In memory of Daddy Long-legs

When it opened in the winter of 1896, Brighton’s most improbable railway was not yet universally known as the Daddy Long-legs. Its promoters preferred Volk’s Electric Sea Car - a name that stressed novelty and maritime glamour rather than the prosaic fact that it ran on rails. Formally incorporated as the Brighton and Rottingdean Seashore Electric Railway, it took only weeks for the public to supply a nickname that proved impossible to dislodge.

The line was the creation of Magnus Volk, already established with his electric railway along Brighton’s seafront (see this blog’s very first article - Whistle, hoot, whistle). Extending that system eastwards on land meant costly engineering through unstable cliffs. Volk’s solution was to avoid the cliffs altogether by placing the railway in the sea. Between 1894 and 1896, standard-gauge track was laid directly onto the seabed, fixed to concrete sleepers drilled into the chalk in the shallows between Brighton and Rottingdean.

The single passenger vehicle - officially named Pioneer - was neither boat nor tram but an uneasy hybrid. A large saloon carriage sat high above the water on four long steel legs, each mounted on a wheeled bogie that followed the submerged rails. Electric power was supplied by overhead wires mounted on poles set into the seabed, an arrangement that worked tolerably in calm conditions and poorly in rough seas. Because it operated offshore, the Sea Car was treated partly as a vessel and was required to carry maritime safety equipment and a qualified sea captain on board.

The railway opened to the public on 28 November 1896, making this winter the 129th anniversary of its launch. Its debut was dramatic and inauspicious. Within days, a severe storm capsized the carriage. Volk rebuilt it with longer legs and raised electrical gear, and services resumed in 1897. For a short time, the Sea Car functioned as intended, carrying thousands of passengers on what was marketed as a ‘sea voyage on wheels’.

The English Channel, however, proved an unforgiving environment for fixed infrastructure. Tides, wave action and shifting shingle scoured around the track supports, while new groynes and coastal works altered sediment movement along the bay. Maintenance became constant and costly. Plans to divert the route further offshore to avoid new sea defences proved financially impossible, and by 1901 the railway was dismantled and abandoned.

What survives today is not rail but footprint. The metalwork was removed for scrap, but the concrete sleepers and seabed fixings were left in place. These remains are normally buried beneath sand and shingle. Only on exceptionally low spring tides, often in winter and only for a brief window around slack water, can parts of the alignment sometimes be made out as a faint, ruler-straight line beneath the surface east of the Palace Pier.

Seen then, the Daddy Long-legs ceases to be a cartoonish curiosity and becomes something more exacting: a measurable line in the landscape, briefly legible, marking the moment when Brighton attempted to extend its electric railway not along the shore - but straight through the sea.

Sources: National Railway Museum, Volks Electric Railway Association and My Brighton and Hove. The top image is courtesy of Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove, and the other two can be found at Wikipedia.

Progress on Madeira Terrace

According to a press release from Brighton and Hove City Council, structural testing has confirmed that much of the original cast iron from Madeira Terrace can be repaired and reused, strengthening the heritage-first approach to restoring the seafront landmark. This will be BrightonBeach365’s last (and very wet) report on the famed but troubled arches - see Likely delays to arches work and Madeira Terrace restoration - hurrah!.

Restoration work began on site in November 2024 and is one of the most technically complex engineering projects undertaken on the seafront. A central aim is to repair rather than replace as much of the historic fabric as possible, including the cast iron structure, retained soil and the terrace’s retaining wall, in order to preserve authenticity and limit environmental impact.

Earlier this year, sections of cast iron removed during the first phase of works were sent to a specialist foundry for testing. An initial round of tests proved inconclusive, requiring further analysis. The latest results now confirm that the original structural cast iron can be successfully repaired and reused. Although the testing programme took longer than planned, the outcome has been welcomed by both the council and the Seafront Development Board, the independent body advising on the wider revitalisation of the seafront.

The findings mean that much of the century-old cast iron can be reinstated during the opening phase of restoration. The environmental savings are substantial: producing new cast iron typically generates around eight tonnes of CO₂ per tonne, while repair is expected to produce less than an eighth of that. Across the full structure, the difference is equivalent to the annual carbon footprint of powering more than 2,000 UK homes.

Alongside the testing results, visible progress is now expected on site. The first sections of steelwork for a new fully accessible lift have arrived, forming part of a new route from Marine Parade down to Madeira Drive. Most of the lift steels are due to be delivered by Christmas, allowing residents to see the structure taking shape. The lift is intended to open as part of the first phase of restoration, improving access to the seafront and to businesses along Madeira Drive.

Councillor Jacob Taylor said the project required patience because of its technical complexity and the age of the structure, but emphasised that funders and the council were committed to restoring rather than replacing wherever possible. Lord Bassam, chair of the Seafront Development Board, said the confirmation that the cast iron could be reused was crucial and added that the arrival of the lift steels marked an important moment in building momentum on site.

