the Nets’ on the beach by the Fishing Museum -  for more on this, see the Brighton Seafront Heritage Trust and My Brighton and Hove. Meanwhile, the city’s Greek Orthodox community has long marked Epiphany with the ‘Blessing of the Waters’, casting a cross into the waves from the pier. Today’s event consciously draws on both traditions, updating them with a climate-conscious emphasis suited to Brighton’s identity as a coastal city where faith, protest and performance often overlap.

What emerged on the groyne today was therefore more than symbolic: it was a reminder of the continuing link between the sea and the city, between prayer and protest, and between past traditions and present anxieties.

Victory in Japan day

Victory over Japan Day, or VJ Day, marked the formal end of the Second World War when Emperor Hirohito announced Japan’s surrender on 15 August 1945 - exactly 80 years ago today. For Britain it was the conclusion of six years of global conflict that had brought bombing raids, rationing and separation into everyday life. In Brighton the news spread quickly, and by early evening the town centre was thronged with people eager to take part in a final wartime celebration. After years of blackouts and restrictions, the streets were suddenly alive with light, noise and movement, as locals embraced the moment with the same gusto they had shown three months earlier on VE Day.

The backdrop to Brighton’s celebrations was still visibly shaped by the war. The seafront had been fortified for much of the conflict, its beaches fenced and mined, piers partially dismantled, and coastal waters patrolled against the threat of invasion. Even in August 1945, ordnance still washed ashore, and the task of clearing wartime defences was only just beginning. Yet on VJ Day night, these reminders of danger faded into the background as bonfires flared along the shoreline. At the bottom of West Street, just yards from the beach, a huge blaze was fed with anything combustible, while other fires sprang up on the shingle itself, sending sparks into the Channel air.

In the heart of the town, thousands jammed the streets from the Clock Tower to the seafront, singing, dancing, clapping and cheering. Fireworks appeared from nowhere, buses and cars attempting to pass were swarmed with revellers, and the air filled with the shrill of whistles and the beat of improvised drums. The atmosphere was one of unrestrained release, a communal letting-go after years of anxiety and hardship. 

Eighty years on, today, Brighton is marking the anniversary with a Service of Reflection at St Helen’s Church in Hangleton. According to the council, the service will honour the thousands of Allied POWs and civilian internees who endured immense suffering during the Asia-Pacific conflict’. Personal testimonies from local residents, either recounting their own experiences or those of relatives, will form a heartfelt part of the commemoration - all told a quieter, reflective event far removed from the wild, good-natured chaos of that night in 1945. Here is a first hand account of that day, recorded by a young Tony Simmonds in his diary. 

‘We decided not to go out as early in the evening as we did on V. E. Day but at 7.15 we trooped out heading for the Clock Tower. Even by 8 o’clock the fun exceeded even that on V. E. Day. Where all the fireworks came from remains a mystery - never before have I seen so many people jammed together in two streets. It was impossible even to guess how many shouting, singing, dancing clapping uproariously happy people were there. Every bus or car daring to invade the area was banged and rocked and “fireworked”. No bus left the area without its boards being missing - still they make a nice bonfire.

The first big bonfire was lit in a patch of waste land near the Prudential - on this was dumped all the material used to begin a fire at the top of West Street - a fire soon put out by Police. I think I led the “Boos” that followed this action. Still the other bonfire soon made up for it. Denny and I now went off again up to the Clock Tower giving repeated blasts in our whistles - what hooligans - but still, even old men were blowing whistles and shaking rattles and every old dear was waving a flag. Then about 11.30 the fun really began.

A huge bonfire was lit at the bottom of West Street, every moveable piece of wood in the area was dumped on this fire. The Sports Stadium, the Odeon, Sherrys and the Harris Grill were all stripped of their advertisement boards - time and time again. The police tried to stop it but they hadn’t the slightest chance against such a crowd. Then the N[ational] F[ire] S[ervice] arrived. In course of ten minutes, every moveable article on the lorry was dumped onto the fire - from hose pipes to doors. As a retaliation one Fireman drenched the crowd with showers of water.

