Judy Middleton 2002 (revised 2023)
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| copyright © J.Middleton This photograph of the west side of Norton Road was taken in February 2020 |
Background
The Ordnance Survey map of 1876 marks Norton Road
and although the houses had not been built, the road was lined with
trees on both sides. It is interesting to note that two deeds dating
back to 1877 refer to the road not by name but simply as ‘number 7
road in West Brighton’.
William Harvey
William Harvey
William Harvey was a gentleman and landowner; he
owned land on the east side of Lansdowne Place where numbers 94, 96,
and 98 were built, and in 1854 he sold them for £2,000. On 5 April
1877 William Harvey of Buckingham Place, Brighton, agreed to sell to
Alfred Thorncroft Mills, gentleman, a piece of freehold land situated
on the west side of the road (Norton) measuring 21-ft from north to
south, and from east to west 145-ft 2-in on the south side, and
143-ft 4-in on the north side for £282; furthermore, Harvey agreed
to lend Mills £750 so that a house might be built.
Also on 5 April 1877 William Harvey agreed to sell
to Joseph Hall a plot of land on the west side of the road measuring
from north to south 21-ft, from east to west 143-ft 4-in on the south
side, and 141-ft 6-in on the north side for £292.
The following deed is a rather touching tribute to
Harvey’s wife Emily because he wanted to leave her in comfortable
circumstances when he died. On 14 November 1879 an indenture was
drawn up between the following people:
William
Harvey (1st
part)
Emily
Harvey (2nd
part)
William
Hore of Osborne Street, Whitechapel, distiller (3rd
part)
John
Brown of Ditchling, farmer (3rd
part)
Augustus
King of Ditchling, wine and spirit merchant (3rd
part)
The three latter men were to be trustees of a
property consisting of two plots of land for the use of Emily Harvey
because she had no marriage settlement, and he wished to provide for
her out of his ‘love and affection’. The men paid him a token
five shillings. The property was on the west side of Norton Road,
measuring from north to south 22-ft, from east to west 147-ft on the
south side, and 143-ft on the north side. The plot was bounded on the
south side by a road leading to stabling belonging to Edward William
Hudson, on the west side by the back of premises in Hova Villas, and
on the north by property belonging to Alfred Thorncroft Mills,
together with coach-house, stables, and the right to use the said
road.
The other parcel of land was also in Norton Road,
measuring from north to south 41-ft on the east side, and 42-ft on
the west side; from east to west 27-ft on the north side, and 30-ft
on the south, bounded on the north by numbers 21 & 19 belonging
to George Lansdell Fenner, and on the east by the back walls of
numbers 15 & 17 belonging to William Harvey.
By 1889 William Harvey had died, and his widow was
living at 13 Norton Road. In the same year Emily Harvey agreed to let
17 Norton Road to Mrs Bolton for three years at £75 per annum,
commencing on 29 September. Mrs Harvey also let 15 Norton Road to
William Coventry for three years for use as a private dwelling house
only for £60 a year.
On 20 June 1892 Mrs Harvey agreed to let 15 Norton
Road to Mrs Fanny Farley of Ferndale, Westbourne Villas for £65 a
year from 24 June.
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| copyright © J.Middleton Numbers 13, 15, 17 Norton Road |
Further Development
On 6 October 1877 Hove Commissioners approved of plans submitted by Arthur Farr on behalf of Joseph Hall for five houses to be built in Norton Road.
In 1885 Norton Road was declared a public highway.
Today Norton Road retains much of its original housing with the exception of the south end where buildings were demolished to make way for the construction of the new Hove Town Hall on the east side, and the multi-storey car park on the west side. This means that the houses now start at number 13 on the west side and number 22 on the east side.
Church of the Sacred Heart
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| copyright © D. Sharp The Church of the Sacred Heart |
On 2 October 1880 Hove Commissioners rejected
plans for a Roman Catholic Church and Presbytery in Norton Road.
There must have been a few quick adjustments because within a short space of time the Commissioners approved the plans on 23 October 1880.
(A separate page is devoted to the Sacred Heart)
Architecture
Norton Road does not have uniformity with regard
to its architecture – instead there is a variety of styles, no
doubt according to the taste (and purse) of the developers involved.
For example, porches range from square white-brick porticoes to
red-brick arches.
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| copyright © Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove The Supreme War Council leaving the Norton Road exit of Hove Town Hall on 22 September 1939. Amongst the delegates visible are Neville Chamberlain, Edouard Daladier, Lord Halifax, Admiral Francois Darlan and General Maurice Gamelin. |
Fire
In 1993 Police Constable Keith Wales was first on
the scene of a fire in Norton Road, and he pulled a semi-conscious
woman out of a smoke-filled room. In September 1994 the Mayor of
Hove, Les Hamilton, presented Wales with a certificate of
distinguished conduct.
