Charles II and Pepys on the quarterdeck

23 May 1660: the day Brighton made its first appearance in a diary (albeit not by name), and not just any diary, but THE diary - the one kept by Samuel Pepys, the most famous diarist in the English language. That day, aboard a ship bringing Charles II back from exile to claim the throne, Pepys listened spellbound as the King paced the quarterdeck, recounting a harrowing escape that had taken him - nearly a decade earlier - through the Sussex coast and within a pebble’s toss of Brighton Beach.

Pepys’ journal entry for that day overflows with drama. The King and a retinue of royals had boarded the fleet in the Netherlands, greeted with ‘infinite shooting off of the guns.’ The King, rather than playing the aloof monarch, surprised Pepys by walking ‘up and down,’ full of energy, and launching into vivid stories of his flight from the Battle of Worcester in 1651.

After the Royalist defeat at Worcester, Charles II was a fugitive in his own country. Hiding in priest holes, haylofts, and famously in an oak tree at Boscobel, he eluded capture for six weeks. Travelling in disguise, he trudged through mud ‘with nothing but a green coat and a pair of country breeches,’ his feet rubbed raw by peasant shoes. His journey led him through Sussex, staying in Arundel and Beeding, and then - on 14 October - to ‘another place’. Although not named, the place was certainly Brighthelmstone, as Brighton was then called.

According to the King’s own account, recorded by Pepys in a later narrative, he met his escape vessel’s captain, Nicholas Tettersell, at an inn - most likely The George in Middle Street. The ship lay waiting at Shoreham. Although Tettersell recognised Charles immediately (‘he is the king, and I very well know him’), he agreed to help, later earning a royal pension and the honour of having his ship, Surprise, renamed The Royal Escape.

There, in that Brighton inn, surrounded by loyalists and strangers alike, Charles drank beer, smoked tobacco, and gambled that he could trust the landlord - who quietly knelt and kissed his hand. At 4 am, they rode to Shoreham and boarded the small vessel. As Charles later told it, he lay low in the cabin until the tide rose enough to carry them across the Channel to safety.

That same escape would later inspire two commemorations: the 615-mile Monarch’s Way long-distance footpath tracing his route from Worcester to Shoreham, and the annual Royal Escape Race - a modern yacht event retracing his dash to France.

So what of Pepys? His diary began on New Year’s Day 1660 and ran for nine momentous years. He was aboard the ship that day not just as a chronicler, but as part of the Admiralty team. That his journal should contain Brighton’s earliest known diary mention seems fitting, given his flair for blending personal anecdote with sweeping historical detail. He wrote of that 23 May - 365 years ago today - ‘The King . . . fell into discourse of his escape from Worcester . . . made me ready to weep to hear the stories that he told. . .’

[This article was largely sourced from my book Brighton in Diaries (History Press, 2011). The topmost picture was created using Bing, and the lower picture is a copy of a 1911 print - Samuel Pepys and King Charles II - by Robert Spence found on the website of The Australian National Gallery of Victoria.]

The Golden Gallopers

We are lucky to have the GGs on Brighton Beach, better known as the ‘Golden Gallopers’, a fairground ride that surely captures the spirit of traditional seaside entertainment. 

This carousel was built in 1888 by Frederick Savage, a pioneering 19th-century English engineer and inventor who transformed the world of fairground machinery. Savage, based in King’s Lynn, Norfolk, developed steam-powered systems for carousels, including the ‘galloping horse’ mechanism that gave ride-on horses their signature rise-and-fall motion. His roundabouts were exported around the world and laid the foundation for what became known as the golden age of mechanical fairgrounds.

The Brighton carousel originally toured the North of England before being exported to the USA by an American collector. After some years abroad, it returned to the UK and eventually found a permanent home on Brighton beach. Over the course of its history, the ride has undergone a number of restorations, including a key rebuild by Savage’s company to convert it from a ‘dobby set’ (with stationary horses) to a full galloper ride using overhead cranks and a rotating platform. The original steam engine was removed in 1949, and the carousel has since run on electric power.

The carousel has been operated on Brighton beach since 1997 by Owen Smith - Smith’s name is proudly painted on the ride’s canopy, and he continues to manage its seasonal appearance and upkeep. The carousel typically operates from Easter to September and is dismantled each winter for protection. A notable feature of the ride’s operation is its annual rebuilding each March, when it is reassembled on the beach. This process has been documented in a sequence of photos by Tony Mould, who also recorded the names of all the carved horses, each one individually painted and named - see My Brighton and Hove. (However, these photographs are my own.)

