Hove in the Past: Queen's Gardens, Hove

Judy Middleton 2003 (revised 2022)

The houses known as Queen’s Gardens consisted of two terraces facing the sea-front built on land that had once been part of the Stanford Estate. James T. Knowles (later Sir James Knowles) was the architect, the builder was J. T. Chappell (see also King’s Gardens), and the developer was William Morris from London.

copyright © Royal Pavilion & Museum, Brighton & Hove
An early Victorian print of Queen's Gardens, Hove (not Brighton)

Queen’s Gardens were part of the West Brighton Estate, which meant the residents had access to the private gardens (now Hove Lawns). The terraces were built in the 1870s, and were a fine example of the popular Italianate style. The original plan was that Queen’s Gardens should be complemented by two matching terraces west of Grand Avenue, but this never happened. The first terrace to be built was situated between First and Second Avenues, and numbered 1 to 7, while the second terrace was between Second and Grand Avenues, numbered 8 to 14.

On 14 June 1941 the east end of the east terrace was badly damaged by bombs.

(Brighton & Hove under Fire) Copyright © J.Middleton
The First Avenue Hotel was photographed after a raid. At first glance the damage does not seem to be too drastic but all the same this block had to be demolished. photo right:- First Avenue Hotel in peacetime.

The middle part of the east terrace was occupied by the Kingsway Hotel, while there were private flats in the western part. Regrettably, the whole east terrace was demolished in the 1960s and the monstrous Kingsway Court was built on the site. Thus the symmetry of this part of sea-front housing was lost for ever, and not forgetting all the historical interest associated with them, especially the Sassoon residence at number 7. The 1960s were a terrible time for the demolition of historic buildings before Victorian architecture and art came to receive its proper recognition. Had it survived, the east terrace would have become a listed building, as did its sister terrace on 31 May 1974.

Most of the west terrace was occupied by the up-market Prince’s Hotel, which was there from the 1870s until 1941 when it was requisitioned by the Admiralty, along with houses in Grand Avenue and Courtney Gate, which became HMS Lizard for the duration. Then the building served as the headquarters of Seeboard until the 1990s; Brighton & Hove City Council were the next occupants, the building being called King’s House, and by 2020 the structure was being converted into private apartments.

copyright © J.Middleton
On the left is the former Prince’s Hotel (King's House) on the right the former Kingsway Hotel (now demolished)

House Notes

Number 1

In 1916 Hove Council approved Clayton & Black’s plans for a new staircase on behalf of Abraham Carlish. Mr Carlish, with two other people, had recently purchased Mills Terrace situated south of Kingsway, and had demolished them

Number 4

In 1880 the house was sold for £7,500. In 1891 Richard Simpson, a 69-year old retired manufacturer, lived here with his wife, sister-in-law, a companion, a butler, and three female servants.

Number 6

In 1881 this house was occupied by Arthur Sassoon (1840-1912), younger brother of Reuben Sassoon, who lived next door. Arthur Sassoon was then aged 41, and described as a merchant like his brother. Arthur Sassoon’s wife Louise was considered a great beauty and was an elegant hostess – the couple becoming great favourites of the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) as well as King George V. On census night 1881 the Sassoons had some visitors staying with them, namely Sir Charles Forbes, merchant, and his wife Lady Forbes, plus James Daly, a civil servant. The domestic staff included William Gibson, the butler, an under butler, three footmen, a male cook, and seven maids. Arthur and Louise soon moved along the road to 8 King’s Gardens.

Number 7

Reuben David Sassoon ('Men of the Day. No. 483.')

by Sir Leslie Ward, chromolithograph,
published in Vanity Fair 20 September 1890

Reuben Sassoon (1835-1905) lived in this house from 1881 until his death. He also had a London address – 1 Belgrave Square. He was the fourth son of David Sassoon, and was born in Bombay. Reuben was brought up in a strict Arab-Jewish household, and was accustomed to wearing oriental clothes and speaking Arabic until he was of mature years. He married Kate Ezekiel in Hong Kong. She had been born in Bombay too, and was described as a small lady who never became a great society hostess like her brilliant sister-in-law Louise Sassoon. But then she had a good excuse because she gave birth to thirteen children while Louise remained childless. Reuben arrived in England in 1867.

