BRIGHTON IN 1743.
(Whoever has enjoyed the natural beauties or artificial luxuries of BRIGHTON—the Daphne of our metropolis—will feel some curiosity respecting its origin and progress from an obscure fishing-town to such a focus of wealth and fashion as at this moment it presents. The celebrity of Brighton, we may observe, extends throughout the empire, and is almost as well known to the plodding and stay-at-home townsman of the north as to the luxurious idler ever and anon in quest of new pleasures. As the occasional abode of the Royal Family, its name has figured in the Court records of the last half century. Of late years, however, Brighton has assumed an extent and importance which may be referred to a spirit of speculative enterprise unparalleled in the fortunes of any other town in the United Kingdom. Not only has a palace, but squares of palatial mansions, terraces, crescents, and streets, nay, very towns of splendid houses, have sprung up with fairy-like rapidity; and Brighton has thus become, not merely a fashionable resort for the season, but a place of permanent residence for a very large proportion of wealthy individuals. Our present purpose is, however, to illustrate the past obscurity and not the present high palmy state of Brighton. Our own recollections would carry us back nearly a score of years, when the Pavilion or Marine Palace was a plain, neat, villa-like building, with verandas to command a prospect of the sea; and when the Steines scarcely merited the designation of enclosures: when a roomy yellow-washed mansion occupied the upper end of the old Steine, and was pointed to as once the house of Dr. Russell, to whom Brighton owes much of its early fame; its site being now occupied by a superb hotel: when Phoebe Hassell and Martha Gunn were the lionesses of the place—the one by land and the other by sea: and when not a carriage entered Brighton without the electioneering salute of half a score of blue gownswomen with cards of their crazy machines to give you a tenancy-at-will of the ocean. But, our quoted particulars of Brighton invest it with a much earlier interest than our brief memory can supply. They are historical as well as topographical, from the primitive records of the place, and are accompanied by a view of the town from the sea, as it appeared in the year 1743, or about 90 years since. For this and the interesting details which accompany it we are indebted to a History of Brighthelmston published by Dr. Anthony Rhelan towards the close of the last century, and lately edited and reprinted by Mr. Mitchell of Brighton, with the benevolent intention of aiding the funds of the Sussex County Infirmary, by the profits arising from the sale of the work. It requires an almost microscopic eye to distinguish the buildings in the Cut. The Royal standard on the fort, is, by an error of the artist, disproportionally large.) The town of Brighthelmston, [2 ] in the county of Sussex, is situated on the banks of the sea, at the bottom of a bay of the same name, formed to the east by Beachy-Head, and by Worthing point to the West.
The bay is a bold and deep shore exposed to the open sea: from the banks or cliffs a clean gravel runs to the sea terminating in a hard sand, free from every mixture of ooze, and those offensive beds of mud, so frequently found at the mouths of rivers, and on many shores.
The town is built on a rising hill with a south-east exposition; defended towards the north by hills, whose ascent is easy, and view pleasing; bounded on the west by a fruitful and extensive cornfield, descending gently from the Downs to the banks of the sea, and leading to Shoreham; and on the east by a most beautiful lawn called the Steine, which runs winding up into the country among hills, to the distance of some miles.
The soil here, and over all the south Downs, is a chalk rock covered with earth of various kinds and depths in different places.
The country round Brighthelmston is open and free from woods, and finely diversified with hills and valleys. Hence the advantage of exercise may be always enjoyed in fair weather: it is ever cool on the hills, and a shelter may be constantly found in the valleys from excess of wind.
The hills are in some places steep, but everywhere covered with a green sward from the bottom to the top. [3 ] On the summit of these the prospect is extensive and varied; towards the sea there is an uninterrupted view from Beachy-head to the Isle of Wight; towards the land, or weald side, the view, in the opinion of the great Mr. Ray, is no where to be equalled; and from this very prospect, compared with that of the Isle of Ely, he infers the wisdom of God in the construction of hills.
The Downs here run parallel to the sea; the turf of them is remarkably fine; they are from six to ten miles broad: so that this delightful country cannot be deemed a confined one.
