Numbers 14 & 15: house histories
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Land originally owned by Thomas Read Kemp
Numbers 14 and 15 Victoria Road were built by Robert Ackerson and Thomas Pelling, on land acquired from Thomas Read Kemp in the early 1830s. Number 14 was called ‘Selby Villa’ and number 15, ‘St Alban’s Villa’. In a good light you can just see the outline of the name St Alban’s Villa on the gatepost of No 15.
A DIY surprise
In the 1980s, the then owner of No 16 was stripping wallpaper from his drawing room wall and uncovered the name of the next door house painted in early Victorian lettering on the plaster (see photo).When 14 and 15 stood alone, they may have had side entrances, which were lost when No 16, originally ‘Norland House’, and No 13, ‘Sea View Lodge’, were built later in the nineteenth century.
The man who saved The Royal Pavilion
In the 1850s Lewis Slight, Clerk to the Brighton Town Commissioners lived at No 15. His portrait hangs in Brighton Town Hall with a glimpse of the Pavilion seen through a window in the top right corner. This is because Slight was credited with securing the Pavilion for the town, after the Crown’s decision to sell it off. Sales particulars (see image) for Selby Villa in the late Victorian period show it advertised as a gentleman’s residence in a healthy and fashionable area of the town.
Once a vegetarian guesthouse
The statue in the niche shared by numbers 14 and 15 represents Hebe, wine-bearer to the Gods. This copy of a work by the Danish sculptor, Thorvaldsen, was installed by the owners of the two houses in 1979. Nos 13 and 14 were, for a period at the beginning of the twentieth century, joined together and run as a vegetarian guesthouse for women by Minnie Sara Turner (c. 1867-1948). Minnie Turner was an active suffragist. On one occasion the house was stoned by local youths protesting against votes for women. Minnie responded by sticking a sign over the broken windows which read ‘Masculine Logic’.
Comments about this page
That is a great story Carol, and one I did not know. In 1979 I lived in a flat in Upper North Street; the buildings in this area are really beautiful!
Many years ago I spoke to the Montpelier & Clifton Hill Society. I commented on the lovely statue in the niche and the then owner of the property above had a good laugh and said, “everyone thinks it is an old original from the 19th Century house…I bought it for a few pounds from Mike Deasey and put it in the niche, which correctly should be empty!”. Mike Deasey ran an ‘antique’ yard near Kemp Town station and did copies of classical statuary amongst other artefacts. A lovely Brighton ‘back-story’!
Beautiful building!!
During the 19th century there were several shops in this road one of which was run by a ‘Waters’. Can anyone tell me which number this was and what sort of shop it was please?
Also which of the many Waters had this shop?
The Waters family was quite large and seem to have all been shopkeepers in the 19th Century in East Sussex and Kent.
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