The fire was as high as the buildings when Denny and I left at 12.30. On the way home we saw other huge bonfires on the beach and smaller ones in almost every street - and around each bonfire danced hilariously happy people - men, women and children. That ended the most glorious evening of my life - the crowds weren’t riotous - on the whole very little damage was done - but just supremely happy that the greatest of all wars was over.’

Images from this diary as well as the photograph above (which actually dates from 18 August 1945) are used courtesy of Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove. Further information about Simmonds and his diary can be found at Victory in Europe Day and in my book, Brighton in Diaries.

Huddlestone’s Brighton Story

It is 65 years since John Huddlestone’s series of illustrations about Brighton first appeared in the Brighton and Hove Herald. Beginning in 1960, his weekly cartoon strips traced the town’s story from the Domesday Book to the mid-twentieth century. The feature was so popular that, by the end of its first year, the strips were gathered into a 64-page pictorial booklet titled The Brighton Story, first published in 1961 by Thanet Books and sold for 2/6 (12½p). The original yellow-covered edition is now scarce and has become something of a collector’s item. A blue-covered facsimile reprint appeared in 1999, published by SB Publications of Seaford, which noted that all attempts to trace the author or his heirs had failed.

Despite the enduring appeal of the book, remarkably little is known about Huddlestone himself. He was described by Herald editor Frank Garratt as ‘a Northerner’, who developed an interest in Brighton after reading Unknown Brighton by George Aitchison. Huddlestone had already contributed historical illustrations of Kentish coastal towns to a local newspaper when, by chance, Garratt saw his work and wished aloud for someone with similar ability to do the same for Brighton. That same day, Huddlestone called at the Herald office and offered his services. Garratt, astonished by the coincidence, accepted immediately.

In his own introduction, written in May 1961, Huddlestone explained that he had known Brighton since 1930 and was especially drawn to its rich and colourful history. He claimed descent from the Northern Huddlestone family, which included Father John Huddlestone, the Roman Catholic priest who attended Charles II on his deathbed in 1685. He also recalled being particularly fascinated by the story of Charles’s escape from ‘Brighhelmstone’ to France. His aim, he wrote, was to stimulate interest in Brighton, ‘the oldest and largest and most famous of sea-side resorts’, and the birthplace of what he called ‘a great and happy tradition’.

The Brighton Story rearranges the original newspaper strips by theme rather than date, and omits contemporary advertisements. With Garratt’s editorial support, Huddlestone’s affectionate cartoon history drew responses from readers all over the world and helped to record the town’s unique atmosphere at a moment of civic pride and change. When the Herald closed in the 1960s, its parent company was taken over by Southern Publishing and later absorbed into the Newsquest group, which authorised the 1999 facsimile edition.

Here are two of the pages in which Huddlestone draws and writes about the Brighton seafront.

World’s oldest operating aquarium

Brighton’s aquarium was formally opened on this day in 1872. Designed by Eugenius Birch, the engineer behind the West Pier (see Celebrating Eugenius Birch), it was built below beach level in the Italian Renaissance style and originally featured tanks lit by gas burners behind red glass to simulate sunlight. One of the world’s oldest purpose-built aquariums, it quickly became a Victorian marvel, drawing thousands to its seawater tanks, grand entrance hall and winter garden.

Among its more unusual early exhibits was a cigar-smoking sea lion, and for several decades it hosted regular military band concerts in a specially designed concert hall. In the 1950s and 60s, the centre of the aquarium came alive again as a music venue called The Florida Rooms, known for its nightly jazz performances and packed dancefloor. According to Sea Life itself, The Who played there every Wednesday and helped turn it into a hotspot for local mods.