Rain Garden
The romantic-sounding name of rain garden is a comparatively recent concept. But the more prosaic reality of a rain garden is to help absorb surplus rain, and thus halt sudden downpours from flooding nearby basements, and this was the reason for a rain garden in Norton Road.
Tarmac is removed and small gaps made in the kerbs while plants are placed in the earth. As well as being useful, a rain garden provides a valuable green space, and the cost was funded by the Carbon Neutral Fund. As if on cue, this rain garden was finished just before the arrival of Storm Ciaran. (Argus 2/11/23)
House Notes and Famous Residents
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| copyright © Royal Pavilion & Museum,
Brighton & Hove Brighton Herald December 1898, Number 3 sold for £1450 at auction |
It is interesting to note there were three schools
in Norton Road in the early days. But the proprietors were taking on
a very crowded Hove market because in 1887 there were no less than 22
private establishments for the education of gentlemen, and the same
number provided for ladies. Hove was famous for its private schools
and its bracing sea air, and many children born abroad in the days of
the British Empire were sent back to Hove to be educated. However,
because there were so many schools, many of them did not survive for
long.
Number
2 - In 1887 Miss Worthington ran a boarding school for boys here
called Minshall House. This school was not listed in the Directory
for 1890.
Number 12 - Major General Evelyn
Pultennay Gurdon joined the army in 1852, served during the Indian Mutiny
of 1857, and mentioned in despatches and awarded a medal. Gurdon was
appointed Commissioner and Divisional Judge in the Punjab.
Number 15 - Major General James Teevan had followed an Army career in the 94th Regiment of Foot before becoming Chief Constable of South Shields. On 2 July 1884 at the age of 45 he was appointed Chief Constable of Hove at a salary of £200 a year, plus uniform. He lived in a house called Pembridge Villa in Connaught Road before moving to Norton Road in 1887. See Hove Police
Number 20 - Major General Mossam Boyd was born in India and served with the Bombay Staff Corps from 1847-1881. Mossom Boyd was the great uncle of Alan Turing the brilliant mathematician who took a leading role in the breaking of the Nazi enigma code machine in the Second World War.
Number 10 - In 1925 Sir Duncan
James Macpherson was living at this address and
served with distinction in the Indian Civil Service. Among
his many positions were District Magistrate for Bengal, Chairman of
Calcutta Port Commissioners and
Member of the Imperial Legislative Council of India. . He was decorated for his
humanitarian
work in the Indian Famine of 1896-1897 and he served in the Foreign Office from 1916-1919
In
the late 1920s Lady Stella Brownlow Cecil lived at this address, she
was the widow of Colonel Lord Thomas M. Brownlow Cecil the son of the
2nd
Marquess of Exeter.
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| copyright © J.Middleton Signora Toselli once ran a kindergarten at number 31 |
Number 15 - Major General James Teevan had followed an Army career in the 94th Regiment of Foot before becoming Chief Constable of South Shields. On 2 July 1884 at the age of 45 he was appointed Chief Constable of Hove at a salary of £200 a year, plus uniform. He lived in a house called Pembridge Villa in Connaught Road before moving to Norton Road in 1887. See Hove Police
Number 20 - Major General Mossam Boyd was born in India and served with the Bombay Staff Corps from 1847-1881. Mossom Boyd was the great uncle of Alan Turing the brilliant mathematician who took a leading role in the breaking of the Nazi enigma code machine in the Second World War.
Number 28 - Two major generals lived
at this address in quick succession, Major General George Allix
Wilkinson in 1887, followed by Major General Philip Hammer Harcourt in
1899, both were veterans of the Indian Army.
Number
31 - In 1887 Signora Toselli ran a Kindergarten in this house. It was
still there in 1890. In 1891 she became the manageress of 'Blenheim House First Class Boarding Establishment' at 1A Marborough Place, Brighton.
Number
37 - In 1887 Mrs Power was headmistress of Heathcote House, a girls’
school. It was not listed in the 1890 Directory.
Dr Thomas Neville
(1849-1927) who was born in Macroom, County Cork, Ireland. A
retired physician and surgeon, he
lived at number 37 in
1926 before returning to
Ireland.
Dr
Neville studied medicine in Dublin, Paris and Vienna, enlisted with the British Red
Cross and was transferred
to the Red Crescent to serve
with the Imperial Ottoman Army in 1876 as a Surgeon Major. He saw
action in the Russian-Turkish War and was captured by the Russians at
the Siege of Plevna in Bulgaria. He was awarded the Order of Medjidie by the Ottoman Government.
In the 1880s he ran a medical practice in Pimlico Road and Sloane Street in London and also served as a Police Divisional Surgeon. In September 1888 he was called to examine the dismembered remains of a woman in Pimlico. This murder was never solved and dubbed by the newspapers as the Whitehall Mystery. Some national newspapers suggested this crime was perpetrated by the infamous Jack the Ripper.
