Brighton & Hove's REGENCY Magazine » Property Developers

The Old Market: A Tangle of Conflicting Loyalties and Remits

REGENCY — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 15:02:40 +0000

Just after World War II the bulldozer and developers threat to Brunswick Square and Terrace architecture led to the formation of The Regency Society. Over the years it grew to be the premier Conservation voice in Brighton and Hove, the respectable Club to be seen to be joining & the trusted repository of bequeathed collections, such as the James Gray photographic archive.
Hierarchically, it has reigned over all the others. The Hove Civic Society and The Brighton Society each had their respected status, but even they have been subservient in terms of status to the very Grand and very respected Regency Society. The pecking order then takes in all the other groups like the Kemp Town Society, The Kingscliffe Society and the myriad local area resident & amenity groups and overtly campaigning ones such as my own saveHOVE and the Marina area’s more recently formed Save Brighton.

But the Regency Society was the leader of the pack, attracting serious expertise to its ruling Committee. In recent years this has come to mean attracting expertise with unattractive agendas. Predatory developers, architects and politicians, looking to serve their own interests by standing for and being elected to positions on the ruling Committee, have increased the danger of a diluted or abandoned conservation remit.

How could the members of the Regency Society have allowed people like that to gain major positions of power on their Committee, neutralising the credibility of The Regency Society as a conservation voice! By next AGM it will just be an asset-rich club, protecting and advancing the careers of architects, politicians and developers.

For most Regency Society members (other groups work in a similar fashion), membership has been all about the tea and biscuits, the wine and chamber music in the Royal Pavilion at AGM, the garden party, the lectures, the coach trips and the £60 dinners. There is little interest or involvement with boring old planning.

For the committed conservationist, however, membership has been about protecting heritage, Grades 1 and 2 Listed buildings, the Regency era Brunswick Townscape (mostly listed buildings) and the cultural story of this nation along the thread of time. Architecture is certainly High Art to the Starchitects of our time and for me, these areas of listed buildings merit the term “Artscape”.
“My turn! My turn!” the Horribles shrill, bug-eyed, teeth bared, fame and wealth on their minds. They want these buildings “euthanized” and see ambitions thwarted by their taking up space THEY could be using. “Get off the stage! My turn! My turn!” And the cultural markers that tell the visitor what country they are in, what town, city or village they are in are just so-much “brown field site” to them.

In recent years leading members of the various conservation-agenda groups have “intermarried” so to speak. They have propped up each other’s dwindling memberships by joining each other’s groups. They have aged and died. They have not been replaced with new members possessed of their deep respect, wish to learn and understandings of history and heritage, their educational strengths and grit in defending the riches of heritage this country so proudly shows off to the tourism trade. The dwindling numbers of them desperately prop up each other’s conservation remits and become haunted by the dilution and marginalisation of conservation. Social memberships and the brazen infiltration by predators for whom conservation is optional has bred deep despair. And a lot of empty hand-wringing.

At the time of the Old Market’s February planning application to put 2 glass box penthouses on the roof of the Grade 2 Listed Old Market, the convenor of the Regency Society’s planning group was former Labour councillor, Delia Forester, a woman who used her position on the planning committee on March 23rd, 2007 to provide fulsome support for the Frank Gehry colossus on Hove seafront. She led the majority Labour Party vote which gave it planning permission.

How did someone like that become convenor of the planning group at the Regency Society? A weak constitution helped allow it. The supine, tea & biscuits credulous membership voted her (and others) onto the ruling committee and thence to the planning group, the credibility of the Regency Society being of no concern to them.
How was it right that the Chair of the Regency Society was also an Old Market Trustee? How is it right that the Treasurer of the Regency Society, Stephen Neiman, is also the Old Market Trustee raising this glass boxes planning application? Should he not have resigned from the Regency Society to do that? Entanglements and loyalties so deep that you can barely see the join have meant that the move by the Old Market Trust to put big glass boxes on its Grade 2 Listed roof compromised the Regency Society’s conservation remit. Or did it?

Ahead of the 2009 Regency Society AGM, and using her Brighton University email account instead of Regency Society letterhead , Delia Forester, convenor of the Regency Society planning group, Labour politician & architect, registered fulsome planning consultation support on behalf of the Regency Society. Nervous breakdowns, angst and hysteria ensued when this became known. Loyalty to Stephen Neiman, however, led to old stagers staying their hands and not objecting as they would otherwise have done and then getting in a state about it. Remit vs. Loyalty to a close & valued colleague and mate.

