ABOVE: This photo shows the majority of the overall site of The
Works and the Goods Yards in 2005, cleared for redevelopment. (The curve of the
picture is artificial as the photo is a panoramic composite of 12 different
photos taken at intervals through roughly 180 degrees!) The whole site, once
cleared, effectively provided a huge clean slate for developers and gave
grounds for a huge amount of speculation, perhaps a little worry, but more
commonly the usual array of daft and (more often than not) totally
inappropriate building designs. There have been mentions of an on-site power
station and a huge skyscraper with 30-mile visibility to name but a few. One
thing that is for certain is that the site of Brighton
Works and The Upper & Lower Goods Yards will change beyond all possible
recognition. Author’s
collection
ABOVE:
These two aerial photos show the entire Station and Railway Works Site in the
early 1990s. The ramp to the original car park is clearly visible on both
photos, as is the swathe of greenery around the boundary where the path of the
track bed to the Lower Goods Yard ran.
ABOVE: This photo shows the entire site as it appeared before any notion of redevelopment had yet to surface. Points of interest on the photo that are covered in detail in this chapter are (in no particular order):
Harvest Forestry (bottom left of photo), along with the coal yard
The access ramp to the car park (top right)
The bridge over the Lower Goods Line (top right)
Ffyfes Banana Warehouses (top right, behind the bridge)
The Pay Office and Works Entrance Footbridge (top left, above ramp)
The Car Park (top middle to left)
ABOVE:
This plan shows what the redevelopment of the Brighton Works Site may
eventually look like, including the Green Corridor which runs between the
Station Building (top left) to New England Road (top right), which will be a sort
of semi rural pathway and cycle lane combined, utilising the route of the
original track bed of the Lower Goods Line, mentioned elsewhere in this chapter
in greater detail.
BELOW:
This picture shows an early artist’s impression of the finished City Point
development. Whilst it bears little resemblance to the finished article in
terms of colour or layout, it is clear to see that some of the early ideas
lasted through to the final finished complex, for example there is a tower
where the final tower now stands and the facia designs look as though they made
it through onto some of the terraces around the new Sainsburys.
This picture (ABOVE) shows what the developers have in store for the
site as a whole. The dark red areas centre-left labelled A, B, C & D are
mentioned in depth in a later chapter, but are the bulk of the first part of
the site to be redeveloped. This area, known as Citypoint, comprises housing as
the greater proportion of overall site usage, some offices and retail units and
a new Sainsburys superstore underneath it, shown in cross-hatched light blue. A
surprising proportion of this site has been allocated to communal gardens (more
of which later) and goes some way towards undoing the theme of blandness and
sterile functionality which the New England Street area has suffered from over
the last three decades. Part of New England
Street is to be pedestrianised and traffic diverted
west behind the area of Citypoint.
Area L & M are to become a College building and student
accommodation, while the thin area across the road will be consigned to
terraced homes and a development of offices at the southern end.
Areas Q & R represents a low level dual storey car park which is
key to the redevelopment of the entire site. Whilst only taking a fraction of
the overall site, this one building holds almost as many vehicles as the car
park it replaced, freeing up valuable space for other development. It has been
proposed that the weekly Sunday market will be able to use the top storey, as
it originally used a significant proportion of the old car park. The Station
Building, railway linesand New England
& Mocatta Houses can be seen at the top left of the picture and London Road
runs left to right across the bottom.The
blue and pink cross hatched triangle in front of Q/R will be a hotel.
Areas E & F will eventually become “One Brighton”, another
development of terraced homes and flats, similar to Citypoint, bordering New England
Street.
(ABOVE:) This
picture shows the whole of the area to be redeveloped as it appeared in 2002,
outlined in red. The area outlined in blue shows the extent of the area to be
demolished and / or landscaped. The curve of the old car park access ramp can
be clearly seen just to the right of the centre, along with the Pay Office and
the Footbridge which were the main access to The Works Complex. As well as simple
demolition, several of the roads around the site were developed or reshaped.
A lot of the
through routes from London Road received treatment to lead the eye into the architectural styles which
would be employed in the new developments (three in all seen at the bottom of
the map).
ABOVE: This photo
shows the site, as the date shows, in September 2005. The majority of City
Point is nearing completion, but Sainsburys and the triangular tower in the
centre of the photo still have a long way to go. The large cleared patch just
up from the centre of the photo will eventually become the Language College and the Jury’s Inn Hotel.
