Viva Brighton Issue #40 June 2016

BITS AND BOBS
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MYSTERY OBJECTS OF THE PAVILION
AN AMPHITHEATRE FOR THE ROYAL PAVILION GARDENS?
The joy of working
in archives is that
often it feels like an
archaeological dig or
a treasure hunt: you
never know what you
are going to find. As
part of my role as
curator of the Royal
Pavilion archives I
have recently been
selecting prints and
drawings for an
exhibition in 2017
of unfamiliar, little
known or rare views of
the Royal Pavilion estate.
While looking for
interesting 20th-century
images I found
two curious drawings
we don’t know much
about and I was wondering
whether any
Viva Brighton readers
can shed any light on
them. They show a
proposal for performance
spaces in the Royal Pavilion grounds, most
prominently a kind of amphitheatre to the south of
the main Dome structure and various ‘courses for
pageants’.
Although they are clearly proposals for new structures
and a change in layout of part of the Pavilion
grounds they are not professional design drawings.
They rather look as if an amateur artist wanted to
put up a grand idea for
discussion and illustrated
it to the best of
his or her abilities. The
designs are quite crudely
drawn, but charming
and colourful. They
are not dated, but must
have been created after
1921 as the India Gate
appears to be in place.
The joyful, positive
and ambitious plans
for large municipal
performance spaces
in the Royal Pavilion
Gardens clearly predate
the Second World
War, so we are looking
at the inter-war period.
If anyone knows of any
records that mention a
proposed amphitheatre
on the Royal Pavilion
estate in the 1920s or
1930s please contact
me. Even if we can’t
find out more about
these drawings, they will certainly be included in
the 2017 exhibition at Brighton Museum, joining a
group of designs for the palace and its gardens that
were never realised. Alexandra Loske, Art Historian
and Curator at the Royal Pavilion
A longer version of this article will appear on the
official Royal Pavilion & Museums blog at brightonmuseums.org.uk
Images © Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove
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