Toy Story
With the Fringe upon us, this is the perfect time to pay a visit to our most magical festival venue: The Brighton Toy and Model Museum. Peter Chrisp has been talking with the museum manager, Jan Etches, and founder, Chris Littledale
Every day, more than 40,000 people pass through Brighton Station, arriving and departing. Few of them realise that directly beneath their feet lies one of the great cultural treasures of our city: Brighton Toy and Model Museum. And the trains running below have much more finesse than the Gatwick Express.
Like Bom-Bane’ s and BOAT, the museum was created without public funding by a local cultural hero and a group of friends. Chris Littledale is a tinsmith, expert toy restorer and an obsessive model train collector. He says,‘’ It’ s a disease. I have been collecting, continuously, since I was 12.’’ By the 1980s, his Hove flat was so full of trains that it looked like a toy museum. Friends persuaded him that he should put his collection on public display. The search for a location ended when Chris discovered that four of the Victorian arches under the station forecourt, once the Bass brewery and stables, could be rented. The floors were uneven and the brick walls were damp. It took months of renovation work before the museum, registered as a charity, was finally able to open, in 1991.
The heart of the museum has always been Chris’ s central 1930s train layout. The best time to see it is on one of the Train Running Days, when you can experience the full glory of multiple locomotives clattering around the tracks. The collections around it have steadily grown until there are now more than 12,000 exhibits, most of them from the pre-plastic Golden Age of Toys, a period when children moved from playing with Noah’ s arks to space rockets. All Brightonians should visit the Glamour of Brighton display in the first arch, created in 2010, along with the mural of the Brighton Belle in the arches outside.
For many years, the museum was run by Chris and his friends, often model train enthusiasts like my Uncle Philip and Aunt Denise, as volunteers in the 1990s. Jan Etches, manager since 2018, is the first experienced m u s e u m professional to take charge. She’ d been working in museum education for more than ten years and did a Masters in how to make cultural attractions more visitor friendly. Jan says,‘’ I was considerably older than a lot of the people they’ d employed in the past, and when they took me on I was gobby and opinionated, and I had the wisdom of age to rock the boat.’’ Straight away, Jan started to use the museum as a venue for hire to bring in new audiences. In the early 2020s, Folkroom Records ran a Toy Museum Folk Club, inviting audiences to‘’ watch murder ballads performed beside a sprawling train set, or 18th century dance songs reconstructed under the watchful eye of the museum’ s collection of Steiff’ s least popular stuffed toys- they have a snail!’’ It was a regular venue for the Brighton Science Festival and now hosts the Aging Well Festival and Heritage Open Days. Visitor numbers have more than doubled since Jan became manager.
I asked Chris and Jan if they had a favourite exhibit. Chris chose the model of the Hospital Ship Maine, built by his father while stationed on the ship as an eye surgeon in WW2:‘’ It’ s a beautifully detailed precision model, incorporating all complex nautical features and beautifully finished.’’ You can see a photo of Chris’ father holding his model on the museum website’ s
9,000 page Toy and Model Index.
Jan says,‘’ I have many favourite toys, but the Marklin range cooker is probably a standout for me. I’ m really interested in the social history of the collection and how toys were gendered. For most of the toys in the museum, the people who owned them would have been pretty wealthy and the toys were designed to teach kids skills that were useful when they grew up. This range cooker had an actual spirit burner so it could heat up to boil water- and even cook a quail’ s egg! This stove is always a‘ jaw-dropper’ when I show it to visitors.’’
My own favourites are the two Dismal Desmonds, a soft toy based on a depressed dog in the magazine Toby. In the 1920s, there was a big craze for Desmond and there’ s even a song on YouTube: Charles Penrose’ s‘ Dismal Desmond the Despondent Dalmation’. The Dean’ s Rag Book Company also brought out a Cheerful Desmond but people far preferred the miserable one.
Jan is busy right now working on the Trafalgar Street Regeneration Project, which will open up and illuminate the bricked up arches, transforming the exterior of the museum. The total cost of the build is £ 200,000, but Jan has already raised three quarters of that. She says,‘’ We’ re only bit short of the money we need and it’ s very achievable.’’
Building work is due to to start this summer. You can donate on the JustGiving page and help make this happen. You can also hire the museum for special celebrations.
l www. brightontoymuseum. co. uk l www. justgiving. com / campaign / TrafalgarStreet