This pub used to be the Bevendean Hotel, until one too many fights forced the police to close it in the spring of 2010. It lay empty for years, leaving around 18,000 people without a local. Brewers sniffed around but couldn’t make the sums work. The area’s reputation for roughness did not help: a local vicar once received a postcard addressed to “The Reverend John Wall, The Vicarage, The Dodgy Bit of Brighton, England”. That this was all the address the sorting office needed tells you something about the suburb’s standing.
In the end, local people raised the funds and opened the Bevy in 2014. With banners reading “More Than A Pub”, it certainly doesn’t look like tourist Brighton’s gastropubs and cocktail palaces. Jones calls it “a back-to-front community centre”.
Go to the GEO front page
Add new comment