Viva Brighton Issue #45 November 2016

INSIDE LEFT: BHS, 1968
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It’s all change since this picture was taken in December 1968, not in terms of the architecture, but in
terms of what things were then named, and what they are called now. For starters, in 1968 the photographer
would have been standing outside the Castle in Clarence Gardens, while now he’d be outside
the Pull & Pump in Clarence Square. To the left we can see gentlemen’s outfitter Roy Baxter, a space
now inhabited by Santander. And, most strikingly, the grand building which dominates the background
of the picture, which we now know so well as Primark’s Brighton store, was then owned by British
Home Stores, as it had been since the building was constructed.
British Home Stores was founded in 1928, and the controlling shares were almost immediately bought
by American chain-store owners Neisner Brothers, who were intent on growing Britain’s second ever
national chain store (the first being Woolworths). Like the latter store, BHS was a bottom-end-of-themarket
operation, with a price limit of 3d to one shilling (which later rose to five shillings); the first
shops were built in London, with the Brighton version constructed in 1931.
They may have been a cut-price store, but they certainly paid top dollar for the building. Though
you wouldn’t necessarily know it nowadays. Pevsner’s Architectural Guide comments that the building is
constructed of Portland Stone ashlar blocks, which were, it points out, ‘painted in 2007, astonishingly’.
The store traded from 164-170 Western Road until 1969, when they moved to the new Churchill
Square development, with C&A taking over and opening their store the next year, remaining there
for nearly 30 years, until 2000, when the company withdrew from the UK market. Littlewoods traded
there for a few years until 2005, when the building was purchased by Associated British Foods, who
soon plonked a Primark in place. And so one popular chain selling low-price goods has turned into
another; do you know anyone who has never purchased anything from the store? AL
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