The merit of the situation of this town has within these few years attracted a great resort of the principal gentry of this kingdom, and engaged them in a summer residence here. And there is reason to believe, that in the earliest times it was in the highest estimation. The altars of the Druids, the only surviving remains of the ancient Britons, are no where to be seen in greater number. [4 ] And although there are here no traces of temples, no images here existing, yet does not their want in any shape invalidate the supposition of this place's having been an original residence of theirs, as it seems to have been a received principle in all countries where Druidism prevailed, that the confining the Deity within walls, or the representing him in any human figure, were unworthy of his majesty, and unsuitable to his immensity. But the position of these altars, and the local circumstances answering so exactly to their customary choice of places, leave but little room to doubt of their having had a residence here.
The attachment of our ancestors to this place may be further illustrated by our taking a view of the efforts they made to preserve it.
Suetonius, relating the invasion of Britain by Vespasian, says, "Tricies cum hoste conflixit; duas validissimas gentes, superque xx oppida, et Insulam Vectem Britanniae proximam in deditionem redegit." Cap. iv. Now, that one of these nations inhabited the Downs of Sussex, seems probable from their vicinity to the Isle of Wight, and in some measure confirmed by the lines and intrenchments still subsisting between Brighthelmston and Lewes, where the principal scene of action must have been, and bearing every Roman mark.
That there was a Roman station in this neighbourhood is admitted by the antiquarians, though its exact situation is not as yet ascertained. The Portus Aldurni, placed by the learned Selden at Aldrington, two miles to the west of Brighthelmston, is by the ingenious Tabor presumed to have been at East Bourne, eighteen miles to the east of it: yet there are many local and incidental circumstances belonging to this place, and which are wanting in those towns, that render a conjecture probable as to its having been a Roman station.
The Praepositus of the Exploratores, whose office was to discover the state and motions of the enemy, and who was certainly in this part of Sussex, could be no where more advantageously placed than in the elevated situations of the strong camps at Hollingsbury and White-Hawke, commanding a most extensive view of the whole coast from Beachy-Head to the Isle of Wight. The form of this town is almost a perfect square; the streets are built at right angles to each other, and its situation is to the south east, the favourite one among the Romans. To these may be added, that an urn has been some time ago dug up in this neighbourhood, containing a thousand silver denarii marked from Antoninus Pius to Philip, during which tract of time Britain was probably a Roman province. And, lastly, the vestiges of a true Roman via running from Shoreham towards Lewes, at a small distance above this town have been lately discovered by an ingenious gentleman truly conversant in matters of this nature.
The light sometimes obtained in these dark matters from a similitude of sounds in the ancient and modern names of places, is not to be had in assisting the present conjecture. Its ancient one, as far as I can learn, is no way discoverable; and its modern one may be owing either to this town's belonging formerly to, or being countenanced in a particular manner by a Bishop Brighthelm, who, during the Saxon government of the island, lived in this neighbourhood: or perhaps may be deduced from the ships of this town having their helms better ornamented than those of their neighbouring ones.
It is true here are no hypocausts, Mosaic pavements, inscriptions, or any other delicate monuments of Roman antiquity, [5 ] that might corroborate in a stronger manner this supposition: these, if any such existed here, have been defaced by time, or destroyed by the undiscerning inhabitants of the place.
During the Saxon aera, this town was almost the centre of the kingdom of the South Saxons; and consequently could not be the scene of much action. It submitted to the various revolutions which prevailed at different times, until the Norman conquest.
The conqueror landed at Hastings forty miles distant to the east of this town; so that his troops never came near it. Yet, the fate of England being decided by the bloody engagement at Battel, this town, with many other large possessions in the county, was granted to William de Warren, who married the Conqueror's daughter: and he soon made it part of the endowment of that rich priory, which he founded at Lewes.
This resigning of the town into the hands of monks was a fatal stroke to its ancient greatness. Too attentive to their own immediate interest, and too regardless of that of their vassals, as soon as they were in possession of it, they laboured, and with success, to obtain an exemption for it from supplying the king with ships, or affording him such other succour, as a large and powerful maritime town ought to have done, on the pretence of its being part of a religious estate.
(To be concluded in our next.)