Reuben was the elder brother of Arthur Sassoon, and like him, was a great friend of the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII) becoming part of the group known as the Marlborough House set. The Prince shared a love of horse racing with Reuben who sported a scarf-pin featuring a motif of a racehorse and jockey. The Prince found Reuben an amusing companion and the pair went on visits to foreign watering places such as Marienbad. These visits could last a month, and were intended to be ‘cures’. Together they consumed evil-tasting waters, and took mud baths. Reuben took all this in good part, although he did not need to diet, whereas the Prince had a prodigious appetite.

Reuben had a good head for figures, and his ease with mathematics astonished the Prince. No doubt this had something to do with Reuben’s early involvement in the family business. Another favourite pastimes was cards. Reuben was one of the house-party in the notorious Tranby Croft Affair. What happened was that in 1890 a group of friends were invited to Arthur Young’s house where they all settled down to play baccarat. However, an officer was accused of cheating, and the result was that the Prince of Wales was obliged to appear in the witness box at the subsequent court case. It caused a grave scandal at the time.

Reuben was such a favourite that his name figured more frequently in the visitor’s book at Sandringham than anyone else except Lord Hartington. But it is not advisable to behave in too familiar a manner with royalty. On one occasion, Reuben overstepped the mark by playfully putting his arm around the Prince’s neck as they were going downstairs. The Prince reacted strongly, pushing Reuben away with such force that the unfortunate man fell down and was badly bruised. But he remained one of the Prince’s closest companions until gout slowed him down.

The 1881 census found Reuben at home in Queen’s Gardens when he was described as an East India merchant. He lived with his wife Catherine (Kate) with the following household:

Rachel, aged 21, daughter

Luna, aged 15, daughter

Mozelle, aged 11, daughter

Flora, aged 10, daughter

Louise, aged 8, daughter

Henrietta, Reuben’s widowed sister-in-law

George Forbes, East India merchant, visitor

Rosa Adams, governess

A Domestic staff consisting of fourteen servants

This must surely be a record for the number of servants employed in a single household at Hove. It is amusing to note that the local landed gentry made do with far fewer servants, but of course they were not entertaining royalty, and were not as rich as the Sassoons. Ten years later there were still fourteen living-in servants; five of them were male, and only the wealthiest of households employed male servants because the government imposed a tax on them – you needed a licence to ensure you had paid your dues.

According to the relative of a servant who once worked at the house, the family owned a pet parrot that had been taught to speak and could recite with precision, ‘My name is Polly Sassoon and I live at 7 Queen’s Gardens.’

On 1 May 1893 Reuben and Kate’s fourth daughter, Flora Cecilia, married Ernest George Raphael, the youngest son of Mr and Mrs Raphael of 31 Portland Place, London, and 2 Grand Avenue, Hove. The wedding took place in the synagogue in Upper Berkeley Street, and a large crowd gathered because there was a rumour that the Prince of Wales might attend. In fact the Prince did not go to the synagogue, but he and the Duke of Cambridge certainly attended the wedding déjeuner afterwards. This synagogue was the first in London to have an organ and a trained choir. At the wedding there were four soloists and a fine choir, but they all performed behind a screen of gilt lattice-work. Reuben was an elder of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, vice-president of the Anglo-Jewish Association, and the Jews’ College.

The Prince presented the bride with a sapphire and diamond bracelet, and there was said to be a magnificent assortment of jewels given as wedding presents. The Duke and Duchess of Fife’s present was a clock. Among the guests at the glittering reception were the following:

The Russian Ambassador

Madame de Stael

The Austrian Ambassador

Duke and Duchess of Atholl

Duchess of Devonshire

Earl of Chesterfield

There was a whole wealth of Sassoons too – Sir Albert, Charles, Edward, Meyer, Frederick, Aaron and Arthur, not to mention members of the Meyer and Rothschild families.