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.

Out and Along and Over

Here is the 22nd 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 three people riding in a small, bright red-trimmed speedboat skimming over rough stylised blue and green waves. The boat’s wooden decking is sharply angled, two passengers sit at the back, with a helmsman at the front. The sea curves beneath them in bold, flowing bands, and above them a wide expanse of blue sky is broken by big, rounded white clouds. Off to the left, a red sail or distant vessel adds a point of contrast on the horizon.

A limerick starter

A day-tripping trio left shore

In a boat that was really quite poor;

When it smacked through a swell

They all yelled, ‘Bloody hell!’

‘That’s an oath,’ they added, ‘not a port we’d aim for.’

Out and Along and Over (loosely inspired by the rhythms of James Joyce)

They shot out from the shingle as if the whole beach had given them a shove. A jerk, a cough of the engine, and then the little red prow lifting, nosing, finding its run along the bright-slap water. Tom felt it under him, the shudder and lift, the hard rattle in his knees, and he thought, yes, this is it now, this is the going, the real going, and not the standing and watching and saying one day, one day. Behind him the pier stretched its legs into the sea, iron and timber, rattling with music and gulls and the clank of rides starting up, and all along the shore the people like shells scattered, small and safe and stayed.

His father had both hands on the wheel, knuckles yellow, grinning into the wind that peeled his cheeks back, and every now and then he’d glance to the side, to the left where the open ran out to France, to everything else, and to the right where Brighton curled round on itself with its terraces and hotels and its white-faced houses pretending not to look at the water. The boy watched his father’s eyes and thought of how they looked at the kitchen table, grey then, and how they looked now, lit from below by the jump of the waves and the fat high sun.

‘Hold on there, Tommy boy,’ he shouted, and the sound was whipped away, cut to bits by the speed and the salt. Tom laughed but the laugh stayed in his chest, a rising bubble, and he dug his fingers into the warm rail, feeling every bolt, every scar where the paint had run or been scraped back by someone else’s summer.

Beside him Mum sat forward, one hand on the side, one hand in the air pointing at nothing in particular - a buoy, a line of foam, a flash of glass in the west where the drowned pier lay flat as a drawing on the water. Her hair flew back and slapped her face and she pushed it away and laughed, a proper laugh, not the small kitchen laugh, and in her eyes he saw the beach as it had been before him, before Dad, Brighton before Brighton, a strip of stones and a strip of sea and the old idea of going, always going, out and along and over.

And the boat ran on, skimming the chopped blue, throwing its own white script behind it, a long curling sentence on the water that said: we were here, we passed, we were going, we went.

Signal cannon relic

The small black-painted gun that sits on the Brighton Palace Pier today - now rather forlorn and out of place beside the men’s toilets and perhaps appropriately close to the thump of the funfair - is one of the surviving signal cannons from the Royal Suspension Chain Pier, which stood a few hundred metres to the east between 1823 and 1896. The Chain Pier operated as both a pleasure promenade and a working embarkation point for cross-Channel vessels, and its cannons played a practical role in that maritime life. They were fired to announce the departure or arrival of packet boats, to signal in thick weather, and occasionally to warn small craft off the pier’s immediate approaches. Contemporary guidebooks note that visitors often gathered to watch the gun being discharged before a steamer cast off, a brief spectacle folded into the pier’s daily rhythm.

The guns themselves were small muzzle-loading pieces mounted on simple timber beds, never intended for defence but for audible reach along the seafront and out to sea. Contemporary accounts confirm that a signal gun was kept on the Chain Pier and fired on ceremonial occasions. John George Bishop’s The Brighton Chain Pier: in memoriam describes how, during the celebrations for King William IV and Queen Adelaide’s arrival in 1830, ‘a signal gun was fired from the Chain Pier, as well as from the Battery, to indicate the welcome intelligence that their Majesties had arrived.’ Moreover, surviving pier toll records are said to indicate routine maintenance costs for ‘signals’ or ‘signal guns’, suggesting they were kept in regular working order through the pier’s lifetime. By the late nineteenth century, as the Chain Pier aged and cross-Channel services shifted west to the Palace Pier landing stages and to Newhaven, the signal guns fell gradually out of use.

The storm of 4-5 December 1896 destroyed the Chain Pier completely (see Brighton’s oldest pier), scattering its timbers along the beach. Some fittings were salvaged by the Palace Pier Company, including ironwork, lamps and at least one of the old signal cannons. It remained in storage for decades before being brought onto the Palace Pier as a heritage object. The weathered wooden carriage now visible beneath it is a modern reconstruction, but the barrel is original to the Chain Pier era. The small plaque on the pier deck dates it to the operational life of the Royal Suspension Chain Pier, 1822–1896, and stands as one of the last tangible artefacts from Brighton’s first great pier.

