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 Visit to Brighton |
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| October 2006 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Our two night trip to Brighton was a great success despite the rain. On arrival, we had a glorious sunny afternoon in which to explore the town. We were staying near the West Pier (above). According to the West Pier Trust website: "Brighton's West Pier, opened in 1866, is England's finest seaside pier and the first one to be Grade I listed. Although closed since 1975 and ravaged by the elements, it has survived as a magical and enduring part of seaside England and an essential feature of the Brighton seafront". All this, despite the fact that It was burnt down in March 2003! | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The Brighton Hotel served us well. Old fashioned and friendly, it was conveniently situated, and the coach picked us up right outside it | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| We were highly impressed by the Royal Pavilion, where we were very lucky to get a really entertaining guide. She thought the Prince Regent (see below) had been much maligned, but was really an attractive and popular person, even if he'd later made a dreadful king | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| On left: HRH the Prince Regent Awakening the Spirit of Brighton. Painted by Rex Whistler in 1944 whilst the artist was billeted in the town © The Royal Pavilion, Libraries & Museums, Brighton & Hove |
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| Palmeira Mansions in Hove came as a bit of an anticlimax after the Royal Pavilion. Not normally open to the public, the corner house in this terrace used to belong to a nouveau riche Victorian merchant, but it is now used as a language school and hardly any of the original furnishings remain. The "Venetian glass" mirror on the right was made in Birmingham. Our guide had written her dissertation about the family who lived here | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Titsey Place at Oxted in Surrey may not look much from the outside, but it proved a very interesting Georgian mansion (on the site of an Elizabethan one) with impressive family portraits, furniture, and porcelain. Looking out of the window on the right above, there is a stunning garden with lakes and park - even though we could only peer at it through the rain! The local church used to be just outside the house too, but in 1776 Sir John Gresham had it moved much further away so that it did not block his view. There was also a pilgrim way that went past the house, so he moved it into a beech plantation where he didn't have to see anyone using it. How he would have hated to think that his house was now open to the public ... | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The new dining room, designed in 1826, was originally a drawing room but became a dining room in the 1920s because it was nearer the kitchen. The room contains four Canaletto paintings of Venice, probably directly commissioned from the artist, who used to charge more for including extra people or buildings. |
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Philip Grosset |
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