Hove in the Past: Hove Street, Hove.

Judy Middleton 2002 (revised 2023)

copyright © J.Middleton
There are few old postcards of Hove Street. This one clearly shows that it was not a straight thoroughfare

Background

It should be remembered that some early settlement at Hove was likely to have been south of modern-day Hove Street on land long since lost to the sea. When William the Conqueror stumbled ashore at Hastings in 1066, Hove extended south for another 150 acres. It is a curious fact that some of this land was known as Le Greves, and old deeds mention properties being situated ‘under the cliff’.

Representation of the Attack made by the French Fleet upon Brighthelmston. A.D. 1545. From a drawing made by J.T. Smith, reproduced from a coloured map at the British Library. Published by the Antiquities of London. It is now thought the drawing represents the raid made by the French in 1514 when the whole town was burned.
To the left is Hove Village centred around Hove Street, to the north is 'Hoove Church' - (St Andrew's Church)

Probably the earliest mention of Hove Street, although it was not called that, occurs in 1576 when Richard Andrew was granted a piece of land on the seashore called Le Greves to build a shop on the east part of Hove highway towards the sea, the rent being 2d a year.

copyright © Royal Pavilion & Museum, Brighton & Hove
The Environs of Brighthemstone by Thomas Yeakell c1800
This map shows the village of Hove around Hove Drove (Hove Street).

When this land was lost the heart of Hove was Hove Street. In times past the street was more sinuous than the straight thoroughfare we see today. The cottages were built of flint with thatched roofs, and on 29 November 1836 a terrific gale blew off the thatch from several cottages. Some of the cottages had external staircases, which meant that when it was to time to go to bed, you had to go outside to access the bedrooms. According to William Hollamby some of these cottages were still there in 1897.

On 4 September 1796 a crowd collected on the shore at the foot of Hove Street to watch as the ship Lewes of Newhaven was captured by a French privateer and taken to Boulogne where the English crew were held prisoners.

There were two wells in the village – one at either end, but the southern one could be problematic, and after a severe storm the well became polluted with sea water and had to be abandoned.

Bull-baiting

The people living in Hove in those days enjoyed violent sports such as dog-fighting and bull-baiting. It was a peculiar fact that on 30 November, which was the feast day of St Andrew, the patron saint of Hove church, there was a celebration in the form of an annual fair and some bull-baiting. This custom was also carried over to a major religious festival – the celebration of Easter, and on Easter Tuesday there was more bull-baiting. Mine host at the nearby Ship Inn could expect plenty of custom on these occasions. The bull ring was situated on the south-west side of Hove Street, south of the coast road.

Enamelled pearlware bull-baiting group, showing a man and
terrier dog standing beside a large tethered brown bull, c1825.
Part of the 'Sports' theme in the Henry Willett Collection in Brighton Museum.

The final bull-bait at Hove took place in 1810. At last there was a courageous bull who managed to break free of his tormentors and charge at the spectators, scattering them in all directions. But somehow the pole and the ring remained as a gruesome reminder until the 1850s.

"View of Hove" by George Hilditch, showing St Andrew's Old Church and Hove Street to the left c.1850.

Cock-fighting

The men also enjoyed watching cock-fighting. The cockerels fought with tiny spurs that were attached to their legs to inflict maximum damage. The general public came to deplore this practice, and in 1849 Parliament passed a law making it illegal. This law was completely ignored by some Hove men, and cock-fighting continued in secret in Hove Street. The Hove Courier (29 April 1882) reported that in one of Hove’s oldest and narrowest thoroughfares cock-fighting took place on a Sunday in the back yard of a tailor’s shop. But the tailor’s wife was unhappy about it because she hated cock-fighting, and thought her husband could get into trouble as well. The wife stayed out of the way in her kitchen. Of course no names were mentioned in the report.

But there is one name we do know due to Tom Hicks because cock-fighting was amongst his earliest memories. He claimed that George Jennings, who was born in the 1840s and died in April 1929, fitted up the interior of an old flint-built slate-roofed shed with white sheets around the walls to provide a proper cock-main. It looks like it was a canny commercial investment because the unfortunate cockerels were his own, and so he knew which ones were the pluckiest; no doubt the money he made from the betting came in very useful. In his youth Jennings was a noted sprinter but he gambled away a fortune. He also bred and raced greyhounds.

