Brighton (where I was born) is a hilly seaside town on the edge of the South Downs National Park and is remarkable for a number of reasons. Brighton’s Royal Pavilion, with its striking onion-shaped Indian-style domes, was built as a palatial seaside home for the Prince Regent, George III’s son who later became George IV. Lawrence Olivier, who helped create the National Theater on the south bank of the Thames, lived on the seafront and commuted to London, taking the last train home after theatrical performances of him.
Graham Greene wrote a novel ‘Brighton Rock’, a wry allusion to the long, thin cylinders of pink sugar rock with those letters running along their white mint flavored interior. But the novel was a serious story about good and evil, the ‘evil’ embodied in Pinkie, a rather unpleasant young man, and the ‘good’ in Rose, a sweet and innocent young woman who has the misfortune to fall in love with Pinkie. . The Volk Electric Railway, opened in 1883, ran along the Brighton coast and was the first such railway in the world. In the 1930s, he would see a bearded old man standing outside his house on the road to Devil’s Dyke on the South Downs: it was Magnus Volk, his designer, greeting children and passers-by with a smile. . The railway still works.
In 1866 Brighton acquired a pier jutting out into the sea which, by the turn of the 20th century, had become the most beautiful pier in the world. the west pier. You can find one or two beautiful old photos from 1912 on the arthurlloyd.co.uk website. The glory of him lasted until 1939.
At the age of 8 or 9, I would walk home from school up the steep hill that led to my basement house, a quarter of a mile from the sea. On a rainy day we were running matches down the hill in the ditch. On a good day I would look down at the sharp line between sea and sky, and perhaps see one of the (to me) splendid steamships, the Brighton Queen or the Brighton Belle, sailing to or from the jetty. of the West Pier. . Sometimes I would go to the other end of the pier and venture down the checkered iron steps to the long iron platform where the men fished with pole and line. On the land side of this was a large square area open to the sea with accommodation above and around it for spectators. A popular act consisted of a man riding a bicycle from a springboard into the sea. He told stories like the body of a drowned man floating on the surface: a man always floats upside down, a woman always upside down. In the summer we spent hours on the beach just east of the pier. At Christmas there would be a pantomime at the West Pier Theatre, at the other end of the pier, perhaps Cinderella or Aladdin, beginning on Boxing Day and continuing for several weeks until January.
Then, in 1939, came the war. In 1940, Hitler had occupied the French coast across the English Channel, and in the autumn there was talk of an upcoming invasion. The Brighton Queen and the Brighton Belle had been lost during the “miraculous” evacuation of the Allied armies from Dunkirk at the end of May. Brighton beach, now out of bounds, was defended with coils of barbed wire and a section of the West Pier had been removed leaving a large space to contain the enemy. In retrospect, that was the beginning of the end for the West Pier. There was no maintenance during the five years of war, and afterwards there were many other priorities for an impoverished country and city besides restoring the pier and it never returned to its former glory even though it was a Grade 1 listed building that could not be demolished. But the ravages of the storm and fire paid no attention to its legal status, so today nothing remains but a mass of iron in the sea that serves as a tombstone.
The charity West Pier Trust (westpier.co.uk) tried for many years to raise funds for the restoration of the pier, but the cost was always beyond their reach. If the West Pier is ever replaced, it will be with a modern new design. In the meantime, they are creating an excellent interim solution to preserve the memory of the dock. The grave marker will be left in the sea, but the end of the shoreline will be replaced by a tall observation tower (now called the i360) surrounded by the restored waterfront kiosks of the old West Pier and a museum. The architects of the project are the same ones who designed the successful London Eye on the south bank of the Thames. So naturally the new tower will be known as the Brighton Eye. Funding is almost certain and work is expected to start in late 2012. It is scheduled to open in 2015 and I am looking forward to a space trip in the donut observation capsule moving from shore level to a height of 141 meters (427 ft); already a long time travel in my thoughts when I look around from the top.