London Road is a horrible place to be - grim and vile. I dread waking down the road. Redevelop the whole place and sod the heritage experts. Now Sainsburys and the Co-op are gone, what's there to look forward to?!

My great, great, great grandfather Thomas Roberts lived at number 19 Viaduct Terrace on the London Road in Brighton in 1863 when his wife died. On a 1859 directory, it is said to be near Rose Hill Street. Is it still there today at all?

Jimbo, Go onto the Brighton Regency society website and follow the link to the James Gray collection, then to London Road and the rest is self explanatory.

London road is Brighton, Brighton People! not Churchill Square or the Lanes. The local Council should improve this area for local people instead of catering for just the tourist trade!

I personally find this guy's description and opinion of London Road to be way way off the mark; "full of drug dealers, addicts and beggars"! - a few beggars tops, I have never seen addicts hanging around, or open drug dealing.

The London Road is the dump of Brighton but both of the shopping centres are rubbish and you have to leave Brighton to get good shopping with fair parking prices.

Me, I rather like the cheap friendly sleaze of London Road. I feel more at home there than in the carbon copy consumer zones.

When I first moved to Brighton (1974) I lived just off the London Road (Kingsbury Street) and it was a vibrant shopping area catering for all needs: walking down from Brighton Station to home I would often pop into Marks & Spencer to purchase a little luxury food item or buy the everyday groceries from Sainsbury on the corner of Cheapside. On Saturdays I would buy my vegetables at the Open Market and fish from Sid's stall (the friendliest fishmonger in Sussex) or go to Corbins (now MacDonalds) or Mitchells (now a mobile phone retailer) for paint and materials to "do our house up". I still have a dress I purchased in the late 1960s from Bellmans (now a supermarket). Woolworths had a basement then where I used to purchase seeds for my allotment in Roedale Valley and there were so many shoe shops to choose from you were spoilt for choice.

Today with the departure of the 'anchor' stores (Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury and now the huge Co-operative store (corner of Baker Street and London Road) and the demise or relocation of stores like Corbins, Sankeys Builders Merchants, Elliotts Tools, Mitchells to name but a few, and their replacement with charity shops and stores selling cheap lines, £1 shops etc. the road is in urgent need of revitalization. There is a chance to try and stop the rot by careful redevelopment of the redundant Co-op building - (saving the 1930s front fascade and using the upper storeys for residential to bring new people in to the area) and the creation of a covered Shopping Mall from the old main entrance through to the side entrance by the food hall in Baker Street, which is also dying, but for the moment London Road remains in limbo, by passed by the visitor to Brighton as their cars are channelled away from the shops up Viaduct Road (not much quality of life for the people living here) into the traffic jam at the bottom of Ditchling Road and the Level.

Not all is lost however, as the opening of the new Sainsbury supermarket at the top of Ann Street means that you might just walk up from the London Road and pass by the Grade 1 listed St. Bartholomew's church (known locally as Noah's Ark because of its massive size). From the outside it looks abit austere and daunting but take 5 minutes out of your busy schedule and pop inside - it's certainly worthwhile - the feeling of peace and tranquility and its strange beauty I am sure will make an impression on you.

Yes, London Road needs saving, it's the only real part of Brighton that remains, but don't look to Brighton and Hove Council.... they either pretend it doesn't exist - West Pier, The Bandstand - or green light completely inappropriate plans for development, ie: Royal Alexandra hospital development.  Need I say more?  The Cheapside development has regenerated a brown-field sight but it's hardly architecturally significant and have you seen the 'railing art'?  I really don't see how characters out of Enid Blyton (well that's what they remind me of) have relevance to our 'city'.  Want a city that is driven and progressive? I do.  Brighton and Hove City Council isn't.

Being on a low income as a single parent with two voraciously hungry kids, the Open Market is a lifeline for me. I have got to know most of the stallholders and they are brilliant, very friendly and encouraging with always just the right connection with their customers. Some fantastic new shops have opened recently, including a gourmet French cheese shop and I always go into Pulse to see what new foods they have in. The bread is fantastic and if you like your eggs the Open Market has the cheapest free-range eggs in Brighton on a number of stalls. Look on the two second-hand stalls before the Market Cafe - if you still watch videos, great bargains to be had for just 50p most days. The 2nd hand stalls are also great for china and bric-a- brac - sort of a mini station market during the week run by friendly stall holders. I would highly recommend all those on a low income to continue to support the Open Market. The fresh fruit and vegetables are fantastic and the tomatoes I always buy to create wonderful pasta sauces. You can create gourmet dishes of the highest order by shopping at the last bit of authentic Brighton still in existence. Please don't change too much, Open Market.

In the early 1990s, I lived at 35 Baker Street - the only house in the road, I believe, nestling in between Melinda the hairdresser and other small independent businesses. It was a typical student house - cramped, damp and with no heating with the garden (small concrete yard) butting up against the open market. The smell from the fish stall in the summer was quite something! We couldn't afford a telephone so had an incoming-calls-only arrangement whereby people could call us but we had to walk to the phonebox by the market entrance if we wanted to phone anyone. The Mitre pub was immediately across the road and we soon realised that the street was quiet enough in the evenings to stretch a 20 metre extension cable across the road from the house to the pub so that we could nurse a pint and still be 'in' for when our mothers called to check we were eating properly.

Still living in Brighton 16 years later, if I walk into town or down to the seafront, the most direct route takes me via London Road. I now find that it's the city's ash-tray; people standing waiting for buses puffing on their cigarettes whilst invariably talking loudly into their mobiles. Old ladies with shopping trollies being tutted at by young mums with pushchairs. Kids in baseball caps hanging around outside KFC or MacDonalds. It sounds so sterotypical but this is what it's like. The gems can still be found - I make a regular trip to the charity shops for books and bargains - but London Road is now mostly just the part of town I have to endure, trying not to inhale other people's smoke, to get from one point to another.

Look up when you're walking along London Road. The age and style of the buildings are so diverse. I love looking at the old pics of London Road on this website where it was lined with trees. London Road feels real, the traders are real too. Yes, there are some real issues too and it does need some care and attention. Question is, is St. James Investments, knocking half the character out of the street and a massive Tesco with a 1,000 space car park what London Road/Preston Circus needs? I remain wholly unconvinced.