Hove Lagoon watersports

On a bright salt-washed morning the blue clubhouse of Lagoon Watersports beside Hove Lagoon looks almost theatrical, its white lettering impelling passers-by to learn, improve, progress. The building, raised slightly above the path and fronted by a tangle of kayaks, Pico dinghies and wakeboard gear, has become one of the most recognisable structures on the Brighton Beach seafront. What began as a modest watersports base more than thirty years ago is now woven into the daily life of the lagoon and the lives of thousands who first stood on a paddleboard, hauled a sail upright or felt the sudden tug of a wake-cable here.

Lagoon Watersports was formally incorporated in 1989 and has been run by the same management since the mid-1990s. Its chosen setting, Hove Lagoon, is an artificial remnant of the old Salt Daisy Lake, a brackish hollow that was gradually formalised during interwar landscaping of the Kingsway (see Brighton Toy Museum website which is also the source of the photograph below). The company turned this shallow, wind-swept waterbody into a training ground for beginners, school groups and would-be sailors. Over the years its programmes expanded across two sites - sheltered lessons and wakeboarding at the lagoon, and yacht sailing and power-boat sessions from Brighton Marina.

The lagoon has regularly thrown Lagoon Watersports into the local press. When the first cable-tow wakeboarding system went live in 2011 it drew a flurry of interest as one of the earliest installations of its type in the UK. By 2013 the centre was running three cables, including a beginner line and a rail section that drew riders from across the region. Newspapers ran bright, summery photographs of young wakeboarders skimming across the lagoon, a striking contrast to the placid model-yacht scene once associated with the site.

There have been quirkier stories too. One Argus report captured the arrival of paddleboard yoga on the lagoon, describing early sessions wobbling across the water. Another covered a women’s watersports day that saw first-timers taking to kayaks and paddleboards in breezy conditions, relishing the sense of achievement even when the wind and chop made the lagoon feel more like open sea. These sat alongside the regular run of charity challenges on icy January mornings, youth groups completing multi-sport days in howling south-westerlies, and the occasional windsurfer being blown clean across the lagoon and into the reeds, to the delight of watching schoolchildren.

The company’s daily rhythm sees staff usher in wetsuited school groups, kayaks carried to the slipway in lines, and the wake-cable’s soft mechanical hum drifting across the water whenever conditions are calm. The blue clubhouse stands at the heart of it all, part workshop, part briefing room, part symbol of Brighton and Hove’s multivarious beach culture.

The European fan palm

Found on the beach: Chamaerops humilis, commonly known as the European fan palm. It grows low and wide on the shingle, its fronds rattling in even the gentlest seafront breeze, looking half like a survivor from some Mediterranean headland and half like an escapee from a forgotten Victorian planting scheme. Brighton Beach is one of the few places in Britain where this species seems entirely at home. The salt spray, the glare, the scouring winds that flatten other ornamentals all suit it perfectly, and its scruffy, sun-bleached skirt of old leaves gives it the faintly rakish air of a visitor who has stayed long enough to become a local.

Chamaerops humilis is the only palm native to continental Europe, growing naturally around the western Mediterranean from southern Spain to Sicily (see pic below from Wikipedia). It is a compact, clumping species, often forming several short trunks rather than a single tall one, and its fans are stiff, segmented and edged with tiny teeth. The fronds emerge a bold green but quickly fade to a straw colour in coastal exposure, creating the characteristic thatch of shredded leaves seen on the beach. In spring it produces small yellow flowers at the base of the leaf stems, followed later by clusters of reddish fruit that are technically edible but rarely palatable. What makes the species so useful in Brighton is its tolerance: it survives drought, cold snaps, poor soils and salt-laden winds, and will root happily in rubble or shingle where more delicate ornamentals fail.

Historically, the European fan palm has been familiar to travellers since antiquity, appearing in early herbal texts for its fibres, which were used for rope, brushes and stuffing. Its leaves were woven into mats, baskets and the rustic rain capes once worn by shepherds in Spain and Portugal. Renaissance gardeners admired it as a curiosity from classical lands and often tried to coax it through northern winters, though with little success until more robust varieties were introduced in the nineteenth century. By the early twentieth century it had become a reliable feature of British seaside towns, planted in the optimistic belief that palms could summon the air of a warmer climate. Brighton adopted the idea enthusiastically, dotting the seafront with species that could endure the Channel’s temperament, and Chamaerops humilis proved one of the hardiest.

The palm on the beach now stands as part of that long horticultural experiment, a living remnant of the city’s desire to appear just a little more southern than it really is. Walkers pass it without comment, but it quietly thrives, shrugging off winter storms and growing a little wider each year. It is both out of place and perfectly placed, a Mediterranean native that has found its own niche on an English shingle shore.

Sources: Royal Horticultural Society, Kew Gardens, Harrod Outdoors, Wikipedia.

Hooray for Horatio’s

At the far end of Brighton’s Palace Pier, and settled easily into the funfair area, sits Horatio’s, an elegant all-purpose bar with what must be nearly 40 years of history. It evolved as the pier shifted from Victorian theatreland into full-blown seaside spectacle, and by the late 1980s it had become the pier’s resident big, breezy social hall - a place where the smell of sea spray and hot doughnuts drifted through the doors and where the floor could tremble slightly whenever the Turbo Coaster launched its cars overhead.

