Brighton Fishing Museum
The Brighton Fishing Museum is an independent museum started in 1994 with the help of Brighton’s fishing community. It celebrates Brighton’s fishing and seaside history. The museum is just west of Brighton Pier in the Fishing Quarter, housed in two arches on Kings’ Road along the seafront. Admission is free, with donations welcome.
The exhibits share the history, traditions and practices of the fishing community through images, artifacts and boats. There are archive films, slides and recordings of fishing families that cover Brighton and the sea from the 1800s to the 1990s. The collection includes restored Sussex beach boats and marine engines, with work taking place in front of the museum’s workshop. Model boats are displayed inside. Each May, the museum and the fishing community hold the free Brighton Mackerel Fair with traditional entertainment.
Fishing has been part of Brighton for more than a thousand years, and the seafront arches have been used by fishermen since they were built in the 1860s. In earlier times there were wooden netshops and rope houses on the beach below a natural cliff. Boats were hauled up with capstans and lined up along the beach, and nets were dried on the sand or on the railings. When Brighton became a fashionable resort, some fishing families also ran bathing machines and pleasure boats for visitors.
The museum highlights two local folk heroes: Martha Gunn, the famous “Dipper” who helped bathers, and Captain Fred Collins of the Skylark pleasure boat. It also shows images of Brighton in the 18th and early 19th centuries when fishing operated both in town and on the beach. After conflicts with fashionable Brighton in the early 1800s, the fishery moved mainly to the beach. The museum explains the evolution of the beach and arches and the boats used at Brighton.
A scale model of the classic Brighton hog-boat is on display, along with the 27-foot lugger Sussex Maid, a 1920s beach fishing boat with a motor. Toward the back of the arch are sections on the town’s lifeboats, pleasure boats and the fish market. The Brighton Fish Market was originally on the beach, with a new market built in arches to the east in 1867. Fish were landed from the southeast and even came in by rail from Cornwall. The market closed in 1960, and today fishermen sell their catch at Shoreham-by-Sea.
At the front, the museum presents the culture, dress and souvenirs of the fishing community, including images of traditional boat names. The risk of fishing, mortality and religion are also highlighted; the arch once hosted St. Margaret’s Mission and the Brighton Sailor and Fisherman’s Home founded in 1860. Outside, a memorial plaque honors Sean Tierney, a Brighton fisherman who died at sea in 1994.
Inside, near the bow of the Sussex Maid, there is a display about Brighton fishermen and boatmen who took part in the Dunkirk and St. Valery evacuations in World War II. Twenty-six Brighton boats participated; two were sunk and two sailors received medals for bravery.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 19:01 (CET).