The Cab Road was filmed and edited by artist Annis Joslin with narration by historian Jackie Marsh-Hobbs. The films illustrates the journey from the entrance of the Cab Road on Trafalgar Street to the exit onto platform eight of the station (now blocked). This would have been the journey along the Cab Road horses and cab drivers would have taken when the route was in operation.
The transcript from the film (from Jackie-Marsh Hobbs’ narration):
You have just heard the sound of the train leaving platform eight in Brighton Station heading to Lewes. We’re in the Cab Road, hidden behind the large timber doors that are in Trafalgar Street just past the Toy Museum, is the Cab Road that was there to allow the cabs to go from Trafalgar Street right up into the station without having to climb the terrible hill. You can see how high up and how wide it is here.
On the left hand side is the supporting wall of the station side, which goes back to when it was first built in 1840. The original station site had been cut into a plateau on the side of the hill. And on the right hand side, you have all these sort of arches where there would have been rooms on the other side.
There are now staff offices and things there, but it would have been looking out over the old goods yards originally. You must have noticed, we have been climbing up very gradually. And above our heads, you can see all these girders, which is where it was built out to enlarge the station in 1882.
So you’ve got the girders with the wooden sleepers on the top of that being supported by these enormous cast iron columns. The section where we are now is just past the ladies and gents’ toilets where the restaurants are. This was all built out in 1882, when they enlarged the whole of the station site by building out over the old goods yard.
The section here is where the old goods tunnel – the arch of where the old goods tunnel used to come out into the goods yard. Here you’ll notice how it’s becoming very narrow. So from this point onwards, the horse cabs would have been a one-way system.
Obviously, it’s very narrow. And this is because you’re now underneath where the actual line is, and then the platform of platform eight. Above your head, you can see the train actually moving going off to Lewes.
We’re carrying on underneath where the line is. And you’ll notice there is a slight pavement. So this was used for the cabs. And it was not for taking passengers up there. It’s for just getting the cabs to where they need to be to pick up their passengers.
And so as it’s turning here, this is where you’re going from underneath the line, to underneath the actual platform itself. And if you look up in the distance, you can see there is a girder going across. That is where it cuts underneath the row of columns on platform eight, and then it will run underneath for the rest of its journey, right to where the platform is in a straight sort of line.
And I have to excuse all of this rubbish and things there. It’s where everything was cleared for the art exhibition. And also the rubbish that you can see is where people drop their rubbish on the line and on the platform and it works its way down into the actual Cab Road. On the right hand side, can you see where you have bricks that are protruding out? So, you’ve got a line of different columns and they’re the ones that are running along where platform eight is.
And above you is the actual platform. As you can see, the wood, these are all the original old cobbles there. There are drains there. You can see how it goes in the middle to drain out the water. They weren’t there for passengers to use.
This was just this bit for the cabs to be using there. Because if you imagine this space that you’re going through where steam trains would have been above your head in that part of it, and you’ve just got the horses and the cabs and all this noise from above and the darkness of the whole thing as well. There’s an addition here. So, this wouldn’t have been here originally when it was used as a cab road.
This is a more recent addition that has been put there with doors. But again, this is very narrow. This is why it was a one-way system for the cabs, so that the horse cabs could climb up gently to the level of the station and not have to do the very steep hill up to Fougere Street.
I think it would have been very noisy, very claustrophobic, very smelly, possibly. And I think most probably the cab drivers were off at this point, and they were just leading the horses up where it gets very narrow at the end of it. So as we’re getting to the end, you can see where it’s climbing up on the other side and these bricked in arches, so light would have been coming through here.
And this tiny little bit here is where the cabs turned around and then came up to the level of where the station is. All this brickwork has been added in more recent years to give more support, and actually made it smaller than they would have had to turn around here where it’s bricked out. You can see that you’ve got all the arches there, which allow the light to go through.
The breeze block in the distance that you can see, that’s where it actually would have come out into the bottom of the last climb up into the station. And then these little stores – yes, all of these would have had doors on them there and been storage, I think, mostly for coal. One of them survived at the end there.
And the reason the arches are there is so that the light could go through. If you see those cuts into the brickwork is where they use the cab wheels, the metal wheels, as a braking system so that they didn’t roll back down where the slope is. And then the last little bit where the breezeblocks is where they would come to the level of the roadway between platform eight and seven.
And again, you get a great view of the cab road where it’s running up on the other side there. And these arches, as I said, they would have gone right to the end, allowing all that light into that section of the cab road. As you get a very good view as you’re going down from this section, the way that it’s going back down so very gradual, the climb that the horse have to do.
And you can really get the view of how it turns around. And that natural light would have gone into that whole last section coming up towards the turn. And the reason the Cab Road stopped being used was because of motorised cabs, once they were introduced, they couldn’t do the [sharp] turn at the end.
So that’s why it stopped being used. And also they could [ascend] the hill much easier. A very special place, imagine the horses all coming up and the business of the space that you would have had.
