Hove in the Past: Bigwood Avenue, Hove

Judy Middleton 2001 (revised 2022)

There must be some reason for this odd and ugly name; it is thought that it was named after John Bigwood, a local landowner. But nobody seems to have established exactly who he was although there is a likely candidate in a John Bigwood who in 1905 was to be found living at 57 Dyke Road and was a house agent.

The road was originally called Bigwood Villas but in January 1909 it was changed to Bigwood Avenue. In April 1910 the Borough Surveyor reported that 33 houses had been built, and out of these only five had been numbered, but they were irregular, the other residences being known by name only. He therefore proposed that numbering should be commenced at the south end, with odd numbers on the east side and even numbers on the west side.

House Notes

Number 3– From 1914 until the late 1940s Dr and Mrs Mott Harrison lived in this house. Earlier in their lives the couple had lived at 11 Denmark Villas.

He was still active on Hove Council when he moved to Bigwood Avenue, and in February 1942 he was made an Alderman. It must have been a memorable move because of his magnificent collection of over 400 volumes relating to John Bunyan (1628-1688) including some rare items. Naturally, there were many editions of Bunyan’s great work Pilgrim’s Progress, including foreign language editions, the work having been translated into at least 122 languages and dialects. Within Bunyan’s own lifetime, some 100,000 copies were sold at one shilling and sixpence a copy. In Harrison’s collection there was a first edition of A Few Sighs from Hell (1658) with Bunyan’s signature.

On 29 September 1938 Harrison handed over his entire collection to Bedford Public Library because he considered it the most fitting place, being near to Bunyan’s birthplace, and Bunyan was sometimes known as the ‘Elstow Tinker’ – the Harrisons liked to visit Elstow annually. The presentation was made on the 250^th anniversary of Bunyan’s death. It is astonishing to note that the official catalogue listed around 800 items because as well as books and pamphlets, there were prints and other objects relating to Bunyan.

To Hove Museum Harrison donated the following:

A Sussex Ware cup, 4¼ inches

A pair of Sussex brass candle-sticks, height 7¾ inches

A Sussex copper warming-pan

In the Spring of 1944 Harrison suffered from a severe bout of flu from which he never recovered properly, and he died suddenly on 25 January 1945.

Number 7

Francis Arthur Joseph Oddie was born at Horsham on 25 September 1879. In 1901 he married Lilian, and subsequently joined the staff of the Sheffield Daily Telegraph as a journalist. He later became the secretary to the Sussex County Cricket Club and lived in this house.

During the First World War he joined the 28^th Battalion, Middlesex Regiment, but was later attached to the 2^nd Battalion, Royal Berkshire Regiment. On 23 October 1918 Lieutenant Oddie was killed while leading his platoon into action during the Battle of the Somme.

Number 8

John and Mary Bright lived in this house called Pembridge and had to endure the sadness of losing two sons in the First World War. It is said that Second Lieutenant John Leslie Bright was one of the first to answer Kitchener’s famous call to arms, and joined the 7^th Battalion, Royal Sussex Regiment. He was sent to France, and then after a short period of leave, he served in the 2^nd Battalion of the same regiment. He was aged 25 when he was killed in action on 25 September 1915 in the great advance near Vermelles. His widow, Dorothea Mary Bright, lived in Uckfield.

By coincidence, on the same day, and in the same campaign, his brother suffered a head wound, and was invalided home. He was Kenneth Coldwell Bright of the 7^th Battalion, Royal Sussex Regiment. In peacetime he earned his living as an assistant in a wholesale ironmongery business. But he did so well in the Army that he was promoted to sergeant in less than two months. After he had recovered from his wound, he was attached firstly to the 3^rd Battalion of the same regiment, and then to the 8^th Battalion. There was barely time to become acquainted with his new comrades when 2^nd Lieutenant K. C. Bright was killed in action on 18 August 1916 at Guillemont. He was only 23 years of age.

