Seeking refuge along the Lewes Road in Brighton & Hove’s forgotten suburbs
At its source, the A270 divides the affluent Hanover area with its crescents, private roads and estate agents from ‘The Level’, the preferred daytime refuge for many of the city’s heterogenous groups. The socio-economic divide that plagues Brighton & Hove is encapsulated topographically here. This series of photos explores the in-between spaces or heterotopia that mark the arterial drag that is the Lewes Road. I wondered what spaces of refuge or evidence of local community exist along the way? As a former Sussex postgrad (MA Digital Documentary) I rarely ventured beyond the Falmer campus, instead heading in the opposite direction towards home in Kent. Nevertheless, the Lewes Road area is home to a sizeable proportion of Brighton & Hove’s student population. Many of my fellow students lived here but have since moved on.
Unusually, the A270 begins as two separate one-way streets, a fork created by ‘The Level’ which merges into two-way traffic at the Vogue gyratory. Named after the former Vogue Cinema which was replaced by a Sainsbury’s supermarket in 1985, the Vogue was an X-rated film and strip club in the 1970s. Even today, iconic Brighton & Hove landmarks such as the pier, the Royal Pavilion, The Dome, Victoria Gardens couldn’t seem further away amidst the endless commuter traffic of the gyratory. The A270 then snakes its way north-eastwards to the neighbouring town of Lewes via the sprawling suburbs of Bevendean, Moulescoomb, Coldean and the Falmer campuses of Brighton and Sussex universities.
This series of 27 sequential images therefore reflects the A270 that inspired them; images are displayed as they were captured one afternoon on Easter Saturday. Most students had gone home for the weekend and ‘the Albion’ were at home to Leicester City. Apart from the odd pedestrian, the streets were mostly deserted. This helped me avoid reproducing unhelpful social stereotypes of hooded youths, gangs and ‘asbos’ that arguably occupy the social imaginary of the area. One of the problems with bearing witness to a socially deprived area through the photograph is sensationalising its aesthetic of decay. I sought to subjectively frame details which interested me; lines, perspectives, disparate features that are subversively characterful. Much of Brighton centre has become ‘hipsterfied’ or 'studentified', sterilised by modern developments and commercial property. Instead, the spaces depicted herein seem to intrinsically counter that narrative. I sought therefore not to sensationalise or romanticise a downtrodden area but where possible, to create or restore former spaces of refuge or 'heterotopia' within the images themselves.
This is Wagner Memorial Hall named after Rev Arthur Wagner who commissioned the construction of adjacent St Bartholomew’s Church. This upset locals who complained that the excessive height of the building (as the tallest church in Britain) stopped their chimneys from drawing properly. Wagner bought all 400 neighbouring houses and subsequently reduced the rents.
The Extra Mural Cemetery next to Woodvale Crematorium is a sheltered, gently sloping, well wooded area of down land between two much steeper hills.... a good place for a walk.
The Bernard Oppenheimer Diamond Works was a diamond polishing factory built 100 years ago. It provided work and refuge for the majority of Brighton & Hove’s disabled war heroes, some of whom were amputees needing specialist treatment. Now the Big Yellow Self Storage, popular with local students often leaving for the summer before returning and renting different rooms.
The site of the former Preston Barracks which were builtin 1793 to sustain potential Napoleonic invasion after the French revolution. They were demolished in the 1990s and the site is now a University of Brighton student housing development.
Like the nearby more modern St. George’s hall in Moulsecoomb, halls like this one build in 1949 which were once community meeting grounds are now often left empty with staff blaming changing demographics in the community.
Behind this junction at the end of Queensdown Rd is Homewood College, a community special school. Accessible only by foot from Moulsecoomb Station are Brighton & Hove Pupil Referral Unit and Cedar Centre Special School. The absence of these schools in image was both an aesthetic and political decision, reflecting on the otherwise hidden nature of their geographical location.
Since the mid-eighties, the twin phenomena of the Right to Buy scheme and the 1992 Universities Act have had the dual effect of displacing once established communities in these post-war housing estates as many residents have cashed-in and moved out creating increasing numbers of tenanted HMOs (houses of multiple occupancy) to cater for the increased influx of students from University of Brighton. Situated on Bates Estate noted for its high incidents of report crime, this housing office closed down in March 2014 due to a decline in the number of people using the office. Local residents have rejected plans for a new block of flats on the site. This is in spite of a similar development in neighbouring Whitehawk on the site of the old housing office. The scheme is known as New Homes for Neighbourhoods and is intended to provide much-needed affordable housing. Council bosses hope that a new block of flats could help lead to the regeneration of one of Brighton’s ‘most notorious estates’.
The Moulsecoomb scheme was in the form of a garden city with winding roads, large grass verges, and big gardens. It was intended to house veterans of the Great War; there were even tennis-courts provided in The Avenue. In South Moulsecoomb, the earliest buildings were effectively an adjunct to the existing housing opposite Preston barracks, but the later extensions of North and then East Moulsecoomb took the estate out into relatively remote countryside. The 478 houses were meant to provide new homes for people in the proposed slum clearance areas on Albion Hill, but the rents charged by the council were prohibitive for most of the intended residents, and tenants were brought in from other towns, especially London, following an advertising campaign. Little was therefore done to relieve the appalling conditions in central Brighton.
The mainline rail track between Falmer and Moulsecoomb stations running adjacent to these dilapidated garages separates the Bates Estate from the Home Farm Business Centre, home to American military weapons manufacturer EDO MBM Technology Ltd/Harris. The UK firm makes the EDO MBM Zero Retention Force Arming Unit, an electro mechanical device used on military aircraft bomb racks to arm munitions as they are released from the aircraft. The headquarters has been the target of multiple instances of anti-war activism.
Anyone coming down Lewes Road from Falmer can’t miss Rory’s Hand Car Wash which backs on to Wild Park. Near the back of the park is what's known locally as the "ski slope" which rises to the Hollingbury Fort and gives views across the city. Wild Park will always be synonymous with the ‘Babes in the Wood’ murders in 1986 which remain unsolved.
The Stringers have the monopoly of funeral services in the Lewes Road area and have been a staple of the community from Moulsecoomb down to the Level for decades, if not centuries.
This phone box appears like a grotesque tardis to some lost past. This one interestingly without a door, as if it would be too tempting a prospect for ‘scoombers’ to make varied use of a phone box with a door... city planning at its finest.
As well as housing students in HMOs, Barcombe Road is home to some local families, whose kids patrol on bikes haranging visitors to take pictures of them.
The entrance to 'The Keep', the East Sussex Record Office. A heterotopia of time... '...an unrivalled, detailed record of the region’s history, dating back over 900 years. These archives document the lives of individuals, places and events from across the county and beyond, and they include written records, maps and plans, prints and drawings, photographs and films, oral histories, and digital and electronic records.' (Source - thekeep.info)
The Keep serves as an artificial and psychological barrier between the Moulescoomb estates and the universities.
The end of Moulescoomb and the continuation of the A270 under the flyover. The next stop is HMP Lewes, home to many of Moulescoomb and Bevendean's convicted criminals.
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