********************
Part 1:
Prologue.
Since the demolition of The Works, little had changed on the site that
is notable, until 2003-2004 with the current overall site redevelopment into
City Point and The New England Quarter. A lot of the site became derelict in
the 1970’s and was signed over to uncontrolled vegetation.
An entrance ramp to the car park (built on the majority of The Works
site) was built in the 1970’s across the path of the Lower Goods Line. This
ramp adjoined Cheapside just
opposite Blackman Street. In
the last 20 years (1983 to 2003) the area around the Cheapside end of
this access ramp had been consigned for the most part to used car dealerships
and vehicle compounds for car parking companies.
TOP LEFT & RIGHT: These 2 photos show the area where the ramp would have joined Cheapside, just opposite Blackman Street. In the left hand photo, the site has been cleared and leveled ready for the Citypoint development. In the right hand photo, the ramp can be seen very clearly rising up to the point where it crosses the trackbed of the Lower Goods Line. Note all the used car dealerships in the foreground and harvest Forestry at the bottom left hand corner.
While this ramp was still in use, observers could make out (to the east
of the bridge) the track bed of the Lower Goods Line as far as Old
Shoreham Road and could clearly see a variety
of outbuildings behind the Fyffe’s Banana warehouse, including the staircase to
the original pay office: the main entrance to the site.
ABOVE: These three photos show the signing office and access walkway over the Lower Track Bed that was the original main enterance to The Works Buildings. The middle photo is owned by The Isetta Owners Club and appears here for comparative research purposes only.
To the west of the bridge the area was mostly overgrown, but part of
the area previously consigned to the coal yard was used for car parking,
aggregate and permanent way storage and in later years (2000 – 2004) the
immediate coal office and yard were used by Harvest Forestry as a small garden
and organic centre. At odd intervals, the remains of the walls of buildings
punctuated the site. These appear to have been used to provide the boundaries
of car parking areas and small businesses.
ABOVE: CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Harvest Forestry extensively customised and took over this little coal office around 2000. The minarets are recovered from Brighton's Palace Pier Theatre. In the back end of 2003, demolition of the site commenced and the building was knocked back to just its outer walls. The site was totally levelled and the boundary walls demolished in this rather bleak shot from early 2004, due to a massive change to the road layout in the area. In the next shot from the mouth of Blackman Street, we can see the corner plot previously occupied by Harvest Forestry starting to take shape, the finished buildings are seen in the image bottom left.
One particular area bound in this style provided temporary parking for
the New England House offices. This was originally in the area bound by
Trafalgar Street Arches, the east side of the station and the car-park access
ramp.
The warehouses which had stood to the south of the Lower Goods Yard (now
in the present day area bound by Whitecross Street, Trafalgar Street and
Trafalgar Street Arches) were gradually cleared between 1970 and the present
day. Most have been lost to CityCollege
(formerly Brighton College of Technology), the DVLA building and small factory
units and offices in the area between Whitecross
Street and Station
Street.
ABOVE: THEN & NOW: There used to be some amazing old warehouses in the streets between Trafalgar Street and Cheapside, particularly around Station Street, Whitecross Street and Blackman Street. The entire area between Whitecross Street and Station Street has changed beyond all recognition, as illustrated in the modern day views.
LEFT: Station Street: May's is still on the corner and the modern GB carriers warehouse can be seen in both views, but the embankment and arches underneath that formed the base for the majority of the Lower Goods Yard has become Trafalgar Place, as seen underneath in the modern shot.
MIDDLE: Blackman Street: The warehouse and houses in this photo all disappeared with the construction of the highrise block Theobald house and the subsequent car park underneath it. Note that the modern day photo is lookingsouth-west, rather than north-west.
RIGHT: Cheapside / Pelham Street / New England Street: Again, the angle is 90 degrees due south, but illustrates the change in the area quite well.
In the late 1990’s the station was completely refurbished and the roof
literally rebuilt. Access to the station from the London
Road side was improved (but still
used the access road to the ramp described earlier). The access road for the
most part was virtually single track with passing places and would never really
be adequate for such an important station. Perhaps this provided considerable
impetus to redevelopment plans. A drop-off point was constructed where the old
Kemptown departures platform was, but little changed in the car park area
besides this.
ABOVE: This view shows the drop-off point next to the station.
