Hove in the Past: Cromwell Road, Hove

Judy Middleton 2002 (revised 2023)

According to a conveyance dated 29 September 1887 the original name of the road was intended to be Vernon Road, but this was probably before the houses were even built. The Hove Courier (8 April 1882) had this to say ‘ Cromwell Road … is a row of eleven houses facing the south, half of them being let or sold and rents varying from £90 to £130 a year, prices for the freehold being about £2,000, and along this road on the south side … a large plot of ground (is) being planted and turfed for lawn tennis.’

These houses and later ones were built of yellow stock brick by the noted builder William Willett and are embellished with his characteristic moulded and incised bricks to decorate cornices, window surroundings, and string courses. Numbers 2 to 36 consisting of two terraces and six semi-detached villas were built between 1880 and 1883, and on 2 November 1992 they received Grade II listed building status. It is interesting to note that the tennis courts were still in the ownership of William Willett in 1935, while his builder’s yard was located at 1A.

Public Highway

In July 1886 the road between the east side of Denmark Villas and the west side of The Drive (a distance of 625-ft) was declared a public highway.

In September 1889 the road between Wilbury Road and Holland Road was declared a public highway, and an agreement was signed between the Hove Commissioners and the West Brighton Estate.

In February 1898 Hove councillors asked Mr Willett to pave the foot-way on the south side between Eaton Gardens and The Drive in accordance with an agreement made with him on 24 June 1886.

In 1926 it was decided that cross-roads signs should be erected at the junction of The Drive and Cromwell Road, and at the junction of Wilbury Road and Cromwell Road. The signs were to be provided with reflectors and the wording would read ‘Very Dangerous Crossing’. Nearly one hundred years later, these crossings remain a perilous place for pedestrians, although at The Drive there is at least the ‘green man’ to see them across.

Trees

In December 1910 Mr Willett stated that there were too many trees on the north side of the road between The Drive and Wilbury Road. The Borough Surveyor agreed because there were 27 trees in this stretch of road with the distance between them varying from 11-ft to 28-ft. It was decided to remove some of them.

Motor Bus Complaints

In June 1915 a petition signed by 40 residents and ratepayers was presented to Hove Council complaining of the great annoyance caused by the motor buses. Apparently, the motor buses rushed along the road, causing such clouds of dust that residents were unable to open their windows. In addition, the vibrations caused walls and ceilings to crack, and pictures and china to rattle. The residents had no objection to horse buses but said motor buses were not required. However, Hove Council decided to allow the motor buses to continue running on condition that they slowed down.

Street Lighting

By 1928 Cromwell Road was still lit by 33 gas lamps, but in that year Hove Council decided to substitute overhead electric lighting instead.

House Notes

Number 7 – Major General Sir Philip Palin (1864-1937) lived in this house where he died in January 1937. His funeral was held at Holy Trinity Church, and he was buried in Hove Cemetery. He, his two brothers, and his father all rose to distinction in the Indian Army. Sir Philip was in charge of a Sikh regiment and in his younger days saw service on the Indian Frontier. During the First World War his regiment became part of the 29^th Indian Brigade, which was sent to Gallipoli in 1915. In June 1917 he commanded the 75^th Division (composed of Indian and British troops) and he led it in the Third Battle of Gaza. He was Mentioned in Dispatches no less than eight times.

Number 9 – Major General Robert William Bland-Hunt (born 1831) served with the Royal Marines in the Crimea (1855-1856), Jamaica and British Honduras (1864-1867) and South Africa in the Zulu War of 1879. He was Aide-de-Camp to Queen Victoria from 1880 until 1885.

Number 10 – For many years this was the home of Brigadier General Frederick Charles Lloyd (1860-1957). He was there in the 1930s and died at home in June 1957. He served with the Lincolnshire Regiment in Malta and India, and by the end of the South African War he had been awarded the Queen’s Medal with five clasps, and the King’s Medal with two clasps.

