Travel Round Hill, Brighton Map

Travel to Round Hill, Brighton Map

Round Hill, Brighton tourist guide map of landmarks & destinations by Walkfo

Round Hill, Brighton history

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Early history

In 1800, Round Hill was a steep-sided, round-topped hill rising to 223 feet (68 m) and ploughed up for use by farmers. Some poorly defined tracks crossed it, linking Preston village to the road to Lewes. Two of the largest landowners in the Brighton and Hove area, Thomas Read Kemp and William Stanford (an ancestor of Charles Thomas-Stanford of the Thomas-Stanford Baronetcy of Preston Manor), owned most of the land between them. In the late 19th century, the Stanford family sold some of their land—which almost completely encircled Brighton, Preston and Hove to the north—for housing development, and retained much of it to develop themselves. The earliest development in the Round Hill area was Ireland’s Pleasure Gardens on the southern slope in 1823. Also known as the Royal Pleasure Gardens, this venture by James Ireland was intended to be a profitable speculation, attracting the increasing number of visitors and short-term residents who had doubled Brighton’s population in the previous decade. Ireland, a rich businessman with interests in drapery and undertaking, bought a 10-acre (4 ha) site from Thomas Read Kemp in 1822 and opened the gardens on 1 May 1823. The vast range of attractions included an aviary, maze, formal gardens with a canal, Gothic-style tower, bowling greens, billiard rooms, assembly rooms with a roof promenade, a grotto and a lake. A cricket ground (the Royal New Ground) was also provided and was said to be “the best in the country” at the time. Despite the range of activities, and occasional high-profile stunts by associates of Ireland (such as a flying demonstration), the gardens never thrived, and soon fell into decline. Ireland sold them in 1826, and later owners presided over further decline until the facility was eventually closed in the 1840s. Only its south boundary wall and gate piers, decorated with copies of their original stone lions, survive. Another development of the 1820s, on Thomas Read Kemp’s landholding, was the Jewish cemetery and its chapel. Its location on Florence Place, off Ditchling Road just north of the railway line, places it marginally outside Brighton and Hove City Council’s definition of the Round Hill area, but the site has always been associated with Round Hill. In 1826, Kemp, who at the time was a member of parliament, donated a parcel of land on the north slope of the hill to the congregation of Brighton’s synagogue. The town had a large Jewish population—about 150 by 1840. An octagonal brick cemetery chapel (the Ohel), designed by the firm of Thomas Lainson and Son, was built in the burial ground in 1893. In accordance with Jewish custom, it had facilities for mourners to wash their hands upon leaving the “presence of death”. Money to build the chapel and a fence round the cemetery was raised in the 1890s by charging members of the Middle Street Synagogue two shillings per week for a year; some prominent members of Brighton’s Jewish community provided interest-free loans as well. Burials include Henry Solomon, Brighton Borough’s chief constable (murdered in 1844); Hyam Lewis, a Brighton Town Commissioner and the first Jew in England to hold such a high-ranking municipal position; Levi Emanuel Cohen, a radical journalist who helped Brighton achieve borough status; and Sir John Howard, an engineer. The cemetery has been full for many years and is now closed except for family burials where a tomb already exists. It is locked and in poor condition; many graves are overgrown. The foundation stone commemorating Kemp’s gift of the land survives, though. The cemetery chapel and its surrounding walls and gates are Grade II listed buildings. In 1838, a windmill was built at the top of the hill, where the northern end of the present-day Belton Road stands. Although it was demolished in the early 20th century, it has been called “probably the most well-known feature of the Round Hill area”. Its names included Rose Hill Mill, Round Hill Mill and Cutress’s Mill, but its most common name—alluding to the type of windmill it was—was Tower Mill. Ownership changed regularly, and the mill was rarely profitable—even after Charles Cutress converted it to steam power in 1880. Storm damage soon afterwards caused further problems. The mill was demolished in 1913, and its bricks were recovered and used in the construction of some houses in Belton Road. In 1854, the Diocese of Chichester selected an area of open land on the west side of Ditchling Road as the site of their Training College for Anglican Schoolmistresses, which had outgrown its premises in Black Lion Street in the old town. Viaduct Road was built in front of the Gothic Revival building’s south façade around the same time and was built up with terraced houses by the early 1860s. In the early 20th century, the Diocese bought three of the four villas nearby and converted them into accommodation for trainee schoolteachers. Before that, the trainee teachers slept in large rooms in the Training College.

Residential development in the 19th century

Between 1838 and 1840, the Colbatch family built four large detached villas in the former Rose Hill Park on a southwest-facing part of the hill. The site of the failed Pleasure Gardens then became one of Brighton’s most exclusive residential developments in the 1850s, when prominent and influential local architect Amon Henry Wilds conceived and built the three-part Park Crescent development.

Smallholdings and cat’s-creeps

Smallholdings and plant nurseries were common between houses and streets. A large nursery existed behind Park Crescent until 1883, when the Salvation Army Citadel was built on the site. Other areas of green space survive behind Richmond Road, between Wakefield Road and Roundhill Crescent.

Employment and industry in the 19th and 20th centuries

Brighton and Sussex Laundry Works catered for large institutions such as hotels and schools. Cox’s Pill Factory, which took over the former laundry factory, moved to Hove in 1910. Another important 20th-century industry was the manufacture of golf balls.

Health

In 1905, the first hospital for the treatment of mental illness was opened in the large house at 101 Roundhill Crescent. The Lewes Road Hospital for Women and Children was the first such facility in England. The hospital expanded in 1911 and moved to Ditchling Road, and later split into two parts housed in Brighton and Brunswick Town area of Hove respectively.

Roundhill in the postwar era

Four villas erected by the Colbatch family were demolished after the Second World War. The family drew up plans to replace the four villas and the gatekeepers’ cottages with flats. Brighton Borough Council bought the land using a compulsory purchase order and redeveloped it with council flats based on the family’s designs.

  

Round Hill, Brighton map & travel guide with history & landmarks to explore

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Tourist Guide to Round Hill, Brighton Map

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