History of Brighton - Post-war 20th Century

Post-war 20th Century

In many ways, Brighton's post-war growth has been a continuation of the "fashionable Brighton" which drew the Georgian upper classes. The growth in mass tourism stimulated numerous Brighton businesses to serve visitors. Pubs and restaurants are abundant. An important post-war development was the 1961 founding of the University of Sussex, designed by Sir Basil Spence. The University acquired a strong academic reputation, and a certain reputation for radicalism. Brighton, with its vibrant cultural scene, is hard to imagine without the thousands of students from Sussex and Brighton Polytechnic, which was given the name University of Brighton in 1992, but with its early roots in the Victorian-era Brighton School of Art.

Other post-war developments radically changed the centre of Brighton, in the name of creating much needed low-cost local housing. An example is the virtual replacement of Richmond Street to make way for tower blocks in the vicinity. A notable feature of this area was a fence at the junction of the present Elmore Road and Richmond Street which once stopped carts from running away down the steep hill.

In the same area of the town there have been further developments, with student accommodation at the bottom of Southover Street being built in the early 1990s near the site of the Phoenix Brewery. An adjacent housing association development at the bottom of Albion Hill, behind the Phoenix Gallery, incorporates the houses once known as "The Peoples State of Trumpton" which was first squatted by Martin and Suzie Cowley in an effort to halt the demolition of the cottages, one being the smallest cottage in Brighton, it was twinned with The Peoples State of Chigley which was a squatted area in Brigg in Humberside, formerly a long-term squatted dwelling, its colourful appearance much in fitting with the area's Bohemian demographic. The Peoples State of Trumpton arose alongside the politics of the Brighton Justice? movement and the creation of a social space in a nearby squatted former courthouse.

The period of the 1970s and '80s saw much of the town becoming somewhat dilapidated. At the same time, a major investment was being made into the Brighton Marina, which encountered stiff opposition from many local people. Opposition to the way the town was being run was also voiced by the semi-anarchist newspaper Brighton Voice. The seafront, in particular, was much less developed than today. There was notorious sub-standard rental accommodation run by slum landlords. High levels of unemployment in the central districts led to a strong unemployed counter-culture involving squatting. Whilst a minority of the population, they had a strong and visible presence, often with brightly dyed hair or dreadlocks, and were overtly political, vocal in their hatred of the Margaret Thatcher government.

This period is punctuated by a natural phenomenon: the Great Storm of 1987. The Level and Steine were decimated by this event with many great elm trees lost. The Pavilion and the Church of St. Peter suffered substantial damage.

Embassy Court is one of the most unusual buildings on the seafront at Brighton and Hove, although the reasons for this have differed over the years. When built in 1935, designed by architect Wells Coates, the building contrasted sharply with the more sedate and ornamental architecture of King's Road, and was suggested as a prototype for a proposed total redevelopment. However, by the 1990s the structure drew comment because of the state of its decay. The building made the local press after chunks of render and windows fell from the building onto the street below, and it appeared until recently that it might suffer the same ignominious fate met by the nearby West Pier, which all but succumbed to the elements and suspected arsonists in early 2004. Eventually this fate was avoided: a consortium formed by residents and owners were able to wrestle the freehold of the building from the then management company, and restoration began in 2004, being completed by autumn 2005.

Social change during the 20th Century has seen many of the 19th Century townhouses converted to flats, along with the mews buildings which once served many of them.