Battle, High Street 1921 (ref. 71507) | The long High Street curves gently towards the triangular market place in front of the Abbey gatehouse. The Ford Service Depot on the right, with the two Fords parked nearby, is still a car showroom. |  Add your own Memory
 Add to your Album |
Battle, the Abbey Gatehouse 1927 (ref. 80411) | William the Conqueror, having beaten and killed the Anglo-Danish King Harold on Senlac Hill in 1066, vowed to found an abbey on the site of the great battle, known as the Battle of Hastings. William the Conqueror gave the Abbey a market which was held in front of the Abbey's gates, although the present magnificent Gatehouse was built for Abbot Alan of Ketling in 1338 to replace the Norman one. | Add your own Memory
Add to your Album |
Battle, the Abbey, the Abbot's Hall 1910 (ref. 62981) | Now part of a girls' school, the Abbot's Great Hall is its centrepiece, originally of the 15th century. It has now been made more medieval than it was: the minstrels' gallery and the massive fireplace were added in the 1850s by Henry Clutton. | Add your own Memory
Add to your Album |
Battle, High Street 1910 (ref. 62991) | The old market place is more of a grassy village green at this time. The High Street is relatively unchanged. Astonishingly, the plot boundaries, if not the buildings themselves, were established in the late 11th century. | Add your own Memory
Add to your Album |
Bexhill-On-Sea, Parade 1903 (ref. 50308) | The Dutch gables on the hotels and apartments are typical of Bexhill's Victorian architecture, although the seaside buildings favour the Moorish look: provincial and dim echoes of the Brighton Pavilion perhaps? | Add your own Memory
Add to your Album |
Bexhill-On-Sea, Old Town, Walnut Tree 1897 (ref. 38994) | While the old town up the hill had its origins in the 8th century, the Bexhill everyone knows grew up from the 1880s by the sea as a resort on Earl De La Warr's estate. Thus its architectural character is more late Victorian than the Regency stucco of Brighton. The tree has gone and motor cars have arrived, but the buildings of the old town on its hill survive almost intact, a charming mix of brick, painted weatherboarding and flint. | Add your own Memory
Add to your Album |
Bexhill-On-Sea, 1903 (ref. 50306) | The Moorish minareted building has gone, as have the elegant gates, the brick and stone archway, and the gate piers. Bexhill now has the 1930s De La Warr Pavilion, an elegant concrete and glass building of great beauty. | Add your own Memory
Add to your Album |
Bodiam, the Castle 1890 (ref. 25390) | Bodiam is dominated by one of the most picturesque castles in England, set within a broad moat filled with golden carp. The castle, at the medieval limit of navigation for the River Rother, was presumably licensed in 1385 following French raids on Rye and Winchelsea. It became a picturesque ruin after a brief 1643 Civil War siege, until Lord Curzon bought the castle in 1919, restored it impeccably and passed it to the National Trust. | Add your own Memory
Add to your Album |
Bodiam, Oast House c1965 (ref. B128018) | Oast houses are common in the Weald of Sussex as well as in Kent, and indeed wherever hops are grown. The buildings are usually circular; heated air passed through the hops laid on the drying floor and out through the cowl hood. | Add your own Memory
Add to your Album |
Brighton, the Royal Pavilion 1889 (ref. 22244) | Once a fishing village, Brighton was rescued by the late 18th-century fashion for sea air and sea bathing. Only five hours from London, and endorsed by the Prince Regent, the town spread along the coast in stucco waves. This astonishing building started life as a farmhouse, then became a classical villa with a rotunda, before Nash transformed it into this domed and minareted Mahatman-Indian palace for the Prince Regent. | Add your own Memory
Add to your Album |
Brighton, Beach and Pier 1898 (ref. 41890) | This view brings out the tremendous bustle of Brighton's beaches, dotted with small sailing boats and lines of bathing machines. In the background is the Palace Pier, the chain pier's replacement, under construction: this photograph freezes a moment in history. | Add your own Memory
Add to your Album |
Brighton, the Aquarium 1889 (ref. 22238) | Richard Jefferies described Brighton's special quality of sun, wind and light in the 1880s: 'The wind coming up the cliff seems to bring with it whole armfuls of sunshine, and to throw the warmth and light against you as you linger ... light and wind spring upwards from the pavement ... the sky is richly blue against the parapets overhead.' | Add your own Memory
Add to your Album |
Brighton, the Beach 1902 (ref. 48516) | From Palace Pier looking east, beyond the terminus of Magnus Volks' 1883 Electric Railway, we can see the late 1890s arches of Madeira Terrace, halfway up the sea wall in front of Marine Parade, with Kemp Town in the distance. | Add your own Memory
Add to your Album |
Brighton, the Chain Pier 1870 (ref. B208003) | After the railway arrived, Brighton's continued popularity was assured. Designed by Captain Samuel Brown in 1823, the pier was like a four-span suspension bridge, jutting about 1,000 ft into the sea. Featuring in a painting by Turner, it was swept away in storms in 1896. | Add your own Memory
Add to your Album |
Brighton, West Pier 1889 (ref. 22345) | Besides watching clowns, jugglers, musicians and conjurors, short sea trips in the little sailing boats were immensely popular. West Pier in the background looks just like it did when it first opened in 1866 before later additions and alterations. | Add your own Memory
Add to your Album |
Brighton, the 'Skylark' sets sail 1902 (ref. 48504) | In 1902 it's 'All aboard the Skylark', as a party set out in the little gaff-rigged yawl with its crew of two. In the background, West Pier has now received its continuous and necessary central wind screen. | Add your own Memory
Add to your Album |
Brighton, West Pier 1902 (ref. 48495) | West Pier, now sadly derelict and awaiting restoration, was enlarged at the seaward end in 1890 to accommodate a larger pavilion. The ships tied up at the seaward end show the original function of seaside piers. | Add your own Memory
Add to your Album |
Brighton, The Old Steine 1902 (ref. 48522) | Once marshy common used for drying fishing nets, The Steyne was drained and turned into elegant gardens. Surrounded by fashionable tall lodging houses, it provided a more sheltered alternative promenade to the windy sea front. | Add your own Memory
Add to your Album |
Brighton, Municipal Camping Ground, Sheepcote Valley c1955 (ref. B208510) | Between the wars, Brighton boomed: by the mid-1930s it was packed at weekends. After the war, Brighton and other Sussex towns were still popular for holidays, but in the 1960s package tours took the tourists abroad. This view is a splendid evocation of 1950s holiday-making, with plywood caravans and canvas ridge tents. | Add your own Memory
Add to your Album |
Brighton, Hotel Metropole 1890 (ref. 27610) | Rearing out amid the stucco, the bright red brick and terra-cotta of Alfred Waterhouse's 1890 Metropole Hotel must have seemed remarkably intrusive when it was first built. The 1860s Grand Hotel on the right is in Italianate stucco. | Add your own Memory
Add to your Album |
