History of Brighton Part 2
‘Pre-Historic Brighthelmstonton’ ( C.25,000 b.c. – 10,000 b.c)
Early Cafe Culture to Sailing Marina
Storming a teacup
The pre-historic settlers of Brighton were of various origins, even in it’s infancy it was a mixing pot of life styles, cultures and fashionistas. Digs at early settlements have shown that as early as 15,000 b.c. there were a string of café bars along the coast serving a bland Colombian coffee blend, but im sure the inhabitancies new that the Kenyan roast was only around the corner. The majority of the peoples of this new town came from 5 main areas.
There were the Saxons, who moved to the area when they found out that Peter “Biff” Byford had bought a beach kibbutz in the area, they were a distinctive peoples, with long hair, low brows and distinctive leather clad dress shirts. They tended to stick to their own, and settles around what is now London Road, but used to be a seasonal river. Finding found in this area show that they lived on a diet of obsidian skulls and judging by their grotesquely disintegrated necks and the surprisingly high amount of fatalities due to massive burns to the top of the skull, spent their leisure time rocking out in thunder storms.
The second group were the Angles, who had moved from the Rhineland’s as they thought it was all the lines were too flowing and faced persecution from the Romantics, the Orange order and Mr Tickle. They landed in Brighthelmstonton c. 20,000 b.c and lived in square mazes that were built with boring old Prussian precision. They lived off the land, growing square watermelons long before the Japanese, harvesting waffles, toblarones and walnut whips (though they would only eat walnut whips in times of starvation as the base was circular). They were generally happy enough apparently.
The 3rd group were people who were cruising about the med in boats and got caught in a storm, these were the Marinas. They needed somewhere to shelter their boats and happened across the natural harbour to the east of Brighton, which is now the marina (names after them). Where the marina is now, their was a natural coral bay, which the concrete walls have been built on top of. It you want to imagine it, think of the cliff as a stomach and the ‘arms’ (or walls) of the marina looking like someone doing a mime of how over weight someone they have met or seen is to a friend. The Marina people were from all over Europe and brought many strange and exotic items to trade with the locals such as beads, spices, oil, tiles, horse meat and Speedos. Some of them left when the storm cleared up but some stayed and these people opened up Brighthelmstonton to trade with the rest of Europe for the first time
The 4th group were the Celts, who had travelled far and wide. They liked to booze it up right nice a lot of the time, though their system of laws was far superior to our own in many ways. They used shells as currency, the down side to which was that after heavy storms loads of shells would wash up on the beach and the value of the currency would crash through the floor, meaning that they had either hyper inflation or massive depressions. The bones of many skeletons of Celtic merchants can still be found at the bottom of the cliffs to the east of Brighton and make an excellent substitute for chalk.
And the 5th group was a man called Geoff, who moved down with his family, he remembered having a nice time in Brighthelmstonton once when he was younger and used his redundancy money to build the beginnings of what developed into Hollingbury Hill fort (but more of that later).
These groups got along in general, they traded, they interbred, they laughed together, though there was inevitable skirmish’s, however the 5 settlements were still fairly separate and the area could not really be considered a single settlement as yet, though the town was finally taking root.
Next week: ‘The age of metal’ Brighthelmston goes Bronze
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Tags: history of brighton