Another Sassoon daughter became Lady Rocksavage.

In 1893 J. T. Chappell was called in to build vaults underneath the pavement – no doubt a necessity to increase Reuben’s wine cellar.

In the 1890s a new building was to be erected at the Royal Sussex County Hospital, and Reuben thought it would be a good idea if he were to persuade the Prince to become involved in the project by asking him to lay the foundation stone. The Prince agreed, but the ceremony was put back for two weeks because of court mourning for Prince Henry of Battenberg (the husband of Princess Beatrice, Queen Victoria’s youngest daughter) who died of malaria aged 37 on 20 January 1896, following his military career during the Ashanti War.

The Prince arrived at Brighton Station on 29 February 1896, and there was a royal procession from there to the hospital. The state carriage contained the Prince, the Duke and Duchess of Fife, and the equerry Major Stanley Clarke. There were four other carriages full of aldermen, the town clerk and local MPs while the last one contained the Mayor and Mayoress of Brighton, the Lord Lieutenant of Sussex and Reuben. The 1^st Middlesex Yeomanry provided the escort. The Prince then spent the weekend at Reuben’s house in Queen’s Gardens, and the Prince attended morning service at All Saints Church in The Drive, Hove. Afterwards, Reuben met him outside the church together with three ladies of the Sassoon family, and the party drove off for a visit to the Aquarium. The Prince left Reuben’s house on Monday morning and when ‘His Royal Highness appeared … the crowd, which by this time numbered about 50, took off their hats, an act which the Prince graciously acknowledged’.

In April 1896 the Duke and Duchess of York (later King George V and Queen Mary) arrived to stay with Reuben and Kate. The local Press had this to say:

‘At 5.20 p.m. the Duke and Duchess arrived. There was then as dense a throng as could have been seen anywhere, and the onlookers cheered again and again and seemed highly gratified that the Duke and Duchess stood for a few minutes on the steps and held a brief conversation with one of the party. The Duke and Duchess expressed how extremely pleased they had been by the reception accorded to them by the inhabitants. The Duke and Duchess then entered the house, and the crowd commenced to disperse, although several hundreds of people hung about for a long time.’ Hove Police regulated the traffic under the personal supervision of the Chief Constable Major Teevan, assisted by Inspector Cocks, an ample force of constables plus four mounted officers.

The royal couple had a busy time, visiting the theatre, the Convalescent Police Seaside Home in Portland Road, and Moss’s gymnasium in Holland Road, where they were received by Hutton Moss. The party watched an exhibition of fancy bicycle riding by Mrs Edward Sassoon. (In the 1900s the Misses Sassoon attended dancing classes at Moss’s Gymnasium). Although the crowds outside the house in Queen’s Gardens were said to run into thousands, there were only between 200 and 300 people to see the departure of the Yorks on 11 April. There was ‘a general waving of handkerchiefs and raising of hats’.

Other royal visits were as follows:

1 March 1896 – the Prince of Wales

13 May 1896 - Princess Louise, the Duke and Duchess of Fife

20 February 1898 – the Prince of Wales

The famous Lillie Langtry (1853-1929) also visited Reuben Sassoon’s house in Queen’s Gardens, although she was a little confused about the exact address. In her autobiography on page 118, she wrote the following:

‘We stayed with the Reuben Sassoons at Brighton from tine to time where they had a large house in Brunswick Gardens. They had numberless horses and carriages of every description, and it was rare not see one of the large family driving up and down the sea-front. Reuben Sassoon had a special victoria with a high-stepping horse, and I often drove about with him. The result was that the papers thought it funny to call us “Othello and Desdemona”, he being of a very swarthy complexion.’

Lillie also visited the family when they were at Belgrave Square.

