Prof. Powsey’s West Pier feats

At the height of the Edwardian seaside boom, few spectacles drew a crowd like the high dives of ‘Professor’ Powsey. From a spindly wooden tower on Brighton’s West Pier he hurled himself into the Channel from 80 feet up, sometimes head first, sometimes astride a bicycle. His name appeared on countless postcards, his performances billed as ‘Professor Powsey’s Sensational High Dive of 81 feet’ or ‘The Great Cycle Dive’.

The most widespread image of his act shows him riding off a platform above the West Pier, still in the saddle. But other, less common photographs do still exist - such as the two on the left above that passed through Toovey’s auctioneers at one time or another.

Powsey’s Brighton Beach performances took place around 1905-08, part of a circuit of seaside stunts that included Margate, Blackpool and Scarborough. Yet Brighton became his signature setting. On clear afternoons he climbed the narrow frame above the pier, waved to the crowd, and dropped into a small patch of sea fenced off by boats. These were feats as much of nerve as of balance, undertaken in unpredictable tides and wind.

The diving tradition continued with his daughter, Miss G. Powsey, who performed on the same pier a few years later. A postcard from the Royal Pavilion & Museums collection shows her captured in mid-dive before the domed concert hall, continuing the family’s blend of danger and elegance that had thrilled the seaside crowds. See also Powsey Family History.

Picture credits: Top left - Toovey’s; top right - Wikipedia; bottom left - Toovey’s; bottom right - Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove.

The Thruster Buster

Found on the beach: a Thruster Buster single-shot firework, its casing damp and salt-streaked among the Brighton pebbles. The label still legible - ‘Shooting Direction’ helpfully printed for whoever last took aim - links it to Kimbolton Fireworks, one of the best-known British brands. Each tube launches a single 30 mm shell, a quick pulse of lift and colour before silence returns. 

Kimbolton began life in Cambridgeshire in the 1960s, its founder Reverend Ron Lancaster combining chemistry teaching with pyrotechnics. The company became a by-word for organised displays, providing fireworks for royal jubilees, university celebrations, and village fêtes alike. Though the business was sold after Lancaster’s retirement, the brand endures in the retail market - its modest ‘single shots’ now scattered through supermarket shelves and, it seems, Brighton’s shingle.

The Thruster Buster is a small and simple firework: one lift charge, one burst, a few seconds of applause in the sky. Retailers describe it as a low-cost alternative to a rocket, designed to minimise debris (an ‘eco-alternative’ to a stick rocket because there’s no wooden stick to litter the ground). On Guy Fawkes Night it might have soared high over Madeira Drive, blossoming briefly above the Palace Pier before falling unseen into the sea or onto the pebbles.

Domes Beneath the Waves

Here is the 19th 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 a stylised architectural scene dominated by domes and towers. The largest dome rises centrally, flanked by smaller ones, all with bulbous, onion-like shapes that evoke an exotic, palatial skyline. Vertical pillars and arch-shaped windows support the structure, while the sky behind is rendered in soft blue tones that contrast with the golden and amber hues of the domes. The whole composition has a rhythmic balance, with repeating ovals and arches giving it a sense of harmony and grandeur.

A limerick starter

A palace of domes in the sky,

Seemed built for a dream passing by;

Its minarets gleamed,

As if Brighton had dreamed

Of being a Sultan’s Versailles.

Domes Beneath the Waves (with apologies to Salmon Rushdie)

On certain evenings, when the tide withdraws like a curtain from a stage, the domes of the sea begin to rise. Tourists do not see them, of course - their eyes are fixed on the Pavilion up the road, that grand, improbable wedding cake of empire. But the locals, the old strollers of Brighton Beach, know: when the light dips and the gulls turn black against the sun, the reflection in the shallows is not a reflection at all. It is memory - architecture dreaming itself back to the sea.

A boy named Karim sells shells from an upturned ice-cream tub near the Palace Pier. He has heard his grandmother’s stories of domes that float like lanterns under the Channel, relics of the Prince’s folly that slipped from land into myth. One evening, as the beach empties and the gulls fall silent, he wades out where the surf softens into glass. The water trembles with colour - amber, sapphire, milk-white - and beneath his toes he sees, for a heartbeat, a city of gold and glass, breathing.

The domes pulse, as if the Pavilion itself is exhaling through the seabed, sending bubbles that smell faintly of cardamom and salt. Within them swirl voices - Indian servants gossiping about the mad English prince, sea-bathers laughing in the cold, a band tuning for a ball that never quite ends. Karim reaches down; the glow flickers like a lantern in wind.