Number 12 – Rear Admiral Anson Schonberg died at this house aged 78 on 12 June 1925. At his funeral his coffin was draped with the Union Flag, and his sword and cocked hat were placed on top. He was buried in Hove Cemetery, close to where the First World War graves are to be found. Anson Schonberg entered the Navy at the age of fourteen in 1860, and eight years later when he was a sub-lieutenant, he was awarded the Humane Society’s bronze medal for rescuing a Marine private who fell into Portsmouth Harbour. In 1879 he was promoted to lieutenant, and in 1882 he became commander and served on HMS Achilles during the Egyptian War. His next post was as executive officer aboard HMS Audacious, the flagship in the China Seas of Admiral Sir William Dowell. Some of the other ships he served in were as follows:

HMS Boscawen, training ship at Portland

HMS Abyssinia, coastal defence ship in East Indies (by this time, he was a captain)

HMS Dreadnought, at Bantry

HMS Victorious, China Seas

He retired in 1901, and was promoted to Rear Admiral on the retired list in 1903.

The name Schonberg was long honoured within Naval circles. Anson’s father was Rear Admiral Herbert Schonberg, his grandfather was Vice Admiral Alexander W. Schonberg, son of a Captain RN. Anson’s cousin was Commissioner Isaac Schonberg author of Naval Chronology.

(It is interesting to note that in 1880 a Mrs Schonberg lived at 22 Brunswick Road.)

The artist Mary Hoad (1908-1968) later lived in this house. She was born in Beckenham, Kent, and went on to study at Chelsea School of Art. In 1957 she became Principal of St Alban’s School of Art, and continued in the post for ten years. When living at Hove, she took full advantage of being near the Sussex County Cricket Ground, and liked to attend matches. She must have had friends or known some of the officials, at any rate she undertook some calligraphic work on their behalf. Mary Hoad certainly had a wide range of styles. For example, the rather lovely Rain in St Albans could be described as in a traditional style, and when it came up for auction was only accorded a price range from £200 to £400, while Areas of Colour can best be described as some modernistic daubs of colour on an untidy background, and is now to be found in the University of Reading Art Collection.

Number 15 – Major General Alexander Gregor Forsyth fought in the Punjab Campaign (1848-1849) and the Indian Mutiny (1857-1859).

Number 18 – The house has some attractive stained glass roundels featuring a song bird on either side of the front door. Another window on the east side facing the Drive depicts an owl. Similar windows are to be found inside 2 New Church Road. During the 1940s the premises served as a private hotel run by John Fox. In around 1973 it became home to St Giles School of English, today it is a Regent English Language Training Centre.

Number 27 – Colonel George Malleson (1825 –1898) served 35 years in India, 10 years in the army and 25 years in the civil and political departments of the Government of India. He was guardian to the young Maharaja of Mysore. Malleson was a prolific author, below is a brief list of his publications :-

History of Afghanistan, from the Earliest Period to the Outbreak of the War of 1878. (1879)
The Decisive Battles of India from 1746 to 1849. (1883)
The Indian Mutiny of 1857. (1891)
History of the French in India (1893)
The Refounding of the German Empire 1848-1871. (1893)
Akbar and the Rise of the Mughal Empire. (1896)
Dupleix and the Struggle for India by the European Nations. (1899)

He also wrote biographies on Lord Clive, Akbar the Great, Warren Hastings and Prince Metternich - who lived at 42 Brunswick Terrace, Hove.

Mrs Rebecca Willett was in her 92^nd year (having been born on 15 February 1854) when she died in this house on 8 January 1946. She had been a widow for many years because her husband had died on 18 November 1904 and was buried in Hove Cemetery. Her husband was Everard John Willett, son of the famous William Willett who was responsible for so many fine Victorian buildings at Hove, including some in Cromwell Road. E. J. Willett was a member of Hove Council at the time of his death. The couple had two sons who were present at their mother’s funeral – they were noted as Everard W. Willett of London, and Thomas George Willett M.B.E. Honorary Secretary of the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Help Society, Brighton & Hove branch. He died on 2 October 1953, and was buried next to his parents in Hove Cemetery. Mrs Rebecca Willett was also aunt to William Willett, junior (1856-1915) who wrote a famous pamphlet entitled The Waste of Daylight, and was in fact the instigator of daylight saving. It was considered a somewhat eccentric idea at the time although he had an ardent fan in Winston Churchill.

