Why Queen Victoria really did love Brighton and Hove

SUSSEX has been a bit snotty towards Victoria over the years.

Ever since she deserted Brighton in 1845 for Osborne House in the Isle of Wight and put the Pavilion up for sale, risking its demolition, we’ve not always warmed to her.

Even though we built the Victoria Fountain in Brighton’s Steine for her 26th birthday, the clocktower at the top of West Street for her golden jubilee and named pubs and hotels after her and Albert, she still wasn’t tempted back to grace the town with her presence or cash.

The subsequent treatment the Pavilion got in the 1840s due to its sale didn’t help either.

A book on its decorators explained that ‘scarcely more than the bare walls remained, for the chimney pieces had been torn down; the chandeliers, the organ and even the grates removed; the Music Room stripped of its beautiful Chinese paintings, and the whole place dismantled and disfigured’.

More than 130 clocks, china, furniture and decorations were stripped by a Brighton firm alone between January 1847 and June 1848.

Victorian Osborne replaced Regency Brighton as the fashionable place to be.

Victoria vacating the Pavilion also led eventually to damaging Victorian restorations. Whilst she was there, Victoria didn’t even have the decency to grace the Pavilion with a royal conception on any of her five stays.

The last monarch of the House of Hanover could of least have had the decency to spawn the future King Edward or one of his siblings in one of her late uncle’s rooms, but no.

I’ve checked the dates. Perhaps Brightonians being so "indiscreet and troublesome" as she called our ancestors put her and Albert off.

Sussex doesn’t seem to have been that popular with Victoria and Albert either.

They visited Maresfield Park, which had an avenue of oaks planted to celebrate. They briefly stopped in Worthing on the way to a successful stay with the Duke of Norfolk at Arundel Castle, during which time they visited Petworth House, but otherwise they visited Osborne not Ovingdean, Windsor not Withyham and Balmoral not Burpham.

And yet I think we should be more positive about Vic than we have in the past.

So here we go: this I why I think we should celebrate Alexandrina Victoria - as she was actually called (she certainly deserves some sympathy just for having such a dreadful name alone).

Firstly, her leaving us didn’t do that much harm. All our biggest and grandest hotels (the Norfolk, Grand and Metropole) were built after she deserted us, as visitor numbers to Brighton continued to boom, as did our other seaside resorts throughout her reign.

No more residence here meant that visiting royals actually had to do what the rest of us did and pay to book into a hotel (usually the Bedford) from the 1840s.

We also got the Pavilion for a snip at £53,000, 10 per cent of what it cost to build, and how much has it made the town (now city) since then?

Victoria also gave her blessing to people of all classes having seaside holidays which meant resorts like Brighton boomed with the arrival of railways.

Brighton benefitted from her presence in many ways.

She was the last of the Hanoverians, the family without whom Brighton would never have developed as it did.

It is only fitting therefore that Hanover is one of our most popular and booming Brighton areas to live today.

Not just names were left but amazing buildings and constructions: an amazing floral arch in Preston Circus, the Victoria Fountain, Victoria Avenue, Victoria Gardens, Jubilee Clock Tower at the top of West Street and of course several Queen Victoria and Prince Albert pubs in Rottingdean, Trafalgar Street in Brighton and Crawley.

Not enough for you?

The Queen Victoria Hospital in East Grinstead is famed for its work with reconstructive surgery around the world and the new Brighton Harbour Hotel was once the Victoria Hotel.

Her visits give us some of the most amazing portraits of the era: Brighton’s Chain Pier being used as a jetty for the Royal yacht in 1843, a young Victoria in front of the Pavilion and the young royal lovers travelling to Brighton from a snowy Hassocks by sledge.

In 2017 it is 180 years since Victoria’s first visit, should that not be the excuse for Brighton to have a new central building named after her once more? The nearest we have is a pub in Rottingdean.

She may not have been the most intelligent of monarchs, according to contemporary reports, but she was a dynamo at her desk, working relentlessly at the despatch box to encourage stability throughout her rule.

Her rule saw British influence expand, more due to the outcome of Victoria in the bedroom rather than by troops on the battlefield.