Number 9 – Graham Head lived in this property in the 1970s. He began flying at the age of seventeen, took out a licence at the age of twenty, and during his National Service he worked as a ferry pilot, gaining experience of flying some 70 different types of aircraft. In 1967 he was on TV demonstrating how to make model planes out of three pieces of paper and a paper-clip. He was greatly interested in the early Hove film pioneers such as James Williamson, Esme Collings, George Albert Smith and Alfred Darling – the latter two men he knew personally. Indeed, Smith left him his precious bioscope camera, made in 1895. Head also came to own Darling’s Biokam, which he was fortunate enough to find in an antique shop. The Biokam was made in hand-tooled sections for the Warwick Trading Company in 1908.

In the late 1970s and again in 1981 Head had a successful series broadcast on TV called Bioscope Days. Head had amassed such a huge collection of film memorabilia in his house in Bigwood Avenue that there were only two rooms left for normal use. In addition he had also installed his own cinema measuring 18-ft by 12-ft in which was housed two 35mm cinema projectors, one coming from the Regent cinema; he could also boast of having a genuine arc lamp. Another find was one of the original film projectors from the Duke of York cinema, which he discovered in a garage and purchased from an estate agent for £5. Head’s dearest wish was to establish a National Museum of Kinematography at Hove to commemorate the place where the early pioneers worked. He was adamant that he had offered his vast collection to Hove Council in 1975, although there does not seem to be any official record of such a fine gesture.

Head said that the councillors were totally uninterested, and it was well known that some were unsympathetic to the point that they considered the eminent Williamson as just a chemist who fiddled about with some films and moreover ‘had no influence on the cinema and filming’. It is sad to think that Head faced such a rejection and he died in 1980 before his vision was vindicated sixteen years later. In 1996 a big fuss was made of the centenary of film-making and the worthies of Hove had at last woken up to its heritage. However, Hove Museum was ahead of the wave, and had a very good display concerning the Hove film pioneers; in 2001 the museum was closed for refurbishment, and in order that a new gallery could be created to house the Barnes Collection of early cameras and film memorabilia.

copyright © Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove
Brighton Herald 3 July 1915
In 1915, Number 15 could be rented for only £45 per annum

Number 15 – Magnus Hermann Volk, the eldest son of Magnus Volk of Brighton’s Volk’s Railway fame, lived at this address from 1908 until 1910. Magnus was a director in his father’s business and eventually took over the running of Volk’s Electric Railway. After the First World War he became the general manager of the Gosport Aircraft Company.

In the 1920s and 1930s Revd Andrew Young (1885-1971) lived at number 15. He was born on 29 April 1885 at Elgin, the youngest of three children. In 1887 the family moved to the Morningside district of Edinburgh. Young took a Master’s degree at Edinburgh University, and afterwards became a theological student for four years before being ordained a Minister of the United Free Church of Scotland. In September 1914 he married Janet Green in Glasgow. In 1920 the couple moved to Sussex where Young became the Presbyterian minister at St Cuthbert’s Church, Cromwell Road, Hove. It was at Hove that their daughter was born – they already had a son.

George Aitchison wrote about Young’s relationship with his congregation as follows; ‘He made a deep and lasting impression. The congregation of St Cuthbert’s, practically all of them of the Scottish kind that takes its theology seriously, and sits in judgement on the minister as only a Scottish laity can, found him a sound man in the pulpit.’

The year 1938 was an important one for Young because he retired from St Cuthbert’s, and he met the charismatic George Bell, Bishop of Chichester – not necessarily in that order. Young’s theological viewpoint had shifted over the years, and in 1939 Bishop Bell ordained him into the Church of England. First of all, Young went as a curate to Plaistow, West Sussex, and then in 1941 he became vicar of Stonegate, near Ticehurst, where he stayed until his retirement in 1952; then he moved to Yapton.

Revd Andrew John Young in 1937
by Howard Coster, NPG x81720

Andrew Young followed a parallel career as a fine poet, and indeed in 1952 he was awarded the Queen’s Medal for Poetry. During his years at Hove he published ten volumes of poetry. Also at Hove, Young began his association with J. G. Wilson who published his poems in slender volumes in 1920, 1921, 1922, 1926 and 1931. Young also became friendly with Francis Meynell whose Nonesuch Press published his Winter Harvest in 1933. In January 1934 Young inscribed a copy of this work in violet ink to Wilhelmina Stitch, another Hove resident – this copy now resides in Hove Library. Young was harsh in his opinion of his earlier works, disowning all he had written before Winter Harvest – it was a complete change in his poetic style, perhaps similar to his shift in theological thinking. The Brighton Herald penned an apt comment – ‘He said little, but he said it uncommonly well’.