Sources: Wikipedia, Brighton & Hove Museums. PS: The full original name of the pier was the Brighton Marine Palace & Pier Company which explains the BM and PP initials on the wall behind the cannon. 

Steamer trips from Palace Pier

This poster - found in Palace Pier by Albert Bullock and Peter Medcalf - advertises P. & A. Campbell’s Brighton excursions to the Spithead Naval Review of 1924, one of the great maritime set-pieces of the interwar years. The Review took place on Saturday 26 July, with the King observing long lines of capital ships, cruisers, destroyers and submarines anchored across the Solent. The event brought together around two hundred vessels, including representatives of the Dominions and visiting fleets assembled during the Imperial Conference. It was the first major Review since the war and was intended as a demonstration of stability and naval cooperation after the upheavals of the previous decade.

Brighton had its part to play. Campbell’s Sussex steamers - most prominently the earlier Devonia and the newly renamed Brighton Belle - were advertised on the Palace Pier railings and along the West Pier concourse, offering passengers a full afternoon cruise along the Sussex coast before joining the mass of small excursion craft mustering off Spithead. Leaving Brighton in mid-afternoon and early evening, the steamers carried holidaymakers through warm Channel air, past Shoreham and Worthing, and on towards the Isle of Wight, where the lines of warships stretched out like a floating city. Once darkness fell the fleet was illuminated from stem to stern, with searchlights sweeping across the water as the royal yacht made its slow progress through the anchorage.

Before the war and on this stretch of coast, the most powerful steamer, operated by Campbell, had been the Brighton Queen, a broad-sponsoned paddler that dominated departures from the pier. Recognisable from her high funnel (see photo, also from the Palace Pier book), she would shoulder out into deeper water before turning. But in 1915 she had been lost on minesweeping duty, and by 1924 she existed only in postcards and recollections traded on deckchairs below the pier head.

In 1924, the scale of the Naval Review would have been impressive, ships ranged in perfect alignment, their electric outlines reflected perhaps in still water, and the succession of salutes and night-time illuminations that carried on long after the King had departed. For Brighton’s excursionists it was a full day and night away, but the piers were busy again before breakfast, with talk of the searchlights, the size of the battleships, and how the holiday steamers seemed tiny against the bulk of the fleet. It was one of the last great Reviews before the naval reductions of the 1930s, and for those who embarked from the Palace Pier that July, it was a rare glimpse of the world’s largest fleet assembled within a day’s sail of Brighton Beach.

It is worth noting that the authors of Palace Pier mistook the poster above as advertising a much earlier and pre-war event. The caption (in the book but edited out of the poster image) reads ‘The coronation of King Edward VII was to have taken place on 26 June 1902. A few days before the coronation the King was taken ill with appendicitis and the Naval Review was postponed. The King made a speedy recovery and the event took place on 16 August 1902.’ However, the Brighton Belle, one of the two vessels making the round trip to Spithead, was not even built until 1905!

See also Palace Pier light and dark.

The veteran run to Brighton

At sunrise this morning, more than 400 pre-1905 motor cars were scheduled to set off from Hyde Park for the 98th London to Brighton Veteran Car Run, the world’s longest-running motoring event. The run commemorates the original ‘Emancipation Run’ of 14 November 1896, which celebrated the passing of the Locomotives on Highways Act. That law raised the speed limit for light locomotives from four to fourteen miles per hour and abolished the requirement for a man with a red flag to walk ahead of every vehicle.

Organised by the Royal Automobile Club, this year’s event covered a route of about sixty miles, following the traditional course from London through Croydon, Redhill, Crawley and Burgess Hill before descending into Brighton. It is not a race: the event is open only to vehicles built before 1905, and every entrant who crosses the finish line within daylight is considered a victor. The finishing stretch took the cars directly onto the Brighton seafront, Madeira Drive once again serving as the ceremonial end-point. 

The run’s tradition of finishing on Madeira Drive dates back to the early 1900s, when the event was revived after the First World War. Over the decades it has only rarely been interrupted - by fuel shortages, war, and once by the pandemic. This year’s run also honoured the 125th anniversary of the Royal Automobile Club’s 1000-Mile Trial of 1900, another milestone in the story of early motoring. 

This morning’s first arrival on Madeira Drive was vehicle number 046, a 1900 Renaux tricycle driven by Clive Pettit (picture at top). The lightweight three-wheeler crossed the finish line just before 11 a.m., its simple design and reliability giving it an early advantage on the 60-mile run. The second vehicle and the first four-wheeled car to reach the seafront was number 018, an 1898 Stephens dogcart (pictured above), which rolled in at exactly 11 - later than usual, possibly because of early morning bad weather.

The run has acquired its own folklore. Many entrants and passengers dress in Edwardian costume; breakdowns are frequent and often met with good humour and clouds of steam; and the sound of sputtering engines and brass horns evokes the infancy of motoring. The 1953 film Genevieve (see film still) has immortalised the event’s charm and chaos, and even today the scene of creaking, smoke-puffing machines rolling into Brighton beneath the cliffs of Madeira Drive retains something of that cinematic magic. 

