[Illustration: 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,[1] 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.[2] 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.[3] 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,[4] 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_.)
[1] It appears to have been called Brighton in a terrier of lands,
dated in 1660.
[2] In the years 1800 and 1801, when wheat was at an unprecedented
price, the occupiers of farms on the South Downs converted much
of their downland into tillage, from which they acquired abundant
crops of corn. The green sward when once ploughed, can never be
restored to its former verdure, and although grass seeds have
been yearly sown in succession for more than 80 years upon down
formerly broken up and converted into arable land, the
distinctions between these parts and the original down is still
clearly perceptible.
[3] See the remains of a Druidical altar at Goldstone (Gor or Thor
stone) bottom, about a mile to the north-west of the town.
[4] A Mosaic pavement has been discovered at Lancing, within nine
miles west of the town.
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