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BRIGHTON
BANDSTAND RE-OPENS FRIDAY JULY 24!
After decades of
neglect, the historic Grade II listed Bandstand will finally
re-open fully-restored to its former glory on July 24 at 8pm.
 Local
bands lined up for the launch celebrations include Patcham
Silver Band, Brighton Youth Orchestra and Brighton indie-band
Gloria Cycles and the opening will conclude with a spectacular
floodlighting of the building for the first time.
The £850,000 restoration took just 10 months and was completed
ahead of schedule. The iron work, including eight 1.2 tonne
pillars and the ornate linking spandrels, has been fully
restored and now freshly painted in its original 1880s colour
scheme. With the copper roof complete and the original bridge
linking the bandstand to the prom back in place, the bandstand
is back and ready for business.
Underneath the bandstand is a new
café run by local restaurant group La Fourchette. Open from
8am
–
10pm every day, the menu will feature light meals and snacks
with a French flavour, including breakfast, baguettes, salads,
oysters and pastries.
The areas around the
bandstand are being landscaped and will include seating for
the café.
Bands will play on
the bandstand most Sundays during the summer. Click
here for the full schedule.
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BRIGHTON BANDSTAND GOES NORTH!
Some of you
may have noticed the bandstand has disappeared from the prom
where it has braved the elements for the past 124 years! For
the next few weeks it has a new home in the wild moorlands of
the Peak District in Derbyshire. In October the bandstand’s
cast ironwork was dismantled and taken to Leander Architectural’s foundry in the spa town of Buxton, for
complete restoration.
Ted McAvoy, managing director of Leander, says that almost
everything has been blasted to bare metal and is now being
repaired and repainted. “We’re concentrating on the columns,
arches and roof framework as the main contractors need these
back on site by the week of 15th December so they
can put in the new floor around them. Which means the skeleton
of the bandstand should be in place by 19th
December.”
The company is also busy making patterns for other broken and
missing sections – gutters and gutter corners, balustrade
posts and panels, friezes - and has just started making the
new castings. It will be well into the New Year, however,
before these components come back to Brighton.
 “A few surprises turned up when we were dismantling on site,”
says Ted. “The fairly recent concrete floor had been supported
by the bandstand columns, so that we couldn’t remove the
columns until the whole floor had been hacked out. The
balustrade posts had massive cranked feet which ran under the
concrete and were thus very difficult to remove. The
difference in condition between seaward side and landward side
castings was very marked – a bit surprising as they were only
a few feet apart. The cupola and finial on the top of the roof
turned out to be timber throughout with only the ventilation
grilles in cast iron.” The paint analysis revealed 40 old
coats of paint he adds!
Once the steelwork is back in Brighton, the original 8-shaped
timber rafters will be fixed on top of the roof’s steel
subframe. Individual timbers are being machined at a local
joinery shop in Sussex and these will be fixed to these joists
to give the ‘onion shape’ of the main roof. Once all the
timber structure is in place, including the original
refurbished vertical timber finnial and top, a specialist
copper roofing contractor, Marshotts, will sheet the entire
roof in copper ensuring it stays faithful in appearance to the
original.
For more news on the restoration:
http://www.leanderarchitectural.co.uk/news/2008/10/october-news/
http://www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/index.cfm?request=c1192574
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