Hove Street Meadow

copyright © Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove
Brighton Argus 10 October 1891
The advert claims the newly erected arena at
the Hove Street Meadows will seat 15,000 people.
See the separate page The Circus comes to Hove

copyright © Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove
Brighton Herald 6 August 1898
The circus at Hove Street Meadow (See the separate page The Circus comes to Hove)

Hunting

Hunting foxes on horseback could be equally as bloody of course but since it was the gentry engaged in the chase, society tolerated it. Siegfried Sassoon narrates the old custom of ‘blooding’ whereby the young novice had the fox’s blood besmirched on the face as a sort of initiation. At Hove Manor, there was plenty of evidence of fox-hunting with fine horses in the stables and fox feet and brushes nailed up on the stable doors as well as horse-shoes for good luck. In the 1890s Hove Manor still retained its hunting stables and barns, cow sheds, and buttery.

Some of the men who lived in Hove Street were also involved in smuggling, and it could be said the money supplemented the meagre wages they earned as agricultural labourers. Indeed, Hove with its remote beach, became so notorious for smuggling activities that the authorities were obliged to build a Coastguard Station to the south-east of Hove Street. Contraband was hidden locally, and smugglers did not have to go far to hide their loot, often using the malthouse at the top of the street – where the Connaught stands today.

copyright © J.Middleton
This corner of Hove has changed completely. Hove College on the left, the Coastguard Cottages and Station on the right, have all been demolished. But the 1897 Hove Lodge is still standing

Bare-knuckle Fighting

This was another diversion enjoyed by the men of Hove. It was actually called Prize-ring Tourneys. Forget about the Queensbury Rules – these were brutal fights with no boxing gloves to soften the blows and bouts could last a considerable time. It was a case of the last man left standing. Even as late as the 1890s it was stated that some of the current boxing champions had trained in the vicinity of the Ship Inn.

The Malt-House

Malthouse & Sheep by William Thomas Quartermain,
Brighton Museum describes this painting as, ‘A view looking up a street in an unknown village with a malthouse’.
William Quartermain was a local artist and painted many views around Brighton and Hove, this painting could possibly be Hove’s malthouse with sheep being driven down Hove Drove (Hove Street)

The malt-house stood almost at the top of Hove Street on the north west corner. In the Brighton Gazette (16 August 1827) it was advertised for leasing. It was stated that that there was a cistern ‘capable of wetting fifteen quarters of barley’ and a large storeroom capable of holding 700 quarters of malt and around 300 quarters of barley.

The Vallance family owned the malt-house, and different men leased it over the years. For example, there were the following:

1850 – Benjamin Davis was the occupant

1861-1869 – Henry Longhurst

1873-1877 – William C. Tamplin

The malt-house had no windows, but there were stout wooden bars and shutters to let down as required. The men used very wide wooden shovels at their work, and on their feet they wore lambskin with the wool on the inside, which gave them a somewhat ‘gouty’ appearance.

William Hollamby, writing in 1897, remembered the malt-house from his youth. As a young boy, he and his friends used to shout and tease the workers until one day they decided to retaliate. They tied a length of string from the loft to the piece of wood keeping the shutter open, then just when the boys were at their most boisterous, the string was pulled, down came the shutters and the boys were caught like rats in a trap. The men improved the occasion by drenching the boys with a bucket of cold water. After that lesson, the boys left the malt-house in peace.

The malt-house was demolished before the Connaught Hotel was built in 1880.

copyright © J.Middleton
The Connaught Hotel was built on the site of the old Hove Street malt-house. The photograph was taken on 17 March 2014.

Brick-making

In the 1851 census there were three households in Hove Street where the bread-winner earned his money from bricks. There was one brick-maker, one brick-maker’s labourer, and one brick-layer. Brick-making was an important industry in Hove for many years. It started off at the end of the 18^th century on land bordering with Brighton, and continued to the 20^th century, by which time the brick-fields had moved to Aldrington.

A Female Blacksmith?

The Street Directories for 1854 and 1859 record an intriguing person – namely Elizabeth Adams, blacksmith. It seems probable that she owned the family business rather than wielding the hammer at the anvil herself.

The Sewer Tussle

The Vallance family occupied Hove Manor on the east side of Hove Street from at least the 1790s and the family remained there until the 20^th century. The Vallance Estate was the third largest land-holding in Hove after the Stanford Estate and the Wick Estate.