Why did she (with others in commanding positions in The Regency Society) do all this? Why not start their own group? Why destroy the Regency Society’s remit and credibility? How was it even possible to do so? Putting on a military hat, I would say that taking out the leader is the best way to topple the rest. And so it came to pass.
Over at the Hove Civic Society, conflicts of loyalty, angst, rage and shattered alliances tested their commitment to conservation to its limit. One of its two members on the Council’s Conservation Advisory Group resigned over this one application. The Hove Civic prevaricated, vascillated, hung back but finally moved to a position of objection – but with blood on the floor.

This story was repeated all over the shop.

At the Regency Society AGM, regime change led to the new Chairman withdrawing Forester’s Regency Society response to the Old Market application for the two glass penthouses, declaring to the Council that because the Society was divided, there would be no response. No response to an application affecting a listed Regency building in a massively listed Regency townscape. The infiltrators had done their job and taken out the conservation movement’s leader group.

Embarrassed and mortified, torn between hurting Old Market Trustee and applicant, Stephen Neiman, or hurting the listed building, the amenity groups were like chickens trapped in the coop with a fox. Only the 11th hour intervention of the London-based Georgian Group sobered everyone up.

The Old Market is saved from glass boxes for the moment. But now the time for reckoning has come. And it is clear that the Regency Society membership will not make the effort to defend the conservation remit by learning anything other than who will be playing what at the next AGM chamber concert. It is clear too that, unlike the Brighton Society, which allows anyone to be a member, but bars politicians, developers and architects from Committee membership, the Regency Society has failed to write a Constitution which protects itself from destruction of its remit & respectable purpose.

Royal Alex Update

REGENCY — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 12:31:12 +0000

Taylor Wimpey’s appeal against refusal of their planning application to demolish the historic Royal Alex building and build a block of flats on the site was defeated at the Public Inquiry in June this year. The council subsequently decided to prepare a planning brief for TW, so that they wouldn’t have to submit yet another planning application with no hope of acceptance. During the following months, Jo Thompson, major project officer, and Gill Thompson, town planner, held meetings with representatives of local amenity groups: the Montpelier & Clifton Hill Association, Clifton Montpelier Powis Community Alliance, Brighton Society, Regency Society, also Homelees House, the Primary Care Trust, Taylor Wimpey, and two local residents – Philippa Sankey and Adam Jones, whose houses in Clifton Hill back onto the Royal Alex grounds, and who are also respectively Secretary and Chair of the CMPCA.

During these meetings, Jo Thompson & Gill Thompson (no relation), made clear that the rejected option of complete demolition was not on the table, and that any planning application would have to involve retention and conversion of at least the main Royal Alex building. Also the green space in front of it must be preserved.
A poorly publicised exhibition was then held at Hove Town Hall during the last week of October. On display were five options, ranging from retention and conversion of all the buildings on the site, to complete demolition and redevelopment. There was no indication that the latter option was out of the question, and just included for ‘control’ purposes.

Only financial considerations were taken into account, although the District Valuer had not completed his assessment by the time of the exhibition. The exhibition appeared to be biased against the conversion option – complete demolition was the only option showing not so much a profit as a smaller loss. This is largely due to the Council in effect continuing to tax profit that does not exist, by requiring the provision of 40% affordable housing. Coincidentally, the day before this exhibition started, there was a conference on land economics and valuation at UCL, which was attended by many of the best brains in the country. The conference unanimously concluded that the economic model that aims to build ’social housing’ using the super-profit from development is for the time being dead; it was rather aptly referred to as ‘bubble economics’, and it was firmly stated that the bubble would not be around for the foreseeable future.

Local architect Mr. Graham Towers, who has more than 30 years professional experience of urban housing design and development, has found that the Royal Alex exhibition was incorrect regarding the numbers of flats which could be achieved in the different options. His calculations, based on a detailed and realistic comparison with the Taylor Wimpey planning application, show that more flats could be achieved in a conversion scheme than claimed in the exhibition, and fewer flats created in a new-build scheme.

The exhibition also did not take into account the fact that the large roof space in the existing building could be utilised for additional flats, as has been pointed out to Jo & Gill Thompson by Mick Hamer, who coordinated the MCHA case at the public inquiry in June.

