With the summer holidays in full swing, the Flâneuse is heading to the seaside for this week’s story. In the late 1960s Richard Attenborough filmed parts of Oh! What a Lovely War on the Brighton seafront. When filming was over, he donated a seaside kiosk that had featured in the film to the Brighton Festival. In May 1970 the architect Sir Hugh Casson transformed it into a ‘small folly built – or at least embellished – in Brighton rock’.
The Brighton Festival was founded in 1970 to ‘stimulate townsfolk and visitors into taking a new look at the arts’. Casson was then head of the Interior Design school at the Royal College of Art, and a member of the festival’s council of management. He was known to be a fan of follies, writing in the foreword to the National Benzole book Follies, which he edited in 1963, that he hoped the tradition would never die out. He was sure that ‘Somebody somewhere is probably nailing crockets on his cycle-shed or building an obelisk of bottle-tops and broken shards’.
Casson’s folly for Brighton was equally unsophisticated: he repurposed the kiosk as a Chinese temple, decorated with bamboo fretwork. But, in homage to one of the resort’s favourite souvenirs, the bamboo was replaced with sticks of bright pink Brighton rock.
This gave the building what the Architects’ Journal called a ‘Cecil Beaton appearance’ (sadly the Flâneuse has failed to find any colour photographs). The roof was a riotous affair with pinnacles of striped rock.
It was reported that 2,500 children aged eight and under had been invited to ‘demolish’ the kiosk in an ‘orgy of eating’. As the Architects’ Journal columnist noted, they stripped the folly in ‘eleven minutes flat’, although ‘not so much by eating, more by harvesting, consumption presumably being done later at leisure’.
No doubt the children loved this sweet treat, and the only sour note came from ‘Mr Manchester’, who wrote a diary column for the Manchester Evening News: ‘it all sounds very unhygienic to me’, he grumbled.
Thank you for reading. Please scroll down to the comments box to share any thoughts or observations.
Nick Kingsley says:
It is sometimes possible to believe we really did have more fun in the past!
Editor says:
Good morning Nick. I did think that such an event would cause waves of horror today, not least from the British Dental Association!
David Allum says:
Since you don’t mention it, I guess there is no information as to what happened to The House of Rock.
Editor says:
Hello David. Good point. I should have said that I had drawn a blank in finding out what had happened to the kiosk once it had been stripped of the rock.
John St B Hooper says:
I cannot resist writing to thank you for today’s very sweet article.
Editor says:
Thank you John. It is very sweet of you to share your appreciation of the article.
TOM GARDNER says:
TOM (NYC)
THE MAGICAL ‘JOY’ – IN THE FACES OF THOSE YOUNG LADS – AS THEY
CARRY AWAY THEIR ‘TREASURES’ … IS PERHAPS NOT SUCH A SAD ENDING TO:
A SWEET PIECE OF HISTORY.
THANKS,
TOM
Editor says:
Good evening Tom. I don’t think modern parents would approve! But what a wonderful way to introduce children to follies – bribed with sugar.
Nicky Hessenberg says:
Thank you so much for this fascinating piece of Brighton history which was put together by my father. I had NO idea that he had done anything like this and it was the sort of job he would have loved to do – the thought of all those sticks of Brighton rock being stripped off and the photographs of the children’s faces are wonderful. What a shame none in colour, but of course in those days, colour photography was expensive!
Editor says:
Hello Nicky. It is good to hear from you and I’m very happy to have introduced you to this ephemeral but delightful piece of work by your father. The photo’s were destined for the press so sadly black and white back then. But we can use our imagination to picture how enticing the folly looked to the children.