Free City WiFi network

BHCC and BT have joined forces to make free wi-fi available at a range of locations across the city centre. The new outdoor network will cover the busiest areas for tourism, shopping and leisure, providing free wi-fi for local residents, hundreds of businesses, and the 11.5 million people who visit the city each year.

A total of 40 BT Wi-fi hotspots will be available on completion of the project, allowing visitors and residents to get online while ‘on the go’ through their smart phones, tablets and laptops. Thirty of the wi-fi access points are now live, with the remaining ten due to be switched on later in the summer.

The ‘BrightonHovefreewifi’ network will come at no cost to the council. In return, BT will get access to some of the city’s lamp posts and other street furniture allowing the company to install new mobile infrastructure.

The service will cover a large proportion of the city centre, including parts of Western Road, Queens Road, West Street, North Laine, London Road, St James’s Street and the seafront between Brighton Pier and the Hilton Metropole Hotel, as well as in front of Hove Town Hall on Church Road and at the top of George Street in Hove.

People within range of the network will be able to tap into free wi-fi following a simple on-off log in. They will then be taken automatically to a landing page with links to the council website and VisitBrighton the city’s main resource for visitor information.

For more information visit: www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/bhfreewifi

Hippodrome glory

Footage shot inside the theatre sometime in the 1980s. The film shows the theatre while in use as a bingo hall, as it had been from 1967. This represents a rare glimpse of the magnificent and still largely preserved interior of the Brighton Hippodrome Theatre.

Compare with: Hippodrome interior. Aug 2013

RSCH Public Engagement Day.

67 Preston Street gets makeover

A neglected Regency building, a prominent eyesore in one of the city's prestigious conservation areas, is now looking good thanks to the persistence of the council's planning enforcement team. Over a period of more than three years officers served a number of formal notices and worked closely with the building's owners to encourage them to bring 67 Preston Street back to its former glory. It has had its rough edges smoothed, repairs made and a new coat of paint in the distinctive cream colour of the city's historic squares and terraces.

This impressive Grade 2 listed building  on the corner of Regency Square was built c.1818 in the heyday of Brighton's emergence as a fashionable seaside resort. The architects were probably Amon Wilds & Amon Henry Wilds. It was the birthplace of early screen actor Eva Moore.

The building of 3 storeys features a rusticated porch in Preston Street with round-arched entrance and fanlight, a 20C shop front to ground floor and canted bay window to first floor. At its southern end the windows  are blind. The cast-iron railings have distinctive conical finials.

For many years the shop was occupied by the Frigidaire Refrigeration Co.


The building is listed together with the adjoining bow-fronted property round the corner in Regency Square

Listed building consent for Shelter Hall kiosk restoration

Better late than never, listed building consent has been granted for restoration of a listed kiosk on Brighton seafront.

Dating from around 1883, the yellow, 10-sided building opposite the bottom of West Street originally acted as a natural light lantern to illuminate the Shelter Hall below. Latterly it had operated as a snack bar.

It was dismantled in early February as part of £11m plans to rebuild the Shelter Hall and strengthen the A259 seafront road.  Structural deterioration meant the road, carried by a viaduct at this point, was at risk of collapse. 

Decay in the kiosk meant it needed dismantling urgently for safety reasons.   Its mild steel framework was seriously corroded and much of its woodwork rotten.  Subject to planning permission, it will be rebuilt on the East Street Bastion, a hundred metres to the east.  A new rotunda will be created on top of the rebuilt Shelter Hall.

Detailed photographs have been taken to ensure a faithful restoration.  Decorative ironwork will be used to make moulds so that missing pieces can be re-cast at a foundry in Oxfordshire.  Rotten woodwork will be replaced by Seth Evans Joinery from Patching, who worked on the council’s award-winning reconstruction of historic fishermen’s arches near the i360.  New window frames and shutters will be made.

Previous posts:-
The lower promenade shelter hall
Rebuilding of the Seafront Shelter Hall
New life for the Seafront Shelter Hall