Discussion of the planning brief for this site is pencilled in for the environment cabinet of 17 December. The MCHA is pressing for discussion of the brief to be deferred until the meeting of 26 January to allow time for a proper feasibility study by a qualified and experienced conservation architect, and to allow time for all stages of the public consultation to be completed. Otherwise there is the risk of yet more doomed planning applications followed by another time consuming and costly appeal. This is unfair on the community and also unfair on the developers, who need a clear and unambiguous brief this time.

Letters: Citizen Power Over Marina Appeal

REGENCY — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 17:52:22 +0000

Early in November Explore Living’s appeal, to try and overturn Brighton & Hove City Council’s decision to refuse Planning Permission for their development in the Marina, begins at the Brighton Centre.

At the beginning of September a local citizen, Bill Impey, started a petition against the potential loss of the views of our white cliffs, the downland coming down to the sea and the settings of the Listed Regency buildings, should these towers be built. He, and a small group, stood on the pavement collecting signatures from passers-by, both locals and tourist with amazing results. Petition forms were emailed out to a network and REGENCY magazine delivered them in relevant places.

In less than a month many thousands of signatures have been collected and the word spread across the country – even to the USA from where a former resident airmailed a petition form. Forms were posted in from all over the country. We honestly didn’t expect such an overwhelming response.

Several delegates from the Labour Party Conference signed and were amazed that this development had ever been allowed to go forward. They obviously preferred our lovely seafront on a warm sunny lunchtime to the Conference Centre.

All the forms have now been sent to the Inspectorate to meet their deadline and I would like to thank everyone who helped make this important Petition so successful. We hope it will make a difference. Our views are our heritage.

Stella McCrickard
 Lewes Crescent

Letters: Feedback From Last Month’s Feature On Seafront Developments, Written By  Valerie Paynter

REGENCY — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 17:49:57 +0000

As a local resident and member of Brighton Sailing Club, I cannot but agree with Valerie Paynter’s case against ”i360″ and “Brighton O”. Brighton & Hove City Council has gone on quite long enough with central government’s accent on alcohol-fuelled “cheap and nasty”. It has brought no benefit to the nation at large and certainly not to this city. The process has run its course and councillors should understand that ”i360″ and “Brighton O”, even before they get off the ground, belong to a decaying era whose buzz words like “pro-active” and “joined-up thinking” will soon go the way of T-Rex.

These tacky and meretricious developments, the one resembling a bog-standard pin and the other a rolled-up condom minus the teat, do not even have the merit of being aesthetic. They do not even begin to approximate Portsmouth’s Spinnaker Tower for looks.

In passing, I should like to wish Stella McCrickard of www.savebrighton.com the best in her fight to conserve our chalk cliffs at the Marina from the commercial intents of Explore Living.

Dr. Yen-Chung Chong 
Ship Street, Brighton

Letters: Developments On The Marina

REGENCY — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 11:01:48 +0000

How many citizens of Brighton and Hove, and the many tourists who visit our seafront, realise that the famous White Cliffs of Dover start right here in Kemp Town?

The views of the cliffs with the South Downs rolling down to the sea are enjoyed by motorists, bus passengers, cyclists and walkers who travel along the A259. They are our largely unspoiled heritage.

Xplore Living’s large proposed development in the Marina was turned down by the Planning Committee of Brighton & Hove City Council last December but they are appealing next month against that decision.

If the Appeal is upheld we will no longer see any of the beautiful cliffs as we look east and instead there will be densely packed concrete tower blocks coming up over the height of the cliffs. To prevent this please download our petition which you will find at www.savebrighton.com and which must be returned to the address given no later than the 4th October.

Help Save our Seafront both for our citizens and tourists.

Stella McCrickard 
Lewes Crescent

Developments On The Seafront

REGENCY — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 17:30:37 +0000

Most residents know that a viewing pod on a pole, cunningly labelled the “i360” to suggest it is cool, is scheduled to be built any time now, on the seafront, up where the West Pier kiosks moulder. In fact, planning consent for “the i360” expires on October 25th and they have still to cobble together the last £20 million needed to proceed (one has heard). Unsatisfied Conditions of Planning Consent (one of which involves the Brighton Sailing Club) will further block a start any time soon. And the West Pier cadaver crumbles on.