Among the machines entered in this year’s London to Brighton Veteran Car Run are: 

- an 1894 Benz, a single-cylinder 1.5 horsepower pioneer from Germany driven by Hermann Layher, its exposed brass fittings and carriage-style tiller steering embodying the dawn of motoring; 

- an 1898 Léon Bollée, the elegant French tricar whose sloping body and chain drive reflecte the ingenuity of fin-de-siècle engineering;

- the British Motor Museum’s 1899 Wolseley, one of the earliest four-wheelers designed by Herbert Austin;

- a newly restored Opel Darracq making its debut, representing a rare Franco-German collaboration from the earliest years of the automobile.

E-scooters for the seafront

Brighton Beach’s long seafront cycle lane may soon get a lot busier. Brighton & Hove City Council has agreed to apply for government approval to run an e-scooter trial, a move that could soon bring rental scooters to the city’s seafront. At a cabinet meeting on 16 October, councillors voted to seek Department for Transport consent for a scheme that would add up to 300 e-scooters to the existing Beryl bike-share programme. The cabinet report explicitly mentions that the council will ‘prioritise locations on the seafront and seek to maximise convenience for commuters with central sites near car parks, stations and bus stops.’ If successful, the trial would launch in April 2026, with a public consultation and full financial review to be completed before rollout. 

The plan is part of what transport experts call ‘micromobility’ - small, lightweight vehicles such as bikes, e-bikes and scooters designed for short urban journeys. According to the CoMoUK Annual Shared Micromobility Report, more than 40 million journeys were made on shared bikes, e-bikes and e-scooters in the UK in 2023, with around one in five scooter trips replacing a car journey. The Council argues that giving residents and visitors a regulated hire option could cut emissions, reduce traffic, and displace the use of illegal private scooters.

Under the scheme, up to 75 scooters would be introduced each week until the full fleet is in place. The operating zone would be smaller than the bike-share area, excluding the Undercliff and private land without consent. Thirty new parking bays are proposed, located along the seafront and at transport hubs, to prevent obstruction on pavements. Charges would be higher than for e-bikes, with an unlock fee and per-minute rate. Safety measures include speed caps, no-go zones, possible curfews between midnight and 5am on weekends, licence checks, helmet promotion and access audits of parking sites to protect disabled users.

The council report reminds councillors that privately owned e-scooters remain illegal to use on public roads and pavements except as part of authorised trials. The document then notes that many people are already using them around Brighton despite the ban, creating safety concerns and enforcement difficulties (see Brighton and Hove Police on Facebook). The trial is pitched as a way to provide a safe, regulated alternative, with proper insurance, speed limits, and parking controls - and to reduce demand for illegal private scooters. Moreover, the report highlights that most scooter collisions involve private machines, with hire schemes showing a far better safety record. Data from other trials suggests that e-scooters not only replace car journeys but can also complement public transport, making them an important tool for cutting congestion in busy coastal areas.

The application deadline is 21 October, with a decision expected in January 2026. A three-month mobilisation would then precede the launch. The scooters will be funded and owned by Beryl, and the Council anticipates no additional budget costs, with any surplus offsetting existing borrowing on the bike-share scheme.

Brighton’s fishing past

Just inside the vaulted arches of the marvellous Brighton Fishing Museum rests Sussex Maid, a clinker-built beach punt that once worked the inshore waters off Brighton and Shoreham. Her black-painted stem proudly bears the registry mark SM 380, the ‘SM’ denoting Shoreham. With her varnished planking and bluff bow, she embodies the traditional form of Sussex beach boats that for generations were launched and hauled directly from the shingle.

The Sussex Maid was built in the 1920s by Courtney & Birkett of Southwick, a noted yard for small fishing craft. She belonged to Brighton fisherman Robert ‘Bobby’ Leach, part of the long-established Leach fishing family, and was worked with nets and lines in the waters off the beach. Although fitted with an auxiliary motor, like other Brighton boats, she would have been hauled up the shingle by capstan and crew.

Beach boats like this were the backbone of Brighton’s fishing community until well into the twentieth century. Their sturdy clinker hulls could withstand the pounding surf, and their crews were experts at reading tides and weather. The Sussex Maid is a rare survivor of that fleet. Retired from service, and now set among nets, lobster pots and photographs, she was preserved as the centrepiece of the Fishing Museum when it opened in 1994, standing as both an exhibit and a memorial to generations of Brighton fishermen.

Much of Brighton’s fishing history has been captured in Catching Stories: Voices from the Brighton Fishing Community (QueenSpark Books, 1996). The project, which began in 1993, sought to preserve the memories and daily realities of a declining local fishing community. Organised thematically rather than by individual life story, the book weaves selected excerpts from transcripts into chapters on beach life, types of fishing, the role of women, the market side of fisheries, and changing technologies and social pressures. It can be freely downloaded from QueenSpark’s website. 

