Hove in the Past: York Avenue, Hove.

Judy Middleton 2003 (revised 2023)

On 4 May 1905 Hove Council approved plans submitted by M. Tucker on behalf of the Wick Estate for a new street called York Road, a continuation of York Road. Presumably, this was for the first section of the road because on 16 November 1905 Hove Council approved the continuation of York Avenue from Furze Hill to Osmond Road.

The new street works were also carried out in sections. The first part was completed in 1914 and cost £749-4-8d, a sum that must have pleased the council because the original estimate was for £936; it was declared a public highway in 1915. Also in 1915 the road was widened at the corner of York Avenue and Nizells Avenue but it only cost £27.

In 1920 the next portion of York was declared a public highway except for the foot-path on the east side between Furze Hill and Osmond Road. This work had to wait for another eight years because it was not until 1928 that it was laid out at a cost of £155-19-8d.

copyright © Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove
York Avenue in 1909, The boundary between Hove and Brighton ran along the backgarden fences of the east side of York Avenue. Emmanuel Church can be seen on the corner of Lansdowne Road and York Avenue, the Church's schoolroom was in Norfolk Terrace, Brighton.

Emmanuel Church

This 1868 built church had the unusual distinction of being half in Hove (on the corner of York Avenue and Lansdowne Road) and half in Brighton (Norfolk Terrace). For example, the chancel was in Hove, while the nave and aisles were in Brighton. Originally, the pulpit was in Brighton too but when refurbishment took place in 1878, the pulpit was moved and joined the reading desk in Hove. This church had two entrances, one in Lansdowne Road and one in York Avenue (then known as York Road) this substantially built church large enough to accommodate 1,500 people was demolished in 1968.

Mercia House

Illustration from 1881 The Builder magazine
Mercia House stands on the corner of Lansdowne Road and York Avenue,
this artist impression shows an identical designed house in the background
in York Avenue, which was never built.

Eminent Residents

Number 5

On the 23 May 1947 The London Gazette published a List of Alien’s to whom certificates of Naturalization have been granted by the Home Office and had taken the Oath of Allegiance.
Listed by The London Gazette and living at Number 5 York Avenue were:- Dr Josef Marcel Bednar and his two daughters, Anita Maria Bednar (b.1930) and Magdalena Agnes Bednar (b.1933). The family were Holocaust survivors from Czechoslovakia and they changed their surname from Apfelman to Bednar on gaining British Citizenship. Magdalena Agnes Bednar used the professional name of ‘Carol (Magdalena) Bednar’ for her career as a successful artist in the 1950s. ‘Carol’ also worked for Brighton Council in the early 1950s as a member of the Brighton Promettes, which was small group of smartly uniformed ladies who gave out tourist advice on Brighton’s seafront to holiday makers.

Number 13

George Bradshaw lived in York Avenue in the 1930s and 1940s. He was the owner of Messrs George Bradshaw (Sussex) of Western Road, Hove. The name Bradshaw became a legendary one at Brighton and Hove in connection with the sale of bicycles. It started off at 6 Western Road, Hove, in 1898, and in the 1920s Bradshaw became the agent for the New Hudson Cycle Company Ltd.

On the 5 June 1937, Hove Fire Brigade put out a fire at Bradshaw’s shop in Western Road, Hove, notice the burnt and twisted cycle wheels in the foreground.

Bradshaw soon expanded his business by opening another shop at 91 Blatchington Road, Hove, and in the next decade there was a further shop at 70 London Road, Brighton.

An indoor Cycle Race for the Bradshaw Cup took place on 18 December 1937 in Brighton.

By the 1940s the name of Bradshaw was to be found in Eastbourne, Haywards Heath, and Lewes. Bradshaw also had an inventive mind, and produced a vehicle that acquired the peculiar name of Majestic Milk Pram. It was designed for use by the dairy industry, and, depending on how large your milk round was, you could convey a drum holding 20 or 30 gallons of milk.

There are some famous publicity photos taken in 1937 when Bradshaw kindly presented no less than twelve bicycles for the use of nurses from the District Nurses Association. It was an important enough occasion for the Mayor of Hove to be present.

The business remained in operation until the 1960s.

