Royal Liaison · Brighton, East Sussex
Royal Pavilion, Brighton (George IV & Maria Fitzherbert)
George IV built his fantastical pleasure-palace at Brighton while conducting his relationship with Maria Fitzherbert, whom he had secretly and illegally married in 1785 — 'the wife of my heart and soul'. Brighton, then and now, is a hot spot of romance and scandal.
More stories at this spot
- George IV & Lady Jersey
- Brighton as gay/romance capital
Sources
Nearby on the map
The Sussex farmhouse where the Bloomsbury Group 'lived in squares and loved in triangles' — Vanessa Bell, her lover Duncan Grant and his lover David Garnett under one painted roof, a laboratory of open relationships and bisexual love.
Documented historyHot spotFolk Rite & FertilityThe Long Man of WilmingtonWilmington, East Sussex · EnglandA 235ft chalk giant clasping two staves, a focus for neo-pagan and May-Day fertility ritual where the Long Man Morris Men dance at dawn. A 2003 excavation led by Professor Martin Bell of the University of Reading (with the Open University's Landscape Mysteries) strongly suggested the figure dates from the Early Modern period — the 16th or 17th century AD.
Documented + folkloreRoyal LiaisonHever Castle (Henry VIII courts Anne Boleyn)Hever, Edenbridge, Kent · EnglandAnne Boleyn's girlhood home, where Henry VIII rode out to press a courtship that would break England from Rome. The castle keeps his love letters' story alive — 'I would you were in mine arms, or I in yours' — the correspondence of a king undone by a woman who knew the value of waiting.
Documented historySpotted an error, or hold a better source? Write to marquis@marquisdemayfair.com — corrections are made, never defended. Our methodology.