Replacement vultures are circling, however, directly threatening the future of the last of the organised boating activities still allowed to occupy and use Brighton beach between the piers – sailing.

Over the summer The Argus splashed with news of a 60 metre, spoke-less steel ring with observation capsules which developers propose putting on the seafront, right alongside the Brighton Sailing Club & just below the boarded-up West Pier kiosks (24.7.09). This glorified Ferris wheel would, either on its own, or in tandem with the “i360”, create disturbing and surreal visual noise right in front of our prized Metropole and Grand hotels. Who in their right mind would still book expensive, prestige rooms in either hotel once sea views are blocked by vast airborne gewgaws, supported on the ground by bulky, noisy fairground mechanics?

The Argus also informed us that no further Party Conferences are expected to book the Brighton Centre after this year’s Labour Party Conference (with fringe meetings and lodgings booked into and around the Metropole and Grand hotels). And the Brighton Centre alone is blamed. The identified need is to have it demolished with a mega-treat, connected to Churchill Square at the back, put up in its place.

I don’t buy that the loss of the seafront conference trade is just about The Brighton Centre facilities. Brighton itself is a contributing factor.

Drugs, alcohol, clubs and an over-reliance on transient youth & student culture have all left their indelible mark on Brighton (less so on Hove). Brighton is the destination of choice for the human equivalent of graffiti & there is an obvious gearing of commercial activity and investment that caters to them (and, sadly, I include the annual Pride carnival in this category along with Fat Boy Slim on the beach). Gotta get the kids in, right? Gotta stay on message and keep selling “vibrant” & “diverse”, right? I could write a whole essay on the disvalued diversity now lost to Brighton & Hove forever.

The economy now seems locked into vulgar, chav and “vibrant” mode. How are the “i360” and proposed “Brighton O” better than that? What kind of moneyspinners can they realistically expect to be? Are the views over the city really so special? When the sea air causes it to rust or crust, the “Brighton O” can be moved off (transportable) but the “i360” is to be driven into the fissured chalk to quite a depth to accommodate the 4-metre diameter & extremely tall central pole above ground with its pod going up and down, up and down. Planning consent did not ask for, require, or get any information on how the devil you decommission the “i360” when the time comes …
If Brighton per se and the Brighton Centre can’t deliver class, gravitas, culture, ambience, or whatever political parties need to hold their annual conferences here, why would the kind of person with the kind of money to book a room at the Grand Hotel come here either? What is the city per se, doing to sell itself as a good host to the kind of person these hotels need to bring in if they are to survive?

Brighton & Hove were once the destination of choice for royalty & the wealthy, dignified high rollers? What is offered now for the kind of visitor who reveres and wants to wallow in the grand Regency seafront Brighton & Hove possesses? If I may borrow from The Doors’ Jim Morrison: “what have we done to our fair city”?

And how does it change tack?

Directly below the Grand and Metropole hotels, based in the seafront arches, are a kayak club and the Brighton Sailing Club. By the club entrances the wall-mounted remains of Royal National Life Boat signs remind us this was once an RNLI station. Not so long ago, fish were sold direct from catches on this section of beach where fishermen also kept their boats. Moved along. Gone to the Shoreham harbour area now. Some are moored at the Marina. Not sophisticated enough, perhaps, for the City-by-the-Sea craving urban bling.

Looking at what Brighton & Hove City Council have done with the seafront over recent years, it is clear that a march of facilities and space-gobbling public art has steadily made its way towards the Brighton Sailing Club from the Brighton Pier (still the Palace Pier to many of us), whilst making no concessions to the long-held boating traditions around this spot whatsover. I’m told the boats keep getting moved further up the beach. Pesky boats. Tsk. And I sense that the Sailing Club is being left behind, that it too is in real danger of being edged out and pushed off the beach altogether.

One can count 35 catamarans and 5 other small sailing craft in a line along the pebbles in front of the arches clubhouse and changing rooms. The passing public sit on the “cats”, use them for photos, vandalise them. Even so, the Brighton Sailing Club has a waiting list of another 20 people looking to be based there.

Sailing is a class act. The healthy world of sailing should be good for Brighton’s tarnished image but there isn’t enough of it to over-ride the bad stuff. It is a discipline that offers physical and mental development, year-round pleasure & activity on the water with enhanced sea views for the rest of us. When sailboats are on the water, crowds form to look at them. Club members don’t even need to own their own boat. It is a sport, with a clean, respectable image, practised by men & women from all walks of life. Brighton Sailing Club members John Davys & James Parrott worry deeply now about what impact the proposed developments (“i360” & “Brighton O”) could have on the future of their sailing club.