Then a voice speaks - not to his ears but through his bones. We are the domes that England dreamed, it says. Half built from desire, half from guilt. When you look at us, boy, you look at both.

He blinks, and the light collapses. Only the Pavilion remains behind him, ridiculous and beautiful against the dusk - its turrets dark with evening, its minarets poking holes in the last of the sun. The sea lies flat and grey again, as if nothing has happened. But in the shallows his footprints still glow faintly, like a script written in a language the tide refuses to erase.

I confess I like tar

‘I like to go down on the beach among the fishing boats, and to recline on the shingle by a smack when the wind comes gently from the west, and the low wave breaks but a few yards from my feet. I like the occasional passing scent of pitch: they are melting it close by. I confess I like tar: one’s hands smell nice after touching ropes.’ This was written about Brighton Beach by John Richard Jefferies, an English nature writer born on this day in 1848. Although not well remembered, he turned his attention to Brighton in at least two books of essays - Nature Near London and The Open Air.

Jefferies was born on 6 November 1848 at Coate Farm, near Swindon in Wiltshire. His early years were steeped in rural observation - he studied the hedges, brooks and fields around him with a sharp eye and lyrical sensibility. He worked as a local journalist - reporting for the North Wiltshire Herald and the Wiltshire and Gloucestershire Standard - and began to publish articles on natural history and rural life in the Pall Mall Gazette and other London papers. In 1874 he married Jessie Baden, the daughter of a neighbouring farmer at Syde near Cirencester, and the couple had three children, though the third died young.

Jefferies earned his living precariously as a freelance essayist and novelist; the success of The Gamekeeper at Home (1878) brought him a wider readership and regular commissions from magazines such as Longman’s, The Graphic and The Standard. His blend of realism, spiritual intensity and precise nature description made him one of the leading English nature writers of the Victorian age. Although his name is most often linked with Wiltshire, he moved south in later life, seeking sea-air and convalescence on the Sussex coast. He died in August 1887 at Goring-by-Sea in West Sussex.

In his last years, he published two books of essays: Nature Near London (Chatto & Windus, 1883) and The Open Air (Chatto & Windus, 1885) both with lyrical passages about Brighton and its seaside. These first two are from a chapter in Nature Near London called ‘To Brighton’.

‘The clean dry brick pavements are scarcely less crowded than those of London, but as you drive through the town, now and then there is a glimpse of a greenish mist afar off between the houses. The green mist thickens in one spot almost at the horizon; or is it the dark nebulous sails of a vessel? Then the foam suddenly appears close at hand - a white streak seems to run from house to house, reflecting the sunlight: and this is Brighton.’

‘Westwards, a mile beyond Hove, beyond the coast-guard cottages, turn aside from the road, and go up on the rough path along the ridge of shingle. The hills are away on the right, the sea on the left; the yards of the ships in the basin slant across the sky in front. With a quick, sudden heave the summer sea, calm and gleaming, runs a little way up the side of the groyne, and again retires. There is scarce a gurgle or a bubble, but the solid timbers are polished and smooth where the storms have worn them with pebbles. From a grassy spot ahead a bird rises, marked with white, and another follows it; they are wheatears; they frequent the land by the low beach in the autumn.’

The more extensive passages below are from ‘Sunny Brighton’ in The Open Air.

‘Some of the old streets opening out of the King's Road look very pleasant on a sunny day. They run to the north, so that the sun over the sea shines nearly straight up them, and at the farther end, where the houses close in on higher ground, the deep blue sky descends to the rooftrees. The old red tiles, the red chimneys, the green jalousies, give some colour; and beneath there are shadowy corners and archways. They are not too wide to whisper across, for it is curious that to be interesting a street must be narrow, and the pavements are but two or three bricks broad. These pavements are not for the advantage of foot passengers; they are merely to prevent cart-wheels from grating against the houses. There is nothing ancient or carved in these streets, they are but moderately old, yet turning from the illuminated sea it is pleasant to glance up them as you pass, in their stillness and shadow, lying outside the inconsiderate throng walking to and fro, and contrasting in their irregularity with the set facades of the front. Opposite, across the King's Road, the mastheads of the fishing boats on the beach just rise above the rails of the cliff, tipped with fluttering pennants, or fish-shaped vanes changing to the wind.’

