Entrance and Exit

The main entrance to Brighton station as it is today dates from 1882. The covering over the entrance, a “glazed porte cochere”, hides the original station building designed by the architect David Mocatta.

When the station was first opened in 1841, it was served by a simple carriage track running off Trafalgar Street. Queens Road leading up to the station was a new development, built over Trafalgar Street in 1846, and then widened in the decades that followed.

The gateposts at the modern station exit are old gun barrels. They came from Brighton’s seafront West Battery, built to fight Napoleon, and were brought to the station when the battery was demolished in 1859 to build the Grand Hotel

Comments about this page

  • Thank you for this wonderful insight. It is absolutely fascinating!

    By Gary Marshall (11/05/2003)
  • A picture wouldn’t go amiss.

    By Davrodski (17/10/2006)
  • Although in the style of the cannon on the seafront battery, the gate-post cannons were just mock ups put in place around the time of the Crimean War and could never have fired. There is a photo of the original cannon on the seafront which they do not resemble either in length or girth. The originals on the Brighton Battery were formerly French six and thirtys captured in a naval battle and then reamed out in an armoury to take a 40lb UK cannon ball.

    By Roy Grant (07/02/2011)

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