Five of the railway arches at the top of Trafalgar Street are set to be opened up with glazed shopfronts, with two new retail units and more light for Brighton Toy and Model Museum.
The museum is tucked under the station concourse at the top of Trafalgar Street, and all but one of the five arches it occupies is fully bricked up.
Under the plans, three of its arches will have glazed shopfronts installed, allowing natural light to enter the museum by day, and new windows and glazed doors will be installed in the two arches above it too.
At night, they will be lit up, helping to illuminate the underpass.
The application, submitted jointly by The Arch Company, which leases railway arches, and the museum, says: “The proposal aims to open up and show the Brighton Toy and Model Museum along Trafalgar Street and improve the street itself, which is an important threshold into Brighton, especially the North Laine conservation area.
“Opening up the arches to the Brighton Station undercroft will allow the Trafalgar Street space to feel inhabited and welcoming to the public.
“By creating glazed shopfronts, natural light will be able to enter the arches during the day, and the shopfronts will help illuminate the underpass at night.
“The museum will greatly benefit from increased visibility to the surrounding streets.
“This proposal will clearly show that the museum houses a vast collection, currently occupying five of the seven arches under the station, rather than just arch number seven.
“The public will be able to see elements of the museum’s intricate collection in three shopfront displays, either side of the impressive Pullman mural.
“New metal lettering also helps signal the scale of the Brighton Toy & Model Museum.
“The new shopfronts also offer passive natural surveillance to what was once a blind thoroughfare.
“We propose to restore and repair the surviving historic fabric to Trafalgar Street by carefully cleaning the existing 19th Century face brickwork to the undercroft and repairing and repainting the surviving Victorian stucco ‘panels’.
“We also propose to improve lighting along the underpass by installing wall washing lighting at a high level and historically inspired lanterns to illuminate the main entrance to the museum.
“A final objective to this project is to make better use of the currently vacant arches to the east of the museum.”
The museum’s new shopfronts will be fitted with chainlink shutters, to allow the display cases to seen through them.
The application can be found on the planning register by searching for application BH2021/02115.
Sounds like a great idea!