Photos: then and now
The Queen Anne
Image reproduced with permission from Brighton History Centre
The Standard
Photo by Mike Snewin
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Also used to be known as ‘Swifts’ around 1990.
Cor! what memories…Saturday night in ‘Swifts’ in the 70s, the bars were awash with Brighton’s equivalent of Essex girls, all little black numbers and black stilettos. It was a standard precursor to a night at ‘The Suite’ across the road. The overcrowding was ridiculous and converstation impossible. A proper West St Saturday night pub.
I don’t believe it! We first met purely by chance in this pub in October 1979 – I was on a boys’ night out with some fellow RN shipmates, pulled into Brighton Marina for the one night on a sail-training yacht from Gosport – Kim on a girly night out with her fellow nurses from West Sussex County Hospital. We married in 1981 and, nearly 30 years later, I was googling for some nostalgia pics for our “memoires” & found this! Agree with Geoff’s comment above – it was a miracle I trapped Kim as neither of us could hear a word that was said between us! (But managed to scribble her phone number!) … The rest is history!
I was a trainee chef at the Queen Anne back in the 70s. Mad busy place, long hours – very long – and rubbish wages. Proper lock-ins though and great fun.
Swifts is how I remember it when I was about town in the early 1990s. With the Paradox, just down the road as the next stop for the rest of the night.
Now called Revolutions (Vodka Revs).
I worked as a door supervisor at The Standard for 2 years around 2005. Good times. Also met my now wife there whilst working and still together.
I worked here back in 1979/80. It was then a Schooner Inn steak house, great memories of the years I worked there. It was then sold and taken over in the early 80s and turned to Swifts which was a bar with a grand piano shaped bar in the centre of the floor. Many changes since.
Anyone remember Ian. Ady and Kevin from the late 1990s Ian was the manager
I remember Adrian and Ian. I knew Ian very well. Wonder what happened to them?
Hi Anne, I know that the company relocated them but not sure where to, the company was called Glendola leisure and was based in Scotland, Kevin was a friend of Ian’s and lived there for a while in the flat above, I had heard that Ady had passed away but not sure if that is true, Kevin went off somewhere I think back to Ireland, I was DJ there when Ian and Ady were around but I left just before they did to work at Yates and Club Barcelona.
In the early 70s, every Friday and Saturday night, a group of us from Cardinal Newman would start up at the Lamb & Flag at Churchill Square, wander down West St. to the Queen Anne, then across to Sherries across the road to dance. Queen Anne’s was always packed. Was there one night when there was a bomb scare and we were all cleared out (during the Irish Troubles).
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