Viva Brighton Issue #52 June 2017

Painting by Jay Collins
PUB: THE EVENING STAR
Is there a better pub sign in the city than the
three-dimensional, eight-pointed, red-andblack
affair, surrounded by iron foliage, which
announces that you’ve made your way to the
Evening Star?
It’s a clever bit of marketing. Until 1992 the
pub was a bog-standard Courage pub, albeit one
handily placed near the station with interestingly
shaped windows and a sun trap of a front yard.
They had an everyday flap-in-the-wind sign, with
the words ‘Evening Star’.
Then it became a free house, and soon had a
micro-brewery in its cellar, run by brewer Rob
Jones. The brewery was given the same name
as Jones’ popular porter – Dark Star – and their
logo was fashioned as a star, after the name of the
pub as well as the beer. Real-ale lovers have been
flocking to it ever since, even though the brewery
moved to bigger premises near Haywards Heath
in 2001 (and then on to Partridge Green). And in
2009 Dark Star – who by now owned and ran the
pub – got the new sign fashioned, by a blacksmith,
to give body to the logo, and to evermore
fuse the two institutions. How meta is that?
Surrey Street was built in the 1830s, and the
first listing I can find of the Star is from 1850. It
looks like its first landlady, a Mrs Anne Scott, was
responsible for knocking down the wall between
two terraced houses, Nos 55 and 56, to create
space for a bar and tables. Then, as now, it was off
the beaten track. 170 years’ worth of DFLs fresh
off the train have never had a clue that it’s there:
those who go to the Star go because they want to.
And the main reason is the beer. As well as three
or four of Dark Star’s own ales, there’s always a
great selection of guest ales, including lagers and
ciders, written up on their idiosyncratic blackboard,
nicknamed ‘The Wall of Ale’.
The pub was closed for three weeks in February/
March for a refit, which had punters worried that
somebody, somewhere was thinking of rebranding
it. There was no need. The floor has been
scrubbed, there’s a fab new hand-crafted mirror,
and its facade – and that hanging star – have had
a lick of glossy paint. Otherwise – thankfully - it
hasn’t changed a bit: no music, no hot food, just
beer and conversation. As I find one hot May afternoon,
when I toast the place anew, standing in
that sun-trap yard, with a frothy pint of Hophead.
Alex Leith
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