Number 16

Revd Herries S. Gregory MA of Emmanuel College, Cambridge lived at this address from 1912 until the late 1930s, he was the Minister of Emmanuel Church on the corner of York Avenue and Lansdowne Road.

Number 20

Lewis Cohen, later to become Baron Coleman-Cohen lived at this address during the 1930s with his mother, Mrs Ester Cohen.

Number 24

Major George Harry John Rooke (1869-1936) – The major served in the Prince of Wales Leinster Regiment, and lived at 24 York Avenue from 1923 to 1936. In 1909 George Rooke was living in India at Adyar (Chennai), the headquarters of the Theosophical Society and would have known Annie Besant the women's rights activist, promoter of Indian Home Rule and leading member of the Society. He was a Theosophist and a member of the Royal Asiatic Society for whom he wrote learned articles.

Brighton's Theosophical Lodge was located for many years in the neighbouring Norfolk Terrace, just over the Hove Boundary in Brighton. Major Rooke would have been a regular visitor to the Lodge in the 1920s, a few minutes walk from his York Avenue home.

He was far from being an ordinary military man because he was fluent in Sanskrit, and translated texts into English. Major George Rooke’s seminal work was his 1935 translation of the 4th–5th century epic poem, The Meghadūta of Kālidāsa, that runs to 120 stanzas. Kālidāsa is considered to be one of the greatest Sanskrit poets. George’s translation included an introductory poem by the great Indian polymath Rabindranath Tagore, the winner of the 1913 Nobel Prize for Literature, who coincidently lived at Medina Villas, Hove in the 1870s while attending an English public school.

George’s family as a whole were of great interest, being related to Queen Emma of Hawaii by adoption in an earlier generation. The major’s widowed mother lived with him at Hove. She was Mrs Phebe H. Lane Rooke who survived to the ripe old age of 91 and died in 1931. It was her late husband and son who were related to Queen Emma of Hawaii, and it was most probably this family connection that enabled Phebe Rooke to become tutor to the Crown Princess Ka’iulani when Phebe lived at 7 Cambridge Road, Hove. In the 1930s the major established scholarships at Oriel College, Cambridge, in his mother’s memory.

As for the major – he died dramatically on 24 June 1936 whilst engaged in playing tennis against Commander E. W. Salisbury at the Sussex County Lawn Tennis Club.

Princess Ka’iulani was born on 16 October 1875, and every church in Honolulu rang a peal of bells in her honour; a banyan tree was planted to commemorate her christening. She was the only direct heir by birth to the Hawaiian throne. Her full name was Princess Victoria Kawakiu Ka’iulani Cleghorn. Her parents were Archibald Scott Cleghorn and Princess Likelike, sister of King Kalakauna.

Her family doted on the young princess, but unhappily her mother died when she was eleven years old. In 1899 when she was aged thirteen, it was decided to send her to England to further her education. Robert Louis Stevenson, who was a friend of the family, composed the following verse before she left, and wrote it in her red plush autograph book:

Forth from her land to mine she goes

The island maid, the island rose

Light of heart and bright of face

The daughter of a double race

Her islands here in southern sun

Shall mourn their Ka’iulani gone

And I, in her dear banyan’s shade

Look vainly for my little maid.

The princess was only supposed to stay in England for one year, but events meant that she did not set eyes on her native land for eight long years. At first, she attended a small school run by Mrs Caroline Sharp at Great Harrowden Hall, Northamptonshire. While she was there, her uncle King Kalakaua died in 1891, and the new Queen declared Princess Ka’iulani as the heir apparent. However, her rise in importance led the other girls at the school to tease her unmercifully – indeed she found it an ordeal to even face them.

Most probably, the princess was relieved when Mrs Sharp, aged 74, decided it was time to retire. By February 1892 the princess was comfortably ensconced in 7 Cambridge Road, Hove, with Mrs Phebe Rooke, a relative of Queen Emma of Hawaii. Princess Ka’iulani wrote that Mrs Rooke would look after her and ‘be a sort of mother to me while I am in Brighton. I believe Mrs Rooke is a thorough lady … I shall take lessons in French, German, music and English.’

