Hove in the Past: Somerhill, Hove.

Judy Middleton 2003 (revised 2023)

The Name

The name derives from a Jacobean house of the same name in Kent belonging to Baron de Goldsmid, which he acquired in 1845. It was in 1830 that Goldsmid purchased the Wick Estate, and the two Somerhills in Hove were laid out on land that was part of it.

copyright © Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove
Brighton Herald 16 July 1843
The origins of Hove's Somerhill and Nizels road names are from the Goldsmid family estates in Tonbridge.

Although, alphabetically speaking, Somerhill Avenue should come first, it was actually Somerhill Road that was developed some years earlier than Somerhill Avenue - the latter not receiving planning permission as a new road until 1908.

Somerhill Road

On 21 March 1895 Hove Commissioners approved plans for a new road drawn up by H. J. Gimblette on behalf of Sir Julian Goldsmid. But then nothing much seemed to happen, and the first planning approval for a house did not appear until 1903. However, it was not just farmland, and the 1913 Directory recorded that Wick Farm Cottage and Wick Stable were to be found on the right side of the road while Major Carey Borrer occupied Somerhill Lodge on the left. The land was part of Wick Farm, and there was a track-way with the delightful name of Haystacks traversing the land to where Nizell’s Avenue is today.

Carey Hampton Borrer was born in 1838 and he was the son of Elizabeth Borrer and Revd Carey Hampton Borrer, rector of Hurstpierpoint from 1841 to 1898. John Borrer (1785-1866) was a nephew of Revd Carey Borrer, and he lived at Portslade Manor.

Somerhill Lodge proved difficult to trace in Street Directories because from 1914 its location was moved to being in Lansdowne Road. By the 1920s Mrs Borrer occupied the premises.

Grasshopper Cottage

In 1906 the cottage was described as a one-storey structure 58 feet by 14 feet containing sitting room, kitchen, scullery, two bedrooms and a cloakroom used by the tennis club.

Basil Bolton lived in Grasshopper Cottage, while his daughter and son-in-law occupied The Lodge at the Furze Hill entrance. Bolton was Hove’s first Parks Superintendent, and he held the post from 1908 until his retirement in 1945. Bolton was credited with turning St Ann’s Well Gardens into one of Hove’s most beautiful parks, and Mr Middleton, the well-known gardener of broadcasting fame, mentioned the gardens on more than one occasion. Bolton was a member of St Ann’s Well Bowls Club. He died aged 84 in 1961.

In 1962 Grasshopper Cottage was found to be unfit for human habitation. It was said to be well over 100 years old. The council could not demolish it until a relative of a former parks superintendent vacated it. Part of the premises were used as storage by the Parks department but even that use was limited due to extreme dampness. The cottage was finally demolished on 19^th October 1967.

The Grasshoppers Tennis Club was no doubt named after the adjacent Grasshopper Cottage. It is interesting to note that according to the All England Tennis Association there is a mention of the Grasshoppers in 1895, which makes it one of the earliest known tennis clubs. In around 1916 the Grasshoppers Tennis Club moved to a new site in The Drive, leased initially from the Clark family. The club remains there to this day although reduced in size because the frontage to The Drive was sold to developers and a block of flats built on it.

St Ann's Well Gardens

At a council meeting in June 1912 there was a letter from a solicitor dated 20^th May 1912, which stated ‘a Lady in Hove has arranged to purchase certain land from the Goldsmid (Wick) Estate to make a gift of it to the Town of Hove on condition that it is thrown into St Ann’s Well Gardens’. The council accepted with alacrity because they had been unable to afford the land fronting Somerhill Road at the time the gardens were purchased. The land was turned into two croquet lawns and Mrs Sassoon paid the cost of digging out the lawns, the Cumberland turf to go on top and the construction of a retaining wall at the south end. Today at the Somerhill Road entrance there are still two rose-pink granite tablets set into the gate piers – one records that St Ann’s Well Gardens were opened on 23^rd May 1908 by ABS Fraser / HH Scott, surveyor / H Endacott, town clerk and the other records, ‘The plots of land comprising two croquet lawns with frontages north and south were presented by Mrs Flora Sassoon and opened to the public 1^st May 1913’. Alderman B Marks was Mayor of Hove at the time.