In 1984, when the pier was purchased by the Noble Organisation, it introduced free admission and new attractions. Two years later, it also embarked upon an £8 million refurbishment and enlargement programme which included new entrance kiosks, a remodelling of the Palace of Fun, and the opening of both the Fish and Chip Café, Victoria’s Bar (now the Palm Court Restaurant - see Fish and chips or moules) and Horatio’s Bar.

As the pier modernised, so did Horatio’s. It grew from a simple drinking space into one with occasional music events. Local bands began to play weekend sets, filling the glass-fronted room with Brighton’s familiar mix of covers, ska, indie guitars and the odd sea-shanty revival. Jazz arrived too, and Horatio’s became one of the venues used for the Brighton Jazz Festival, hosting double-header evening concerts with world-class players performing as waves thudded beneath the ironwork. Dance nights joined the offerings - Cuban salsa sessions with live percussion and teaching pairs leading crowds through rueda circles under the rope-woven ceiling.

A collaboration with The Latest led to a variety of performances not just music but spoken word events, film showings, club nights, art exhibitions, comedy nights. ‘We host everything,’ the Latest website says ‘from the monthly talk-based Cafe Scientfique and the infamous Catalyst Club events, to music shows hosted by The Great Escape, burlesque performance nights, Fringe theatre, charity events, kids events and loads more.’ Latest TV, meanwhile, broadcasts live interviews and band sessions directly from Horatio’s. 

A major refit in the late 2010s gave Horatio’s a more modern coastal look - rope-woven ceiling panels, timber slats and bi-fold doors that open straight onto the sea. But its essence hasn’t changed. This is still where parents take a breather between rides, where football fans crowd around big screens, where local musicians cut their teeth on stormy midweek evenings, and where - now and then - the whole place rocks gently when a winter sea pushes hard against the pier piles.

Sources: Wikipedia and My Brighton and Hove (but note the text here is taken from Tim Carder’s printed book, The Encyclopaedia of Brighton).

The Mystery of the Crowded Boats

Here is the 20th 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 four small boats are clustered together on lively, broken water, their hulls overlapping as if pressed close at a busy mooring. In the foreground, a yellow boat and a white-and-red one tilt toward each other, their cabins and decks picked out in clean, angular lines. Behind them lie a vivid red boat and a pale grey one, half-hidden but still distinct, riding at slightly different angles as if shifting with the tide. Strong verticals rise from all four, suggesting taut mooring lines or slender masts, while the sea around them is fragmented into sweeping bands of deep blue, light blue and green, giving the whole scene a sense of movement and bright coastal weather.

A limerick starter

Four boats on a restless blue sea

Were tangled as tangled could be.

Said the yellow one: ‘Mate,

Is this some kind of date?’

Replied red: ‘Only if you moor with me.’

The Mystery of the Crowded Boats (with apologies to Enid Blyton)

Julian spotted the cluster of boats first. They were moored oddly close together, their bright colours bobbing on the choppy water just east of the old West Pier. The four of them were almost nose-to-nose, as if whispering secrets. George shaded her eyes and frowned.

‘They weren’t like that yesterday,’ she said. ‘Look - they’re practically jammed together. Something’s happened.’

Timmy barked in agreement and pulled at his lead. Anne, who always noticed the smaller details, pointed to the sandy shingle at their feet.

‘There are fresh imprints here,’ she said. ‘Two sets - and one of them looks as though the person was carrying something heavy. The prints sink deeper.’

Dick, who was already scrambling towards the nearest groyne, gave a low whistle. ‘And here’s another clue - look at this rope end. It’s been cut clean through. Someone’s taken one of the boats out, and put it back in a terrible hurry.’

George’s eyes shone. ‘Let’s hire a dinghy from the fishing hut and go over to them. If someone’s been up to mischief, we might still catch them.’

Minutes later, they were rowing hard through the shifting green-blue water, Timmy perched at the bow like a proud figurehead. As they drew nearer, the four boats looked even stranger. The yellow one was scuffed along its side, the grey one had a new dent near the stern, and the white-and-red boat was sitting lower in the water than any of them liked.

‘Julian!’ Anne cried. ‘It’s overloaded!’

They pulled alongside, and Dick leaned over. Inside the half-sunken boat lay a wooden crate, still wet and half wedged beneath the seat. Rough stencilled letters ran across its side: BEACH HUT 243 - KEEP SHUT.

‘It must have come loose from its mooring wherever that was, and drifted here’ Julian said. ‘And now it’s stuck between the other boats.’

George tugged at the crate and the lid came away with a snap. Inside were neat rows of shiny tin canisters, each labelled MODEL ROCKET FUEL - CAUTION.

‘Rocket fuel!’ Dick said in astonishment. ‘What on earth is it doing here?’

Julian looked back towards the beach, where the line of colourful beach huts curved towards Hove.

‘I think someone’s planning something they shouldn’t,’ he said. ‘And whoever keeps hut 243 may be in danger, not involved. We must inform the coastguard immediately.’

Timmy barked triumphantly. The children tied the red boat up to the others, and hauled the crate into their own dinghy before setting off to return to shore. Behind them, the four boats rocked together as though relieved to have given up their secret.

By the time the sun dipped behind the West Pier ruins, the Famous Five had uncovered a plot, saved a string of beach huts from a fiery mishap, and earned themselves enormous ice-creams from the grateful hut-owner - just the sort of ending, Anne thought happily, that Brighton Beach always seemed to give them.

Deep sea angling in Hove

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Beach hut Facebook group

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See also 161, what have you done?