Today, the Golden Gallopers carousel remains a much-loved landmark on Brighton’s seafront. It stands, one might say, as a living tribute to Frederick Savage’s mechanical ingenuity and to the commitment of its current operator, who ensures the carousel continues to delight new generations of visitors with the colour, motion, and music of a bygone era.

Rampion’s giant turbines

This month marks ten years since a major turning point in the UK’s green energy journey - and in the future of views out to sea from Brighton Beach. In May 2015, confirmation of a £1.3 billion investment unlocked the start of construction on what would become the Rampion Offshore Wind Farm - a pioneering renewable energy project off the Sussex coast. A decade later, Rampion has not only reshaped the region’s horizon but also played a key role in reshaping Britain’s energy future.

Back in 2015, the announcement by E.ON, with backing from the UK Green Investment Bank and Enbridge, signalled more than just a financial commitment. It was a bold vote of confidence in the potential of offshore wind, then still an emerging sector. Construction began in 2016; by spring 2018, the turbines were fully operational, delivering power to the National Grid.

Situated 13km off the Sussex coast, Rampion was the first offshore wind farm in the south of England. With 116 turbines generating up to 400 megawatts - enough to power around 350,000 homes - it demonstrated the viability of large-scale wind energy in the region. Its name, chosen by public vote, nods to the round-headed rampion, the county flower of Sussex.

Today, Rampion stands as a landmark project - visible most especially from Brighton Beach - and a vital contributor to the UK’s renewable energy mix. Looking ahead, the proposed Rampion 2 expansion aims to nearly triple the wind farm’s generating capacity. With an estimated cost of £2 billion, the project received government approval in April 2025 and is expected to begin construction in late 2026 or early 2027, aiming to be fully operational before 2030. The extension will add 90 turbines, each up to 325 meters tall - surpassing the height of the Eiffel Tower - and will provide clean electricity to over one million homes. (The photo below is from the Rampion website.)

The visual impact of Rampion has been a topic of discussion - see The Guardian. While some residents and visitors appreciate the turbines as symbols of progress and find them majestic, others express concerns about their prominence on the seascape. The developers have engaged in public consultations to address these concerns, including reducing the number of turbines and adjusting their placement to minimise visual intrusion. Meanwhile anyone wishing to get up close and personal to the turbine giants can take a tour with Brighton Diver - costing just £45 for a two-three hour boat ride.

The Brighton Fixer

Here is the eight 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 features two jockeys riding brown horses, both in racing posture. The jockey in the foreground is wearing a pink top and white pants, while the jockey behind is dressed in a red top and white pants with a yellow helmet. The background shows stylised green fields, a blue sky, and white clouds, with a prominent red circle in the sky, possibly representing the sun or a race marker. 

A limerick starter

Two jockeys sped off in a dash,

Each hoping to pocket the cash.

Their horses, inspired,

Look secretly wired -

Did someone spike oats with panache?

The Brighton Fixer (in the style of Dick Francis)

I saw it again this morning. The stained glass roundel above the old betting shop door on Brighton seafront. Two jockeys, mid-gallop, frozen in coloured glass - one in rose, one in red. Odd thing is, I know them both.

The one in rose? That’s Charlie Fielding. Dead two years now - trampled under six hooves at Plumpton. Officially an accident. Unofficially, I never bought it. And the other jockey? I’d bet my last losing slip it’s me.

I retired after Charlie’s death. Couldn’t ride without seeing him in my periphery. But I still walked the beach every morning, boots crunching shingle, past the piers and peeling Victorian arches. That’s when I noticed the stained glass, installed suddenly in the old Seagull Tote, long closed and boarded until recently. No artist’s name. No sign. Just that image - and the past, staring back at me.

That morning, a figure was watching from inside. A flicker behind the coloured panes. Curiosity overrode my better sense. I crossed the promenade and pushed through the warped wooden door. It creaked open.

Inside was dim, the salt air clinging to dusty formica. A single bulb buzzed above a folding table. And sitting at it, with a bookmaker’s ledger open in front of him, was Julian Kemp.

He’d trained both Charlie and me once. Slick, silver-haired, with a fondness for quiet threats and sudden debt. He didn’t look surprised to see me.

‘Thought the window might bring you in,’ he said, without looking up. ‘It’s good, isn’t it? Custom commission. Memory’s a powerful lure.’

I didn’t answer. My eyes scanned the room. Beneath the table: a floorboard pried loose. Inside, stacked neatly - old betting slips, laminated, coded. Duplicates of Charlie’s last race. And photos. Surveillance. One showed Charlie arguing with Kemp, another showed Kemp at a late-night meeting with a farrier who’d been banned from every course south of the M25.

Charlie had known something. Tried to back out. And now the glass showed him forever racing to a finish he never reached.