House Notes

Number 8 – Group Captain Robert Ellis Woolley (1920-1986) lived in this house. He was awarded the George Medal in 1950 for his heroic action when he was stationed at RAF Selatar, Singapore, as Chief Medical Officer. He immediately went to help when a Sunderland aircraft crashed nearby during a thunderstorm. The aircraft landed in shallow water, spilling some of its load of 2,000 gallons of petrol, and thus creating a double hazard both from the fumes and the imminent danger of fire. There were eight crew members, and four passengers, three of the latter died on impact and the fourth died later. Two members of the crew were rescued, but it proved to be impossible to extricate the pilot. Woolley then decided he could not just leave the man to his fate, and he amputated the trapped foot, giving the pilot morphine. It was an extremely difficult and dangerous operation – the space was cramped, the fumes were toxic, and the slightest spark from his instruments would have ignited the petrol and sent them both sky-high. The operation took twenty minutes and the only light was a hand-torch. Unhappily, the pilot later died. When Woolley returned to Hove, Councillor A. J. Hill Perry, Mayor of Hove, organised a cocktail party for him to celebrate his bravery.

Park Gate – This block of flats was built on waste land at the rear of Furze Croft.

Eric Rosevear – He lived in a flat at Park Gate. He was educated at Bournemouth School for Boys and in 1928 he joined the local branch of the Norwich Union Insurance Society. While he was working there he met Kathleen whom he married in 1937.

Rosevear progressed through various departments until he was appointed inspector. In 1933 he was transferred to Jersey where he opened the company’s first full-time office and was responsible for business operations in Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney and Sark. In 1940 the Rosevears had to leave for England hurriedly with their three-month old baby daughter and just one suitcase because of the imminent German invasion. But Rosevear was back in Jersey within days of the Channel Islands being liberated from German occupation. He remained for two years before being promoted to manager at Maidstone, and subsequently at Brighton, where he arrived in 1955. The couple then moved to Park Gate.

When Rosevear retired he joined Hove Council as councillor for Westbourne Ward, and served on several committees including those on finance, education, planning and library. He also served on the governing bodies of many schools. In 1974 he was elected Mayor of Hove – the first to hold the office for the newly enlarged town – Portslade having been amalgamated with Hove in 1974; he served a second year too.

Afterwards, he became Leader of the Council, a position he filled for the full five years. In 1984 he retired from council work but continued to take an interest in local affairs. He became president of The Drive Bowling Club and president of the Probus Club. In October 1985 he and his family attended a gathering of around 500 Rosevears from around the world at Newquay, Cornwall. The English Rosevears trace their family tree back to small-holders living near Par, Cornwall in the 17^th century. In July 1987 Eric and Kathleen Rosevear celebrated their Golden Wedding anniversary.

Wilfrid Martin – He used to live in Somerhill Road. During the Second World War he was an aide to Lord Mountbatten. Amongst the organisations he worked for were Shell and the Brighton Marina Company. He also served as a local councillor, representing Portslade South as a Conservative; that is until he fell out with the Tory leadership and then stood as an Independent. Martin was firmly against the building of the Brighton By-pass and took an active role in the local pressure group ABBA. Perhaps his interest in local politics stemmed from the fact that one of his forbears was Mayor of Brighton in the 19^th century. Martin died at the age of 85 in December 2000. At his funeral dance music was played before and after the service in memory of his fondness for ballroom dancing, and mourners filed out to the strains of Glenn Miller’s Moonlight Serenade

Somerhill Road / Somerhill Avenue

Wardley Hotel

On 21 January 1909 Hove Council approved plans submitted by Mr Tucker on behalf of O. E. d’Avigdor Goldsmid. For many years this was the only house in the road, but was later designated as number 10. The building sports frontages to both Somerhill Road, and Somerhill Avenue. By 1914 the house was called Wardley, and Charles Edgar Whitcher, physician and surgeon, occupied the premises. In 1914 it was reported that Dr Whitcher had erected a rustic summerhouse in the garden measuring 11-ft by 8-ft, and 7-ft in height.

In 1921 W. H. Overton carried out some alterations to the house on behalf of W. H. T. Collings. In 1927 W. F. Andrews received planning permission to convert the house into flats. Meanwhile, it was still the solitary house in Somerhill Avenue. It was not until 1928 that J. Dixon submitted plans for a detached house on the south side for Mr J. F. Bowden.

In around 1964 the actor Terence Morgan purchased Wardley. In 1971 he converted the somewhat run-down building from flats into a 16-bedroom hotel. It was based on a continental model because it was just a bed and breakfast establishment with no dining room and no public area. Breakfast was served in your room, and if you wanted a full English breakfast instead of a continental one, that would cost twenty pence extra; the charge for an overnight stay was just £2. The venture proved such a success that in 1979 Morgan added two more bedrooms.

