THE BRIGHTON THAT'S LEFT
Roy Kerridge finds lots
of things beside the seaside besides sewage
FEW Londoners spend a week at the English seaside in these Mediterranean days, but a day's rail outing to Brighton is still as popular as ever.
I am sorry to report that the town has deteriorated sadly since I lived there as a schoolboy in the 1950s. The old slogan `The West Pier is the Best Pier', is out of date now that the West Pier lies in ruins. The Palace Pier, once thought the more vulgar of Brighton's two piers, is better than ever, with many new attractions. But I miss the night-time glow of pale green and subdued pink from the illuminated West Pier. No longer does Mr Punch evade Jock Ketch the hangman beside that pier, or cry 'That's the way to do it! That's the way to do it!' as he murders his wife, baby, a policeman and a formidable Beadle.
The outdoor summer art exhibition be- side the West Pier still takes place, the artists sitting on folding chairs beside their masterpieces, and keenly watching out for purchasers among the crowds who 'Ooh' and `Ah'. As a boy, I greatly admired a painting of a Siberian tiger that was on show every year. It never occurred to me to wonder why nobody bought it. At length I summoned up my courage and told the artist how much I liked his tiger. 'Yes, it's a popular line, that,' he said. 'I do that one again and again.'
I was shocked to the core by this mercenary attitude. I had always thought that the tiger sprang from his inspiration and could never be duplicated. Later I found that it was copied from a picture in the National Geographic magazine.
Louis Tussauds the waxworks, once famed for its swinging axes, ringing bells with hunchback attached, and lighting effects used to change Dr Jekyll to Mr Hyde, is now no more. A pleasing feature of this horror show was the hall of mirrors, the final exhibit, which seldom failed to cheer up a child terrified by devils and witches cackling around a glowing caul- dron.
Brighton Aquarium, near the Palace Pier, is still in good form, with a dolphin show every hour. A very old aquarium, it is designed as a series of grottos and once boasted a fountain in the aisles. With the dolphins came remodernisation, the emph- asis on fish. In my boyhood, it was less an aquarium, more an entrancing circus. Chimpanzees romped in a large tank meant for porpoises, and parrots and monkeys begged for food, surrounded by fretwork designs of Brighton Pavilion chi- noiserie. Alligators glowered from the sunken pools of their grotto, overhung with plaster stalactites. Near the door could be seen strange stuffed fishes in a glass case — a sucker fish with what seemed to be a toffee apple in its mouth and a spiky porcupine fish.
Gracious Regency (or Regent's Park) architecture still enhances much of the seafront of Brighton and nearby Hove. For many years, Embassy Court in Hove was the only modern block of flats among the Georgian splendour. Everyone agreed that it was a mistake. On one occasion, a parrot escaped from its cage in the Green Sardine club in nearby Waterloo Street and per- ched on the roof of Embassy Court, where it was recaptured through a skylight. On another, sadder occasion, a group of chil- dren lured a dog to the flat roof top of Embassy Court, using lumps of sugar. Then they threw it over the edge. Now, however, Embassy Court has been eclipsed by many concrete towers, flats, offices and fearful hotels.
The Regency Society half-heartedly try to save the old seafront squares, with their windswept lawns that face the coast road, but officialdom is against them. Once the council erected absurd 'dog toilets', com- plete with lamp-posts, at each end of `Panic buying? I've only managed panic queuing so far.' Brunswick Square. These were removed when it was discovered that dogs couldn't read. At Regency Square, whose name is proudly painted in huge letters across a row of houses facing the sea, there is now an underground car park. A Regency Home for the Blind near St James's Street was rebuilt, but the façade preserved, as there was a preservation order on it. This enraged the Powers That Be, who suc- ceeded in 'restoring' the building to look like council flats, partly by the skilful use of a metal fence of outstanding ugliness.
Near here, fishermen's cottages of old Brighthelmstone have been pulled down, black and white cobbled walls and all. George Street is under threat the whole time. With its crazy little lopsided dormer attics stuck onto homely old cottages, it should be seen now, before it's too late. Little George Street, with its Seven Dwarf cottages, has already come down. I have been inside one of Little George Street's miniature cottages, where in a tiny over- furnished room a young mother washed her three-year-old baby in front of a leaping coal fire. A hundred years ago or more, the scene could have been the same.
The huge Kemp Town Brewery, once a Brighton institution, is now no more. In 1959 all the young labourers of Brighton were jostling for jobs there. Instead of a tea break, the Brewery gave its employees a beer break! A teetotaller friend of mine went to work there and broke his vows within a week. Enchanting little terraces, adjoining an allotment, wind around the rear of the old Brewery.
Still in this part of Brighton, unknown to the day tripper, stands Queen's Park, on the hilltop behind St James's Street. Here the façade of a former spa building can be seen, while a few streets away stands the Pepper-Pot. This is a gracious Regency water tower, which incidentally resembles a giant pepper-pot, and is now converted into a public lavatory. Further east stands the desolate hilltop council estate of Whitehawk. This has been a rough neighbourhood since the Iron Age, when the inhabitants ate one another. Archaeologists have uncovered the char- red bones of the victims of the first Whitehawk Boys.
Hooligans made the headlines in Bright- on a quarter of a century ago, when Mod and Rocker fighting took place all over town. Idealistic communists might be pleased to learn that the Class War has already been fought on the beaches of Brighton, both sides using weapons such as bottles and bicycle chains. Mods were normally bright if waspish young people with '0' Levels, while Rockers were usual- ly early school-leavers who stood by the values (or lack of values) of the Teddy Boy working class. The Brighton fight was a draw. In later generations, both types of youth were to merge in an oafish equality. Once more it is safe to `go down to Brighton'.
Previous page
