Brighton & Hove Picture Gallery

 

Brighton & Hove Local History Group

Brighton & Hove Picture Gallery

 

Picture of the Week : Queen Adelaide by William Beechey

 

 

The Old Steine in 1880 and 1806

The Old Steine, photographed from the Royal York Hotel (c1880)

Submitted by Steve Myall

[ABOVE] A hand-coloured photograph of The Old Steine, taken from an upper window of the  Royal York Hotel (c1880).
The Old Steine was originally a poorly drained area of open grassland to the east of the Old Town of Brighton. For centuries, this large, open green was used by Brighton fishermen to dry their nets or store their boats in bad weather. When Brighton became a fashionable seaside resort in the latter part of the 18th Century, this flat, grassy area provided a suitable and convenient place for visitors to promenade. [See coloured print, below].
 

[ABOVE] "The View of the Pavilion and Steyne at Brighton with the Promenade' (1806), a hand coloured print taken from the original design by William Marshall Craig (who drew the figures) and Charles Thomas Cracklow (who drew the background view of the buildings on The Steyne (Steine) and the Pavilion on the right). The artist William Craig has drawn a  fashionable company of residents and visitors promenading on the east side of the Steyne (Steine) in front of Prince George's Marine Pavilion. George, Prince of Wales, is shown riding a dark horse on the right-hand side of the picture.

[ABOVE] The Old Steine in 1779 [Plan adapted from Yeakell & Gardner's Map of Brighthelmston (Brighton) published in 1779]. The original plan was drawn shortly after the grassy area of The Steyne (Steine) was enclosed by a wooden rail (1776). Yeakell & Gardner's plan preceded the improvements to The Steine during the 1790s (e.g. the construction of a sewer to drain the stagnant pool created by the Wellsbourne stream). In 1786, The Prince of Wales acquired Thomas Kemp's Farmhouse (situated north of The Steyne) which provided the site of The Marine Pavilion (1787) which later evolved into The Royal Pavilion.

PICTURE SOURCE: Timothy Carder's Encyclopaedia of Brighton

[ABOVE] The Old Steine in 1990 (The Encyclopaedia of Brighton)

PICTURE SOURCE: Timothy Carder's Encyclopaedia of Brighton
 

The Anthaeum (1833)

Submitted by Sue Carnochan

[ABOVE] A view of Adelaide Terrace with The Anthaeum ("Flower-House") - the large, glass-domed structure - on the left. A detail from a "Panoramic View of Brighton", drawn by the architect Amon Henry Wilds (c1790-1857) and published in 1833 as a long, coloured print by W. H. Mason, Printseller of 1 Ship Street, Brighton. The site pictured is now occupied by Adelaide Crescent and Palmeira Square.

[The original print was in the picture collection of Henry John Smith, an Edwardian bookseller].
The Anthaeum ("Flower-House") was a huge structure made from cast-iron and glass which occupied the site of what is today Palmeira Square. This massive, dome-shaped structure was to serve as an enclosed, artificially heated tropical garden. The Anthaeum was the idea of Henry Phillips (c1779-1840), a botanist, horticulturalist and landscape gardener who had resided in Brighton since 1823. The designer of The Anthaeum was the Brighton-based architect, Amon Henry Wilds (c1790-1857).

The Anthaeum was a gigantic dome-shaped structure; 165 feet in diameter (wider than the dome of St. Peter's in Rome) and 65 feet high. The dome was surmounted by a 16 foot high cupola which would contain an observation gallery. The interior of the dome occupied 1.5 acres and was to contain tropical trees and shrubs, many varieties of flowers and hundreds of different exotic plants. The massive dome was to be constructed with 100,000 panes of glass, totalling 40,000 square feet.

Work began on the site in 1832 and towards the end of August 1833, The Anthaeum was near completion. Amon Henry Wilds, the architect who designed The Anthaeum, and Charles Hollis, the project's structural engineer, had insisted on a central pillar of iron to support the iron ribs of the dome. Mr English, the building contractor ignored their advice and built the dome without a central pillar. Wilds and Hollis resigned in protest.

On 29th August 1833, two days before the official opening of The Anthaeum, the building contractors began dismantling the supporting scaffolding from the dome. An hour after the last section of scaffolding was removed on 30th August 1833, the iron and glass structure, weighing in the region of 500 tons, came crashing down.
 
[ABOVE] A detail from The New Map of Brighton & Hove produced by George Washington Bacon (1830-1922) a London based publisher and cartographer, showing the area north of the coastal road near the boundary between Brighton and Hove (c1900).The red circle in the gardens of Palmeira Square shows the approximate position of The Anthaeum, an iron and glass structure which collapsed in August 1833. The cast-iron girders of the collapsed building remained embedded in the ground for 20 years until Palmeira Square was laid out in the early 1850s.