Brighton pub picks up design award

The Bevy in Brighton has picked up a prize for the best street-corner local at the National Pub Design Awards.

The pub, in Hillside, Moulsecoomb, won praise at the awards, hosted by CAMRA, for its outstanding refurbishment. It reopened in December 2014.

The Morning Advertiser trade paper said: “The Joe Goodwin Award went to the Bevy in Brighton. The 1930s pub in the middle of a Brighton council estate faced closure and conversion or demolition.

“Locals reinvented the Bevy, raising funds and carrying out much of the refurbishment work.”

The Joe Goodwin Award was named after the late CAMRA chairman Joe Goodwin and reserved for outstanding refurbished street-corner locals.

The makeover was designed by ABIR Architects, of St John’s Road, Hove, who were also named at the awards ceremony.

The author of the judges’ report Steven Parissien said that the story of the Bevy was an “inspiring and heartening tale”.

He said: “Eighteen thousand residents were left without a pub. The nearest alternative was four miles away.

“In response the locals got together and reinvented the Bevendean Hotel as the Bevy, a not-for-profit co-operative resource to which everyone could contribute and all could enjoy.

“And now the pub is a friendly, welcoming hub for community life. There is no pool table and no TV. The interior is smart and honestly contemporary.”

He added: “CAMRA has been at the forefront of initiatives to protect our best pubs from demolition or inappropriate conversion.

“Now the latest Pub Design Award winners show that there’s lot of life left in this much-loved national treasure.

“These awards boast the most diverse and inspirational range of pub buildings we’ve judged in the history of the competition.

“All the winners show that good sympathetic design makes commercial as well as aesthetic sense.

“They also demonstrate how fabulous pubs can be used as the engines of regeneration for communities and causes.

“They remind us that the British pub is so much more than somewhere to have a pint. It is the beating heart of our neighbourhood, a place that defines our identity and locality, an agent for relaxation, renewal and revitalisation.”

The awards were run in conjunction with Historic England and the Victorian Society.