The ‘hidden’ hospital in Buckingham Road
by Harry Gaston
When young Pat Blaker, a nurse at Southlands Hospital, arrived in Brighton to begin training as a midwife one day in October 1950, she had trouble finding the Sussex Maternity Hospital. read more >
“Soot -Oh, Sweep”
Does your chimney need sweeping? In the past, were you one of the many Brighton residents more likely to say ‘I need Wadeys’, rather than ‘I need a chimney sweep’? read more >
A Dickens of a Christmas!
In the [happy] days before television celebrities entered our lives novelists were often accorded this status. Amongst their shining number in the 19th century was Charles Dickens, who was a regular visitor to Brighton. Dickens first came here in October 1837 after finishing Pickwick Papers. He liked the town as a seaside resort and a place to write, indeed, he wrote Dombey and Son whilst staying at the old Bedford Hotel, King’s Road. “I feel much better for my short stay here, also the characters one meets at these seaside places.” He particularly liked taking trips on Captain Fred Collins famous pleasure boat. “The sea was rather choppy and his chatter to the trippers was very witty and amusing,” he wrote.read more >
Séances, Science & Spiritualism: a Victorian diversion
On the 11th November 1896 the inhabitants of Preston Manor held a séance for which there is documentary evidence including a transcript of the proceedings so we know exactly what happened that night and the consequences. But what were a family of such high social standing and impeccable conventionality doing dabbling in the occult? read more >
A Little Piece of Hollywood
The future of Saltdean Lido is in the balance once again and a campaign has been set up to try and save this major Brighton landmark. The Save Saltdean Lido Campaign is asking the owners, Brighton and Hove Council, to start proceedings against the current lease-holder who, they claim, has failed to adequately maintain the building, action (or lack of it) which should, in their view, result in the forfeiture of the lease-hold. According to Rebecca Crook, Campaign Chair: ‘This extraordinary Grade II* Listed building is decaying day-by-day.”.read more >
Brighton and Hove Celebrate the Coronation of King Edward VII
Edward VII (aka Albert Edward Saxe-Coburg-Gotha; 9th November 1841 – 6th May 1910) was a very popular character. During his many years as heir apparent he built a colourful reputation for himself, not least as arbiter of men’s fashion and as a man with a large appetite for wine, women and song – well perhaps not so much song as food! He was, in fact, responsible for introducing the practice of eating roast beef, roast potatoes, horseradish sauce and Yorkshire pudding on Sundays. For that alone I like him, as did the people of Brighton and Hove who felt they had a special bond with this charismatic Royal.read more >
The Oldest Operating Aquarium in the World
On Saturday 10 August 1872 Brighton aquarium formally opened to the public. 139 years later it is still entertaining and informing the masses about an underwater world that remains a mystery to most of us. Today visitors to this showpiece of Victorian splendour can see giant turtles, sharks encircling a tropical reef, an Amazon rainforest with razor-toothed piranhas and deadly poison dart frogs. They can also learn about the intricate balance of the oceans and the ways in which man is endangering some species.read more >
I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside…
I loved Upstairs, Downstairs in the 1970s, I really loved the new episodes shown on the BBC last Christmas, but I really, really loved Julian Fellowes’ Downton Abbey. In fact I can’t wait for the second series later this year. These television dramas have given me a taste for Edwardian life; the lives of the servants “downstairs” and their masters “upstairs”; the gradual social and technological changes that took place in all their lives and how the two classes reacted. read more >>
The Gentleman’s Game
Listeners to a recent Radio Four programme were asked what most signified the arrival of summer to them. I replied to my radio, as you do, without hesitation: the almost permanent presence of a large, overflowing and potentially smelly, cricket bag in the hall. Summer means cricket in our house as it does to so many others on a local club, county team and international level and this has been the way, particularly in Sussex, for a very long time. Sussex cricket teams can be traced back to the 17th century, but the county’s involvement in cricket goes back much further than that. In fact, Sussex, alongside Kent, is believed to be the birthplace of the sport; cricket having been invented by children living on the Weald in Saxon or Norman times. read more >>
Memories Preston Manor
I loved Upstairs, Downstairs in the 1970s, I really loved the new episodes shown on the BBC last Christmas, but I really, really loved Julian Fellowes’ Downton Abbey. In fact I can’t wait for the second series later this year. These television dramas have given me a taste for Edwardian life; the lives of the servants “downstairs” and their masters “upstairs”; the gradual social and technological changes that took place in all their lives and how the two classes reacted. read more >>
Dress for Excess
Many of us know of George IV’s passion for architecture and opulent furnishings, apparent by the lavish Royal Pavilion that still graces the heart of Brighton today. Perhaps though, less of us know about this King’s love of fashion? read more >>
A Dialogue Between the Past and the Present with Mrs Muriel Elms
Sunday 13 February saw the planting of new elms in the centre of Patcham; the place where the old, twin elms had stood for so many years, but the idiom off with the old and on with the new doesn’t apply here. I am sure that I was not the only person to see the new trees in-situ and think of those that had been felled and reflect on all that had been played out in front of them over their long history. Happily though for me, I have had the good fortune to meet a lady willing to talk to me about her first-hand memories of Patcham and Preston Park stretching back to 1913. read more >>
The Royal Escape
Before 1750 Brighton doesn’t appear very often in the history books, apart from a few incidents which receive mention; the first in 1541 when, as part of his divorce settlement, Henry VIII granted various manors to Anne of Cleves including Preston; then when poor Deryck Carver, a brewer from Black Lion Street, was burned to death in Lewes, making him one of the first Protestant martyrs in Sussex; then, more famous than either of these two events, is the episode that links the town with Charles II’s escape from England - Cromwellian forces hot on his heels. read more >>