Mrs Rooke arranged for various tutors to visit the house, and the princess admitted that her studies progressed more satisfactorily under tutors than in a school, and besides there was no more bullying. She had an hour’s conversation with Fraulein Kling in German or French every morning, and there were singing lessons with Madame Lancia. She took art lessons from Anna Maria Grace of Hove, who was a miniaturist and exhibited her work at the Royal Academy – she and her two artistic sisters were known locally as the Three Graces. The princess also took lessons in riding, deportment and dancing. Indeed, she was so immersed in her studies that she missed seeing royalty such as the Duke of Connaught or Princess Christian when they came to Hove on official business. Perhaps the princess spent too much time in studying because it began to affect her large, brown eyes, and she started to wear spectacles.

The princess must have missed all the exercise she was accustomed to in Hawaii. She was such a strong swimmer that often she would swim further out to sea than the best male swimmers dared to go. Like other Hawaiins she especially enjoyed going for a swim in the moonlight; she was also an expert on a surfboard or in an outrigger canoe. But she liked living at Hove and thought she would benefit by it because ‘the air is very pure and bracing and already my appetite shows that it suits me.’

While Princess Ka’iulani was living at Hove, she heard that her half-sister Annie’s baby had died (she and Annie had been at Great Harrowden together) and that her aunt, the Queen, had been deposed. It was now uncertain whether or not the princess would ever ascend the throne. Her advisers thought that a visit to the USA might help her cause, and so in 1893 she went there. She also believed she would be going home to Hawaii the same year. Indeed, it had all been planned until the political situation determined otherwise. She also visited Germany and France.

But the clouds were gathering over her unfortunate head, and she herself believed she had been born under an unlucky star. She was suffering from headaches and eye problems, plus the possibility of an arranged marriage, rather than marrying for love, and the death of her half-sister Annie was another blow. By the time she returned home to Hawaii on 9 November 1897, she had given up all hopes of ascending the throne, and turned to good works instead. On 11 August 1898 the USA annexed Hawaii, and on 6 March 1899 the princess died at the early age of 23 from a rheumatic heart and an ophthalmic condition.

The local people called her the Princess of the Peacocks because she was so fond of her flock of peacocks that had the freedom of the estate. The story has been handed down that when she died, her peacocks screeched their mourning so incessantly that her father had to have some of them shot.

Number 26

Corporal Frank Wilkinson – He was the son of Thomas and Elizabeth Wilkinson of 26 York Avenue. He was educated at Hurstpierpoint College, and later on joined the old-established firm of Wilkinson, Son & Welch, auctioneers and estate agents, becoming head of the Hove Branch. He was a Freemason, and in 1908 he was Worshipful Master of the Royal Lodge of Freemasons. He was keenly interested in ornithology, and enjoyed many holidays on the west coast and islands of Scotland, where he collected birds’ eggs – now of course forbidden.

He must have been a patriotic man because he volunteered for war service in September 1914 when he had no need to do so, being already 38 years of age. Indeed, battalion members immediately nick-named him ‘Pa’. Wilkinson joined the 20^th Battalion, Royal Fusiliers (Public School Battalion). He was aged 40 when he was killed in action on 20 July 1916 at High Wood during the Battle of the Somme. The following description of the event pays tribute to his qualities.

‘He met his death with characteristic devotion. He could easily have ensured his (own) safety. But he saw a man lying injured and helpless in a crater and he made his way to him to dress his wounds. He had finished this work of mercy when he was struck by a bullet and killed. Thus died a very brave and gallant gentleman.’

Wilkinson’s name is commemorated in the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme. This means that his body was never recovered from the battlefield nor identified.

It is interesting to note that at around the time of his death, it was announced that his brother, Captain T. O. Wilkinson of the 91^st Punjabis, currently stationed at Mandalay, Upper Burma, had been ordered to Mesopotamia.

Number 32

Earl of Clonmell lived at number 32 from 1915 until the 1920s. His full name was the Honourable Dudley Alexander Charles Scott, 8^th Earl of Clonmell.

Number 36

Helen Kirkpatrick Watts – She was born on 13 July 1881 at Bishop Wearmouth, Sunderland; her father was the Revd Alan Hunter Watts, who was born in West Hoathly, East Sussex, and it is fascinating to note that he became vicar of two churches called Holy Trinity, the first at Bordesley, Birmingham and the latter being at Brighton, and that Edith Warne who lived in York Avenue was also connected to that church.

The Revd Alan Watts was also a campaigner for ‘votes for women’ like his daughter,
the Bishop of Lewes states in his address the whole social system and outlook is going to change.