By the 1920s, the attraction had been renamed the Brighton Dolphinarium and became known for its performing sea lions and dolphins. These shows later became the focus of growing criticism, particularly in the 1980s, as concern mounted over the ethics of keeping dolphins in captivity. The last were relocated in 1990, following sustained public pressure. For more history see Wikipedia and the Sea Life website.

Recognised as the world’s oldest operating aquarium and a Grade II* listed building, Sea Life Brighton combines original Victorian architecture and tanks with innovative modern exhibits, reflecting both its storied past and ongoing commitment to marine conservation. Highlights include the UK’s first glass-bottomed boat experience inside a tank, a 750,000-litre ocean display featuring sharks and a rescued green sea turtle, and the atmospheric Victorian arcade, still in use after more than 150 years. (Credit to Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove for the vintage picture of the building.)

100 years ago, 200 years ago

Exactly 100 years ago today, the Brighton & Hove Herald reported that a 49 year old visitor from London had died in the sea at Brighton Beach. Encouraged by his son to swim, the father appeared at first to have drowned, but it was then established that he had died from heart failure caused by shock. The same edition of the Herald carried a feature - ‘From our files of 1825’ - giving a snapshot of Brighton Beach events exactly 200 years ago.

Brighton & Hove Herald, Saturday August 8, 1925

SAD BATHING FATALITY - Visitor’s Death from Shock.

Within a few hours of his arrival in Brighton on Sunday for a holiday, Mr Robert Dargavel, aged 49, a steel and copperplate engraver, of Cavendish-road, Balham, London, had a bathe in the sea, which proved to be fatal. At the time, it was thought that death was due to drowning, but evidence at the inquest on Tuesday by Dr. H. A. Baines, of Cannon-place, showed that the deceased was suffering from inflammation of the lungs and pleurisy, and that death was due to heart failure from shock.

The circumstances of Mr Dargavel’s death were unusual. His son, Mr Leonard Albert Dargavel, a motor driver, told his father that he proposed to have a bathe, and his father said that he would bathe too. The son swam out some distance and saw nothing more of his father until his body had been brought ashore. Mr John Taylor, a boatman and coxswain of the Brighton lifeboat, when bringing in a load of passengers, saw the deceased standing in shallow water some yards from the shore. A few moments later he saw the deceased fall. Mr Taylor ran into the water, and, with the assistance of another boatman, Mr George Bert Souch, of Artillery-street, brought Mr Dargavel ashore.

Mr Taylor, assisted by Mr Souch, immediately commenced artificial respiration. Shortly afterwards, P.C. Henry Tindall arrived and took over the task. This officer continued the process for about twenty minutes, and, with the assistance of Sergeant W. Cook and P. C. A. Hobden, it was continued for about an hour, two methods being tried.

Dr. Baines, at the inquest, paid a warm tribute to the manner in which the work of artificial respiration was attempted so assiduously and efficiently by the police. If there had been any possible chance of deceased’s life being saved in that way, said Dr. Baines, in all probability it would have been saved.

The Borough Coroner (Mr W. D. Peskett) expressed his gratification at this latest testimony to the services of the police. In the course of the evidence, it was revealed that Mrs Dargavel, widow of the deceased, who had travelled to Brighton with her husband and son, was on the beach when the body was pulled ashore. The son told the Coroner that his father had not been very well at times, but had not had medical treatment, and had been able to attend to his business.

A verdict to the effect that deceased died from natural causes, produced by shock, was returned.

Here also are three verbatim notices from the same page of the 8 August edition of the Herald

Brighton & Hove Herald, Saturday August 8, 1925

BRIGHTON 100 YEARS AGO - From our Files of 1825.

Lady Byron disembarked here on Tuesday from her yacht. After a stay of a few hours, her ladyship sailed for Southampton.

On Sunday last 4,200 persons visited our inimitable Chain Pier.