The Popular Figure of the 18th Century Gentleman Smuggler
Last month all our thoughts were turned to where we were going to purchase the “little extras” we wanted for the festivities. We were on the look out for signs that a bottle of gin was cheaper in Asda than Sainsburys. Now, with Christmas over, we have the additional incentive to buy goods at “sale” prices to help counter the effects of Mr Osborne’s VAT increase. read more >>
A Regency Christmas at the Royal Pavilion
Celebrations at the Royal Pavilion for the Christmas and New Year period of 1822-23 were so extraordinarily lavish and indulgent they cost quite literally the accumulated worth of a skilled man’s entire working life.read more >>
Brighton as National Foster Mother
On 22 August 1939, Parliament was recalled and the Emergency Powers Defence Act was instigated. This set in motion wartime regulations, including an evacuation procedure, which had been crystallising since 1922. The signal for evacuation was given on the radio on 31 August 1939 and Operation Pied Piper began the next day. Of the 660,000 evacuees streaming out of London over the next three days, approximately 31,000 arrived in Brighton.* 400 buses and a convoy of cars met the evacuees at the railway station and delivered them to six distribution centres throughout the Brighton area. read more >>
No Ordinary Ghost Story: No Ordinary House
We all know about Brighton’s restless dead; the woman in white at Preston Manor, the haunted house in Prestonville Road, the famous grey nun in The Lanes, ghoulish monks, martyrs and drowned sailors. The World Horror Convention went so far as to declare Brighton the UK’s ghost capital. There is, however, one haunting, said to have occurred at Patcham Place, that seems to attract less attention. read more >>
Entertainment for the Masses
On the 22nd September the Duke of York’s cinema celebrates its 100th anniversary. This is a real achievement, especially when so many of its contemporaries, with wonderful names like the Bijou Electric Empire (now Burger King), have long since closed their doors. The history of cinema in Brighton goes back further than 1910 though and encompasses not only the rise and fall of glitzy picture palaces and back street ‘flea pits’, but the very birth of the film industry. read more >>
Old Friends
Everyone will be saddened by the news that the two elms at the centre of Patcham Village - that live so close to each other they form a heart-shaped canopy, have to be felled. They attained monumental stature, 70-80 feet, and it is humbling to reflect upon the dramatic changes they witnessed and were part of in Patcham. read more >>
The Most Notorious Man-Women Story of the Early 20th Century
I went on an organised walking tour recently of some of Brighton’s more interesting places. Outside The Old Courtroom in Church Street the tour guide regaled us with a fascinating tale that he introduced as similar in theme to the stories surrounding Phoebe Hessel - one of the most well known women of Brighton – who is said to have dressed as a soldier and served in the West Indies in order to be near her lover, Samuel Golding. read more >>
The Wagners
The Wagners were of German descent and emigrated to England in 1717. They were hatters to the Monarchy and eventually to the British Army, and were thus quite wealthy and influential. The Brighton connection came about when, in 1784, one of the Wagners’ married the daughter of Henry Mitchell, Vicar of Brighton. Henry Mitchell was also a man of influence, having been a tutor to the future Duke of Wellington and a Sussex Yeoman. One of the sons of this marriage was Henry Mitchell Wagner, who apart from inheriting some of the Wagner wealth, became tutor to the sons of the Duke of Wellington and therefore influential in his own right. In 1824, Henry Mitchell Wagner was appointed Vicar of Brighton at St Nicholas Church, a post he held until his death in1870. Also in 1824, his eldest son Arthur Douglas Wagner was born. read more >>
Oriental Palace Occupied by King-Emperor’ s Oriental Troops
I have tried to think when I last visited the Royal Pavilion. I suppose my first visit was in the 1980s when we came to live in Brighton and then again in the 1990s when our children were small. In those intervening years nothing much had changed. The glittering chandeliers, sumptuous furnishings and exotic decoration were all still there, but nothing new appeared to have been added and I guess that is why I have not ventured back. Now there is a reason, a new permanent exhibition has just opened, charting a fascinating chapter in palace’s history. read more >>
Stones at St Peters.
St Peter’s Church has stood at Preston for more than seven hundred years and holds, in its memorial stones, all manner of stories - of people linked to royalty and also to murder.
The oldest graves, from the centuries after the church was built in 1250, no longer survive. One of the earliest memorials is a grey stone plaque in the wall of the bell tower ‘Here lyeth buried the body of Elizabeth the daughter of Sir Richard Shirley, Barronnett who departed this life on 23rd day of April Anno Domini 1684’ read more >>
Gangland Brighton
Gang warfare, racketeering, welshing and protection – no not the Sopranos, but the more seedy and sordid attractions of gangland Brighton in the inter-war years. A side of Brighton that was brought to us by Graham Greene in his 1938 novel Brighton Rock and later the film of the same name, staring Richard Attenborough as the sadistic teenage gangster, Pinkie Brown. read more >>
THE SEVEN AGES OF BRIGHTON GENERAL
When the newly appointed administrator arrived from his Sheffield teaching hospital to take up his post at Brighton General in 1951, he was shocked at what he found.
The wards on J Block, for example, had open fires, wooden floors and no curtains at the windows. They were, he later recalled, “like giant cowsheds filled with people”. read more >>
Pantomime & Brighton’s Theatrical Heritage
The origins of British pantomime probably date back to the Middle Ages and blend the traditions of the Italian “Commedia dell’Arte and the British music hall. Commedia was a type of travelling street entertainment that used dance, music, tumbling, acrobatics and buffoonery in a repertoire of stories passed down through generations of touring troupes. Each plot contained stock characters such as the over protective father, Pantaloon, Columbine his daughter, her love the heroic Harlequin and the servant Pulchinello, (who still exists in this country as the puppet Mr Punch). read more >>