Travel Prestonville, Brighton Map

Travel to Prestonville, Brighton Map

Prestonville, Brighton tourist guide map of landmarks & destinations by Walkfo

Prestonville, Brighton history

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The ancient parish of Preston, a 1,300-acre (530 ha) area of arable land cut through by the valley of the Wellesbourne, was the first parish north of both Hove and Brighton. Old Shoreham Road, now a major route through the southern part of Prestonville, formed the boundary. St Peter’s Church (the old parish church) and Preston Manor were on the east side of the valley. The western boundary was formed by Dyke Road, which led to Devil’s Dyke on the South Downs. Preston parish became part of the parliamentary borough of Brighton and Hove in 1868 and was added to the municipal borough of Brighton five years later as Brighton’s urban development spread northwards, encouraged by its “rapid growth as Britain’s premier seaside resort”. Prestonville’s development contributed to an increase in population in Preston parish from 756 at the time of the 1841 census to 2,470 30 years later. The tithe map of Preston parish before it became urbanised shows that most of the land between Dyke Road and the future route of the railway line was owned by Thomas Stanford and farmed by his son Thomas junior. Thomas senior himself farmed a field in the southeast corner of present-day Prestonville, and another by the Old Shoreham Road–Dyke Road junction was owned by Sir Isaac Goldsmid, 1st Baronet. A post mill called Port Hall Mill, next to the house called Port Hall, existed between 1795 and 1887. Another mill, Preston Mill, occupied the present site of Old Mill Works in Highcroft Villas between 1797 and 1881. Before 1797 it stood on the land now occupied by Regency Square on Brighton seafront. Two paintings of 36 yoke of oxen transporting it up the hill to its new location can be found in Preston Manor. Later names for the mill included Trusler’s, Black and Streeter’s Mill. Waterhall Mill at Patcham contains some of the machinery salvaged when it was demolished. The northward growth of housing into this area began in the 1840s after the opening of Brighton railway station. The West Hill and Seven Dials areas were built up with housing, then between 1848 and 1858 roads such as Chatham Place, Russell Crescent, Howard Terrace and the southern part of Prestonville Road were laid out. Old Shoreham Road had not been reached by this time, though. North of the road was an area of farmland on the west side of the Wellesbourne valley, cut off by the Brighton Main Line from Preston village, the church and the manor house. The land belonged to New England Farm, established in the 1810s south of Old Shoreham Road (therefore in the parish of Brighton), and an abattoir had been proposed to be sited there. A developer called Daniel Friend bought the land, however, and laid it out with middle-class housing from the 1860s. He bought about 6.5 acres (2.6 ha) of land from the London and Brighton Railway, who had in turn acquired it in about 1839 (just before the railway line was laid out) from William Stanford of Preston Manor. In the early days of the railways, it was common for the newly formed railway companies to buy more land than they needed and to sell the remainder for residential development. The earliest streets developed north of Old Shoreham Road were the northern section of Prestonville Road, Prestonville Terrace, Hamilton Road (on which stands the Prestonville Arms pub), Hamilton Terrace, Brigden Street and the lower section of Stanford Road, all of which date from between 1865 and 1869. York Grove, built on the site of the New England Farm buildings, predated these streets by about five years. (The main farmhouse, built before 1820 in a Classical style with a prominent Doric-columned porch, was retained and is numbered as 26 York Grove.) Ribbon development spread north along Dyke Road during the 1870s, reaching Highcroft Villas which was itself built up from 1880. The 1880s was a period of major development in Prestonville, as the land around an 18th-century house called Port Hall was developed with housing. Coventry Street, Exeter Street, Port Hall Street, Upper Hamilton Road and the northern part of Stanford Road date from this time. Four more roads—Buxton, Chatsworth, Lancaster and Stafford—were built during the 1890s. Further north, the roads bounded by Dyke Road, Highcroft Villas, The Drove and the railway line date from the last five years of the 19th century, and the area northwards towards Tivoli Crescent North was completed by the start of World War I. Millers Road, one of the roads from this era, was named after the former Preston Mill, as was the Dyke Tavern pub on Dyke Road (originally the Windmill Inn). The 1871 census shows that many of the early residents of Prestonville were railway workers based at Brighton station or the nearby Brighton railway works; other occupations included schoolteachers, managers, a tax inspector, a retired admiral, a bookseller and a draper’s assistant. Two houses on Hamilton Road were used as an orphans’ home and a private school respectively. At this time, much of the housing was rented, and “a move from one street to the next could represent a climb in social status”. In ascending order of social position at this time were Brigden Street, Prestonville Terrace, Hamilton Road and Stanford Road. Many of the houses on Compton Road and Inwood Crescent were built by the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway (LBSCR) soon after 1900 to house families displaced from the streets around Brighton station. In 1898, the LBSCR received permission to compulsorily purchase 171 houses and demolish them to allow Brighton station goods yard to be expanded. Clearance of the site took place between 1901 and 1904. The company bought some houses privately as well, bringing the total number of displaced households to 225. The Act of Parliament which permitted the compulsory purchasing obliged the LBSCR to rehouse the people elsewhere in Brighton, based on the terms of the Housing of the Working Classes Act 1890 upon which it was based. The company bought land from the trustees of the Stanford estate in 1901 and 1903 for £5,600 and erected 123 houses and flats of various styles. They were of good quality and were larger than the terraced houses they replaced, but as a rehousing scheme the development failed because very few of the displaced people actually moved there. The houses were still owned by the railways (latterly by British Railways) until 1965. On 25 May 1943, during the Brighton Blitz, four houses on Compton Road were bombed and one resident died. Postwar flats occupy the site of numbers 20–26. Another bomb just missed Highcroft Villas, landing on the railway line below. The Prestonville area saw little change after the war, although some other houses were demolished in favour of blocks of flats. An example was the former Hove Villa, built in 1840 on Old Shoreham Road but in institutional use from 1899 (first as a psychiatric hospital, then as a private school). It was demolished in 1972 and twin blocks of flats called Prestonville Court were built in its place.

  

Prestonville, Brighton map & travel guide with history & landmarks to explore

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Tourist Guide to Prestonville, Brighton Map

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