The Royal Pavilion's own archive is now open to the public at The Keep

The Royal Pavilion’s archive has moved to The Keep^1,2,3,4, the archive centre near Falmer, and anyone can now order its papers and read them there. The Keep announced it in its November newsletter.

The papers record how the building was made and changed, and the lives of the people who lived and worked there. The biggest single group is the building plans, which run from 1827 to 1938. The Keep calls them “works of art in themselves”.

Account books name the people who worked on the building before the Victorian period. Committee minute books cover the later work, after the Brighton Commissioners bought the Pavilion from the royal estate in 1850. There are also inventories, accounts and letters. Only a few of the records relate directly to royalty.

Brighton Museum won a grant from The National Archives in 2025 for the project, called Unlocking the Royal Pavilion Archives. The aim was to move the papers to The Keep and catalogue them, and the catalogue is now on The Keep’s website under reference DB/H.

Saadia Khan, an archivist cataloguing the Pavilion’s collections, has written on the museums’ site about what she found. One find is an 1850 drawing by Christopher Wren Vick for new decorations in the Banqueting Room, after the original decorations were stripped out in the sale. The gold on it is real gold leaf. She also found a plan of the Brighton Dome’s gas chandelier, which had 520 jets and was taken down in the 1930s, and a plan for flower beds in the Pavilion Garden dated 7 October 1874.

Viewing is free, but you need a reader’s card, and it is best to book ahead, as the Reading Room has seats for only 15 people a day. There’s no café, so bring lunch. The Keep is shut from 25 December to 1 January.