Until the 1870s there was no main drainage in Hove Street, and in 1872 it was decided that a sewer really ought to be constructed. This led to a tussle between the Hove Commissioners and the Trustees of the Vallance Estate. Thomas Lainson, architect to the Vallance Estate and responsible for the design of many houses built thereon, asked to be present when the tenders for providing a sewer were opened. The tenders were as follows:

Joseph Anscombe £599

I. G. B. Marshall £450

John Blackmore £469

Charles Curd £450

Lainson was not at all happy about the cost, claiming that the lowest tender was still more than 50 per cent in excess of similar work lately carried out by the Trustees. The clerk to the Hove Commissioners suggested that the Trustees might like to pay three-fourths of the cost. Finally, in December 1872 Hove Commissioners decided to put £122-3-6d towards the cost of constructing a sewer – it being the estimated cost of the difference between a 12-in pipe and the proposed sewer.

copyright © Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove
A long lost view of Hove Street, which has changed beyond all recognition in the last 100 years or so.

Hackney Carriage Stand

In October 1899 Hove Council decided that the space at the north-west corner opposite Lloyd’s Bank should become a hackney carriage stand.

Road Widening

In February 1913 it was stated that as far back as March 1887 Mr Ellice Clark, surveyor, had prepared a plan to widen Hove Street, but as the matter was not pressing, it was allowed to drop. Then in 1911 it appeared that the Vallance Estate were about to build three houses that would stand mainly on land needed for road widening. Therefore Hove Council and the Vallance Trustees had to come to an agreement.

copyright © J.Middleton
Cliff House (Hove College) and The Ship Inn in the narrow Hove Street
(See the separate pages for Cliff House (Hove College) and The Ship Inn)

The new road alignment at the south end would be 60-ft wide and Hove Council agreed to erect the necessary new walls and gates to the side of Cliff House and Hove Manor. Hove Corporation would pay £1,000 to the Vallance Trustees, who would in turn pay compensation to their tenants – notice to quit had already been given to Mrs Gervas of Hove Cottage. The Vallance Trustees would convey to Hove Corporation as much of their land as was necessary for road-widening purposes. The estimated cost of the scheme came to £10,000; the breakdown being as follows:

1. Street works, including altering the sewer, gas and water mains, and building boundary walls - £4,250.

2. £1,000 to be paid to the Vallance Trustees.

3. Cost of setting back the Ship Inn - £4,500

4. Legal costs £250

Then an application had to be made to turn and divert the highway so that it continued north over land at present part of the Vallance estate.

On 8 December 1914 while excavating for the sewer a fossil lower molar tooth of a horse was found at a depth of 15-ft in gravel soil, and it was presented to Hove Library. (Hove Museum was not then in existence and there was a small display of various objects at Hove Library).

Electricity for Aldrington

In the 1920s the population of Aldrington had increased to such an extent that the supply of electricity to them became a matter of urgency. In 1923 it was suggested that those roads west of Wish Road should continue to received their electricity supply from Southwick Power Station, which was owned by Brighton Corporation, while the rest should receive electricity from Hove. The latter meant that there needed to be a converter and transformer station in Hove Street. It seems the Vallance Trustees were again digging their heels in by not allowing Hove Corporation to buy just the necessary narrow strip of land. Instead the Trustees insisted that Hove Corporation should purchase the whole plot of land north of Hove Manor to Vallance Gardens for £5,000, plus £50 towards the party wall between Hove Manor and the sites, and 100 guineas to cover the legal fees.

The Vallance Trustees also insisted that the sub-station should be set back 26-ft from Hove Street, and that offices or a showroom should be erected in front to act as a noise buffer for the houses opposite. The land frontage was as follows:

To Hove Street 176-ft

To Vallance Gardens 281-ft

To Vallance Road 159-ft 6-in

Next to Hove Manor 261-ft 6-in

The adjacent property to the north belonged to the Post Office. It was proposed that a Fire Station should be erected on part of the site. A Fire Station was duly built and opened in 1926, and there it remained for fifty years until it moved to new premises in English Close. Meanwhile, the elegant old building was not demolished, thankfully, and was converted into commercial premises and living accommodation. By November 1997 it was stated that Lauralex Investments had purchased the old Fire Station for £550,000 – by then it was called Audley House and Regent House. The properties were multi-let and produced an annual rent of £69,800 a year.

Good-bye to Old Hove

copyright © Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove
Brighton Graphic 14 October 1915
The army camp mentioned in the above was at Goldstone Bottom,
Smugglers were hung in chains at Gibbett's Farm in Aldrington,
close to present day Old Shoreham Road.

