Edward Street

A potted history and photo gallery

Reproduced with permission from the Encyclopaedia of Brighton by Tim Carder, 1990

Please note that this text is an extract from a reference work written in 1990.  As a result, some of the content may not reflect recent research, changes and events.

Stretching from Pavilion Parade to Park Street , Edward Street was once very narrow, only twenty-five-feet wide in places, and lined both sides with shops; indeed, Edward Street and St James's Street were the two principal shopping streets of the eastern town. Serving the area of poor housing to the north, it was a tough district where the police were said to patrol in pairs only. Several of the roads leading northwards were badly affected by war-time bombing. However, the face of Edward Street was completely altered by large-scale clearances in the 1950s together with road widening in 1961-4, resulting in a completely rebuilt northern side with only a few old houses remaining on the southern side around Chapel Street, Devonshire Place and below George Street . The road was widened beyond Upper Rock Gardens to Park Street (and, as Eastern Road , to Freshfield Road) in 1971; the dual carriageway was once intended to stretch all the way to Black Rock .

Edward Street is now dominated by Amex House , a nine-storey, 300,000 square foot office block in a tiered design by the Gollins Melvin Ward Partnership which has been nicknamed 'the wedding cake'. Costing a reported £10 million, the tiers are highlighted in white reinforced plastic while the windows have a blue tint to create a pleasing impression. Built over part of Mighell Street, it was officially opened on 15 September 1977 as the European operations centre of the American Express Corporation, Brighton's largest private-sector employer, and houses some 1,800 workers. The adjacent Windsor House of the Department of Social Security was opened in 1973.

The town's new law courts were opened on 3 November 1967 by Lord Gardiner, the Lord Chancellor. Designed by Percy Billington, the building cost £665,000 and was remodelled in 1986-9 to include three crown courts and eight magistrate courts, plus juvenile and coroner's courts. On 23 October 1985 a new high court and county court building was opened adjacently in William Street. {123} (See also "Courts".)

No.1 Edward Street is an office block of 1990 with a pleasant, bay-windowed design.
Clearances of some of the slum housing to the north of Edward Street were made in the 1890s when Blaker Street and White Street were erected on the site of Chesterfield Street, Cumberland Place, Derby Place and Thomas Street; the new roads contain good red-brick housing designed by borough surveyor Francis May, but the houses were erected privately {115,306}.

The nearby Brighton National Spiritualist Church was built in 1964-5 in an unusual figure-of-eight design by Overton and Partners, replacing a church in Mighell Street {83,123}. To the east is the Brighton Youth Centre, formerly the Brighton Boys' Club which was founded in John Street in 1917. It later moved to 14-16 Manchester Street, but on 23 March 1927 a new building was opened by the Prince of Wales in the remodelled Tierney cinema in Edward Street. On 29 October 1930, the Duke of York opened a Boys' Club Week there, and it was visited in 1938 by the Duke of Gloucester, president of the National Association of Boys' Clubs. The present building was opened in a new position on 28 October 1957 to allow for road widening. The Tierney Royal Picture Theatre itself opened in 1911 on the site of the Tierney Arms, and was known briefly as the Picturedrome in 1916, the Majestic in 1919 and the Devonshire in 1920 before closing in 1922 {19,48a,68,68a,76.115,275a}.

On the opposite side of Edward Street, at the corner of Dorset Place, is the former Little Globe public house. Lower down stands the Thurlow Arms, an early-nineteenth-century listed building with two first-floor bows and mathematical tiles. Steine Gardens retains a few late-eighteenth-century cottages, while at the very foot of the street may be seen the premises of the Brighton Charity Organisation Society, formed in 1872 to 'improve the condition of the poor, to administer relief, and to suppress begging'; the name may still be made out on the plain wall on the southern side of the street near the traffic lights. {83}

Any numerical cross-references in the text above refer to resources in the Sources and Bibliography section of the Encyclopaedia of Brighton by Tim Carder.