Brighton: Pool Valley

Image: © Nigel Cox Taken: 8 Jun 2008

Pool Valley is Brighton's coach station but was for many years the terminus of all the Southdown bus and coach services into the town. This draughty back yard, formed around the backs of the Royal Albion Hotel to the right and the Royal York Hotel directly in front, would be full of green and cream Southdown vehicles, reversing down onto their bus stop bays to set down and pick up passengers. If you look carefully you may be able to pick out the words "Royal York Bldgs" carved in the pediment of the building straight ahead. There is news here http://www.visitbrighton.com/news/1109.asp of an undated proposed £350,000 refurbishment scheme of Pool Valley. With impeccable timing a gas pipeline is being laid in the middle of Grand Junction Road just as the summer season is about to begin. Apropos of nothing at all other than a connection with Pool Valley, a lady, thought be Britain's oldest woman at the time, died in 1940 at the age of 108, having been connected with a confectionery business in Pool Valley from the 1850s to the 1920s, and in 1943, during the Second World War, another woman resident of Pool Valley was fined £1 for wasting bread by feeding a slice to seagulls on the seafront...

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