Marlborough Pub and Theatre

The Marlborough Pub and Theatre stands on Princes Street in Brighton, a building first raised as the Golden Cross inn in 1787. Its cellar hides a bricked-up passage once said to have let George, Prince of Wales slip unseen between the inn and the Royal Pavilion. By the 1820s the inn belonged to James Ireland, who also opened the short-lived Royal Gardens pleasure grounds on The Level. The Brighton Royal Catch & Glee Club sang there every Tuesday evening while Ireland ran the place. Later landlords included the Creech brothers, whose debts led to a detailed inventory of the inn’s furnishings in 1849. The pub’s later years brought a notorious murder in 1900 when Lucy Packham was found dead at the foot of the stairs. Her husband Thomas was tried for manslaughter and served four years, and the case was re-enacted on stage in 1979. Staff have since reported poltergeist-like disturbances blamed on Lucy’s ghost, including sudden cold draughts and flying bottles. From the 1970s the Marlborough became a gathering place for Sussex Gay Liberation Front and Brighton CHE, hosting discos, film nights and meetings. Right-wing groups also met there in the same decade. Inside, the small theatre seats fifty to sixty and dates from the 1970s refurbishment with a proscenium arch and later velvet curtains. Radical lesbian feminist company Siren made their debut there in 1979 before touring widely until 1989. Aids Positive Underground Theatre also performed John Roman Baker’s urgent plays about HIV and AIDS in the late 1980s. The pub reopened in 2021 as The Actors, while the theatre continues to present drama, cabaret and music throughout the year.