Celebrate Brighton's Martha Gunn

We are fundraising for The Martha Gunn Trust which is based in Brighton, UK . In 2026/7 it will be the 300th anniversary of the birth of Martha Gunn. We have created this Trust in order to raise awareness and to generate funds for us, as a City, to be able to commemorate this incredible lady for the next 300 years.

Martha was an ordinary woman, not from a poor family, as many believe, but certainly from a hard working family of fisher-folk. Born around 1727, she became well-known for running the bathing machines at Brighton, dipping the nobility and wealthy that flocked to our town from as early as the 1750’s. She was full of character and good friends with George, Prince of Wales, who made Brighton his favourite residence.

Martha worked with many women to develop seabathing in Brighton and this developed tourism as we see it today .If you are descended from the fishing communities at Brighton, you can almost certainly guarantee you are somehow related, which makes her even more special, the Grandmother of Brighton even!

We think Martha Gunn and the company of bathers should be memorialised. We have lots of ideas and we will need funding to make this a reality. To register as a charity we need £5000 as a start!

We are developing a website to keep you updated on how we are doing as a Trust and to keep you informed of future events and how our fundraiser is going. We have a Celebrate Brighton's Martha Gunn facebook group