‘You killed him,’ I said quietly.

Kemp smiled like a man remembering a clever joke. ‘He wouldn’t play ball. But you? You stayed loyal. Fancy another ride, Ben?’

He nodded toward a fresh set of silks on a hook: rose pink, like Charlie’s.

I picked them up, felt the weight. Then turned, sharp and fast, and cracked the brass hook against Kemp’s temple. He crumpled silently.

I left him tied with his own power cable, his precious stained glass glowing behind me as the dawn caught the curve of the beach.

I’d call the police once I reached the pier. First, I stopped and looked out to sea.

This time, I wouldn’t be part of the finish line.

Hove Beach Park opens

It’s big news for Brighton Beach that Hove Beach Park has been officially opened - by the mayor Mohammed Asaduzzaman and council leader Bella Sankey. Stretching from the King Alfred Leisure Centre to Hove Lagoon, the new park - the first in the city for 100 years, claims Sankey - has been built across Hove’s Western Lawns, an area which for a century has been little more than a series of lawned rectangles. 

The first section of the £13.7m park - opened last September and included a skatepark, pump track and roller area. Since then the council has added padel and tennis courts, gardens and new pathways, and an outdoor sports hub, café and public toilets - see Not the Mary Clarke Park. The existing croquet and bowls lawns have also reopened - a sand sports area is expected to follow by August.

In a press release, the Council quoted Sankey as stating: ‘This project has been evolving since 2018 through the work of local community organisations, particularly West Hove Seafront Action Group and West Hove Forum. Working in partnership, we identified underused facilities and green spaces on the seafront and developed a plan to reinvigorate this key area of the city. The result is a linear park with attractive spaces, better biodiversity and a range of recreational activities for residents and visitors of all ages to enjoy.’

Brighton and Hove News reported on the opening ceremony last Friday, as did BBC Sussex. In celebration of the opening, several events were organised over the weekend: padel games with coaches on hand, an introductory bowls session, a jam session in the skatepark and pump track area, and a croquet drop-in session.

Rotten decking anniversary

It is, today, the 10th anniversary of the day the news broke - in The Argus, where else - that the leg of a teenager (ironically called Megan Wood) ‘went plunging’ through the Palace Pier wooden decking. The story has been immortalised by the National Piers Society which includes the event in its potted history of the Palace Pier. I can find no other source for the story so I will have to rely almost entirely on (i.e. plagiarise) the Argus piece (inc. its photographs).

According to the Argus reporter Adrian Imms, Wood, a 19 year old from Portslade, was out for a stroll with her friends on the Palace Pier when the mishap occurred, and she saw her leg go through a slat in the pier up to above her knee. She said: ‘I just trod on a bit of wood and it fell straight through. I was just in shock at this chunk of wood missing. It could happen to anyone - imagine if it was an old lady or a child who fell through. I never want to go on the pier again.’

Wood told the Argus she had been going to the Palace Pier with her boyfriend Declan Dexter for years. Dexter, 20, who volunteers for the RNLI, added: ‘It’s a shame really because we have been going on there since we were kids.’ The pair took a taxi to A&E in a taxi, where it was confirmed Wood had not broken any bones but may have done some nerve damage, and that there might be some bleeding in the muscles of her leg which could take two or three weeks to heal. Afterwards she told the Argus: ‘It still really hurts and is bruised. The doctor said it would get worse before getting better.’ 

Anne Martin, general manager of the pier, was quoted by the Argus: ‘We have had no direct contact with the young lady concerned and have only been advised by a third party. We are waiting to see how we can resolve this unfortunate incident. Our health and safety consultant has provided us with a report and we are satisfied that this is an isolated incident.’

The National Pier Society website - in its potted history of the Palace Pier - confirms that the pier undertook a health and safety investigation and this had shown the incident to be an isolated one. Nevertheless,  the previous May something similar had occurred. Again according to the Argus, Fakhouri Sami Yassan, a Brighton resident put his leg through the decking and also ended up at hospital where he was treated for cuts and bruises. Yassan was quoted as saying: ‘I was lucky that another piece of decking didn’t give way or I’d have fallen straight through.’ 

I am Brighton

This day seven years ago, Century published Dorothy Koomson’s The Brighton Mermaid. Said to be a gripping thriller, it follows the story of teenagers Nell and Jude who find the body of an unidentified young woman on Brighton beach. On her right arm is the tattoo of a mermaid, and below it are etched the words ‘I am Brighton’. The narrative shifts between past and present as Nell tries to uncover the truth about her death and the disappearance of Jude 25 years later. 

