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Author Archives: raspurr
(Not really) leaving Brighton: a self-indulgent walk from the station to the South Lanes
A few months ago I wrote a post in which I claimed to be ‘leaving Brighton forever’ or something to that effect. That was, of course, groundless melodrama. As anyone who knows me will tell you, I have been resurfacing … Continue reading
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Tagged Architecture, Brighton, Brighton & Hove, Brighton Station, Brutalism, Metropole, Psychogeography, Seafront, South Lanes, Sussex
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Notes On Castlerigg Stone Circle & Form Without Function
What clashes here of wills gen wonts, oystrygods gaggin fishy-gods! Brékkek Kékkek Kékkek Kékkek! Kóax Kóax Kóax! Ualu Ualu Ualu! Quaouauh! Where the Baddelaries partisans are still out to mathmaster Malachus Micgranes and the Verdons catapelting the camibalistics out of … Continue reading
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Tagged Aesthetics, Architecture, Building, Castlerigg, Finnegans Wake, Joyce, Lake District, Stone Circles
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Unreal City – Brighton as a Ghost Town
“Brighton is naturally a place of resort for expectants, and a shifty ugly-looking swarm is, of course, assembled here. Some of the fellows, who had endeavoured to disturb our harmony at the dinner at Lewes, were parading, amongst this swarm, on … Continue reading
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Tagged 19th Century, Architecture, Brighton, Brighton & Hove, East Sussex, Ghost Towns, Sussex, Victorian, victoriana
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Destruction and Reconstruction: Architecture and a Longing for the Past
The landscape wrought by the mechanistic slaughter of the First World War has often been described as ‘lunar’: pockmarked by craters, scarred by erratically zig-zagging trenches, devoid of life – devoid even of the possibility of life. The only difference between … Continue reading
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Tagged Aesthetics, Architecture, Dorchester, Dorset, First World War, Nostalgia, Poundbury, Reconstruction, Regression, Somme, Ypres
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A Change
Hi. In order to avoid confusion I thought I’d write a short post letting everyone who reads this (hi all three of you) know that I’m broadening this blog to cover architecture in general, as I was finding sticking only … Continue reading
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Spires and Gherkins: Ideology in Architecture
The writer Jonathan Meades once remarked that cathedrals (in this case Salisbury Cathedral) serve to facilitate “the dessication and snobbery of the clergy”. Thankfully this barbed, typically Meadesian remark does not characterise his overall assessment of the building – he goes on … Continue reading
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Tagged Architecture, cathedrals, ideology, Jonathan Meades, London, Norman Foster, the Gherkin, the Shard
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The Royal Pavilion: Aesthetics & Oppression
It is almost impossible to write about the architecture of Brighton without going into some detail on the subject of the Royal Pavilion. It is both a sort of monument to the studied hedonism of Regency dandyism, and at the same … Continue reading
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Tagged Aesthetics, Architecture, Brighton, Brighton & Hove, Empire, imperialism, Orientalism, Royal Pavilion, Sussex
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The Spectral Beauty of the West Pier
Anyone with even a faint knowledge of Brighton will probably be aware of the rusting hulk crouched defeatedly just off the shore of Brighton beach known as the West Pier. Once a grand Victorian pier on the same scale as its … Continue reading
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Tagged Abandoned, Aesthetics, Brighton, Sussex, Wabi-sabi, West Pier
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The King and Queen: a brief survey of pantomime, mockery and modernity in the Mock-Tudor
The King & Queen pub (1931-32) on Marlborough Place is arguably one of the most jarring architectural sights in Brighton. Flanked on one side by a relatively unremarkable four-storey Victorian office building and on the other by an austere neo-Georgian bank … Continue reading
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Tagged Architecture, Brighton, Mock Tudor, Modernity, Sussex, The King and Queen, Tudor
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Palaces & Workhouses 