‘I like to go down on the beach among the fishing boats, and to recline on the shingle by a smack when the wind comes gently from the west, and the low wave breaks but a few yards from my feet. I like the occasional passing scent of pitch: they are melting it close by. I confess I like tar: one’s hands smell nice after touching ropes. It is more like home down on the beach here; the men are doing something real, sometimes there is the clink of a hammer; behind me there is a screen of brown net, in which rents are being repaired; a big rope yonder stretches as the horse goes round, and the heavy smack is drawn slowly up over the pebbles. The full curves of the rounded bows beside me are pleasant to the eye, as any curve is that recalls those of woman. Mastheads stand up against the sky, and a loose rope swings as the breeze strikes it; a veer of the wind brings a puff of smoke from the funnel of a cabin, where some one is cooking, but it is not disagreeable, like smoke from a house chimney-pot; another veer carries it away again, - depend upon it the simplest thing cooked there is nice. Shingle rattles as it is shovelled up for ballast - the sound of labour makes me more comfortably lazy. They are not in a hurry, nor “chivy” over their work either; the tides rise and fall slowly, and they work in correspondence. No infernal fidget and fuss. Wonder how long it would take me to pitch a pebble so as to lodge on the top of that large brown pebble there? I try, once now and then.’

‘When this peculiar bank appears at Brighton it is an almost certain sign of continued fine weather, and I have noticed the same thing elsewhere; once particularly it remained fine after this appearance despite every threat the sky could offer of a storm. All the threats came to nothing for three weeks, not even thunder and lightning could break it up, - “deceitful flashes,” as the Arabs say; for, like the sons of the desert, just then the farmers longed for rain on their parched fields. To me, while on the beach among the boats, the value of these clouds lies in their slowness of movement, and consequent effect in soothing the mind. Outside the hurry and drive of life a rest comes through the calm of nature. As the swell of the sea carries up the pebbles, and arranges the largest farthest inland, where they accumulate and stay unmoved, so the drifting of the clouds, and the touch of the wind, the sound of the surge, arrange the molecules of the mind in still layers. It is then that a dream fills it, and a dream is sometimes better than the best reality. Laugh at the idea of dreaming where there is an odour of tar if you like, but you see it is outside intolerable civilization. It is a hundred miles from the King’s Road, though but just under it.’

‘There is a scheme on foot for planking over the ocean, beginning at the bottom of West Street. An immense central pier is proposed, which would occupy the only available site for beaching the smacks. If carried out, the whole fishing industry must leave Brighton,- to the fishermen the injury would be beyond compensation, and the aspect of Brighton itself would be destroyed. Brighton ought to rise in revolt against it.’

The portrait above is from Wikipedia, and the fishing boat image is from the collection of Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove.

Groyne works due to start

Brighton and Hove Council have released further documents concerning the latest phase of the project along Kings Esplanade, Hove, to remove seven existing groynes (six concrete, one timber) and install nine new timber groynes, replenish the shingle beach with 160,000 m³ of marine-dredged material, and raise a 50-metre section of the King Alfred sea wall with reinstated heritage railings. The project forms part of the Brighton Marina to River Adur Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management (FCERM) Scheme, a partnership between Brighton & Hove City Council, Adur District Council, Shoreham Port, the Environment Agency and the Western Esplanade Management Company. See More shingle and better groynes.

The planning application, submitted 28 October 2025 by JBA Consulting for Brighton & Hove City Council, seeks to discharge conditions 4-13 of permission BH2024/02513, including biodiversity, archaeology, and intertidal survey requirements. Together these documents confirm that the Hove frontage is entering a major, environmentally-governed reconstruction phase - balancing climate-defence engineering with commitments to sustainability, ecology, and public amenity. The works - to start in December - will form part of a strategy designed to provide a 1-in-200-year standard of protection for at least fifty years, addressing sea-level rise and erosion pressures.

The Construction Environmental and Social Management Plan (Van Oord, revised 24 October 2025) outlines how the year-long build will proceed from December 2025, with the main compound on Western Lawns and a smaller ‘plant refuge’ near the Southern Water outfall. Noise and vibration will be monitored weekly, and dredged shingle pumped ashore and profiled daily to avoid overnight stockpiles. The plan identifies multiple sensitivities - residential blocks, heritage seafront architecture, bathing-water quality, marine ecology, and a buried medieval settlement - and prescribes detailed mitigation covering noise, dust, lighting, waste, fuel storage, invasive species, and archaeological protection.

