History notes and photo gallery

Please note that this text is an extract from a reference work written in 1990.  As a result, some of the content may not reflect recent research, changes and events.

s) VERNON TERRACE: An impressive terrace of thirty-seven houses built in about 1850 in five distinct compositions, but all with ironwork balconies. Nos.1-6, plain, three-storey houses, and nos.7-16, four-storey bow-fronted houses, are listed buildings. {44}

t) VICTORIA PLACE: Small cottages on the northern side face Victoria House, an elegant three-storey listed house of about the 1840s with bay windows and a good doorway with wreath decorations and lamps. {44}

u) VICTORIA ROAD: No.1 is listed as the end house of Montpelier Street, but nos.14-15, with fluted Ionic pilasters, are also listed. The adjacent no.16 has an ironwork balcony and verandah. The red-brick Church of St Michael and All Angels was originally built in 1858-62 for the Misses Windle by George Bodley in Italian Gothic style, but almost immediately plans were made for its enlargement by William Burges. The alterations were not carried out until after Burges’s death, however, by John Chapple in 1895 when the original church was incorporated as the south aisle and side chapel of the much larger new church. The elaborately decorated interior has a reredos by Romaine Walker and stained glass by William Morris, and there is a fifteenth-century triptych above the altar. The parish was formed in 1925 and the church is now a listed building. In the late nineteenth century St Michael’s was one of several churches involved in the ritualism controversy. {1,44,45,62}

v) VICTORIA STREET: Lined with attractive terraced houses of about 1840, most now with angular bays, but nos.12, 13-14, 16-17, 19, 21-22 on the western side, and nos.23-25 and 30 on the eastern side all have narrow bows and are listed buildings. No.28 was the home of playwright Alan Melville for some years from 1973. {44,83a}

w) VINE PLACE: Several attractive one- and two-storey cottages lie along this narrow twitten behind Clifton Terrace, and no.9, Vine’s Cottage, retains a cobbled facade. The old cottages at the Dyke Road end probably date from about 1810 when the lane was known as Mill Place after William Vine’s post-mill. This stood slightly to the north-west, on the land between Powis Grove and Clifton Hill now used as a car-park, from around 1810 until about 1850 and probably gave the Windmill Inn in Upper North Street its name; it is possible that Clifton Place was originally the approach road to this mill. {108,249a,249b}

x) WINDLESHAM ROAD: The New Sussex Hospital occupies Windlesham House, a building of 1843-4 which is unfortunately rendered in a coarse pebble-dash and cement, and several other more recent buildings which straddle the Brighton/Hove border. The hospital has its origins in the Lewes Road Dispensary for Women and Children which opened on 31 October 1899 at 145 Islingword Road under the patronage of the Countess of Chichester. In March 1905 it was replaced by a proper hospital, the Lewes Road Hospital for Women and Children, which opened at 101 Round Hill Crescent to deal with the early treatment of nervous and mental cases in women and children, the first hospital of its kind; it had twelve beds and a cot. In 1910 it moved to 8 Ditchling Road as the Lady Chichester Hospital, and in 1912 also took over 4-6 Ditchling Road. Later that year the hospital for nervous diseases was removed to 70 Brunswick Place, Hove, and was moved again in 1920 to 35 New Church Road where the Lady Chichester Hospital remained as a psychiatric facility until converted into a day centre, Aldrington House, in late 1988.

In 1921 the remaining facility at Ditchling Road moved to Windlesham House, a former school, as the New Sussex Hospital for Women. Principally dealing with the treatment of gynaecological disorders, it was staffed entirely by women. In March 1928 the Sir John Howard wing was opened by Lady Leconfield, and other enlargements were made in 1931, 1932 and 1936 so that it now has forty beds. In 1964, however, the first male specialist was appointed, and by 1969 there were no women surgeons remaining. The New Sussex is now used principally as a community mental health hospital. {94,96,115,123}

Any numerical cross-references in the text above refer to resources in the Sources and Bibliography section of the Encyclopaedia of Brighton by Tim Carder.

Comments about this page

  • The New Sussex Hospital closed in 1998, and the site was derelict for a few years until it was redeveloped as a housing complex. The facade and the main staircase of the original Windlesham Hall was retained, the later ancillary buildings to the west of the hall were demolished and replaced with a development of flats in the Modernist tradition. Most of the interior of Windlesham Hall was rebuilt since it had become degraded with its different uses over the years and the few years of dereliction when the internal fabric had decayed. A small development of social/affordable housing was built abutting the rear of Windlesham Hall.
    Mill View Hospital was opened in Nevill Avenue, Hove in 1998 to replace the New Sussex and Lady Chichester hospitals and contains some portraits and a few items of antique furniture from Windlesham Hall

    By Rob Buxton (20/03/2007)
  • No 14 (centre with red door) and No 13 (to the right) were run as the boarding house ‘Sea View’ by suffragette Minnie Turner in the period c.1910-1914. She advertised in suffrage newspapers attracting many famous guests including the Pankhursts, Annie Kenney and Emily Wilding Davison.

    By Anna K (10/12/2010)
  • Nos 14 and 15 Victoria Road have an interesting history. Number 14 was originally called Selby Villa and number 15, St Alban’s Villa. In the 1850s Lewis Slight, Clerk to the Brighton Town Commissioners (who engineered the purchase of the Pavilion for the Town), lived at no 15. People often ask about the statue. She represents Hebe and is a copy of a work by the Danish sculptor, Thorvaldsen. The owners of the two houses put her there in 1979.

    By Carol Dyhouse (06/01/2013)

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