History of Brighton - Nineteenth Century and Pre War Period

Nineteenth Century and Pre War Period

Brighton's popularity with the rich, famous, and royal continued in the 19th century, and saw the building of a number of imposing seafront hotels, including the Bedford Hotel of 1829, the Grand Hotel of 1864, and the Metropole Hotel of 1890.

Gideon Algernon Mantell lived on the Steine close to the seafront in the early part of the nineteenth century; his residency is commemorated on a plaque at the house. Mantell identified the iguanadon from a fossilised tooth found locally and was an early theorist of a prehistoric age when the earth was ruled by giant lizards.

Brighton came to be of importance to the railway industry after the building of the Brighton railway works in 1840. This brought Brighton within the reach of day-trippers from London, who flocked to peep at Queen Victoria, whose growing family were constrained for space in the Royal Pavilion; in 1845 she purchased the land for Osborne House in the Isle of Wight and left Brighton permanently. In 1850 the Pavilion was sold to the Corporation of Brighton.

In 1859 the municipal Brighton School of Art was founded, which became part of Brighton Polytechnic as the Faculty of Art and Design and is now the Faculty of Arts and Architecture of the University of Brighton.

In the latter half of the 19th century a large number of churches were built in Brighton. This was in large part due to the efforts of Reverend Arthur Douglas Wagner, a prominent figure in the Anglo-Catholic movement of the time. He is thought to have spent his entire fortune on building a number of churches including St. Bartholomew's — an imposing red brick building, built to the size and proportions of the biblical ark. Other notable Victorian churches in Brighton include the Parish Church of St. Michael and All Angels, which has stained glass windows by the pre-Raphaelites, William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones, Ford Madox Brown and Philip Webb.

In the early twentieth century, Otto Pfenninger developed a method of colour photography in Brighton.

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