Visit Us At The Lanes Armoury In Brighton, Open 6 Days a Week, Rain or Shine. However, on Saturday & Sunday August 3rd, & 4th, Pride Weekend The Ground Floor Shop Will Be Closed {As Usual}.

As our family businesses {family motto; Gloria Antika} have been based in Brighton Lanes for over 100 years we are known around the world to dealers, historians, military families, museum curators, tv and movie companies, collectors and regular tourists alike.

Brighton will be swamped with an extra few hundred thousand visitors on Pride Weekend this coming 3rd and 4th of August. But, just as last year, we closed for the weekend, {we never open on Sundays anyway} as all the main town centre access roads will be closed from Friday night until Sunday evening. It was a fabulous weekend last year for all the local ‘service’ shops, restaurants, cafes, bars, pubs, hotels etc. but the retail stores will mostly close. If you are visiting Brighton then, enjoy, it is a wonderful experience, and great joy and fun will be had by all. Our first and top floor web-store office and apartments will be open as usual 24/7, for the whole weekend, but not the ground floor-gallery shop. But, you can contact us here by phone, or email the partners wherever they may be anytime. But please be patient for a reply.

Fun fact: Brighton pride will cover an area of approximately 9 square miles in Brighton this coming weekend, and will be attended by the equivalent of almost half the entire population of the state of Alaska in the United States. A state that has 148 cities, and is larger than Texas, California and Montana combined, covering 663,000 square miles

Our family representatives have travelled to Tokyo by personal invitation in July, and then on to Beijing, China ,
They were invited to see the Brighton & Hove Albion, aka the ‘Seagulls’ in Tokyo, and watch them play the ‘Kashima Antlers’ in the Japanese National Stadium last Wednesday. Well Done Seagulls!. They won that particular match, yet the result was all taken with jolly good grace, and the reception by the Japanese locals was simply fantastic. They have now returned and stated the Japanese locals were some of the most polite and courteous people they had ever met, and Japan was one of the most beautiful and enjoyable countries either had ever visited. China was utterly breathtaking and their visitors were greeted by astonishment and joy by the amazing locals as hundreds of them had never ever seen westerners before, especial a 6’2’” Englishman. They were even photographed and interviewed by the local national press. The Terracotta Army was one of the most extraordinary museums they had ever seen, and a private walk along the Great Wall was one of the stand out moments of both their lives. Emily had recently only just been on a trans European trip, stretching from Florence, to Split, from Italy, Switzerland, France, Germany Austria and Croatia. Where she noted just how friendly, courteous and accommodating almost all of the people she met were. Enjoying personally guided visits to some of the greatest museums and palaces Europe has to offer. She was also in Paris just prior to the Olympic Games, and remarked that she found the French locals in Paris, very different to all the National Japanese, Chinese, Italian, Swiss, Austrian and Croatian, locals that they met, and that they were ‘very Parisian’. And when the locals realised she was English, they became even more Parisian.

These visits may bear interesting fruit, we will hopefully let our Far Eastern Artefact collectors know in mid August

In the past week, as usual, we have had hundreds of visitors journeying especially to visit us from such places as Scandinavia, {including Iceland, Sweden, Norway and Greenland} from Europe, {France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany} Lichtenstein and Switzerland, and from North America, Central America and South America. Plus our usual year round visitors from the Far East, such as China, Japan, Indonesia and Singapore. Only on this past Friday, we were graced by an arranged visit from an entire visiting Japanese delegation of around a dozen diplomats, politicians and businessmen {daihyō-torishimariyaku}. Their courtesy, kindness, respect and conversation, {much of it regarding traditional Japanese samurai art and culture} is always a delight and a joy to experience, first hand, so to speak. We were also greatly honoured to be invited to the ICBM conference in Tokyo on the 3rd October, to potentially take part in a lecture of Anglo-Japanese studies {translator provided of course}. Sadly, despite such a great honour, we had to regrettably decline, as neither of the partners travel abroad any longer.

Due to our unique, generations long presence, visitors, in their hundreds of thousands from all around the globe travel to Brighton every year, through every season, and visit our gallery whether to buy, sell or simply view.
Consequently this means that every day, descendants of old war veterans from past wars may bring their treasures and heirlooms to sell, or even just to enquire about their potential story if they are unknown to them. If we can help we are delighted to assist, and we never, ever charge. It is entirely free and offered with the greatest of pleasure, in fact it happens often over 50 times a day, week in week out.