In the 1880s he ran a medical practice in Pimlico Road and Sloane Street in London and also served as a Police Divisional Surgeon. In September 1888 he was called to examine the dismembered remains of a woman in Pimlico. This murder was never solved and dubbed by the newspapers as the Whitehall Mystery. Some national newspapers suggested this crime was perpetrated by the infamous Jack the Ripper.
Number 44 - Major General Edward F. Hunter Armstrong served in India
with the Madras Staff Corps from 1852-1882.
Number 45 – Kitty Carson lived in this house where she died, and she was long connected to the theatrical world. Her birth name was a conventional Emily Green then in 1880 she became Mrs Carson when she married Lionel Courtier-Dutton whose stage name was Charles L. Carson, and they had three children. But when Emily decided to tread the boards herself as a comedy actress, she chose the stage name of Kitty Claremont. It’s all rather confusing. However, theatrical folk certainly knew who she was because in 1891 she founded the Theatrical Ladies’ Guild of Charity and ran it for some twenty years – she was greatly admired for her work. Kitty helped in all sorts of ways, providing meal tickets; arranging a sewing circle in her own home so that ladies could make baby clothes; or helping to pay medical expenses, and even lending suitable costumes for use at auditions. (Wojtczak, H. Notable Sussex Women 2008)
Number 46 - was occupied in 1899 by
General William Sparkes Hatch of the Bombay Artillery who served in the
Scinde Campaign 1843-1844, Persian Expedition 1856-1857 and the
Indian Mutiny of 1857.
In 1905 Lady Henrietta Gordon, the
sister-in-law of General Gordon of Khartoum lived in this house, by the 1930s her daughter Miss Anthea Gordon had moved to 27 Wilbury Road. Earlier in 1913 Miss Gordon
made a large donation to Hove Library consisting of 80 volumes of All
the Year Round and
five volumes of Household
Words –
both of these publications being associated with Charles Dickens.
Number 49 - Brigadier General
Hastings Read of the 4th
Bengal Infantry lived at this address in 1914.
Served
in Afghanistan 1879-1880, Burma 1887 and the British invasion of Tibet 1903-1904 where he was Mentioned in Despatches and awarded the CB
(Companion of the
Order of the Bath.)
Number 52 - Major Richard Salisbury
Simpson, retired from the Bombay Staff Corps, occupied this house in
1891
Number
59 - George Augustus Sala
(1828-1895) was a famous writer and journalist, and Charles Dickens
thought highly of him – Sala also contributed to Dickens’ All
the Year Round
and
Household
Words from
1851 to 1856. Sala had a long association with the Daily
Telegraph and
later acted as a special correspondent, reporting on the American
Civil War, and the coronation of Tsar Alexander III at St Petersberg.
Indeed his obituary noted that he was literally the ‘spirit of the
Daily
Telegraph in
its encyclopaedic information and its quaintly inflated diction’.
Sala also wrote a gossip column for the Sunday
Times
entitled
‘Echoes of the Town’, which he delivered personally every week.
But Sala was well aware of the transitory nature of his journalism,
writing as follows:
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| copyright © National Portrait Gallery, London George Augustus Sala by Harry Furniss pen and ink, 1880s-1900s, NPG 3507 |
I have given the best of my brain
to anonymous ephemeral work, which, no matter how good, leaves
nothing behind it to remember me by, I have written some 7,000
leading articles, many of them laboriously constructed, carefully
thought out and (thanks to my commonplace books filled with the
compilation of many years) also crammed with information … yet when
I am dead the world will only remember me as the unknown writer of
some smart articles and a very weak romance.
Sala’s appearance was a gift to
the cartoonist. He habitually wore a chocolate-coloured frock coat,
Blucher boots and dazzling waistcoats but nobody could be unaware of
his famous nose, which Sala referred to as his ‘incarnadined
proboscis’. His red nose was the result of a fracas in a Haymarket
pub when a man wearing a diamond ring delivered a severe blow.
In 1895 Sala was living at 59
Norton Road in the house of surgeon William G. Thistle. Mr Thistle
had been treating Sala since June of that year but there was nothing
much to be done since Sala was suffering from cancer of the liver,
kidney disease, and a shattered nervous system. He was nursed by a
sister from the Bon Secour Convent, Westbourne Grove, London, with
Mrs Bessie Sala in close attendance. A Requiem
Mass was held in the Sacred Heart in Norton Road in December 1895.
Sources
Directories
Encyclopaedia of Hove and Portslade
The Keep
HOW 39 / 24 – 13 Norton Road, 1872 / 1892 – 15
& 17 Norton Road – 94, 96, 98, Lansdowne Place
Copyright © J.Middleton 2020
page layout and additional research by D.Sharp