The year 1936 was a sad time for local history because Hove Manor was demolished. Conservation was not an issue in those days, and the Well House in St Ann’s Well Gardens was also lost. The owner of Hove Manor did the right thing by offering it to Hove Corporation. But that august institution, known for its frugality, declined the offer, fearing that the expense involved might put a shilling on the rates, and of course the grumbles of rate-payers is ever in the news.

Then in October and November 1936 two flint and ivy-covered cottages opposite Hove Manor were demolished. One was called Vine Cottage, numbered at 22, and the other was called King Charles II’s cottage because it was thought that the fugitive king stayed there after fleeing from the Battle of Worcester in 1651. However, there is another contender in this matter at Southwick Green. Both are most probably myths because the general consensus is that the king stayed at Brighton before escaping abroad from Shoreham.

copyright © Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove
The Royal cars parked outside Hove Manor in Hove Street.
The Brighton & Hove & South Sussex Graphic (9 January 1915) stated that King George V and Queen Mary dined at Hove Manor on the occasion of their visit to Hove when they came to inspect the 2^nd Eastern General Hospital.

In front of the cottages there was a flint-walled, slate-tiled, single-storey building with a sign ‘E. R. May, Bath Chair Stores’. These bath chairs were popular vehicles at Hove in which invalids were wheeled along the promenade for a good dose of sea air. The cottages and land were situated on the corner of Hove Street and Princes Avenue and belonged to Leonard Chadwell.

copyright © Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove
This photograph from the Brighton Graphic shows how the original Ship Inn looked, before its demolition in 1914. A new Ship Inn was later rebuilt further back from the old road.
(see the separate page The Ginger Pig - the Ship Inn's new name)

Traffic Census

All the demolitions and new building works left the road surface in a terrible state, and to justify the expense of re-surfing it, a traffic census was taken on 4 August 1926. A total of 1,934 vehicles used Hove Street that day, broken down as follows:

216 motor buses

718 other motor vehicles

53 horse-drawn vehicles

57 hand-carts and barrows

135 motor-cycles

736 bicycles

In 1927 it was decided to pave the road with with creosoted deal blocks at a cost of £6,741, 5s.

Petrol Storage

In June 1928 it was stated that David Langford, garage proprietor, was going to install a petrol bulk-storage at numbers 5 & 6 Hove Street in a large open space in front of two cottages. The steel tanks would be situated underground, each having a double compartment to contain 500 gallons each. There would be six pumps.

Dolphin Court

Between Vallance Road and the back of the houses in Church Road there was a piece of waste land that Charlie Ham took over. He ran an ironmonger’s business at 212 Church Road, and raised poultry and grew vegetables on the land.

It was on this site that Dolphin Court was built, being completed by May 1959. Stonecroft Ltd of London were the developers who commissioned the 60-ft high block of flats, and their agents were Parsons, Son & Basley. It was the first block of flats to be constructed by H. J. Paris, and 50 men were employed on the project. It was also the first time a tower crane was used at Hove.

Morgan & Carn of 12 Grand Avenue were the architects, and there were 33 flats. The bricks were especially manufactured in a new colour range, and near the entrance a carving of a dolphin was installed. There were steel staircases, Balustrades and balconies, the latter faced with aluminium and vitreous enamelled by a new process widely used in the USA. Show flats were furnished by William Hill of Hove. Advertisements stressed that there was a uniformed porter in attendance, and there was central heating, constant hot water, gas fridges, and a TV connection if desired. Flats could be leased for seven years at £275 a year (one bedroom) £375 a year (two bedrooms) and £425 a year (three bedrooms).

Hove Lodge

It is somewhat confusing that there are two distinct buildings known as Hove Lodge next door to each other on the west side of Hove Street. The southern Hove Lodge is a handsome red brick edifice built in 1897 and still with us. The Hove Gazette (12 February 1898) carried s small paragraph about Hove Lodge Mansions reporting that the huge building with its continental flats had ‘already begun to be inhabited’.

The original Hove Lodge, now demolished, has a long and fascinating history.

