The Old Ship Hotel Garage - update

Councillors have unanimously approved planning application BH2014/02100 for the three-storey garage fronting onto Black Lion Street to be demolished. It would be replaced with a new six-storey building with eight one-bed flats and 10 two-bed flats. Forty per cent of the flats would be affordable housing, with tenure arrangements still to be decided. There would be cycle parking and spaces for 14 cars.

Under conditions to be agreed with the council, developers would be required to contribute £45,000 towards open spaces and indoor sports, £12,000 for real-time bus information boards, £20,000 for education and £14,000 for public art. They would also be required to make a £9,000 contribution to local job creation and employ 20 per cent local labour during building.

Parts of the Old Ship date back to 1767 and are Grade 2-star listed. It is generally a good redevelopment but the suggestion by CAG and others that the iconic 1920's lettering be somehow salvaged and reused on the new building was dismissed. Presumably because the Planning Officers who reported on the application were not Brighton-born and bred.

Architects - Howarth Litchfield, Durham

The Kings Head Hotel

The Kings Head hotel & livery yard stood at 9 West Street, possibly on the site of the original George Inn reputed to be the inn in which Charles II stayed the night before his escape to France. A later George Inn was built at 1 West Street (actually on the corner of Kent Street now disappeared beneath the Kingswest Centre).

In the 1930's the site was cleared for a Sports Stadium, SS Brighton, containing  a large swimming pool. This opened in 1934, but the following year was converted to an ice-skating rink.

The site was returned to the hostelry business in the 1990's with the opening of the Oak Hotel (another reference to the Royal Escape maybe?). It is now a Travelodge.

See also:- West Street: then & now (2)

The White Horse Hotel - then & now

c.1906

The front door of this Rottingdean hotel was then on its south side. The cliff-top road from Brighton passed in front of the hotel and then turned sharp left up the High Street. After a short distance it then made a right turn to resume its easterly progress to Newhaven.

2010

The hotel was rebuilt in 1934 to the south and west of the old hotel, and the coast road now passes to the north of it. Some of the properties on the near right are substantially unaltered from the date of the earlier picture, but the red-brick properties, on the NE corner of Marine Drive (the coast road), also date from the 1930's.

Some other posts on Rottingdean:-
Rottingdean
Rottingdean High Street - then & now
Rottingdean from the east - then & now

The "Lanes" hotel on sale for £3.5m

Red brick and tile-hung gables of 'holiday Queen Anne' style erupt among Georgian stucco with a back drop provided by 21st century whimsy and 20th century stark modernism. 

The red brick Lanes Hotel in Marine Parade was built from 1879 onwards by architect Col. Robert Edis imitating the country-house style of his architect friend Norman Shaw. The hotel is being marketed by Graves Jenkins for £3.5M.

Architectural fantasia

The Royal Albion: then & now

The Royal Albion Hotel was built by Amon Henry Wilds on the site of Dr. Russell's house, following its demolition in 1823. Brighton had been offered the site as a dedicated open space which would have extended the Valley Gardens to the seafront. Had this opportunity not been missed, due to dithering by the Town Council, visitors approaching by road would have been offered a much more dramatic encounter with the sea. Instead the Royal Albion was built and quickly became very important in the cultural life of the town. It was subsequently extended westward and later incorporated the Lion Mansion Hotel on the east side of Pool Valley. 

After many alterations, different owners, fluctuations in fortune, and a serious fire in 1998,  it survives to the present. 

Elsewhere in the photo it is intriguing to note that the modern electric lamp standard in the distant right of the picture appears to occupy the identical position to that of the early triple-armed gas lamp. This is probably explained by the practice, in the early days of electric street-lighting, of pulling the cables through the existing gas pipes, thus minimising the amount of excavation needed.

Arnold House Hotel

Arnold House in Montpelier Terrace was built in 1861 on the site of a former farm house and was occupied, until his death in 1903, by Henry Willett the founder of Brighton Museum and friend of the Victorian aesthete John Ruskin. It became a hotel in 1939, and had roof dormers added; but it retained much timeless charm and attractiveness both inside and out until its wanton demolition in 1971. At the rear was a large well-stocked garden the south end of which now forms the east end of Waitrose car park. 

It was replaced with a block of flats of hideous mediocrity the only point in its favour being that the roof line was kept to that of the adjoining buildings:-

It seems as if the wrought-iron lettering on the front couldn't decide if it wanted to be upright or italic so was installed on a slant in the hope no one would notice!