At Morgan’s previous property venture in Brunswick Terrace, he converted a 40-room house and mews building into one- and two-bedroom units, and lived in one himself. In 1980 Morgan sold the Wardley Hotel, but the couple continued to live at Hove.

By 1998 the Wardley Hotel was still in private ownership but Brighton & Hove Council used it as a bed and breakfast place for homeless people. On 18 August 1998 the council served a final warning on the owners because they had been given three months in which to carry out repairs and had not done so. The complaints included damp, cracked plaster, unsafe electrical points, and rotten skirting boards. There was one room measuring 12-ft by 15-ft into which had been crammed two beds, a cot, table and chair, a hot-plate and fridge, and it cost £119 a week.

In December 1998 the Hove Wardley Company applied for planning permission to extend the building and convert the hotel into thirteen apartments. In March 1999 Councillor Jenny Langston handed the council a petition signed by 87 people objecting to the redevelopment plans. By June 1999 the number of proposed apartments had dropped to eleven, and councillors decided they would make a site visit before coming to a decision. The matter dragged on, and in February 2000 the Planning Inspectorate dismissed an appeal by Hove Wardley Company against the council’s refusal to grant planning permission to build extra flats. The Inspector stated that the building would be too high and cause loss of privacy to neighbours. It seems the hotel is still in operation.

Terence Morgan (1921-2005)

Acting was in his genes because his mother, whose professional name was Betty Jumel, had been a musical artist. It was therefore not surprising that he was awarded a scholarship to RADA. The Second World War intervened in his acting career, and he spent two years serving in the Army before being invalided out. He joined the Old Vic Company in 1948, and played the part of Laertes in the 1948 film of Hamlet. He was a handsome man but was often cast as a villain, or unpleasant character, such as in the films Mandy (1952) as the father of a deaf girl, and in Turn the Key Softly (1953). Altogether, he acted in some 30 films. But perhaps he is best remembered in the starring role of Sir Francis Drake, a TV series. That seems to have been the apex of his career, and then the roles dried up.

Morgan met his future wife Georgina at the Piccadilly Theatre, London, while working with Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh in The Skin of Our Teeth. The couple married on 23 March 1947 at Caxton Hall, and they had a daughter. In 1997 it is pleasant to record that the couple celebrated their Golden Wedding, and on 28 March 1997 they gave a Ball at the Eaton Gardens Restaurant in Hove. Amongst their guests were Lord and Lady Attenborough, Donald Sinden and his wife Diana, and Judy Cornwell, both Sinden and Cornwell having local connections. Indeed, the Morgans were to be found living in Brunswick Terrace in the 1950s. Terence Morgan died at the age of 83 in August 2005, his funeral service was held at All Saints Church, in The Drive, Hove, and he was buried in Hove Cemetery.

Julie Burchill and her House

She was born in 1959, and spent her childhood in Bristol where her English teacher once remarked that Burchill should not stay in the town because it would be like putting a peacock in a goldfish bowl. Burchill herself said she thought further education was a waste of time, and perhaps proved her point by becoming a voracious reader from the age of twelve to sixteen. She landed a job in the New Musical Express when she was still only seventeen. When she was twenty, she married fellow journalist Tony Parsons but four years later left him for another journalist – Cosmo Landesman – she had a son from each marriage. Burchill became a prolific writer, penning articles for the Guardian, Sunday Times and Telegraph, besides many books, both non-fiction and fiction.

In 1991 Burchill, Landesman and Toby Young co-founded the The Modern Review, and amongst the contributors were Nick Hornby and Camille Paglia. The venture ran into difficulties within a few years over the question of a new editor, and Young closed it down in 1995. Burchill then re-launched The Modern Review with her friend Charlotte Raven.

But before this happened, Burchill had come to live in Somerhill Avenue in the mid 1990s, travelling up to the magazine’s offices in Fitzroy Street as necessary. In a recent article Burchill stated she was making a fresh start when she moved to Brighton, well, it was Hove actually, and she described her house as a ‘pink party house’. It was a six-bedroom mansion of the 1930s with gardens and a pond. There was also a swimming pool, which she implied was the most effective way of emptying your bank account, but she also said the pool was why she purchased the house in the first place.

In June 1999 the living room was recorded as being painted pink with zebra-stripped sofas, a life-size china cheetah, an enormous television, and a Christmas tree with flashing lights that she was so fond of that she kept it up all year round.

By 2003 Burchill’s house was said to be worth £1 million, and she lived in it for eight years. But of course the value of the land was substantial, and developers were always looking for a suitable site on which to erect a block of flats. In 2004 Burchill sold the house to a developer for £1.5 million, and was heartily relieved to be shot of the swimming pool.

