Trams parked outside Tramway House, ages ago.

Brighton Electric Premises 1897

It was never a school…

Our lovely premises was purpose built in 1897 as the head office for The Brighton Corporation Tramways. Yep, awesome little wooden trams, powered by a now obsolete technology called ‘electricity’…. I mean, who would bother running vehicles in a busy city center on that stuff these days, eh? So 1897.

The walls are all very thick & the whole building is built using highly dense engineering bricks, great for stopping sound & blunting drill bits.

Tramway House under construction, 1897

In 1896 the same building was constructed at Preston Circus on the site where the Joker pub is now. Unfortunately it started to collapse due to the soft ground & so the whole build was abandoned & moved to Coombe Terrace/Lewes Rd, it’s final resting place & where it’s now better known as Brighton Electric Studios.

When we moved here in around 2000, parts of it were verging on derelict. The entrance hall was filthy & the stunning mosaic floor was black. We have spent many hundreds of hours restoring this beautiful building to bring back its original victorian aura & that work continues to this day, as it springs leaks regularly. You may have noticed. Well, it’s old isn’t it?

The chandeliers are not original, though the glazed brickwork on the side walls in the entrance is all original as are the mosaic floors, bearing the Brighton Corporation logo depicting a somewhat hard to believe illustration of two ‘dolphins’. This same dolphin logo can be found all over Brighton, particularly on the sea front where you can find it on lamp posts & railings.

Gratuitous Tram shot, Brighton Electric Studio One is just in the left/front.

Still here? some dull facts you may not have noticed :

• The last remaining tram track in Brighton is round the back, it’s really not very exciting, but it is still visible.
• The chimneys are outrageously tall.
• There is actually a clock in the middle of the roof apex. It was powered by a very heavy weight that would be cranked up a rope inside the roof, it’s still there, with a safety bucket of sand for it to (eventually) fall into.
• Several downstairs studio rooms have large safes in them. We have never opened them…