Number 33 – Baron and Baroness de Crevoisier de Vomecourt and their children lived at this address from 1908 until 1914 before moving to the The Drive. In 1918 the Baroness moved back to Cromwell Road to live at number 2 for a few months before returning to France. During the Second World War their three sons, Jean-Francois, Philippe-Albert and Edouard-Pierre all served with the Special Operations Executive (SOE) as secret agents and were all heroes of the French Resistance.

Numbers 35/36 – For many years a prestigious prep school, Holland House, occupied these premises, and a famous Old Boy was the writer Patrick Hamilton (1904-1962).

By 1935 Miss Elizabeth Gowland ran a school of dancing at number 35.

Number 44 – Vernon Peters Appleyard said he lived in Cromwell Road all his life, and the 1947 Directory records that a Mrs Appleyard lived in a flat at number 44. During the Second World War Mr Appleyard served in France with the Royal Sussex Regiment, and he was severely wounded. Soon after demobilisation he took over the large Hove estate of his grandfather Joseph Peters whose firm built coaches for the royal family by Royal Appointment. Mr Appleyard’s uncle, Alfred Joseph Peters, superintended the preparation and arrangement of the royal coaches for the coronation in 1953, although he was a venerable 89 years of age at the time. Vernon Peters Appleyard served as a Hove councillor for fourteen years, and he had also been a member of the Special Constabulary since 1926. He died aged 60 in 1955.

In 1959 Davies’s Tutorial College was opened in these premises. It was an offshoot of the Davies’s College already established in London. They were popularly known as ‘crammers’ – that is, they were for youths who had failed to to gain the necessary qualifications to further their career, and could now expect a time of rigorous teaching.

The most famous student from the Hove college was the exoctically-named Sir Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes, who was born in 1944, and who was later claimed to be the most famous explorer in the world. The fact that he was once at Hove is not mentioned in on-line biographies, although Eton certainly is, as well as the fact that he failed to get into Sandhurst at the first attempt.

Fiennes was already displaying his adventurous nature, and had been in trouble at Eton because of his penchant for climbing spires at night. At Hove he could not resist the challenge of the high tower on Waterhouse’s Town Hall. He duly clambered up the tower and planted a flag on top. The next day Hove Fire Brigade valiantly tried to remove the offending flag but found their ladder was too short, and sensibly decided to leave it alone. It is not known for how long Fienne’s flag fluttered aloft.

By1986 it was taking 300 students a year composed of 35 different nationalities. The principal, Robin Bellerby, was a radio enthusiast, and once found that the man he was chatting to over the airwaves was King Hussain of Jordan. Eventually through this contact some 30 Jordanian military cadets came to Hove on government scholarships in order to take their ‘A’ levels before progressing on to study at British universities.

The King Hussain of Jordan Scholarship enabled two or three Jordanians (boys and girls) to study in Hove each year. During the Gulf crisis the college ran into difficulties because of the dramatic drop in the number of Arab students, and although the college was supposed to have a turnover of around £14 million a year, the banks froze their financial support. On 31 October 1990 the college closed, but re-opened the following month after being sold to a consortium of twelve companies headed by Sun Living Co. Although Bellerby remained as head for a while, by August 1992 the principal was Tony Burton who said they were expecting an enrolment of 230 students. Bellerby’s had a college hostel in Cambridge Road. Early in 1992 the college bought a controlling interest in Deepdene School, New Church Road. In June 1996 Lawrence Denholm was the principal, and the college had 520 students studying for diplomatic, government, or top business jobs.

Number 46 – Scottish born Robert Allan McLean (1840-1915) was an accountant by profession and in his day was a leading figure in the world of finance. He successfully reorganised the Hudson Bay Company and was intimately concerned in the developments of the Canadian Pacific Railway and the West Indian Railways. McLean was a great financial supporter of Christian Missions in the Far-East and travelled widely in China and Japan. It was through his large donation that St Cuthbert's Presbyterian Church in Cromwell Road (on the corner of Holland Road) was built free of any debts.

In 1935 Commander Edmund Prendergast OBE was the occupant of this house.

Number 47 – A boarding school for Jewish girls called Mansfield House occupied this house from 1918 to 1958, apart from the war years when the school de-camped to North Wales.

Number 52 – The Goodwood Court Medical Centre was located here. In May 1999 it was stated that the centre offered complementary therapies alongside orthodox medicine. These included shiatsu, aromatherapy, reflexology, therapeutic massage, reiki, and champissage (Indian head massage).

