A looming presence on North Road, The Brighthelm Centre is now a United Reformed Christian Church and a popular community space, but its unassuming façade hides the secrets of a tempestuous history.

The Punk movement of the late 70s was engulfing central Brighton. Openly disapproving of the folk music and hippie counterculture that was being nurtured in the outskirts of the city, local punk rockers sought out a venue to express their radical opinions. They finally decided on the underground space below former Presbyterian Church, The Brighthelm Centre, to be their stamping ground.

Named The Vault, the punk rehearsal and gig space was “a 150-year-old crypt with a series of intact tombs” that lay deep underneath what at the time was the Brighton Resource Centre. Initially, the live music crypt “hosted gigs and must have been the nearest thing to the Liverpool Cavern Brighton is ever likely to see.”

Quickly the alternative venue was “developed into rehearsal studios constructed by the bands themselves.” The unmonitored DIY and frequency and sheer volume of the music being performed created vibrations that began to damage and corrode the walls of the crypt. Combined with casual vandalism and the constant renovation for more working space, cracks appeared which caused “bones and pieces of coffin belonging to the Huguenot refugees (who had died of plague in the 1800s) to emerge from the walls.”

The council quickly intervened and shut down the venue. Though the unorthodox sub-culture soon depleted in numbers with the changing times of the late 80s and 90s, their alternative legacy does still live on in the recesses of Brighton.

Cross North Road at the traffic lights, go down North Road and take the first left into Frederick Street. Continue to the end of the street and stop at the shop on the corner at number 50 Gloucester Road.