Yesterday morning two strange boats with no persons on board were perceived in the offing. A boat from the shore secured them, when it turned out that they had broken from their moorings and drifted from Worthing during the strong gale.

NB: Both images above are used courtesy of Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove. The top image is dated c. 1925; and the lower image is dated c. 1825.

Brighton’s biggest bash

Today’s Pride parade - the city’s biggest and most colourful annual event - set off at 11 am from Hove Lawns, gathering thousands of float‑decorated participants, drag performers and rainbow‑clad marchers who made their way east along the iconic seafront promenade. They proceeded along Kingsway to turn into West Street and North Street before winding past Old Steine and heading up toward London Road and Preston Road on its way to Preston Park, where the music festival begins.

This procession continues a legacy stretching back to the Sussex Gay Liberation Front’s first demonstration in October 1972, followed by Brighton’s inaugural Pride Week in July 1973 - a protest‑cum‑carnival walk along the waterfront ending with a beach gathering. After a hiatus, modern Pride returned in 1991, growing rapidly through the 1990s, and by 1996 the parade consistently began on the seafront with a major festival in Preston Park.

A watershed moment came in 2011 when financial collapse forced the new Brighton Pride CIC to introduce fencing and ticketing for the Preston Park event, while preserving the seafront parade as free. That move stabilised the event and enabled the creation of a Social Impact Fund which now supports local LGBTQ+ groups.

The COVID‑19 pandemic marked another turning point: both 2020 and 2021 festivals were cancelled (the 2020 edition was replaced by streamed content), breaking the Pride tradition for the first time. In 2022 Pride returned in full force - with headliners Christina Aguilera and Paloma Faith - and a revived focus on activism as well as entertainment. 2023 emphasised trans rights and global solidarity; 2024 featured themes of environmental activism and celebration, headlined by Girls Aloud and Mika.

Economically, Brighton Pride is one of the city’s most vital events. It draws up to 500,000 people over the weekend, accounting for an estimated two per cent of the city’s annual tourism in a single day and generating approximately £30 million in visitor spending. Since 2018 the event has delivered consistent economic benefits and raised more than £1 million annually for community grants.

This year 2025 brings further evolution. The theme - ‘Ravishing Rage’ - signals both celebration and resilience, and the event introduces major improvements following widespread community consultation. Notably, the Pride Village Party stage in Kemptown has moved from St James’s Street to Marine Parade, which will remain open for pedestrian and vehicle traffic, while Marine Parade will host a new Street Party featuring outside stages and entertainment.

On the festival front, 2025’s Pride on the Park takes place in Preston Park on 2-3 August, headlined by Mariah Carey in a UK festival exclusive - her long‑awaited performance originally planned for 2020 - and supported by acts including Sugababes, Fatboy Slim, Confidence Man, Loreen, Will Young, Natalie Imbruglia, Ashnikko, Slayyyter and Sister Sledge. Hayu, the NBCUniversal reality streaming service, is this year’s headline sponsor, enabling over 150 LGBTQ+ performers across multiple immersive stages.

In sum, today’s procession along Brighton’s seafront is not simply a visual feast - it’s also part of a five‑decade arc of protest turning into celebration, of financial crisis becoming a sustainable model, of pandemic pause and triumphant resurrection, and of ever‑greater economic and cultural significance to both city and community. For further information see Time Out, Brighton and Hove Council, and Wikipedia.

The most delicious thing

This day in 1916, Cynthia Asquith, wife of the son of Prime Minister H. H. Asquith, was to be found on Brighton Beach, so enjoying the experience of bathing from the pier that she wrote in her diary, ‘It was the most delicious thing I have ever done’. During the war, she and her children were often in Brighton, escaping from London and enjoying the sea air.