Burchill caused a great deal of controversy by co-operating with her neighbours so that a block of 108 apartments could be built on the site of four detached houses and their gardens. In fact the plans caused such a furore that the number was quickly reduced to a more modest 78 flats. In December 2004 Brighton & Hove City Council gave the go-ahead but it was a narrow victory of seven votes to six. The Conservatives and Greens opposed the plans with Councillor Carol Theobald commenting ‘The design is very ugly, and reminds me of an old university campus’. But Labour and the Liberal Democrats pushed it through. Councillor Bob Carden, chairman of the Planning Committee, stated ‘Our decision is in line with Government guidelines about making the best use possible of urban land. The new flats would be in Somerhill Avenue / Somerhill Road, and James Robson, architect, stated the scheme included fourteen new homes, with three bedrooms or more, and underground parking. Burchill’s trenchant comment was ‘I can just as easily live somewhere else. I think people who become over-attached to non-living things are a bit weird’.

However, the local rumpus concerning the sale of her property must have got to her because why else would she devote several pages to the issue in her book? (Julie Burchill & Daniel Raven Made in Brighton 2007). She opined that it was sour grapes on the part of some of her neighbours because they had tried to pull off a similar deal, but it had fallen through. She wrote that according to the Argus there had been around forty protesters outside her house, complete with banners and placards, but because it was in genteel Hove they were so damned quiet she did not know they were there. Burchill made a cool £1million profit on the sale of her house. But her social conscience was soothed by being told that 40 per cent of the 78 flats would go to key workers; she envisaged the likes of nurses, bin-men and firefighters moving in. Of course this would be one in the eye for the Hyacinth Bucket brigade. Burchill or Raven were rather disparaging about Hove in general, coming up with that old canard about Hove being full of old people.

With Toby Parsons, Burchill co-wrote the following books:

The Boy Looked at Johnny; the Obituary of Rock and Roll (1978)

Love it or Shove it Century (1985)

Damaged Gods: Cults and Heroes Re-appraised (1986)

Girls on Film (1986)

Burchill’s non-fiction include:

I Knew I was Right (1998) her autobiography

Diana (1999) about Princess Diana

On Beckham (2002)

Not in my Name: A compendium of Modern Hypocrisy (2008)

Unchosen: The Memoirs of a Philo-Semite (2014)

Burchill’s novels include:

Ambition (1989)

No Exit (1993)

Married Alive (1999)

She also wrote the screen-play for Prince, broadcast on BBC TV in 1992, and co-wrote with Daniel Raven Made in Brighton (2007)

It is remarkable that today Julie Burchill is an Anglican Christian, claiming ‘irregular attendance’ at a local church. She wrote a trenchant article in a newspaper recently (Daily Mail 7/9/23) deploring the turning of once sacred churches into secular use. In particular, she mentioned St Agnes Church, Hove, which has been turned into a gym, because it boasts the slogan ‘Your Fitness – Our Passion.’ Granted that the word ‘passion’ has a special resonance for a Christian, the concept of a well-toned body does seem to trump everything else. Burchill ended her article with a swipe at the Anglican clergy, lamenting that many of them were woke or wet.

Somerhill Avenue

Walter Gillett (1838-1937)

He lived in a house called Redlands in Somerhill Avenue, and he died in October 1937. He was the head of a well-known manufacturing stationers and printers in Brighton. He started off in around 1900 at 42 Market Street, Brighton, and the business increased to include a great deal of Nile Street, and indeed Walter Gillet was a household name for many years after his death.

Walter Gillett held various public offices:- Councillor for Montpelier Ward on the Brighton Borough Council, Justice of the Peace, President of The Citizens Permanent Building Society, Chairman of the Brighton Medical Mission, Honorary Secretary of the Brighton Coal & Food Relief Fund and President of the Brighton & Hove Free Church Council. He was also a member of the Stanford Avenue United Methodist Church.

In 1960 Gillett’s took over the old established firm of Combridges at 56 and 70 Church Road, Hove. The firm of Walter Gillett did not cease trading until 1985.

Sources

Argus (22/12/03 / 22/11/04 / 16/12/04)

Burchill, J. & Raven, D. Made in Brighton ((2007)

Daily Mail (9/2/05)

Daily Mail (25/9/22) You magazine

Encyclopaedia of Hove and Portslade

Hove Council Minutes

National Library of Australia

Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove

Street Directories

01 September 2023

Somerhill, Hove.