The Brighton steamer

Here is the 16th 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. The image shows a stylised seascape in shades of blue, white and beige. At its centre is a ship with a single tall funnel and two long decks lined with rows of square windows, suggesting a passenger steamer. The vessel has a solid, rounded hull that sits low in the water, built for carrying people rather than speed. It is sailing from right to left across dark blue waves, with broad cloud shapes filling the sky above. In the foreground, sandy tones and angled forms evoke the shoreline or harbour wall, giving the impression of the ship either departing or arriving at the coast.

A limerick starter

A bright little steamer at sea

Steered a bit too close to the quay.

The captain cried, ‘Blimey

The chalk’s right before me!’

Then dodged it with surprising esprit.

The Brighton steamer (in the style of Joseph Conrad)

The Brighton steamer lay broadside to the cliffs, its hull dark against the pallor of chalk and cloud. A late tide heaved against the shingle, uneasy, as though uncertain of its errand. The vessel, with her one funnel trailing a faint stain of smoke, seemed strangely inert, half-marooned in that restless light, yet she pressed on, slow and deliberate, past the line of the pier.

I watched her from the stones, the weight of her passage pressing upon me as though I were myself embarked. Those rows of windows, dull squares under the whitening sky, were like so many blind eyes - passengers hidden, yet expectant. One imagines them sensing, as I did, the menace of the shore: the pale cliff rearing to the east, sheer and implacable, indifferent to all the little confusions of men.

It is not the sea that alarms me, for the sea, even in its sudden wrath, is honest. No, it is the coast, the narrowing margin where water and rock conspire against the traveller, where a false bearing or a moment’s pride may grind out years of labour in an instant. I thought of the master on his bridge, his hands idle on the rail, gazing ahead with the obstinacy of command, knowing that any falter of judgment would lay bare the futility of his journey.

The ship moved on, a shadow sliding under the immensity of cloud, past the bright disorder of the town’s terraces, into the channel’s uncertain breadth. I turned away then, yet her slow form remained before me, imprinted like a memory of some choice deferred, a fate hovering just beyond reach of the beach and its stones.

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.

Bandit at Two O’Clock

Here is the 15th 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. In this image, two small planes fly low over a bright green landscape beneath a sky of blue and white cloud. The larger, red-winged aircraft (possibly a Cessna) dominates the scene, its nose lifted as if coming in to land. Below it, a smaller pink plane (possibly a de Havilland Tiger Moth) tilts across the fields, wings angled in motion. To the right, a golden path curves towards a pool of deep blue water, catching the eye as it winds away toward the horizon. The whole picture brims with movement and colour, a vivid glimpse of flight above fields and shore.

A limerick starter

A jaunty red flyer on high

Saw a pink one come wobbling by.

They jostled for space

In a comical race,

And both nearly fell from the sky.

Bandit at Two O’Clock (in the style of the Biggles books by W. E. Johns)

The Channel lay calm as glass, Brighton Beach stretched in a golden strip, and the gaunt ribs of the old West Pier glinted in the sun. Biggles held the stick steady, his red-winged machine purring contentedly. Algy, perched in the observer’s seat behind, shaded his eyes with one hand and scanned the horizon.

‘Bandit at two o’clock!’ he barked suddenly.

Biggles banked hard, the aircraft flashing scarlet as it turned seaward. Out of a puff of white cloud came a pink biplane, nose down, engine snarling, its guns spitting spitefully.

Below, holidaymakers thought it part of a show. Children clapped from deckchairs as the two machines roared along the surf-line. Biggles dropped lower still, his wheels all but kissing the spray, the enemy reckless enough to follow.

‘He’s too green for this game,’ Algy shouted over the slipstream. ‘Give him the slip and he’ll tie himself in knots!’

Biggles grinned thinly, jerked the stick, and the red machine shot upwards in a steep climb. The pink biplane tried to match it, stalled, and floundered. In a flash Biggles was round on its tail, the Vickers gun chattering.

The intruder wavered, engine coughing. A plume of black smoke streamed back as it staggered over the Palace Pier. Moments later it flopped ignominiously onto the lawns behind the Metropole Hotel, wheels splayed, wings broken.

When they set down at Shoreham, the word was already through: a foreign agent, papers in his pocket and not a word of English, plucked from the wreckage.

Algy clambered down, brushing sand from his trousers. ‘Another spot of bother tidied up,’ he remarked.

Biggles lit a cigarette, his gaze on the fading light over Brighton.

‘Tidied, yes,’ he said. ‘But there’ll be more of them. Mark my words, Algy - Brighton’s a hotter spot than the holidaymakers ever guess.’

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.