Two basketball courts (with smashed night lamps on poles), two different areas of “public art” and two inflatable soccer pitches now encroach from either side of the little patch of beach where boats and sailing are still tolerated. The glorified Ferris wheel proposed for the area where the cheap and nasty inflatable soccer pitches currently rest would overhang the sailing club’s space, squeezing them still further. Walking along this area, one feels hemmed in by a lot of different objects & activities, all there, jumbled up too closely. On a warm summer’s day it is heaving with visitors. But what about when it rains or in winter?

And what’s in it for the Metropole or Grand Hotel visitor just above them? People do not spend hundreds of pounds a night to stay in hotel rooms overlooking a basketball court with broken lighting round it, “Brighton O’s”, a viewing pod going up and down or feral night life. We need to raise our game to attract the serious leisure spenders to these wonderful hotels. Does Brighton & Hove City Council really care – or will we see those hotels fail and attract developers who will convert them into flats? Sailing, directly overlooked by The Grand Hotel and The Metropole, if promoted and expanded into the adjacent areas would surely also promote the long-term survival of our flagship hotels quid pro quo and generally raise the tone of the area.

I somehow don’t believe that Brighton & Hove City Council has a year-round beach strategy that involves the Brighton Sailing Club or that it is valued or particularly welcome to remain on the seafront any more than the fishermen were. Why is this? Eastbourne has an internationally famous tennis tournament. Classy. Cowes has an internationally famous sailing week. Classy. The Henley Regatta. Classy. Brighton has……what? A mania for encouraging developers to erect huge blocks of flats along the seafront “that will put Brighton & Hove on the map” are all I’ve seen so far this century along with a wannabe wish to be labelled a Capital of Culture. Development strategies that are about throwing up huge buildings and “attractions” all over the seafront betray a lack of confidence and a kind of egotistical bluffing about culture.

Where is sailing on Brighton & Hove’s calendar of feted events to put the City on some part of anyone’s map? Why do the surfers at the Marina have to compete with developers to retain their bit of sea activity? Why is the Marina being turned into a housing estate? The city has filled the beach with petanque rinks, basketball, volleyball, etc. – all of which are constrained in their use by the weather, all of which one would like to see inland in parks and open spaces dedicated to play and sport for people of all ages. None of what is on the beach (Sailing and Kayak clubs apart) is in any way connected with the sea itself – our unique selling point!

Why hasn’t the Council enlisted sailing as a way to help counter the drug-death capital of England tag and the view of Brighton & Hove that got us featured in a guidebook called “Crap Cities”?

Development should be about retaining and ‘bigging-up’ worthwhile, permanent community asset organisations like the Brighton Sailing Club. Clear the seafront, I say, and bring on the windsurfing, sail boats and regattas. Quid pro quo, the city, the sailing club membership, the Metropole and Grand Hotels could all be doing each other a few long-term image and economic favours. And it counts as culture, dont’cha know!

REGENCY Fan Voices Opinion In Street

REGENCY — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 16:57:27 +0000

As I took a stroll in the Lanes on a Saturday afternoon I heard the cry of “P*ss off, why don’t you p*ss off, yeah?”. I turned to see a rather irate looking Josh Arghiros glaring at me. Mr. Arghiros is the property magnate behind the failed King Alfred development, who, readers will remember, we featured a couple of issues ago, taking particular interest in his hiring of acting students to pack out the public gallery at council meetings, pretending to be residents in favour of the project.

See? We told you he was charming.

Disused Ice Rink Plans

REGENCY — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 16:51:31 +0000

Plans are expected to be announced to convert the disused Sussex Ice Rink near Churchill Square into a 6-storey hotel. Brighton and Hove City Council, the owner of the dilapidated site, is said to be in negotiations with a developer but nothing further has been revealed at this stage.

Developer Fined £30,000

REGENCY — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 16:48:02 +0000

A development company who felled five 50-year-old trees in a bid to increase the value of the land on which the trees stood has been fined £30,000. Action was taken by Brighton and Hove City Council against Bridgetown Properties and its operations director Timothy Harding after 600 residents signed a petition urging the council to take action. Harding admitted felling the trees at Anstron House in Preston Road despite there being preservation orders on them since 1988.

