Brains at the Bevy: A garden city dream: the early development of Moulsecoomb, Peacehaven and others

About

Wednesday 7 May 2025, 6pm at the Bevy Pub.
Speakers: Dr Geoffrey Mead and Dr Julia Winckler

With Moulsecoomb celebrating its recent 100th anniversary, our experts give a timely insight into the ambitions of early twentieth-century town-planners and the dreams to provide desirable garden suburbs and towns for all.

Dr Geoffrey Mead will talk us through the early twentieth-century efforts to alleviate Brighton's slum housing conditions and plan for a brighter future after the horrors of World War I. This included the creation of a garden suburb on land acquired in Patcham parish and the rehousing of inner-city residents to the new local authority housing and green spaces at Moulsecoomb, with Bevendean offering more middle-class private housing a decade later.

Dr Julia Wincklers talk will explore the origins of Peacehaven. Drawing from her book, Fabricating Lureland , Julia will share insights into the ideals and imagery from the Garden City Movement that sparked the creation of the town. an interwar development marketed as a 'garden city by the sea. Like the suburbs of Brighton, its development was also influenced by World War I and the impact of crowded and industrialised cities.

Despite Virginia and Leonard Woolf branding the new settlement a 'blot' on the rolling, pastoral downland, it was marketed as a place for people from all walks of life to own their own homes in an environment bordered by the sea, chalk white cliffs and downland.

Dr Geoffrey Mead taught for over 30 years in Adult Education and Geography at the University of Sussex. He worked with the Landscape Studies degree team and his PhD examined Brightons interwar suburban growth, focusing on the development of housing estates.

Dr Julia Winckler is an academic, photographer, and principal lecturer in the School of Art and Media at the University of Brighton. She has exhibited and published widely on memory and contested topographies.