Coincidently Revd Alan Watts' previous 'Holy Trinity' was in Bordesley, Birmingham, which was also the same parish that the Curate of St Andrew's Church Portslade, the Revd Richard Enraght was the vicar of from 1874 to 1881. Revd Enraght was sent to Warwick Prison in 1880 for his Anglo-Catholic practices and became known Nationally and Internationally as a ‘Prisoner for Conscience Sake’

Public Domaine

Suffragette Helen Watts

Photograph by Colonel Linley Blathwayt

Helen Watts became famous as a suffragette, being a founding member in 1907 of the Women’s Social and Political Union. However, after years of frustration the movement became more militant and Watts did not agree with arson attacks.

She therefore left the WSPU and joined the Women’s Freedom League. But this was after she had endured a 90-hour hunger strike in Leicester Jail, and been awarded a Hunger Strike Medal by the WSPU. The reason for her being sent to jail was because she caused a rumpus at a meeting where Winston Churchill was giving a speech.

Fortunately, her hunger strike did not imperil her health because she lived to her nineties. Her last known address was at 36 York Avenue, which was then known as St Ann’s Rest Home.

But she actually died at Chilcompton, Somerset, on 18 August 1972, aged 91. She was buried in the churchyard of St. Vigor, Stratton-on-the-Fosse, Somerset.

Number 46

Captain Athelstan Basil Baines – He served in the 6^th Battalion, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, and was killed in action at the age 28 on 3 April 1917. His name is remembered on the Brighton War Memorial because his father, Harold Athelstan Baines, lived in Cannon Place, Brighton, but later moved to 46 York Avenue. The young man’s widow gave a surprising address to the authorities – it was 20 Rue Dailly, St Cloud, Seine et Oise, France. Her husband was buried in H. A. C. Cemetery, Ecoust St Mein.

This was not the only tragedy to hit the Baines family. Captain Baines’s cousin, whose family lived at Hove, was 2^nd Lieutenant Frederick Athelstan Baines, and he was killed in action at the 2^nd Battle of Ypres. His military career was shockingly brief – he reported for duty on the Sunday, and was killed on the Tuesday; he was only aged nineteen.

Major John Effingham Arnold lived at number 46 in the 1930s, he was educated at Lancing College. During the First World War he served in the Army Service Corps and was mentioned in Despatches twice, in 1917 he was awarded the D.S.O.
Major Arnold was a member of the London Stock Exchange.

Number 52

Gideon Coventry Williams

by Walter Stoneman 1919
NPG x66348

Brigadier-General Gideon Coventry Williams – This professional soldier spent some of his well-earned retirement living at number 52 York Avenue in the 1930s. He was born in Paris, but was educated at Eton. He rose swiftly through the Army ranks as can be seen from the following list:

1880 - 2^nd Lieutenant

1881 – Lieutenant

1886 – Captain

1896 – Adjutant

1903 – Lieutenant-Colonel

1906 – Colonel

1914 – Temporary Brigadier-General

He also served in different regiments as follows:

20^th Hussars

3^rd Dragoon Guards

13^th Hussars

On the Staff at Aldershot to the Cavalry Brigade

Attached to the staff of HRH Duke of Connaught at Aldershot

2^nd Dragoon Guards (Royal Scots Greys)

As for theatres of war – he served in South Africa from 1899 to 1902, and was present at the Relief of Ladysmith, and the action at Spion Kop – both of these became famous events at the time. When the First World War broke out, he was recalled to service, and served in Egypt from 1915 to 1916.

Naturally, he collected a few medals along the way. He received the Queen’s Medal with five clasps, the King’s Medal with two clasps, and the Order of St Anne. The latter unusual award was from Russia where Williams was despatched to meet the Tsar who was Colonel-in-Chief of the regiment, in order to make a report; before Williams departed for Russia, he was received by the King.

Berwyn

George Gregory lived at Berwyn from 1910 until the late 1920s, he was a Coal Merchant with four branches in Brighton and one at the Holland Road Goods Yard in Hove, in an extraordinary mix of occupations, he was also a teacher of Pitman’s Shorthand. George Gregory was an Elder at the Queen's Road Presbyterian Church in Brighton.