Piper Tri‑Pacer test flight

Found on the beach: Piper Tri‑Pacer. Not the real thing! but a foam glider from a familiar seaside toy set, labelled ‘Jet Fighters’. Though this packaging suggests a focus on military jets, the set often include a mix of fighter planes, vintage propeller aircraft, and general aviation types like the Tri‑Pacer.

Still in a sealed package, I felt this find was an invitation to make and test fly the model. The design is No. 12 in a series of twelve collectible aircraft designs. The Piper Tri‑Pacer itself was a four-seat, high-wing monoplane produced in the United States from 1950 to 1964, known for its tricycle undercarriage and popularity among postwar civilian pilots.

Often manufactured in Asia and sold under various generic brands, the toys are part of a long tradition of inexpensive, throwaway beach items. But their materials - non-biodegradable plastics and foams - have made them a target of environmental concern.

The toy glider, likely made of polystyrene foam with a plastic nose cap, would have been sold for very little from a beachfront kiosk or souvenir shop. These lightweight, slot-together models have been a fixture of seaside holidays since at least the 1970s.

And yet, they are poorly made, too light to cope with even the mildest of sea breezes (despite the evidence of these photographs!), so they duck and dive barely able to stay airborne before crashing into the pebbles. 

Time for one last staged photograph before flying off to a waste bin.

A truck in thought

This photo shows a Davis Trackhire truck, equipped with a hydraulic crane, unloading or positioning a large stack of heavy-duty panels - temporary ground protection or trackway, designed to create stable surfaces for vehicles and crowds on uneven or soft ground. In the background, you can see the calm turquoise sea with the silhouettes of the Rampion wind farm turbines on the horizon, under a clear blue sky. What is the truck thinking?

‘How curious it is, to pause amid the salt-kissed air, steel sinews humming with potential, beneath the ever-watchful sun. They call me Davis - a name painted boldly upon my flanks, though what is a name to a mind busy with purpose and observation? Here, perched between shingle and surf, I contemplate more than just my cargo.

I have journeyed on many roads: winding motorways by dawn, city grids pulsing with restless ambition, and now the still calm of the coast. Each mile of my travel has etched stories into my chassis - patience when the world is slow, resilience when the elements test me, satisfaction upon completing my duty.

Today I am burdened, yet unbowed; my payload stacked with the meticulous care of intent and design. My mechanical arm curves with the choreography of industry, a testament to human ingenuity and my own quiet resolve. I find purpose in service, pride in precision. My mission is as clear as the horizon: to deliver, to build, to form the bedrock upon which progress is staged.

Yet I am not without wonder. As I gaze seaward, turbines spin far off, guardians of a future knit with wind and light. I marvel at what I carry, but also at what carries me - the systems and hands, decisions and designs, that coalesce in a moment like this.

I am more than machinery, more than fuel and metal. I am a witness to endeavour, a bearer of burdens, a contemplative spirit at the margin of earth and water. My wheels may rest, but my mind, galvanised by quiet reflection, wanders still.

So let it be written: I am truck, yet thinker; labourer, yet philosopher. On this stony edge, I am at once at home and ever in motion, ever turning ideas as surely as I turn my wheels.’

French attack repulsed!

Exactly 480 years ago today, and amid heightened hostilities between England and France, a French fleet launched an attempted landing at Brighton. The incident is vividly described in Holinshed’s Chronicles, later quoted by the Victorian historian John Ackerson Erredge. Alongside this narrative survives a remarkable contemporary map, now held in the British Library, which graphically depicts the French fleet offshore, the disembarkation of troops, and the town in flames.

In 1545, during the reign of Henry VIII, England was in conflict with France. After Henry’s forces had taken Boulogne and devastated regions of France, King Francis I sent Admiral D’Annebault with a formidable fleet to retaliate by striking at the English south coast. The event, described in Holinshed’s Chronicles (a three-volume British history published in the late 16th century), as quoted in History of Brighthelmston by Erredge (page 61), specifically mentions Brighton (then styled ‘Bright Hampstead’ or ‘Brighthampston’):

‘In 37[th year of the reign of] Hen. 8th, 1545, July the 18th, the admiral of Franco, Mons. Donebatte [a corruption of the name D’Annebault), hoisted up sails, and with his whole navy (which consisted of 200 ships and 26 gallies,) came forth into the seas, and arrived on the coast of Sussex, before Bright Hampstead, and set certain of his soldiers on land to burn and spoil the country: but the beacons were fired and the inhabitants thereabouts came down so thick, that the Frenchmen were driven to their ships with loss of diverse of their numbers, so that they did little hurt there.’

The attempted landing at Brighton was thus met with swift resistance from the local populace, rallied by beacon fires. Their response was so determined that the French could do ‘little hurt there’ and were quickly forced back to their ships, having suffered losses. Again, it is said that ‘the inhabitants thereabouts came down so thick’ that the French attack was foiled before much damage could be done.