Koomson is a Brighton-based British novelist and journalist, widely regarded as one of the UK’s most successful Black authors of adult fiction, with her books translated into over 30 languages and sales exceeding 2.5 million copies in the UK alone. Born in London to Ghanaian parents, she wrote her first novel at age 13 and later earned degrees in psychology and journalism from Leeds University. She began her professional writing career in women’s magazines before publishing her debut novel, The Cupid Effect, in 2003. Her third novel, My Best Friend’s Girl, became a major bestseller, and The Ice Cream Girls was adapted into a successful television drama. 

The Brighton Mermaid - first published on 17 May 2018 - is said to be fast-paced and thrilling, and to explore ‘the deadly secrets of those closest to you’. Here is the moment, right at the start of the book, Nell is narrating, when the reader is first taken on to Brighton beach. It is 1993. 

‘From the promenade, I’d spotted her down on the beach, the light of the almost full moon shining down on her, and said we should check to see if she was all right. Jude had wanted us to keep going, getting back to her house after we’d sneaked out was going to be tricky enough without getting back even later than 3 a.m., which was the time now. But I’d insisted we check. What if she’d twisted her ankle and couldn’t get up? How would we feel, leaving someone who was hurt alone like that? What if she’s drunk and has fallen asleep on the beach when the tide was out and is now too drunk to wake up and pull herself out of the water? How would we live with ourselves if we read in the paper in the morning that she’d been washed out to sea and had drowned?

Jude had rolled her eyes at me, had reminded me in an angry whisper that even though our mums were at work (they were both nurses on night duty), her dad was at home asleep and could wake up any minute now to find us gone. He’d call my dad and then we’d be for it. She’d grumbled this while going towards the stone steps that led to the beach. She was all talk, was Jude - she wouldn’t want to leave someone who was hurt, she would want to help as much as I did. It wasn’t until we’d got nearer, close enough to be able to count the breaths that weren’t going in and out of her chest, that we could to see what the real situation was. And I said that thing about her being asleep.

‘I’ll go up to the . . . I’ll go and call the police,’ Jude said. She didn’t even give me a chance to say I would do it before she was gone - crunching the pebbles underfoot as she tried to get away as fast as possible.

Alone, I felt foolish and scared at the same time. This wasn’t meant to turn out this way. We were meant to come to the beach and help a drunk lady and then sneak back to Jude’s house. I wasn’t supposed to be standing next to someone who was asleep but not.

She must be cold, I thought suddenly. Her vest top was soaked through and stuck to her body like a second, clingy skin; her denim skirt, which didn’t quite reach down to her knees, was also wringing wet. ‘I wish I had a blanket that I could pull over you,’ I silently said to her. ‘If I had a blanket, I’d do my best to keep you warm.’

It was summer, but not that warm. I wasn’t sure why she was only wearing a vest, skirt and no shoes. Maybe, I thought, her shoes and jumper have already been washed out to sea.

I leant forwards to have another look at her. I wanted to make her feel more comfortable, to move her head from resting on her left arm at an awkward angle, and stop her face from being pushed into the dozens and dozens of bracelets she wore on her arm. Thin metal ones, bright plastic ones, wood ones, black rubbery ones, they stretched from her wrist to her elbow, some of them not visible because of where her head rested. I wanted to gently move her head off her arm and lay it instead on myrolled-up jacket. I didn’t dare touch her though. I didn’t dare move any nearer, let alone touch her.

Her other arm, the right one, was thrown out to one side, as if it had flopped there when she’d finally fallen asleep. That arm had only one slender silver charm bracelet, hung with lots of little silver figures. That arm’s real decoration, though, was an elegant and detailed tattoo of a mermaid. My eyes wouldn’t leave the tattoo, which was so clear in the moonlight. Usually when I saw tattoos they were a faded greeny-blue, etched into peach or white skin, but this one was on a girl with the same shade skin as me. Deep black ink had artistically been used to stain and adorn most of her inner forearm. I leant a little more forwards, not wanting to get too close, but fascinated enough to want to have a better look. It was truly beautiful, so incredibly detailed it looked like it had been carefully inscribed onto paper, not rendered on skin.

I could see every curl of the mermaid’s short, black Afro hair; I could make out the tiny squares of light in her pupils; I could count every one of the individually etched scales on her tail, and I could see droplets of water glistening on the bodice, shaped of green seaweed, that covered her torso. The mermaid sat on a craggy grey rock, her hands demurely crossed in her lap, smiling at anyone who cared to look at her.

I couldn’t stop staring at her. She was mythical, she was a picture, but she was also like a siren at whom I couldn’t stop staring. In the waters beneath the mermaid’s rock, there were three words in a swirling, watery script: ‘I am Brighton’.