Her grandchildren included not just George V, but his cousins Nicholas II of Russia and Willheim II of Germany. She was unsurprisingly dubbed the Grandmother of Europe.

All of this meant Brighton and Sussex boomed throughout her reign.

As someone whose company offers Victorian Brighton walking tours, I’m aware of how many great buildings in Brighton were built due to the stability of the 64 years of her reign.

Brighton Station, Adelaide Crescent, Palmeira Square, the Norfolk, Grand, Metropole, all of these were built as Britain boomed.

Her dynastic pairing off of her daughter Louise to a Scottish Laird is even why we have Scottish road names near Preston Park, to celebrate their wedding in the 1870s.

I’d also like to argue that Victoria can’t be blamed for her few visits to Sussex.

Early on in her reign, we were very rural and there wasn’t much worthy of a visit except Brighton.

Five visits to Brighton in eight years isn’t bad, especially when contrasted with the pattern of George IV’s rarer visits towards the end of his life.

The royals weren’t just wealthy second-homers, like many in Brighton today, they had numerous homes.

Henry VIII had 55 palaces at his peak; nobody moaned that he didn’t visit each of them enough.

You can quite understand Victoria’s point of view as well. She was mobbed in 1845 by the masses in Brighton, in a century when royalty were being deposed by the mob.

France from the 1780s to 1870s was a hotbed of revolutions and other countries were bumping off their heads of state.

Also, the Pavilion had been the bachelor pad for George IV and a getaway for William IV, both known for rumoured illegitimate children and affairs.

As a single young lady as she was when she first arrived here in 1838, why would she really want to spend time in a strange old house owned by her two dirty old uncles?

The Pavilion was designed for a single man, why on earth would a woman with a growing family want to stay there, under gaze of all and sundry. Victoria was also known for her prudence. Brighton was a reminder to thrifty Victorians of the extravagance and expense to the exchequer of her wild uncle.

Then there is her treatment of the Pavilion. Here Victoria may be excused to some extent, she only emptied the palace of all its decorations as it was believed Brighton Corporation (as the council was then called) was due to demolish Florizel’s Folly as it was nicknamed. Her wonderful rooms in the Pavilion today make up for her desertion of the rest of the building as a whole, and she did return most of its fixtures and fittings in the 1860s and then the 1890s.

Even though she visited rarely, she still paid household staff, which kept many Brighton families from starvation in the days before the welfare state.

She is also in some ways (but not all), a good female role model for forward-thinking and egalitarian Brighton, proposing to her husband, not vice versa. We still have an inequality in statues of women and blue plaques to leading lady Brightonians and visitors here.

Finally, she and Albert did like some aspects of Brighton and the Pavilion.

She liked the fireworks, her sitting room and its view, her and Albert spent time in Rottingdean and in the private gardens of Kemp Town, which perhaps should be renamed Royal Kemp Town, due to the number of royal visitors.

She even chose the Pavilion for her second wedding anniversary, perhaps due to Albert who was fond of the location, especially its banqueting and music rooms.

So, let’s vindicate Victoria.

There is also so much that’s funny about her and Albert, and her links with Sussex, but that’s another story.

She made us realise that people would want to look at the Pavilion, just as they do today, so she gave us the best tourist information advice ever.

Victoria may have departed in 1845, but Brighton survived, and for republicans, that is perhaps one of the best arguments of all for celebrating her. Brighton managed over half a century without the fawning that occurs when we have a visit from our unelected head of state.

The best thing however about Victoria and her rebuff of Brighton in 1845, due partly to the railways arriving, is the delicious irony in the choice of railway station that today brings many of the railway passengers still to Sussex.

Its name? Victoria, of course.

• Victoria starts on Sunday, August 28 at 9pm on ITV.

Kevin Newman is director of All-Inclusive History, which offers Victorian Brighton walking tours and Victoria’s Sussex motorised tours of the county. He is author of 'Brighton and Hove In 50 Buildings'. His next book is Secret Sussex which out in the autumn. Visit allinclusivehistory.org.