Brighton Fishing Museum
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The Brighton Fishing Museum is a registered independent museum established in co-operation with the local fishing community in 1994.[1] This museum is dedicated to Brighton's fishing and seaside history. It is located a short distance to the west of Brighton Pier within an area known as the Fishing Quarter, occupying two of the arches on the Kings' Road, which runs along Brighton's beachfront. Admission is free and donations appreciated.
The history, traditions and practices of the fishing community are shared by a mix of images, artifacts and fishing boats. Archive and contemporary film, a slide show and a tape of fishing families talking and singing depict Brighton and the sea fishing industry from the 1800s to the 1990s.
Historical and technical research underpins the renovation of vernacular Sussex beach boats and marine engines. Works are carried out on the hard in front of the museum's workshop and the restored fishing and pleasure boats are drawn up on the hard and beach. Model boats are also displayed inside the museum.
Tradition and free public entertainments are combined in the Annual Brighton Mackerel Fair organised by the museum and the fishing community, every May.
There has been a fishing industry on the Brighton beach for over one thousand years, the seafront arches in the fishing quarter have been in continuous use by the fishing community since they were built in the 1860s. In earlier times there were wooden netshops and rope houses on the beach below a natural cliff. Capstans were used to haul up boats that were then ranged along the beach in front of the arches and workshops. Nets were spread out to dry on the beach or upon the railings of the esplanade.
When Brighton became a fashionable seaside resort some of the fishing families adapted themselves to the leisure trade, operating bathing machines and pleasure boats for the visitors. The museum as an area devoted to two of Brighton's folk heroes: Martha Gunn the famous ‘Dipper,’ or bathing woman, and ‘Captain’ Fred Collins of the Skylark pleasure boat.
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