Completely RANDOM things about Brighton & Hove...

[Tony Meolas Loan Spell]

and being able to fish off the palace pier. they must have stopped that mid eighties?

Yep indeed!

 

[Tony Meolas Loan Spell]

The cinema in North Street - opp Boots where Burger King is now.

 

[Oscar]

Selina Squirrel - toy shop in St James's Street which had all toy soldiers in s the side window.

Humpty Dumpty restaurant in West Street. Closed in the late Seventies/early Eighties due to a rat infestation.

The Dolls Hospital in the North Laines (Trafalgar Street?). My Action Man was grateful patient in there after a nasty fall during a particularly daring mission.

Jubilee Market in Gardener Street with the great Jabba's Hut shop downstairs that sold old Star Wars toys. Nostalgia heaven.

 

[The Large One]

AA Baker where I used to get my Subbuteo.

 

[Oscar]

The cinema in North Street - opp Boots where Burger King is now.

Cinescene. Burger King still has a movie theme as a homage to the old place.

 

[The Large One]

A big roundabout at Preston Circus.

 

[Mackenzie]

I haven't real all of this, but what about the 'river' which flows under the city and comes out of the groin (sp?) on the right of the Palace Pier?

27 Upper Rock Gardens (my old house) the most haunted house in Sussex!

The fishermans club, once situated where the Zap Club is now (or was) and then where the Brighton fishing museum is now.

 

[Muzzman]

What was the shop called located on the lower level of Churchill Square where you had to order your school uniform from?

 

[The Spanish]

The porno cinema in Kemp Town by the hospital. What was that called again its on the tip of my tongue, so to speak.....

 

[Mackenzie]

....oh and Mr Oakleys (key cutters and everything else) shop in Kemp Town.

 

[Taybha]

i miss clive walker in stripey shorts and the place he worked at

 

[The Large One]

I haven't real all of this, but what about the 'river' which flows under the city and comes out of the groin (sp?) on the right of the Palace Pier?

The Wellesbourne.

Brighton's 'lost river' was an intermittent stream known as the 'Wellesbourne' that ran from Patcham and beyond to the sea at Pool Valley , but only at those times after prolonged rainfall when the water-table within the porous chalk bedrock reached the surface along the London Road valley and water from springs was thus able to flow without repercolating, a phenomenon similar to the Winterbourne at Lewes today.

One of its principal sources was the pond in front of All Saint's Church, Patcham , now marked by a slight depression. In most winters the pond overflowed and water ran to the bottom of Church Hill (then named Spring Street) where it would be joined by water from other springs in the valley as far as Pyecombe; these included one at Brapool, which means 'pool by which bracken grew'. The stream then flowed into another pond at the corner of Old London Road and Ladies Mile Road , and along the road to Brighton where it was joined at the Level by another winter-bourne from Falmer that ran down the Lewes Road valley. The stream finally debouched into the sea at the 'pool' of Pool Valley , or perhaps slightly to the east, diverted by an artificial bank to protect the inlet {10}. The Domesday Book records the presence of a mill at Preston in 1086, possibly a water-mill powered by the stream.

The bourne often flooded the Valley Gardens in the winter and skating was occasionally possible on the frozen Steine . The swampy nature of the central valley probably prevented development upon it, but once the Steine had become a fashionable promenade with the arrival of visitors from the mid eighteenth century, such conditions were unacceptable.

In 1792-3 the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Marlborough, at their own expense, laid a wooden sewer under the western edge of the Steine to carry the bourne to the sea which also drained a stagnant pool that collected in front of the Prince's Marine Pavilion ; the Wellesbourne was culverted and Pool Valley was also bricked over. Following inundations in the winter of 1827-8, another drain was laid all the way from Preston Circus to the Albion Hotel.

Particularly strong flows of the Wellesbourne occurred in 1795, 1806, 1811, 1827-8, 1852, and finally in 1876 when both Lewes and London Road were impassable, but since the construction of the Patcham Waterworks in 1889, and the consequent siphoning of water from its sources, the bourne has never flowed again.

The Wellesbourne, corrupted to 'Whalesbone', may have given its name to the hundred through which it flowed, but although often referred to as an 'underground river', it is only so in the sense that spring water from Patcham may be carried under the London Road by sewer; there is no stream flowing within the chalk or Coombe deposits of the valley. After very heavy rain the water-table rises and reaches the surface in basements along the valley and occasionally at Preston Park and the Valley Gardens , giving the impression of an invisible stream. The Parks and Recreation Department uses water from the chalk along the valley for watering its gardens.

 

[Mackenzie]

Yep indeed!

My dad won a fishing competition off of the pier, organised by the Argus I think, in the 1960's. He won a rod and reel!

 

[Tony Meolas Loan Spell]

Gamleys

 

[Taybha]

The porno cinema in Kemp Town by the hospital. What was that called again its on the tip of my tongue, so to speak.....

The continental? not that i ever went mind

 

[Gwylan]

Cinescene. Burger King still has a movie theme as a homage to the old place.

It was called Cinescene at the end but prior to that it was called Princes, Jacey's and the Brighton Film Theatre (it was probably called something else before these but that was before my time). I loved the BFT, they showed some fantastically obscure foreign films.

There was also the Essoldo on the other side of North Street

 

[Muzzman]

Also remember people smoking in the Odeon, think the smoking areas were to the side.

 

[Mackenzie]

The Wellesbourne.

Is that what its called? Brillient, I never knew that. I know dad used to follow it up under the town when he was a kid (they have locked it with a metal grill now).

 

[Muzzman]

Gamleys

Used to shop in there for Zoids after saving a months pocket money.

 

[Mackenzie]

Also remember people smoking in the Odeon, think the smoking areas were to the side.

...and you could see the film being projected onto the smoke before it reached the screen......oh what about the ABC down East Street...