On 9 July 1914 Louise Sassoon, Reuben’s daughter, married Sir Cavendish Boyle KCMG, the youngest son of the late Captain Cavendish Spencer Boyle of the 72^nd Highlanders, and great-grandson of the 7^th Earl of Cork. The bride’s nieces, Enid, Violet, and Sylvia were present at the wedding, as also were Mrs Hyeem (born Mozelle Sassoon) Mr and Mrs Frederick Sassoon, and Mrs Flora Sassoon. It was a quiet wedding, and after the ceremony the wedding party returned to 7 Queen’s Gardens. Sir Cavendish and Lady Boyle were committee members of the Red Cross, and it was in conjunction with that organisation that they provided a hospital for wounded officers at 7 Third Avenue, Hove, during the First World War.

When Reuben began to suffer from gout, his social life dwindled. He stayed quietly at Queen’s Gardens, comfortably wrapped in his quilted dressing gown, no doubt puffing away on one of his trademark cigars – he was reputed to have a selection of 3,000 Havana cigars. Lillie Langtry wrote of him, ‘he became a great friend of the Prince of Wales, who entrusted his racing commissions to him. When Reuben died, he left a gap in his clique not easy to fill.’

After his father’s death in 1905, Reuben’s son David Sassoon (1867-1929) continued to live at 7 Queen’s Gardens – he never married. He was known as a generous subscriber to charity as well as a patron of the arts. He enjoyed frequent visits to the Theatre Royal, Brighton, besides having his own box at the Greyhound Stadium in Hove, and enjoying cricket to the extent of becoming a committee member and a trustee of the Sussex County Cricket Club. In June 1911 to honour the coronation of George V and Queen Mary, the house was decorated with six arches bearing electric lights of red, white and blue.

David Sassoon died in his 63^rd year on 8 November 1929, and was cremated at Brighton. His ashes were enclosed in a casket, which was taken to Golder’s Green cemetery to be placed in the Sassoon family vault. The chief mourners at the ceremony were Sir Philip Sassoon, his brother-in-law Mr E. G. Raphael, and his nephews Cyril Raphael and J. A. Marriott.

One person who accompanied David Sassoon on a visit to the Theatre Royal was Alice Dudeney, and the expedition took place on 26 June 1927. They had become acquainted because Alice was a great friend of David’s second cousin, Sir Philip Sassoon. She confided to her diary that she was not looking forward to the occasion, having been unimpressed by this elderly gentleman. However, she soon changed her mind when she turned up at 7 Queen’s Gardens to have lunch with him before they went to the theatre. She found a splendid residence, not to mention the butler and two footmen who were on duty.

Alice is better known to history as Mrs Henry Dudeney, under which name she was a prolific author and famous in her day. She published her first novel in 1894, and by 1901 she was properly into her stride, producing a book nearly every year until 1930. Formal portraits of Alice reveal a somewhat stern but eminently respectable countenance. You would never have expected her to be involved in a passionate love affair in her younger days when both parties were already married. But she retained a soft spot for Hove because it was in St Ann’s Well Gardens that her future husband proposed to her in 1884.

On 12 November 1929 Alice happened to be passing by David Sassoon’s ‘great chunk of a house’ at 7 Queen’s Gardens when she noticed that all the blinds were pulled down, from which she deduced he had died. On 31 January 1930 she noted in her diary that David Sassoon left £150,000 to Sir Philip Sassoon, not that the gentleman was in need of funds because he was seriously rich already. (Mrs Henry Dudeney: A Lewes Diary 1916-1944 edited by Diana Crook 1998).

Number 8

In the 1880s Captain T. F. Sandeman lived in this house. According to the Hove Courier (1 April 1882) a large stack of chimneys fell down with a crash on the house.

The 1891 census recorded that Amelia Sandeman, a 68-year old widow, was in residence, together with her son, a lieutenant in the Army, a butler, a footman, and five female servants. Probably there was a family connection with Lieutenant Henry Sandeman, resident engineer and private secretary to the Governor of St Lucia, who died of yellow fever in 1852, and is remembered by a plaque in St Andrew’s Old Church.

