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. 

Busking on the seafront - yes please

Brighton’s seafront busking tradition has long been part of its festival character, with musicians and street performers enlivening the promenade, the piers and the Lanes. For decades it has operated largely on a basis of informal tolerance, supported by a voluntary code rather than formal regulation. The city council’s guidance confirms that no licence is required, but it sets limits: no amplification, no drumming, and no more than one hour in any spot between 10am and 10pm. Enforcement has tended to be complaint-led rather than systematic. (Here is Unörthadox playing Madeira Drive earlier this year.)

In 2018, attempts to restrict busking in Pavilion Gardens provoked strong public reaction. Proposals to ban amplification or to introduce audition-based access were criticised as undermining the spontaneity that has always defined street performance. Buskers themselves have often tried to ease tensions by informally sharing pitches in high-traffic areas. Films such as Between Two Piers (see film still below) and networks like Brighton Beach Busking have documented the scene, showing how performance has become embedded in seafront life.

The latest dispute - see Brighton and Hove News - centres on a sign erected by the Upside Down House on the seafront, which warned against amplification and percussion and even threatened instrument seizure. This triggered a petition signed by nearly 600 people, calling for the creation of permanent busking zones, including the right to use amplification and percussion, and for some sheltered performance spots to be introduced. Petitioners also asked for a more explicit recognition that busking is an asset for local businesses and tourism.

When the petition was presented to full council on 13 October, councillor Birgit Miller, with responsibility for culture and tourism, acknowledged the value of busking but said local businesses had complained about excessively loud or prolonged performances. She promised a review of the situation and a reconsideration of the current voluntary code. The debate reflects a familiar Brighton tension between protecting a vibrant cultural tradition and addressing concerns about noise and public space management.

Oops, pier opts to drop o and p

Brighton Pier shows a missing o, a proper noun turned provocation; passers-by stop, point, and pose.

On the promenade, popcorn pops; pigeons patrol; photographers compose panoramas.

Above, rope and poles prop the pale front; below, the pier’s pylons drop shadows on the ocean.

A playful proposal: pop the O and the P back atop the roof and proclaim “BRIGHTON PIER” proudly.

For Hattie

xx

Just opened - Quarters

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

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

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

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

The Brighton Behemoth

Found on Brighton Beach - Specimen BRB-2025-021: a weathered mass bearing uncanny zoological features, documented and classified under the provisional name Arboris behemothus. The initial field sketch depicts the living form as imagined by researchers: a hybrid organism with arboreal integument, pachydermal bulk, and a proboscis adapted for both foraging and respiration. While no living specimens have been observed, the morphology reconstructed from the find suggests an evolutionary convergence between megafaunal mammals and coastal flora, raising debate as to whether the remains represent fossilised biology or a natural artefact misinterpreted through pareidolia.

Specimen Data File – BRB-2025-021

Specimen Name: Arboris behemothus (colloquial: Brighton Behemoth)

Classification:

Kingdom: Animalia (disputed, hybrid traits with Plantae)

Phylum: Chordata (?)

Class: Mammalia (arboreal-adapted, extinct)

Order: Indeterminate

Family: Unknown

Discovery location: Brighton Beach, East Sussex, UK

Date of record: 13 October 2025

Collector: Anonymous beach observer

Condition: Semi-fossilised drift specimen, partially mineralised; internal cavities resembling pulmonary or ocular structures

Estimated size: 2.1 m length; 0.9 m maximum width

Surface characteristics:

External ridges resembling dermal armour

Hollow chambers suggesting respiratory or sensory function

Elongated protrusion consistent with feeding apparatus or proboscis

Proposed Origin:

        Arboreal megafauna species adapted to both woodland and coastal marsh environments, extinct c. 12,000 BP

Notable Features:

Cavities arranged in bilateral symmetry, resembling ocular sockets

Protruding snout-like structure

Evidence of prolonged exposure to saline and wave action

Remarks:

This specimen represents either the genuine fossil remains of an unknown taxon. Further study recommended. Or, an extreme case of pareidolia (human tendency to perceive creatures in natural forms). 

Bombing the Grand

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

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

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

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

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

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

Guest: Brighton Beach, Melbourne

Brighton Beach on the eastern side of Port Phillip Bay, just 11km south of Melbourne, has been part of the city’s life for more than 150 years, its long sweep of sand framed by bathing boxes that have become as much a symbol of the city as Flinders Street Station. The Bunurong/Boon Wurrung people fished and gathered shellfish here for millennia, leaving behind middens along the bluffs. European settlement brought roads, the opening of Brighton Beach station in 1861, and an easy escape from the city once the line pushed through to Sandringham in 1887.

The first sea baths were built at Middle Brighton in the 1880s, grand timber structures enclosing a stretch of bay to allow men and women to bathe separately. After storms repeatedly wrecked them, a concrete-walled open-sea pool was built in 1936, still used daily by cold-water swimmers. The Royal Brighton Yacht Club had been formed earlier, in 1875, and grew with the marina into one of Victoria’s leading yachting centres. Just north, the bathing boxes began appearing in the 1860s, multiplying after the First World War and shifting higher up the sand in the 1930s as seawalls and promenades altered the foreshore.

By the mid-20th century the beach was already a magnet for popular culture. In 1959 Marilyn Monroe is said to have posed on the sand during her Australian visit (with husband Arthur Miller), the bathing boxes forming the backdrop to photographs (though I’ve not been able to find a source to confirm this). In recent times, there have been recurring seaweed invasions, with piles of rotting kelp and seagrass creating a stench along the foreshore, sometimes requiring heavy machinery to clear. Other summers have brought swarms of lion’s mane jellyfish, their metre-long tentacles driving swimmers from the water. Local councils experimented with booms and regular sand clearance, while health officers reassured residents the jellyfish were a nuisance more than a danger.

In 1930 Brighton Beach was the scene of one of the bay’s few fatal shark attacks, when 16-year-old Norman William Clark was seized near the Middle Brighton pier before horrified onlookers. Decades later a basking seal asleep on the sand led police to cordon off the beach until it swam away. Over the years, there have been fiercely contested council debates over whether the bathing boxes should remain. Public sentiment, though, and their growing heritage status have prevailed so they are now tightly controlled, passing between generations or fetching extraordinary prices on the private market. Reports in September 2025 of sales approaching one million dollars again underlined their status as coveted assets despite having no plumbing or power.

Today Brighton Beach remains a blend of heritage and utility. The Dendy Street Beach pavilion, completed in 2025, houses the Brighton Life Saving Club along with a café, toilets and showers. The Middle Brighton Baths continue to offer enclosed swimming with boardwalks and changing areas. The Royal Brighton Yacht Club operates a busy marina and social rooms. The Bay Trail runs the length of the foreshore, with car parks, ramps and stair access from the Esplanade. Seasonal dog rules, CCTV proposals to combat break-ins at the boxes, and ongoing sand renourishment programmes show how the beach remains actively managed. (The images above have been taken from Wikipedia and Googlemaps.)