It is why we are able to offer, often unique souvenirs of combat veterans, sometimes remarkable, sometimes not so, but all are unique in their own way. We are a really old fashioned antique store, an old business, with old fashioned ways, and old fashioned standards. A shop that’s crammed to the gunnels with, as we like say, ‘a few bits and pieces’. If you have never actually been here, come down one day, you never know, you might like it!.

The story of Brighton {formerly Brighthelmstone};

It first came to the notice of King William the Conqueror when it was listed in the Domesday Book in 1086, when it was then called Brighthelmstone. The oldest still surviving part of Brighton is the old Lanes, {now called The South Lanes} where we are based, and during its earliest history it was a simple farming and fishing community, only 14 miles South west of Lewes, the old capitol of Sussex. Brighthelmstone was a relatively peaceful place for many centuries {apart from when it was was frequently raided, and burnt to the ground, by our jolly old French neighbours}.

Jump forward several hundred years, whereupon, the Prince Regent and his court had first visited Brighton in 1783, and it was where he decided to build a magnificent summer palace.

Londoners have been travelling to Brighton for beach getaways ever since the railway arrived here in 1841. The pebbled beach, the Brighton Lanes, Brighton Pier's amusement arcade the Royal Pavilion the magnificent Brighton Marina are the main sights, but you'll also find hundreds of pubs and clubs catering to an energetic crowd. Not to mention the fabulous Theatre Royal. Just last week we were absolutely delighted to see a fantastic performance of ‘The 39 Steps’ it was with out doubt one of the most enjoyable evenings we have ever spent at the theatre. The cast of just four actors played dozens of roles each {apart from the lead, aka Richard Hannay} and it was simply a tour de force, a masterpiece of theatre!.

Brighton has been colloquially known as London by the sea, and referred by millions as Britain’s favourite seaside town that is only 55 minutes from London by train and 40 minutes from London Gatwick airport.
It has probably the most cosmopolitan inhabitants of any city in Europe, and known by many as the centre of the ‘artistic’ life of the UK. Come and visit if you have never been, it may be an experience you will never forget. From the 2nd to the 5th of August this year somewhere between 300,000 to 400,000 extra visitors will arrive in Brighton for Brighton Pride Weekend.

We show in the gallery just a selection of the sights to be seen in Brighton, including the stunning Palace of King George IVth known as the Pavilion, also, one of Britain’s oldest pubs, the Cricketers, formerly owned by the late, and truly greatly lamented landlady, Winnie Sexton, in her day probably England's most famed lady publican. In fact it was our family local for over 100 years, where Mark and his father before him, has imbibed and conducted business with members of the artistic and entertainment fraternity, such as Lord ‘Larry’ Olivier, Graham Greene {occasionally} & John Osborne, and where, Mark’s father, David senior, enjoyed ‘several’ libations in the 50’s with Max Miller, & later with Dame Flora Robson, both late Brighton residents, plus hundreds of their contemporaries, such as dear actress hotelier Dora Bryan and her husband Bill Lawton, former resident owners of the Kemp Town seafront hotel, Clarges.
Over 50 years ago, Mark and our head coachman Bill ‘Yorkie’ Cole, carried Kenneth Williams, Sid James, Joan Sims and Charles Hawtrey, in fact whole main cast of the ‘Carry on Crew’, in our Victorian horse drawn landau carriage, for a scene the Carry On film ‘Carry on At Your Convenience’, along Madeira Drive to the Palace Pier. See photos 9 and 10 in the gallery to see some of our past customers, friends and regulars, plus the ‘Carry On’, crew arriving in our carriage, just near the Palace Pier.

This weekend those in the entertainment industry might visit, maybe as as a member and or guest, the restaurant, pool or balcony, of the all new Soho House Members Club. Last summer we visited there, with our granddaughter, a Soho member, for a delightful luncheon, and it is just a few hundred yards from the front door of our late former Royal Crescent neighbour, friend and customer, Lord Larry, and he would have loved it, especially as it is now, literally, right on his former doorstep.

Brighton has more varied restaurants and watering establishments than you can imagine
Also, Brighton is the perfect city for vegans.

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