The text also refers to a remarkable ‘Picture Map’ from the time, providing further detail about the attack: ‘The number of ships attacking the town is twenty-two; and the largest, probably the Admiral’s, lying nearest the shore, has four masts. . . Eight of the latter [galleys] are on shore, and the armed men from them have disembarked on the beach, the place where they landed being inscribed, - “here landed the galleys”.’

This map apparently depicts the full force of the attempted raid. Details include: ‘On shore the houses under the cliffe are on fire; from the upper town also flames are issuing from almost every house.’ The town at that time had ‘five rows of houses running from north to south’ with a town field in the centre and a prominent road east, ‘about the spot now occupied by the Old Steine,’ labeled as ‘the valcy comyng from Lewes town to Brighthampston.’

Defensive preparations and geography are highlighted: ‘On this road and on the hill adjacent bodies of armed men are marching towards the town.’ Key townspeople landmarks are noted, such as the ‘town fyre cag’ (likely for signalling), the church encircled by praying or armed townsfolk, and two ‘wynde mylles’ to the north, near ‘the bekon of the towne’.

The response of the local gentry and yeomen is emphasised both in the narrative and in map notes suggesting rapid mustering in defense: ‘As this road approaches the beach, it is inscribed, - “Upon this west pt may lond cm psones (100,000 persons) unletted by any pvision there.” ’

The attempted raid on Brighton thus achieved very little for the French: they were repulsed with ‘diverse of their numbers’ lost, while the locals ‘quickly distressed them’. Their attack was notable for the rapid civilian and militia resistance that foiled their intent to burn or pillage the town. The French then moved on to other nearby targets, but Brighton’s quick and effective defence seems to stand out in this record as a testament to the vigilance and bravery of its 16th-century residents.

This vivid account is matched by the surviving picture map, produced at the same time - July 1545 - and now held in the British Library under the reference Cotton Augustus I. i. 18. This large-scale, hand-coloured map depicts the French fleet offshore, the disembarkation of troops, burning houses, beacon fires, and armed townspeople rallying in defence. It is thought the map was likely commissioned as part of Henry VIII’s broader programme of coastal surveillance and fortification.

A long RNLI weekend

RNLI volunteers have been busy along Brighton Beach during the last few days. Over the weekend, the crews launched five times in 48 hours, a press release details, dealing with everything from people blown offshore on inflatables to paddleboarders venturing far out to sea.

The first task came at 7.30pm last Friday when the crew launched to reports of a person in the water clinging to an orange float near the West Pier. The lifeboat quickly located a man who was fishing from his stand-up paddleboard. On the return journey, at around dusk, the crew spotted two paddleboarders approximately 1.25 nautical miles offshore. The pair were attempting to reach the wind farm in failing light. They had no communication devices, no lifejackets, no food or water, and were dressed only in T-shirts and shorts. With conditions deteriorating and darkness falling, the crew persuaded them to come aboard and towed their boards back to the beach.

A third task that evening involved a dinghy with paddlers waving for attention. While this turned out to be a case of poor paddling technique rather than distress, it demonstrated the importance of raising the alarm early. Saturday lunchtime, the crew launched to search for a 27-year-old man who had been missing for over 90 minutes after swimming east of Brighton Palace Pier. His belongings were found unattended on the beach by his friend, prompting a swift and coordinated response. Brighton RNLI carried out shoreline and offshore searches, while RNLI Lifeguards and Coastguard teams scoured the beach, and a rescue helicopter conducted an aerial search. The swimmer was eventually located and assisted onshore by the lifeguards and Coastguard.

Just hours later, that evening, Brighton RNLI was called out again. Two people had earlier been brought ashore without lifejackets after using a jet ski, but later swam back out to retrieve the craft, which had been tied to a buoy. Concerned that they might attempt another unsafe recovery, the crew returned the two individuals and their jet ski to Brighton Marina. The incident served as a reminder of how even seemingly short trips on the water can escalate without proper equipment or planning.

Finally, on Monday, at 1.24am, Brighton RNLI launched following a police request after bloodied clothing was discovered near the shore close to the i360. The crew carried out a thorough search of the area but were stood down after nothing was found. Back at the station, returning crew were met by five of the newest volunteer crew. They turned out in the early hours to help recover and clean the boat and to start learning how to respond to calls in the middle of the night safely.

These weekend call-outs were not unusual for the Brighton RNLI team. In 2024, Brighton RNLI responded to 61 incidents and were credited with saving two lives. Across Sussex, RNLI lifeboats carried out 475 launches last year, reflecting how busy the coastline can be.

Lifeboat operations manager Charlie Dannreuther said: ‘These launches highlight just how varied, and how demanding, a weekend on the coast can be. They also reinforced some vital safety messages. Whether you’re paddleboarding, using a jet ski, or going for a swim, being prepared is essential. Always wear a lifejacket when on the water. Take a means of calling for help, like a mobile phone in a waterproof pouch or a VHF radio. Check the weather forecast and tide times. Don’t head out in fading light. And always tell someone your plan.’