An ecological baseline survey by JBA Consulting (September 2025) recorded limited species diversity typical of a high-energy shingle foreshore. Algal and invertebrate colonisation was largely confined to the lower sections of the groynes, where Ulva seaweeds, winkles and barnacles dominated, and small mussel colonies occupied gaps between planks. The report recommends using Integrated Greening of Grey Infrastructure (IGGI) features - rope wraps, honeycomb blocks, and concrete ‘Vertipools’ - to encourage marine growth and deliver biodiversity net gain in line with the Environment Act 2021. These eco-textures will be fitted to the new groynes, partly as an educational resource under the city’s Our City Our World programme.

Half Blind’s Horrible Halloween

Daltons on Brighton Beach, just east of the Palace Pier, plays host tonight to ‘Half Blind’s Horrible Halloween’ a seafront celebration of Brighton’s loudest and strangest. The event, staged by local DIY promoter Half Blind Promotions, promises an unruly mix of metal, punk and alternative energy, all spiked with Halloween atmosphere. Doors open at seven, costumes are encouraged, and anyone wandering down to the arches should expect noise, sweat and spectacle until late.

Headlining are Primal Damnation, a five-piece thrash band forged in Brighton’s metal underground. Their sound, built on classic speed-metal riffs and relentless rhythm, nods to the old school while staying raw enough to rattle the room. The band have built a loyal following on the local circuit, playing with the kind of grit that the sea air seems to sharpen.

Sharing the bill are Dunce, a fast-rising punk outfit with a sly experimental edge. Their recent material veers between furious guitar work and sudden bursts of absurd humour, a collision that keeps audiences off-balance. Creeping Embers, also Brighton-based, brings a newer spark to the scene, their music thick with distortion and youthful intent. Bats in the Belfry add a touch of gothic theatre, fusing punk drive with macabre imagery perfectly suited to Halloween night.

Rounding off the line-up is Puppet Midnight, an angular indie-punk solo act built around bass, loop, and spoken-word fragments. The songs mix myth, madness and dark wit - tales of puppets, animals and burning mattresses delivered with a kind of melodic menace. It’s an artist who seems tailor-made for Daltons’ close-packed stage, where nothing ever feels quite contained.

Half Blind Promotions, the outfit behind the night, has spent recent years cultivating Brighton’s underground from the ground up, offering stages to acts too strange or too noisy for the mainstream. The name ‘Half Blind’ may sound like a throwaway joke, but it carries a streak of irony - a nod to seeing things differently, to championing bands the rest of the city might overlook.

As the tide rises along the beach, Daltons will glow with orange light, fake cobwebs, and the echo of guitars bouncing off the arches. ‘Half Blind’s Horrible Halloween’ promises to be another small, glorious act of local defiance - proof if you like that Brighton’s musical heart still beats hardest in its basement bars and beachfront haunts. (See also King of the Slot Machines.)

Guest: Brighton Beach, Windsor, Ontario

Brighton Beach in Windsor, Ontario, occupies a solitary strip along the Detroit River, metres from the US/Canada border. It lies within a neighbourhood that has become almost entirely an industrial landscape. The physical beach was never a grand resort but a working-class destination, with a scrubby, sandy waterfront bordered by scattered cottages, unpaved lanes, and the smokestacks of industry visible upriver and down. For decades, the water’s edge was a place for fishing, mooring small boats, and impromptu summer picnics - the sand blending into patches of grass and, in later years, the untidy sprawl left behind as homes disappeared.

Windsor’s Brighton Beach has kept a wild, transitional character. Waves lapped the narrow strand, overlooked by remnants of wooden docks and, eventually, the steel infrastructure of major industrial plants. The physical shoreline shifted over the years due to both natural river currents and city-led expropriation and demolition. By the 2000s, the beach was bordered more by silence and wildflowers than by families, except for the occasional urban explorer, local birdwatcher, or fisherman. Yet the riverfront view - freighters sliding past beneath blue or stormy skies - has remained an enduring, haunting place.

Historic and contemporary photographs give a stark sense of this shifting landscape. The most comprehensive series is in ‘Brighton Beach Through The Years’ on International Metropolis, which features aerial images from 1949 through 2006, charting the steady disappearance of homes and roads as the area reverted to prairie and open shore. There are also evocative ground-level photos and travelogues from blog photographers - such as JB’s Warehouse & Curio Emporium - who captured the crumbling streets and river’s edge as late as the 2010s. The adjacent photo, for example, carries the caption: ‘Brighton Beach continues to offer up the finest in abandoned couches. Treasure hunters or connoisseurs of neglected boat hulls, car seats and furniture would have smiles on their faces after a quick scouting trip of the neighbourhood.’