The name Sandeman also appears in the First World War Memorial in the vestibule of Hove Library. He was Lieutenant William Alistair Fraser Sandeman of the Gordon Highlanders, having joined the regiment in 1909. He was born at Hove on 29 March 1889, and educated at Harrow and Sandhurst. On 13 October 1914 he was badly wounded at Bethune, and unhappily he had to be left behind when the regiment was ordered to retire. He thus became a prisoner of war, and died in hospital at Laventie on 19 October 1914.

Lieutenant Sandeman’s father was Captain William Wellington Sandeman, who served for twenty years with the 2^nd Seaforth Highlanders, earning the Afghan medal, and retired in 1888. He also played his part in the war by serving as commander of the 4^th Royal Sussex Volunteers from 1915 to 1919. Meanwhile, the Lieutenant’s mother, Isabella Emma Sandeman, received an OBE for her wartime work with the Red Cross and the Hove Depot. The couple lived at 14 Second Avenue.

Number 9

In 1891 Walter Savill, a 52-year old shipowner, lived in the house with his wife, three sons, two daughters, seven female servants and one male servant. This was the same Walter Savill (1837-1911) who, starting off in a humble way, came to lend his name to the famous shipping line of Shaw, Savill. It was in 1858 that the firm was founded in London, the two young businessmen being Robert Ewart Shaw, and his former chief assistant, Walter Savill. Since they did not have any capital to speak of, they concentrated at first at being ship-brokers. But by 1883, with an amalgamation, the firm became Shaw, Savill and Albion with a satisfying total of 31 sailing ships between them. Shaw and Savill were early believers in the New Zealand trade, and that is where their expertise lay. Savill also found time to purchase two farms in Lindfield, Sussex, making him one of the largest landowners in the parish.

Number 10

In 1891 Robert Stedall, JP for Middlesex, and a retired iron merchant aged 75, lived in the house with his wife, two daughters, and five female servants.

Number 11

Lieutenant James H. Reuton, aged 22, lived in the house in 1891, together with his soldier/servant, his brother and sister, a butler, two footmen, and five female servants.

Renton Ralli (1822-1895) a railway stock-jobber, lived in this house – his other address being 39 Park Lane, London. When Renton Ralli died, he left £803,000. Along the road was another family member – he was Stephen Ralli who lived at St Catherine’s Lodge, and had another house at 32 Park Lane. The family fortunes were laid when five Ralli brothers became established as traders in London – their trading records lasting from 1814 to 1960.

The Ralli brothers were of Greek extraction and had trading operations in India too. A certain Mr Stephanides worked for the Ralli company in India and married Caterina Ralli, daughter of the boss, and their son was born in Bombay. Theodore Stephanides (1896-1983) became a celebrated polymath, besides becoming great friends with the Durrell family when they lived in Corfu. Indeed, he was a mentor to the young Gerald Durrell, who lacked formal schooling, and Durrell later stated that without his influence ‘he would have achieved nothing’.

By 1906 a Mr Wingfield lived in the house, and in that year Princess Louise Augusta of Schleswig-Holstein took luncheon here. The Princess came to Hove to open an art exhibition at 1 Grand Avenue.

Number 12

According to David Spector, Sir Benjamin Samuel Phillips (1811-1899) and his son Sir George Paudell-Phillips (1840-1922) were residents in the house. Sir Benjamin was there from around 1881 to around 1889, followed by Sir George who was there until around 1892. They were both Lord Mayors of London – Sir Benjamin from 1865 to 1866, and Sir George from 1896 to 1897, the latter appointment coinciding with celebrations for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. During Sir Benjamin’s time in office, he rendered service in the fight against an outbreak of cholera in London. In 1867 his son George married the daughter of Joseph Moses Levy, proprietor of the Daily Telegraph.

By 1904 this house was part of Prince’s Hotel.

Sources

Bryant, A. One Hundred Years under the Southern Cross: Shaw Savill Line (1958)

Census returns

Encyclopaedia of Hove and Portslade

Haag, M. The Durrells of Corfu (2017)

Hove Council Minute Books

Jackson, S. The Sassoons (1968)

Langtry, L. The Days that I Knew (N.D.)

07 July 2020

Queen's Gardens, Hove