Brighton

Brighton is a coastal suburb of Adelaide, South Australia, situated between Seacliff and Glenelg and aside Holdfast Bay.

Brighton is a coastal suburb of Adelaide, South Australia, situated between Seacliff and Glenelg and aside Holdfast Bay. Some notable features of the area are the Brighton-Seacliff Yacht Club, the Brighton Surf Lifesaving Club, the Brighton Jetty, and a beach. The Windsor Theatre constructed in 1925 is a long-standing institution, showing cinema to the locals usually two films per night.

The Kaurna people inhabited the area before British colonisation of South Australia. Witu-wattingga has become the accepted Kaurna name for the area, although its origin is probably arose through confusion with Wita-wattingga, the certified Kaurna name for an area around present-day Seacliff Park, meaning "in the midst of peppermint gums". (There is, however, a Kaurna language meaning for witu-watti, meaning "reeds in the middle", so could be applied to some small, intermittent swamps with reeds in the area, such as one near Young Street in Seacliff.)

Brighton Post Office opened on 27 August 1849. Brighton Jetty Post Office opened on 1 March 1950 and closed in 1979.

Brighton became the seat of a newly-formed municipality, the Corporate Town of Brighton, in 1858.

The first Brighton Town Hall was built in 1869 and was just the fourth Town Hall built in the colony of South Australia. The architect and builder was George William Highet who arrived in the colony in 1836 and served as a town clerk and inaugural councillor. He died in Brighton aged 80 years. The hall was constructed of stone from Ayliffe’s quarry in the Adelaide Hills laid on concrete foundations. It was used as the civic centre of the City of Brighton from 1869 until 1936 when it was then leased by the RSL.

The second town hall was opened in 1937, at 24 Jetty Road, and still fulfils a civic administration purpose.

Brighton was the home of Australian geologist, Antarctic explorer and academic Sir Douglas Mawson. He was buried at St Jude's Church Cemetery in the suburb.

North Brighton Cemetery nearby, at 301 Brighton Road, is the "last resting place" of Catherine Helen Spence and her brother J. B. Spence, Pat Glennon and Paul Moran.