Young was also passionate about wild flowers, and during his long life he managed to observe almost every species of wild flower to be found in the British Isles. There is a lovely story about him and how on one occasion he was so absorbed in studying some spiked rampion that he missed his train. His wife died on 12 March 1969, and he died on 25 November 1971. By this time he was a Canon of Chichester Cathedral, and so his funeral was held there. Some of his works are as follows:

Songs of the Night (1910)

Boaz and Ruth (1920)

The Death of Eli (1921)

The Adversary (1923)

Rizpah (1923)

The Bird Cage

The Cuckoo Clock

The New Shepherd

The Poet and the Landscape (prose)

Nicodemus, poem/drama, with incidental music by Imogen Holst, broadcast 1927 from Stockholm.

Number 30

Major Claude Herries Chepmell (1864-1930) lived at Number 30 from 1914 until 1920. Claude was born in Paris, the son of Dr Isaac Dobrée Chepmell, a native of Guernsey, who had been a physician in Paris for 20 years. In the 1880s the Chepmell family spent the winters in Bournemouth where Dr Isaac Chepmell acted as physician to the author Robert Louis Stevenson, who was dogged with ill health for most of his life. Stevenson later wrote, ‘old Dr Chepmell’s visits made it a pleasure to be ill’. While living in Bournemouth, Claude played a series of chess games against Lord Randolph Churchill in order to improve his play. While an undergraduate at Cambridge University in 1886 Claude was president of the University’s Chess Club. In 1894 he took first place in the St. George's Chess Club championship and won the Loewenthal Cup.

On leaving Cambridge, Claude joined the Royal Garrison Artillery and was stationed in Hong Kong. Later in his army career he served as Captain of the garrison in Dover Castle. In 1904 Claude was a participant in the first ever British Chess Federation Congress Championship at Hastings. Claude retired from the army in 1907 and went on to represent Sussex in county chess matches. In 1912 he was appointed the editor of Through Shên-kan; the account of the Clark expedition in north China (1908-9) for publication.
Claude rejoined the army in the First World War as a gunnery instructor. He died in Bristol in 1930.

copyright © J.Middleton
A cherry tree in full splendour in Bigwood Avenue. Such a street tree is a rare sight in Hove because cherries have a short life-span

Hove Council Planning Approvals

1903 – G. M. Jay for G. Kerridge, two pairs semi-detached houses, on the north

1904 – H. Webb, two pairs semi-detached houses, east side

1904 – Overton & Scott, for O. Gabell, four pairs semi-detached houses, east side

1904 – Overton & Scott for G. P. Kerridge, four pairs semi-detached houses, west side

1905 - Overton & Scott, one detached house

1905 – G. M. Jay for Caxton Jay, two pairs semi-detached houses, west side

1905 – Overton & Scott for Mr Schemeld, one detached house

1905 – Overton & Scott for F. Parsons, two semi-detached houses on corner Old Shoreham Road

1906 – G. M. Jay for Caxton Jay, one pair semi-detached houses, west side

1906 – Overton & Scott for G. P. Kerridge, one detached house, east side

1906 – Overton & Scott for C. E. Matton, one pair semi-detached houses

1907 – F. C. Axtell for Mrs A. E. Elliott, one pair semi-detached houses, west side

1908 – H. Webb, one pair houses, east side

1909 – H. Webb for J. C. Glover, two pairs villas, east side

1910 – W. E. H. Overton for J. C. Glover, one pair semi-detached houses

1913 – W. H. Overton for T. H. Elliott, one detached house

Sources

Encyclopaedia of Hove and Portslade

Hove Council Minute Books

Middleton, J. Hove and Portslade in the Great War (2014)

National Portrait Gallery

Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove

08 July 2022

Bigwood Avenue, Hove