More people joined the campaign to save the seafront’s Madeira Terrace at a family fun day on Sunday.
Members of the public gave more than £1,400 through bucket collections, sales of merchandise and online pledges, helping to boost the crowdfunding campaign launched four weeks ago to rebuild and restore the iconic seafront structure.
Madeira Terrace is an 850m long stretch of 151 seafront arches on Madeira Drive in Brighton and thought to be the longest cast iron structure in Britain. The campaign aims to start the journey of bringing it back to full use – it has been closed to the public since 2012.
To make a pledge and find out more go to: www.savemadeiraterrace.org. Residents, visitors and businesses have registered more than 600 pledges so far. More are needed. The campaign has an ambitious target of £431,000 by the end of November. This will kick start the regeneration of Madeira Terrace and be used to bring at least three of the arches back into use.
Just over a third of the total is now pledged, thanks to people’s generosity.
To complement the campaign, tourism businesses and volunteers have launched the Madeira Drive Project to help improve the appearance of Madeira Drive.
Last weekend’s event was part of that project and visitors to the old Peter Pan playground site enjoyed a variety of stalls, entertainers and giant seagulls. Brighton & Hove Tourism Alliance and the council’s tourism arm VisitBrighton organised the fun day.
Brighton Palace Pier sponsored the stalls and got the day off to a flying start with a contribution of £150.
Everyone who donated at the event received a sticker giving free entry to all the films showing at the Big Screen on Brighton beach that day as well as special offers at local attractions.
Howard Barden, head of VisitBrighton says: “The fun day offered something extra on the eastern promenade for people to come down and enjoy while showing their support for Madeira Terrace, which is part of our heritage and important for the future of the seafront that belongs to everyone.”
Find out more about Madeira Terrace and the crowdfunding campaign
Photograph courtesy of British Airways i360