Number 91 – In the 1990s the premises were used as a boarding house. In 1942 Joan Eva Edwards, a 21-year old Hove typist, shot dead Mrs Sadie Bardwell at point blank range with a service revolver; the victim received five bullet wounds. Miss Edwards was tried at Lewes Assizes in 1943, and was found guilty but insane.

Number 99 – This house, situated on the south side of the road, was briefly occupied by Avondale College from 1932 to 1937. It was a girls’ school run by a Mrs Cobbold whose husband Arthur B. Cobbold was a gymnastic instructor. Also living in the house in 1935 was Charles Henry Cobbold who earned a living as a lantern-slide artist.

copyright © Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove
The Palmeira Hotel on the corner of Cromwell Road and Lorna Road, the building on the right is Hove Electricity Works in Davigdor Road.

Cromwell Court – The premises consist of two nine-storey blocks of flats rising to a height of 90-feet, and arranged in a cruciform plan. The building made use of calculated load-bearing brick-work, a technique pioneered in Sweden. A feature of the flats was a panel of painted asbestos cladding, backed with concrete blocks under the main living room widow of each flat. Cromwell Court occupied a corner site at the junction of Cromwell Road and Palmeira Avenue. It was developed by the Land & General Group, and built by the Brighton firm of Rice & Son. There is a total of 46 flats and four penthouse suites, the latter costing from £7,500 to £10,000. Prices of the flats ranged from £4,750 to £6,550 – all on a 99-year lease. Since the building overlooks the Sussex County Cricket Ground, Arthur Gilligan, former England and Sussex cricket captain, was asked to perform the opening ceremony in May 1964.

Hovedene – In 1994 the residents of this block of flats hired planning consultant Michael Parker to produce his own report on the re-development of the Sussex County Cricket Ground. The flat dwellers were not happy at the prospect of having a new north stand built in front of Hovedene. It seems the proposed back wall of the new building would be 48-ft high. They wrote a letter of protest to Prime Minister John Major.

Philip Court – This block of flats for old people, and neighbouring Elizabeth Court, named after the royal couple, were built in the late 1970s. The flats were erected on what had been private tennis courts. Hove people wanted to keep the site as a green open space for everyone, but it all came to nothing, and Hove councillors were determined to have the flats. In January 1971 Philip Court was given the number 102 Cromwell Road, while Elizabeth Court became 101 Cromwell Road. Then there was a change of heart, and Elizabeth Court became 65 Wilbury Road.

St Thomas Fund – This was a local charity set up in the 1980s by the Roman Catholic community to help people with dependency problems. The Fund operated two therapeutic houses where residents could stay for up to two years. In November 1989 a new, half-way house opened in Cromwell Road for people coming straight from detox. It catered for seven residents who could stay for three months.

Fires

In November 1998 a man rescued his mother-in-law from her smoke-filled flat after she had left a candle burning in a plastic bath.

In May 1999 fire broke out at 12.45 a.m. in the bedroom of the first floor flat of a building that was being converted into four flats. People were obliged to flee in their nightclothes, but fortunately nobody was hurt. Arson was not ruled out.

Hove Planning Approvals

1889 – Daniel Field, one house

1891 – G. Sherrin for J. W. Faulkner, one house on the south side

1893 – A. Creswell for G. T. Congreve, two pairs semi-detached villas, south side

1896 – C. Nye for W. Stuckey, one pair semi-detached houses, south side

1898 – S. Denman for E. J. Reeves, one house, south side

1900 – Messrs Loader & Long for H. M. Stevens, one detached villa, south side

1903 – Mr Faulkner for M. R. Blount, one house on the south side

1906 – Messrs Overton & Scott for Mr Cook, one pair semi-detached houses, north side

1906 – Messrs Overton & Scott for Mr Slack, two pairs semi-detached houses, north side

1906 – Messrs Overton & Scott for Mr Cook, two houses, one on the corner of Lorna Road

1911 – W. H. Overton for Mr Bennett, two detached houses with motor garage, south side

Sources

Argus

Brighton Herald

Encyclopaedia of Hove and Portslade

Hove Council Minute Books

Internet searches

Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove

30 April 2022

Cromwell Road, Hove