The changing face of Brighton

---

Throughout the summer and autumn of 1996, groups of volunteers all over the UK were to be found attentively scanning the landscape, pencils and clipboards in hand. Land Use - UK mobilised 1,400 schools and 50,000 people to survey the way we use our land. They were repeating an exercise that first took place in the 1930s and again in the 1960s.

"The experience had a profound educational impact on the students involved and the results of the survey form a major contribution to the nation's environmental database", said Rex Walford, who co-ordinated the 1990s survey. "The project has demonstrated the incomparable value of fieldwork and geography in a properly rounded education."

The area around Brighton was surveyed in 138 kilometre squares. It covers the Sussex coast centred on Brighton and Hove, extending westwards to Shoreham harbour and the Adur valley and eastwards to Saltdean and Telscombe Cliffs.

Surveying was co-ordinated by the Brighton branch of the Geographical Association under the direction of Dr Tony Binns, Senior Lecturer in Geography at Sussex. He dispatched 108 unsuspecting first-year undergraduates across the area, and they completed 64 grid squares in a single day.

More than 200 students from schools in Brighton, Hove, Lewes and Shoreham also collected data for the survey. They included 10 A level students from the Old Grammar School in Lewes, who walked the fields above Kingston and mapped them according to how the land was being used. "We concluded that the land use fitted the relief and that there was some set-aside land", said Elizabeth Williams, head of geography. "Kingston had spread since the 1960s and some fields had amalgamated. Also there was very good marking of footpaths which implies heavy tourist use. I think it gave pupils a real feel for the local area and showed how land use really fits in with physical geography."

Once the survey work was complete, research fellow Sarah Cormac took on the unenviable job of moderating and checking the data. University cartographer Susan Rowlands then began the painstaking task of turning 138 hand-coloured squares into one digitised map and liaising with the Ordnance Survey on its publication.

The colour-coded map, which was launched at a geographers' conference on campus earlier this month, shows residential areas, industry, countryside, farmland and public institutions. It provides a unique snapshot of the area in 1996 and is the only sheet covered by Land Use - UK to be published. "No other area in the country has all three maps", said Tony. "It's been a great achievement, really. I can't believe we've done it."

A comparative study of the three maps reveals some remarkable changes in the Brighton area since the 1930s. Undoubtedly the most striking change is the considerable growth in housing. "The urban area grew at a rapid pace between the 1930s and 1960s", said Tony. "The coastal strip became a continuous built-up area."

The new map also demonstrates the striking differences in terms of transport and the relentless expansion of the road system in the area. Tony pointed out that, while three local railway lines have disappeared, the Adur flyover and the Brighton and Hove bypass didn't even exist in the 1960s.

• Single copies of the map are available from Susan Rowlands in the Geography Laboratory (Arts C174), price £7.00 plus £1.50 p&p. For teaching sets and single copies, contact Latitude, tel. 01707 663090.