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The Brighton Herald (renamed The Brighton Herald & Hove Chronicle in 1902 and the Brighton & Hove Herald in 1922) was a weekly newspaper covering the boroughs of Brighton and Hove in southeast England. Founded in 1806 as the first newspaper in the fashionable seaside resort of Brighton, it survived until 1971 and was one of England's "leading provincial weekly" newspapers—being the first publication in the country to report several important international events, such as Napoleon's escape and the start of the July Revolution. Based in the centre of Brighton throughout its 165-year existence, it moved in 1934 to new premises at Pavilion Buildings, near the Royal Pavilion.
The paper took the name Brighton Herald & Hove Chronicle with effect from 19 July 1902, then on 4 November 1922 it became the Brighton & Hove Herald. A final move of premises took place in 1934 when John Leopold Denman's "very stylish" Neo-Georgian head office building at 2–3 Pavilion Buildings was completed. Denman was also responsible for designing the office building (Regent House) which replaced the old Princes Place premises.
In 1954 it was reported that the paper covered the area from Peacehaven in the east to Shoreham-by-Sea in the west, as well as the boroughs of Brighton and Hove where its sales were highest and where "it was very influential". It was also read by many people in nearby towns and villages such as Lancing, Hassocks and Burgess Hill.
The final edition of the Herald was published on 30 September 1971, after which the newspaper was absorbed by the Brighton & Hove Gazette. This was in turn merged into the Brighton & Hove Leader, a weekly free newspaper, in 1985. This is now published online on the website of The Argus, another longstanding local newspaper. The Brighton History Centre at The Keep, the archive and historical resource centre of East Sussex and the city of Brighton and Hove, holds copies of the newspaper from 1806 until 1970.
The Herald had "a long tradition of being first with the news". In the first half of the 19th century, it was the first newspaper in England to break the news of three stories of major international importances: Napoleon's escape from Elba in 1815, the start of the July Revolution in France in 1830, the arrival in England of the exiled King Louis Philippe I in 1848, and the Battles of the Talavera (1809) and Vitoria (1813). The Herald regularly broke such news because it was the main newspaper in Brighton and all communication from France at the time came via the Dieppe–Brighton shipping route.
The newspaper reported on all the major events affecting Brighton in the 19th and early 20th centuries, often in detail. It carried a special report on the opening of the Brighton Main Line on 21 September 1841, describing the arrival of the first train with "much the same level of excitement as that with which people watched the first man landing on the moon". In 1861 it carried the most detailed report on the Clayton Tunnel rail crash, the worst in Britain at the time. Crowds of people, angered by the disaster, gathered to await publication of a special supplement on 31 August 1861, six days later, and "windows were broken and fittings torn from walls in the struggle for news" when it was delayed.
At the opening of Preston Park—Brighton's oldest and largest public park—the newspaper claimed that "public parks are the best competitors for public houses". It was enthusiastic about King Edward VII's patronage of the town, claiming in 1908 that "nothing could exert a finer influence on the fortunes of Brighton ... and bring about an influx of rank and fashion to the town" and criticising "ranting demagogues" who had carried out a "socialistic demonstration" outside Arthur Sassoon's house in Hove, where the king was visiting.
The Herald reported extensively on the 1926 United Kingdom general strike. It coined the name "the Battle of Lewes Road" for the town's most famous incident, produced a special edition devoted to the strike, and also covered in depth an incident earlier that week in which a woman drove her car "at tremendous speed" at a group of strikers. The paper was sympathetic to the special constables who were sent in by Brighton Corporation to break the strike—praising the "determined, formidable" men "well set up on their fine horses" and noting that the blows they dealt with their clubs "seemed to be unintentional".
In 1935, the newspaper published a special illustrated supplement setting out Alderman Sir Herbert Carden's radical plans for the entire redevelopment of Brighton's seafront, from Kemp Town in the east to Brunswick Town in the west. The City Beautiful: A Vision of New Brighton envisaged the demolition of all the Regency-style buildings in favour of modern blocks of flats in the style of Embassy Court, which Carden greatly admired. Public reaction to these proposals was negative, and the Regency Society (a locally influential conservation and architectural interest group) was formed in reaction to them. In 1947, it carried an interview with Winston Churchill when he was awarded the Freedom of the Borough of Brighton, including the statesman's reminiscences of a popular flea circus on the seafront.
As well as news, the Herald sometimes published poems and other literary work: for example, it regularly carried stories by popular Victorian novelist Mary Elizabeth Braddon in the late 1850s, before her first novel The Trail of the Serpent was published.
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