There are said to have been 80 fishing boats in Brighton in the year 1579, and 400 " able mariners, " with 10,000 fishing nets, " besides many other necessaries belonging to their mystery." Horsfield gives a fine old drawing showing the attack made upon Brighton by the French fleet under Admiral D'Annebalte. It is a very careful piece of work, with geographical localities correctly indicated.

 

The ships depicted lying off the coast are the warships of the period. A number of small boats are shown lying on the beach, and dwellings under the cliff (where the Marine Parade runs) show the position of a part of the town long submerged. East and West Streets were formed, and Middle Street was just begun.

 

As a result of these unpleasant experiences at the hands of the French, the Brighton folk endeavour to obtain better protection, and in the first year of Queen Elizabeth a small fort, afterwards known as the Blockhouse, was built on land granted for the purpose by the " Court-Baron of the Manor of Brighthelmstone" between Black Lion Street and Ship Street.

 

This is described as having been a circular building 50 feet in diameter, with walls 8 feet thick and 18 feet high. On its south front, overlooking the sea, was a small battery called the Gun Garden, on which were four pieces of artillery. It continued to protect the town for about 200 years, but the gradual encroachment of the sea carried away part of the blockhouse, and by 1761 the south wall was gone. The remainder was soon afterwards taken down.

 

From Brighton's history in her early days, before the town boomed into popularity under the Georges, the most Familiar figure which emerges is that of Captain Nicholas Tettersall, the master of the little brig in which Charles II. escaped to France in 1651. After the Restoration the Captain, finding himself forgotten, is said to have sailed his brig up the Thames and moored her before Whitehall. "The bait took," says Horsfield, who seems to have entertained a low opinion of the Captain's commercial motives, and Tettersall was appointed by James Duke of York, then High Admiral, to be captain of the "Royal Escape," under which high-sounding title his little brig was admitted to the Royal Navy, and renovated and enlarged.

 

In 1670 the Captain was appointed "Constable of Brighton," and among his exploits which contributed to Mr. Horsfield's disfavour was the surrounding with his "gang" of a house where " a few peaceable Dissenters had met to worsilip God according to the dictates of their own conscience. He had them dragged before an iniquitous tribunal, wherein a local tyrant of the name of Nutt presided."

 

Proof of their having broken the Statute of Conventicles could not be found, it is added, but the master of the house was fined £20, and Captain lettersall broke open the malt house where the assembly had been held, and "took therefrom 63 bushel sacks of malt, which he sold to one of his friends for 12s. a quarter." The Captain died at Brighton, and most visitors to the town are familiar with his tomb in St. Nicholas Churchyard, which contains what Horsfield scornfully refers to as "the following prosaic inscription to the memory of the bargain-making Tettersall": -

 

" Within this marble monvment doth lie
Approved faith, honovr and loyalty.
In this cold clay he hath now ta'en vp his station,
Who once preserved the chvrch, the crowne, the nation.
When Charles the Greate was nothing bvt a breath
This valiant hero stept 'tween him and death.
Vsvrper's threats, nor tyrant rebel's frowne,
Could not affright his dvty to the crowne;
Which glorious act of his for chvrch and state
Eight princes in one day did gratvlate,
Professing all to him in debt to bee,
As all the world are to his memory.
Since earth covld not reward the worth him given,
He now receives it from the King of Heaven.
In the same chest one jewel more you have,
The partner of his virtues, bed', and grave."

 

The fishing industry, which was of so much importance not only to Brighton, but to all the Sussex coast towns, suffered a bad slump during the I7th Century. This was partly because of renewed disputes between the South Coast men and their old rivals of Yarmouth, and partly owing to the growth of foreign (especially Dutch) competition, which often resulted in attacks upon the English boats and their capture.

 

There was more than one petition to Parliament over the fishing troubles, and one of these describes itself as that"of the poor, distressed, and the much decayed fishing town of Brighthelmstone in Sussex in most humble manner complaining." It begs the House " to take into their careful and judicial consideration their most miserable and distressed state, and speedily to succour and defend the coast with some of His Majesty's ships of war," lest otherwise " the seacoast would be wholly forsaken of seamen, and left forlorne and an easy prey to the enemy, which God by His great mercy defend!"

 

This was shortly before the 'Treaty of Breda between the English, French, Dutch, and Danes. To such a pitch of poverty do the inhabitants of Brighton appear to have been brought about this time, that neighbouring villages were ordered to contribute to support the poor of Brighton - an order which naturally met with much opposition, and appears to have been avoided with more or less success.

 

In the early years of the next century Brighton suffered badly from incursions of the sea, and that portion of the town under the cliff was quite washed away. Parts of a former street known as South Street, which anciently ran under the cliff, were discovered in 1818 under a layer of beach 15 feet thick by workmen engaged on excavations between Middle Street and Ship Street.

 

Brighton's dark days were, however, over by that time. For it happened that about the middle of the 18th Century an eminent London physician, Dr. Richard Russell, who moved to Brighton and occupied a house in the Steyne, on the site now covered by the Albion Hotel, suddenly discovered the virtues of sea bathing, and wrote so eloquently on the subject that many fashionable patients began to flock to Brighton. The good doctor had married a lady who was the heiress of property at South Malling, Lewes. He lived to the ripe age of 73 (perhaps assisted therto by his practice of sea bathing), and when he died he was buried in the family vault at South Malling.

 

Russell's good work for Brighton was continued by a professional brother, Dr. Anthony Relham, who is distinguished as having written the first of a host of histories and guides to the town in the year 1761. Brighton in Dr. Relham's day consisted of "six principal streets, many lanes, and some spaces surrounded with houses, called by the inhabitants squares." "The town," says the doctor, ' improves daily, as the inhabitants, encouraged by the late great resort of company, seem disposed to expend the whole of what they acquire in the erecting of new buildings, or making the old ones convenient. "

 

In 1773 an Act of Parliament was obtained for the appointment of 64 Commissioners for governing the town, which soon afterwards became a yearly resort of fashionable people. The fortune of Brighton was definitely made by the lucky chance of a visit paid by George IV., then Prince of Wales, to his uncle the Duke of Cumberland. The Prince took such a fancy to the place that he made it his summer residence, and under this stimulus it rapidly rose to the position of the most fashionable seaside report in Europe.

 

The Steine was in those days the centre of the gaieties and frivolities of which the rising resort was the scene. Tall houses stood at irregular intervals along its western side. The eastern side, with the rising ground beyond, was still open country. In the wake of the Prince came a host of gay and dissolute bloods. The Prince himself dived near the Steine, and there it was that the mad pranks of his fashionable following were played.

 

On one occasion, it is related, the Prince amused himself, after his favourite sport of pigeon shooting on the Steine, by lowering the chimneys of his uncle's, the Duke of Cumberland 's house. Another item of the " fashionable intelligence " of the day was a race between a French nobleman and a waiter from the old Castle Inn (long since demolished), which shared with the Old Ship the social festivities of the time. On October 27, 1788, a nobleman amused himself and the town by riding a horse to the top room of the house of Mrs. Fitzherbert, the Prince's unacknowledged wife. The horse " could not be induced to make the return journey, and two blacksmiths were at last called in to get it down by main force, their reward being a bowl of punch at the Castle."

 

Another event, in 1786, was a race across the Steine by " a military gentleman ridden by a jockey booted and spurred, run with a fat bullock, unmounted, for 100 guineas." A great crowd of people assembled to witness the event, which " afforded most excellent diversion."

 

 

 

 

Page 1                              Page 3

 

 

 

 

 

Top of Page       main page:  www.yeoldesussexpages.com