Thomas Read Kemp – a Regency ‘Credit Crunch’?

REGENCY — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 02:25:12 +0000

Thomas Read Kemp's "Kemptown"

In November 1822, the Sussex Weekly Advertiser reported that; ‘Two elegant new squares are talked of to skirt the East and the West of the town’. One was Kemp Town and the other, Brunswick Town in Hove.

Thomas Read Kemp developed Kemp Town. He inherited this land from his father. By 1820 Thomas Read and Frances Kemp (nee Baring – of the banking family) had sold their country house in Herstmonceaux and were living at The Temple, now the High School for Girls in Montpelier Road.

Thomas must have been planning his huge project for some time. Between c1818 and 1824, he bought land in East Laine, a large arable field between Brighton and Kemp Town to extend what we now call Eastern Road directly into Sussex Square. This road enabled Kemp not only to give an inland route into Sussex Square and the Crescent but also to develop land that he owned along it.

Kemp chose Busby and Wilds as his architects for the design of his grand project for Sussex Square and Lewes Crescent. That part of Kemp Town was originally to have 250 houses and, mews (see picture). Kemp decided to act as the developer without a surveyor in charge and without following the usual practice (employed so successfully over in Brunswick Town) of expecting the builders to find their own funding.

In 1822, Kemp was paying the wages of at least 200 workmen to level the site and to begin the construction of the carcasses of the houses. He bore the costs of not only the building work but also the landscaping and the esplanade to the south of the main road along the seafront.

By 1824 there were carcasses awaiting buyers and no evidence of interest in them, so Kemp borrowed £42,000 secured on the land in his marriage settlement with Frances (nee Baring, his first wife) and on land in Kemp Town. Early in 1826 Kemp did have most of the carcasses of the square and crescents standing. Due to the lack of sales, Kemp was short of capital and borrowed more in 1826.

In 1827, Kemp decided to move to Kemp Town and to sell The Temple. He could not find a buyer and let it as a school. A French visitor described his opulent lifestyle at Kemp Town: “The impression is of a man who is hoping that his lifestyle there would attract buyers who might emulate it.” Slowly houses sold. In 1828, Matthias Wilks of Tandridge bought a house in Sussex Square on the south east corner. The same year Kemp’s sister, Mrs Sober contracted to buy 23 Sussex Square for £3,150. By May he had sold 17 carcasses on to Cubitt, 15 to Joseph and Matthias Wilks and 11 to Nehemiah Wimble (of Lewes) but remained the largest proprietor with 47 houses and sites. The Earl of Bristol bought two houses in the north-west corner of Sussex Square in 1829 and then large plots of land from Kemp, including all of the pasture between his house and the old parish boundary at Bear Road.

In 1828 the 6th Duke of Devonshire bought the carcass of No. 14 Chichester Terrace from Kemp and in March 1829, No. 1 Lewes Crescent from Thomas Cubitt ( a well known builder). The two houses were on a wedge shaped plot and although he used them both, they were laid out as two separate houses with, the accounts suggest, a connecting door and a large detached kitchen to keep the smell of cooking out of the houses. Cubitt completed No.1 and did all the interior work within it for £9,293. The Duke spent over £1000 a year on running costs alone. Could the sheer size of these houses deterred people from buying?

To show that he wished to sell land west of the core of his main project, Kemp built St. George’s chapel, designed by C A Busby. The Chapel cost Kemp £11,000 and the additional cost of the private Act of Parliament. Such a chapel was often built by a developer starting a large and prestigious project. Pews were let to pay for the curate and for the running costs.

Kemp never finished his scheme. He was faced with three issues by 1828s, first that Brunswick Town was closer to the town centre, second that this rival was better managed, third – in 1827, the economy was starting to enter a recession which lasted for Brighton into the early 1840s. Having chosen to finance the whole project, he slowed down the rate of construction and the project got caught in the credit crunch which made wealth buyers unwilling to commit to holidays homes beside the sea.

Sue Berry wrote Georgian Brighton (Phillimore,2005) and has published many articles on the history of the area now within the City. She is now writing The City of Brighton and Hove, to be published by the Victoria County History series in 2011. She teaches for the Centre for Continuing Education at the University of Sussex and can be reached via her email which is on the University’s web site.