Hove Lodge was the subject of a marriage settlement dated 9 November 1842. In 1850 Mrs Minshaw lived in the house with her 32-year old nephew Charles Stuart Kirton. The nephew had suffered from depression for many years and on 27 April 1850 he drowned himself in the well belonging to Hove Lodge. He left the house at midnight and his footsteps were heard by the maids, but he was not missed until 5 a.m. Then a full-scale search was launched, and John Bartlett, carpenter, discovered the body in the well situated in a field next to Mrs Minshaw’s house. The well was 31-ft deep and the water level was 5-ft 6-in. Mr Kirton was clad in in his drawers and night clothes. An Inquest was held at the Ship Inn before Mr F. H. Gell, coroner, and the jury returned a verdict of insanity.

On 6 December 1853 Hove Lodge was let to Revd Henry H. Hamilton of Storrington. The terms were £130 a year for the first seven years, and £135 for the next seven years plus £5 for the use of the small meadow or paddock. The signatures on the document were as follows:

Edward Baugh of Lindfield and Mary his wife (1^st part)

Charles Frederick Mann of Upper Holloway, Middlesex (2^nd part)

Evan Jones of the Admiralty Register (2^nd part)

Revd H. H. Hamilton (3^rd part)

The schedule described the fittings in the house including an ornamental register stove with steel mouldings in the dining room, and a ‘bright front register stove with bronze ornaments and steel mouldings’ in the drawing room. The kitchen contained a 5-ft range with oven and back boiler, and there were five iron hooks in the ceiling. The butler’s pantry contained a Portland stone sink mounted on brickwork. The same sort of sink was to be found in the scullery along with two coppers and iron furnaces set in brickwork. Venetian sun-shades were fitted to the windows.

In the yard there was an iron-bound water butt on brickwork. The stables contained two mangers, a saddle-rack, five pegs, and a ladder to the hayloft. There was a green painted lattice partition between the garden and the paddock.

Hove Lodge School / Academy

Revd Hamilton then ran a boys’ school on the premises. By the late 1840s Charles Dorange ‘professor of the French Language’ was running the school.

Dr Charles White, a fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, took over the school in the 1850s and changed the name to Hove Lodge Academy. Dr White had led an interesting life because he had been invited to St Petersberg to act as tutor to the young Russian prince who became Czar Alexander II in 1855. The Russian royal family liked to employ English nurses and tutors for their children, and when Alexander II visited England in 1874 he was able to converse with Queen Victoria in English. Although Alexander II was an enlightened ruler, and the emancipation of the serfs took place under his rule, the country was plagued with unrest. In 1881 whilst returning to the Winter Palace, his carriage was attacked. One bomb damaged the carriage and caused casualties among the horses and accompanying Cossacks. The Tsar alighted from his carriage to assist the wounded, and another terrorist threw a grenade wrapped in a snowball at his feet. The explosion shattered both of the Tsar’s legs below the knee and destroyed his left eye. He was taken back to the Winter Palace to die. The Tsar was careful about his security and he never used the same route twice, but there were enough terrorists about to be able to attack him whichever route he chose. His erstwhile tutor Dr White was not alive to read of the appalling tragedy.

Dr White sported a cape and flowing gown, and he was often to be seen going to and from Mrs Knight’s shop – dubbed the tuck shop by the schoolboys. It is a grim fact that there was another suicide at Hove Lodge, just 26 years after the previous one. Mr White committed suicide by hanging himself inside the house. He was aged 77 and was buried in the churchyard of St Andrew’s Old Church (now under a Tesco's Supermarket carpark) Apparently, his gravestone bore the rather unkind inscription ‘Dr White was pious without enthusiasm’. Old Mrs Knight swore she saw Dr White’s ghost now and again.

The running of the school then passed to Dr White’s son Percy White. The 1881 census recorded him living with his widowed mother Elizabeth, a housekeeper, two servants, and sixteen scholars. Percy White had a deep knowledge of French literature, wrote novels and played cricket for the Gentlemen of Sussex. His nephew was the celebrated C. B. Fry.

Charles Burgess Fry (1872-1956)

Charles Burgess Fry

by Ernest Clarence Elliott (1904)

NPG Ax39967

C. B. Fry has been described as the greatest all-round sportsman in history. Fry’s family on his father’s side had lived in Sussex for 800 years, although C. B. Fry was born in Croydon, just a few weeks after the Sussex County Cricket Ground opened its new ground at Hove – Fry was destined to be the Sussex captain in 1904. Fry managed to score 20,656 runs at an average of 56.43 runs during his cricketing career. At Oxford University Fry became a triple blue, and he went on to represent England in football, cricket, and athletics. For a long tine he held the world record for the long jump.