More support for Kings Arches

Some of Brighton’s crumbling seafront arches are set for a long-awaited transformation following the Department for Transport’s green light on 8 July to release £21 million from its Major Road Network fund. The money will pay for the next two major phases of the A259 King’s Road Highway Structures Renewal Programme, a project said to be vital for safeguarding the upper promenade and coast road that run above dozens of ageing Victorian arches. Much of the finance will go towards reinforcing the arches since these act as a viaduct supporting the road.

Brighton & Hove City Council has been working on plans to restore the arches for over a decade, prompted by structural failures that first made headlines in 2012. The most dramatic incident came in 2014, when the Fortune of War arch partially collapsed, forcing emergency repairs. Subsequent inspections revealed that many sections of the Victorian seafront were in similar peril. The arches not only house small businesses but also support the A259, which carries up to 36,000 vehicles, 30,000 pedestrians and 2,500 cyclists daily.

Council documents, planning applications and engineering reports, which have been repeatedly cited in local newspapers including the Argus and Brighton and Hove News, set out the detailed proposals. They show that Phase 4 of the scheme will rebuild the arches between the King’s Road playground and the Brighton Music Hall, while Phase 5 will reconstruct even more arches just west of the Shelter Hall. Together these phases are expected to cost around £27 million. The council will top up the government’s grant with local funds.

The rebuilt structures will use a reinforced concrete frame on piled foundations to provide modern load capacity, concealed behind brick façades designed to match the originals. The listed cast-iron balustrades along the upper promenade will be replaced with replicas, slightly raised to meet current safety regulations. The works also promise better ventilation and more efficient services, including the installation of discreet air-source heat pumps. Much of this information comes from the planning submissions and technical statements lodged with the city council, as well as design papers prepared by Project Centre, an arm of Marston Holdings, which is overseeing the engineering.

Construction is expected to start on Phase 4 now and run for about a year, followed by Phase 5 from May 2026 over roughly 18 months. During this time the A259 carriageway and lower promenade will remain open, though parts of the upper promenade may close intermittently. The council has pledged that businesses occupying the arches will either be temporarily relocated or have the chance to return to upgraded premises.

Local leaders have argued for years that the investment is critical not only to protect Brighton’s most famous road from collapse but also to secure the long-term future of the seafront economy. Earlier phases of the arches restoration, including around the i360 and Shelter Hall, have already demonstrated how modern structural interventions can be blended with heritage preservation.

Brighton Beach as runway!

Brighton Beach has always been a place for spectacle, but few moments could have matched the astonishment of locals in 1911 when Sir Harry Preston, the flamboyant hotelier and sportsman, arranged for a monoplane to land on the wide shingle shore. Preston, keen to boost Brighton’s reputation as a fashionable playground, was a fervent supporter of early aviation. Eager to showcase the marvels of flight, he invited pioneering pilot Oscar Morison to make a dramatic landing on the beach. 

On 15 February, crowds gathered to watch as Morison brought his Blériot XI monoplane skimming over the waves and touched down on the shingle beach between the Palace and West Piers. Although the rough pebbled surface damaged the aircraft’s undercarriage and propeller, the landing was safe, with Preston himself among the delighted spectators. The event captured national headlines and cemented Brighton’s place in the glamorous story of early aviation. (See the Sir Harry Preston website for further details).

Preston’s enthusiasm for flying was not limited to publicity stunts. As proprietor of the Royal York and the Royal Albion Hotels, he entertained countless aviators, racing drivers and sportsmen, many of whom regarded Brighton as their sporting headquarters. Preston saw aviation as part of the modern allure of his beloved town - a symbol of speed, daring, and forward-looking spirit.

Meanwhile, the inventive Volk brothers - Magnus and George Herbert, sons of Magnus Volk of electric railway fame -were turning their mechanical skills to aviation. Their particular story was recently (May) uncovered by BBC News with photographs (as above) and a radio report. From around 1910, the brothers were producing engines and floats in a North Laine workshop (though George Herbert ‘Bert’ Volk was at the heart of these endeavours). Soon after, they were building full airframes and fitting them with lightweight engines. The parts for these curious craft were wheeled down to the seafront near Paston Place, where they were assembled and launched directly into the Channel from Brighton Beach. 

Bert Volk’s operation attracted other aviation enthusiasts and innovators. Among them was John Cyril Porte, later known for his significant contributions to flying boat design, who collaborated on ideas about hulls and floats. In 1912, the celebrated aviator Claude Grahame‑White arrived in Brighton and demonstrated flights from Volk’s beach station, adding a dash of celebrity to the venture and thrilling crowds who had never seen such machines take to the air from the waves.

This brief flowering of marine aviation in Brighton, however, was overtaken by larger forces. By 1913, Bert had departed for South Africa, and with the outbreak of the First World War, the government requisitioned the site for wartime needs.