The frontage of the station shown here would originally have been the platform
for KempTown
departures, the track running right to left, left being the end of the platform
and the station forecourt. Note the newly constructed multi storey car park on
the right, completed early 2005. This one building, whilst a fraction of the
size of the original car park, holds almost as many vehicles and was a key
component to freeing up land for the proposed developments.
A lot of the site of the Goods Yard was built on in the early 1990’s
when New England House and Mocatta House were both built (this is the area
around Trafalgar Place). However, there are odd glimpses of
the site’s past even though the overall site has changed beyond all
recognition. For example, if one were to walk down Trafalgar
Street and turn left after St.
Martin’s Vintners, the white walled building on the
corner of Station Street has
ceramic tiled panels on the wall, proclaiming that it was an iron foundry and
engineering shop.
----====****====----
3 PHOTOS ABOVE: A tantalising glimpse of the past! These 3 photos show a building on the corner of Trafalgar Street and Station Street, originally known as May's. This building has some fantastic tiling around the ground floor windows, which give a vivid insight into the building's past, even in the present day. The area of Trafalgar Street presents an amazing mix of architectural styles (many are a hangover from the railway era), combining Victorian and Edwardian, plus more contemporary styles right up to the cutting edge buildings of today.
********************
Part 2:
Determining the
site history:
Method and
Resources.
Little glimpses of the past,
mixed in with new buildings and the promise of state of the art redevelopments
mean that it would be extremely difficult to provide an overview of how the
site has changed as a whole over the duration of its life. No one building will
have a similar history to the adjoining building at the best of times, and this
site is absolutely no exception.
As a result, in order to outline the changes to the site, it will be
necessary to present a timeline for each building or group of buildings, old
and new maps of the location, old and new photos and details of usage including
names adopted by different owners for the duration of the building’s life where
possible, but for the most part focusing on the period of 1970 to the present.
As a result of a stagnant period during the 1980’s and 90’s, areas of
the site will have become fairly inaccessible, so the periodical development of
some areas will have to include some approximation based on site visits and
photographs taken at a specific time.
********************
ABOVE: This map has been coloured to show what remained of The
Works site as at 2003, relative to the site as it was at its zenith. The red
areas are structures, which are still in situe, and either accessible or
derelict, the blue areas are accessible with relative ease and the green areas
are derelict and inaccessible. Whilst the boundaries of the areas are accurate
and have been surveyed on foot, the extent of the inaccessible areas is largely
unconfirmed. Note that the site has been cleared in its entirety since 2003.
ABOVE: This plan shows boundary walls, structures and earthworks
on the site that remain unaltered as at 2003, shown in red. The majority of
this site was taken up by small used car dealerships, the coal office (bottom
right) was used by Harvest Forestry and the area below the Fyffe’s building was
used as a car park for Clifford’s and the post office until 2005. The Fyffe’s
buildings themselves contained (from top of map): John’s Camping, Martha’s Barn
Furniture and Clifford’s Auto Factors. All were demolished in 2005. In 2006
none of the layout shown is still in situe, save for the road at the top right
(although now massively altered). This was New York
Street, later New England
Street.
ABOVE: This map shows the site as it appears in 2006. The entire car park has
been removed and replaced with a multi-storey car park (more of which later),
Billington Way (the unnamed curved road between New England Street and Station
Street) is now the principle through route as the southern end of New England
Street beyond York Hill has now been narrowed and pedestrianised. The ‘J’
shaped road leading from the station is Stroudley Road.
The New England Street / Billington Way junction has been
built on the site of the old Fyffe’s Warehouse. A new Sainsburys superstore and
offices are being built at the apex of the junction and the frontage to New England
Street is now City Point (see proceeding
photographs). The pay office and its staircase have been demolished in this map
but it is pleasing to note that the majority of the Lower Goods Line track bed
is still in place and undisturbed, along with the support pillars for the
extension and the retaining walls for the upper level.
ABOVE: This map shows the site, as it would have appeared between 1980 and
2005, prior to redevelopment. Note the changes to the layout around Station Street. The car park
(and later the drop off point’s) access ramp joins Cheapside just opposite Station Street.
********************
Part 3:
Specific locations and
their
development.
(Please be aware that this part of the website (seen below) is still in development - new grey underlined links will replace the black text as the components are completed. Please keep checking, though - this is a huge project and has taken some 16 years to produce so far!)