C. B, Fry’s first school was Hove Lodge, and he remembered the place as a large whitewashed house with school-rooms and playgrounds. He wrote ‘To Hove Lodge I used to go as a very small boy, in order to get a bad bilious attack and be dosed with syrup of senna by Dr Dill, and on recovery to live on the fringe of some forty boys, who (…) were taught Homer and Virgil by my uncle.’

Percy White gave Fry some formal education, but what stuck in Fry’s memory was learning how to shoot with a catapult. It was a craze at the school for boys to make catapult prongs from the top of cigar boxes, which were carved, shaped and polished. Elastic for the catapult was purchased from the nearby sweet shop. Whenever White caught a boy with a catapult, he would confiscate the offending article, and there were usually several languishing inside his big desk in the study.

However, Fry’s mother was unimpressed by her son’s progress at Hove Lodge, and never mind the fact that the head was her brother, so she despatched him to a school at Chiselhurst. She thought the discipline at Hove Lodge was too lax, and young Fry seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time fishing and shooting birds.

Flats

In around 1984 Hove Council sought to have Hove Lodge made a listed building because it was one of the oldest buildings in the area. But the application was turned down, probably because there were not enough original features left.

The building was described as being a two-storey structure, brick-built with contrasting brick-work at the level of the window tops on the ground and first floors. There was a projecting two-storey bay with six windows at either end – almost like small towers. There was a covered porch over the front door.

By 1986 the house was in the occupation of fifteen young squatters who were ejected in July of that year by six men wielding sledge-hammers and crowbars. The squatters fled, and the men proceeded to smash windows, doors ans floors, and watched by the police, boarded up the property.

In September 1986 an application to re-develop the site was deferred for further reports. But as Hove Lodge was not a listed building, the scheme could not be blocked. The house was demolished in 1986. One of the two owners decided to sweeten the destruction by removing the old fireplaces and selling them for charity. The sale produced £1,250 and the money was donated to the cancer treatment fund at the Royal Sussex County Hospital. The fireplaces were purchased by John Hynam of Grate Restorations. The site was re-developed by Coastal Counties Retirement Homes, and a four-storey block of twenty sheltered flats was built.

Hove Manor (Flats)

This block of flats was thus named because it stood on the site previously occupied by the old Hove Manor House. Clayton & Black of 10 Prince Albert Street designed the development that included 40 high-class residential flats, 10 spacious lock-up shops, and 26 lock-up garages. The advertising brochure also mentioned ‘electric express passenger lifts and electric service for servants and tradesmen. There are uniformed porters and pages, day and night.’

Initially the old gates from Hove Manor were incorporated into the top flat, number 53, and set between the living room and dining room. That is, until the occupant grew tired of them, and stored them on his balcony.

There was always a cafe at 5 Hove Manor Parade. Its first name was the Old Vienna Cafe, but by 1947 it was the Tommy Tucker Restaurant. By 1951 it had become the Hove Manor Restaurant.

In March 1988 it was stated that Juan Hernandez and his wife Frances had owned the restaurant for nearly twelve years. Frances’s brother-in-law was also involved in the business while the chef was Jose Navas. The cuisine was English and continental with a touch of Spanish flavour. In October 2000 the restaurant became the Coriander, and Katrin and David Smale ran it with David being the chef. The exotic cuisine originated in Morocco, Turkey and the Middle East.

Vallance Hall

This was the name of the old Post Office property situated on the corner of Vallance Road and Hove Street after it was taken over in the 1990s by Graves, Son & Pilcher for use as auction rooms. The first property sale was held there on 22 September 1993, realizing a sum of £412,000.

In August 2000 it was announced that the three Brighton partners of Graves, Son & Pilcher were retiring to concentrate on surveying and estate agency. They were Andrew Mackay, David Clifford, and Stephen Owen. The auction rooms would now be run by Scarborough Perry Fine Arts.

Under Separate Headings

Connaught Hotel

Hove College

Hove Fire Station

Hove Manor House

The Ship Inn now The Ginger Pig

Smugglers of Hove

Hove Planning Approvals

1896 – T. Chambers for Messrs Cranbourne & Cranbourne, residential flats on the west side – bringing forward of bay windows permitted.

1911 – Clayton & Black for J. Hayler, two pairs of semi-detached houses and garages, west side

1922 – J, Parsons & Sons for Miss Annand, flats and a garage.

1922 – G. M. Jay, two pairs of semi-detached houses, west side

1922 – one pair of semi-detached houses, west side