Cynthia Charteris was born at Clouds, her mother’s family estate, in 1887, but spent most of her childhood at Stanway House near Cheltenham, where she was educated privately. In 1903, she was sent to Dresden, the then fashionable European city for finishing young ladies, and there met Herbert Asquith. Since her family did not approve of the match, they became engaged secretly in 1907. The couple married in 1910, and found a home in Sussex Place, Regent’s Park in London. Their first child, John, born a year later, proved to be mentally backward and caused them much anxiety and grief. Two other children were born, in 1914 (Michael) and 1919 (Simon).

At the suggestion of a friend, she began to keep a diary during the First World War. This was published by Hutchinson, but not until 1968, as Lady Cynthia Asquith Diaries 1915-1918 - with a foreword by her lifelong friend L. P. Hartley. He wrote: ‘Lady Cynthia was one of the most fascinatingly beautiful women of her time - painted for love by McEvoy, Sargent, and Augustus John - and her lively wit and sensitivity of intelligence made her the treasured confidante of such diverse characters as D. H. Lawrence and Sir James Barrie, but when she died in 1960 she left a new generation to discover yet another of her gifts - as a rarely talented diarist. . .’

Her diaries - available to view online at Internet Archive - provide a startlingly open and self-absorbed account of a life so privileged on the surface but affected deeply and painfully by the pressures of marriage, children, war, and her own intense social needs. During the war, and the period of the published diaries, Cynthia was often in Brighton, where she first took her children to benefit from the sea air, and where she herself loved to bathe - as shown by these entries.

3 December 1916

‘We played the fool on the pier and went to the tourist’s whole hog by being photographed with our heads through burlesques.’

20 July 1916

‘Back in Brighton. After I had written some letters, I went out in search of a bathing cap, thinking I should find a suitable one nearby, but I had to walk for miles and miles in grilling sun, but God forbid that I should complain of any ray of heat vouchsafed to us during this awful summer! It was delicious in the water - really warm and heavenly.’

30 July 1916

‘Glittering, scorching day and the town teeming like an anthill. No signs of war, save for the poor, legless men whom Michael tried to encourage by saying, “Poor wounded soldiers - soon be better.” There is no doubt that Brighton has a charm of its own, almost amounting to glamour. I am beginning to be quite patriotic about this end of the town - Kemp Town as it is called - in opposition to the parvenu Hove, which has less character and is to this rather what the Lido is to Venice.

We joined the children on the beach - painfully hot and glaring. We took them in a boat to try and get cooler. Beb and I bathed from the rather squalid bathing machines - perfect in the water, except for the quantity of foreign bodies.’

31 July 1916

‘Grilling hot again. [. . .] I boldly decided to bathe off the pier as the machines were all full. I shall never bathe from anywhere else again! It was the most delicious thing I have ever done - down a ladder straight into the bottomless green water. Apparently there is no risk of drowning as there is a man in a boat, a raft, a life-buoy, etc. There was a strong current taking one inwards, so I rowed out and swam back. Luxurious dressing rooms, too. It’s a great discovery.

After dinner we sat on the pier, which was most delicious. Lovely lights on the water and in the twilight Brighton looked quite glamorous, and I like the teeming, happy crowds. Being here is strangely like being abroad.’

7 August 1916

‘Reluctantly coming to the conclusion that I shall have to make my home at Brighton, I feel and look so incomparably better there.’

13 August 1916

‘Banged at Basil’s door at seven [Lord Basil Blackwood who died on German trenches the following year]. We had agreed to bathe if awake. We just ran down to the beach with coats over our bathing clothes. A man, perhaps what they call a ‘beach policeman’, stopped me, saying it was only for men that station. I said, “Rubbish!” which, unfortunately, he overheard and was furious, threatening to send for the police and saying I must go to Kemp Town. My bathing dress was very wet from the day before and I didn’t at all like the idea of going either to Kemp Town or the police station in it. However, we found the situation could be overcome by going through the technicality of taking a bathing machine and leaving one’s coat. We had the most heavenly bathe - soft sand and delicious waves, exactly the right size.’