The bohemian corner of Britain where The Body Shop was born
Brighton and Hove, playground of philandering princes, unruly thesps and generation after generation of artists, writers and poets, is not a city short on Blue Plaques. They’re everywhere.
Listed under Arts and Culture you’ll find Doreen Valiente, “Mother of Modern Witchcraft”, and poet and author Sir Lawrence Olivier, founder of the National Theatre.
Under Science and Industry is Magnus Volk, whose “oldest operating public electric railway in the world” still trundles along the seafront in Kemptown.
Under Civic, Political and Military is the Russian prince Pyotr (Peter) Kropotkin, listed simply as “Anarchist”, and the Sport category claims little-known Mercedes Gleitze, pioneer of long-distance swimming.
And on a sliver of wall between a dressmaker’s shop and an opticians in North Laine, Brighton’s bohemian core and independent shopping hub (Laine comes from the old English word that describes a meadow or field), is another plaque honouring “Body Shop founder, Environmentalist and Animal Rights campaigner,” Dame Anita Roddick.
“The Body Shop, along with Patagonia and Ben & Jerry’s, were pioneers of ESG [environmental, social, and corporate governance],” says chair of Responsible Travel and Projects for Nature, Justin Francis.
“The Body Shop and its founders Anita and Gordon Roddick were the inspiration for Responsible Travel and also seed investors.”
The late Roddick’s first shop, offering refillable bottles of cruelty-free beauty products, opened here in 1976, at 22 Kensington Gardens. When my mum came here for hemp hand cream, I’d go dizzy over the tropical scents. It smelt like the world in one exotic room.
North Laine, a grid of residential and attractive commercial streets, is anchored by Brighton Station and the Royal Pavilion.
On a wet Tuesday, Kensington Gardens, a pedestrian lane home to local businesses including Resident Music, Bert’s Homestore, Kennys Rock and Soul Café (known locally as the “balcony café”) and the esoteric, Tardis-like vintage emporium Snoopers Paradise, was busy.
Passionate and principled, Roddick and the likes of University of Sussex students Ian Loeffler and Peter Deadman, who started a macrobiotic café on campus and then expanded into a shop called Infinity Foods that sold among other things, “real bread,” helped breathe new life into the residential neighbourhood.
“North Laine is where you came if you wanted to start a business,” says the owner of Snoopers, Zena Thompson. “Because it was cheap.”
So cheap that the same year Roddick launched, North Laine was nearly murdered by a flyover. But it didn’t come to pass.
Today, a pastel-painted bow-windowed cottage large enough to house two pixies could set you back £500,000. So has Brighton’s golden goose snuffed out the spirit of Britain’s most bohemian corner?
“There’s still a great community here,” says tailor Gresham Blake, in the handsome shop he runs with his wife Fal. Blake began cutting cloth in the neighbourhood 25 years ago in a room he shared with a biodegradable coffin and a ceramic toilet-seat maker.
If you watch The Masked Singer you’ll have seen Blake’s suits on host Joel Dommett and an exclusive, limited-edition Peaky Blinders range drops this year.
“It’s still diverse, young and inclusive and people are passionate about what they do,” he adds. “You can’t just create that sort of energy.”
Not far away is the Gak (guitar, amp, keyboard) music emporium, the Vegetarian Shoe Shop and the hardware store Dockerills, in business for 90 years. The shop is run by fifth generation “Dockerill”, Jo. Service is faultless.
Gak, an endless rabbit warren of rooms, began as a market stall in 1992 and is now one of the UK’s largest independent musical instrumental retailers.
The Vegetarian Shoe Shop opened in 1991 and has a worldwide mail-order business but visitors still come from Kenya, Japan and Russia.
Its satchels and popular Boulder Boots (£179) come in a range of colours and its newer trainer range incorporates corn, Piñatex, extracted from the fibrous leaves of the pineapple, and apple leather.
Pubs like The Basketmakers Arms and The Great Eastern won’t disappoint, the North Laine Runner is still being printed 48 years on. Although Gail’s, Costa and Starbucks have infiltrated, North Laine is cacao bean (and bubble tea) heaven.
Dave’s Comics and the decades-old vintage clothes shop Starfish – which evolved from a stall at a local car-boot fair – are going strong on Sydney Street, and one of Pelicano’s eye-watering cakes will help shift residual incense from your throat.
You could walk into a café in North Laine in full Regency clobber or with a parrot on your shoulder and nobody would judge (although with avian flu about, now is not a great time to test that hypothesis).
“You’ve got to be different to survive here,” says Snooper’s Zena Thompson.
The biggest threat to this community, and to livelihoods, is rates and rents – mentioned by every business owner I spoke to, including local institution, Dockerills. Roddick would struggle to flourish here today.
Outside 22 Kensington Gardens, home to Ditto Fabrics (“a treasure trove of fabulous fabric”), passersby didn’t notice the plaque.
When I pointed it out only one shopper, a Ditto customer for 30 years, knew of the Body Shop’s Brighton origins, although most knew of its recent troubles.
“I follow Mary Portas and I read her post on Instagram. It’s very sad,” said Lucy, from Southampton.
Inside, I headed up a narrow staircase to a small room where owner and founder Gill Thornley was drawing at a large measuring table. Thornley bought the lease from Anita Roddick and her husband.
The space is full of bolts but it’s not hard to imagine Roddick here, refilling her distinctive, green-labelled bottles.
“It wasn’t easy being a woman in business then,” she said. “My landlord was an ‘oh, not another arty-farty female’ type. Anita understood that and gave me time to sort it out.”
Thornley has been here for 40 years – long enough to remember the greengrocers and the dedicated cork and foam shops. “We offer good service and we really know what we’re doing,” she says.
As the Body Shop empire came crashing down yesterday, the rain felt entirely appropriate. There was nothing else for it but an eye-watering cake.