Flight Magazine 4 July 1918

The Cottage – Major George Stuart Kerrick lived in this house in 1913. He was a veteran of the Afghan War 1879-80, and the Burmese Expedition 1886-89 – being awarded a medal for the former, and a medal with two clasps for the latter.

The Occult Review February 1929
Mr Frank Ferrier, the publisher of The Link,
lived in The Cottage from late 1920s until the early 1930s

Knight Lodge – In November 1993 Philip Knight was the owner of this nursing home that provided a place for ten patients with learning difficulties. He stated that he would have to close down because of all the new rules and regulations coming into force. The authorities wanted him to install a bathroom on each floor, but if he did that, it would mean the loss of bedroom space with a consequent loss of income; such improvements could cost in the region of £30,000.

Prospect Lodge

Honourable Alice Baring – She had a distinguished brother in the shape of Thomas George Baring, Earl of Northbrook, who served as Viceroy of India from 1872 to 1876. She lived at number 36 York Avenue, which was then called Prospect Lodge, from 1916 to 1924. She obviously liked living at Hove because her previous address was at 51 Clarendon Villas from 1889 to 1890. Then she rented it to Catherine Gurney who established a Police Seaside Home there until it moved to spacious new quarters – still extant – in Portland Road. Then Baring moved back in and stayed there until 1897.

Wentworth

Edith Warne – Edith was a widow when she shared a house in York Avenue called Wentworth with her spinster sister Clara. Edith was a lively person who could play the piano and violin as well as sing, and she loved the theatre, like other members of her family. She was a champion letter writer, and thought nothing of producing a twenty-page missive when she was travelling abroad. Edith married Harry Duke Warne, a solicitor of 20 Middle Street, Brighton. They both had an interest in the Old Ship Hotel, Brighton. Edith – because she was the daughter of Robert Bacon who ran the establishment with Samuel Ridley; Harry – because he was one of the original seven directors of the hotel.

Edith died in December 1943. Her wide range of interests can be gauged from the variety of mourners at her impressive funeral at Holy Trinity, Ship Street. There were representatives from the Old Ship, the New Sussex Hospital for Women, the Sussex Eye Hospital, the Girl Guides, the Guild of Brave Poor Things, the church council of Holy Trinity, and lastly Brighton Musical Festival of which she had been a committee member.

(See also A Brighton Lady in Tasmania and Travels with Edith.)

Major General Ronald Frederick King ‘David’ Belcham CB, CBE, DSO, (1911-1981) – He was a resident in a flat in York Avenue in the 1970s until 1981. Perhaps he did not like his given names because he was popularly known as David. He acquired the name ‘David’ because he once won a boxing match against a much larger opponent that reminded his fellow soldiers of the story of David and Goliath in the Old Testament.

Ronald Frederick King Belchem

by Walter Stoneman, November 1948

NPG x164851

Belchem became a brilliant and much decorated officer, the military genes coming from both his mother’s side as well as his father’s family. Indeed, he was born at Gibraltar because that was where his father was stationed at the time. It was no surprise that at Sandhurst he shone to such an extent that he was awarded the King’s Medal for the cadet with the best qualifications in military subjects plus the Anson Memorial Sword for passing out first.

Belchem was also fortunate to be fluent in three languages – Russian, French and Italian. This acquisition started early in life because his nanny was Russian, and later he attended schools in France and Italy. His Russian was of particular use during his military career because British officers fluent in that language were somewhat thin on the ground, and so he acted as interpreter as well as performing his other duties. Belchem acquired a string of medals including decorations from the Netherlands, Czechoslovakia, and the USA, as well as being twice Mentioned in Despatches.

Another string to Belchem’s bow was his interest in mechanical engineering, which he studied as well. His knowledge must have added some extra kudos to his role when he came to command the 1^st Royal Tank Regiment in Tunisia. After the war he became interested in nuclear energy.

During the Second World War Belchem became Field Marshall Montgomery’s right-hand man and chief of operations. Belchem served with Montgomery from 1942 when Montgomery took over command of the Eighth Army, until 1953 when Belchem retired. He was full of praise for Montgomery although he was the first to admit that Montgomery did not suffer fools gladly, and made several enemies.

Belchem acquired a further skill by becoming the author of three books. He received his grounding by helping Montgomery with his memoirs, in fact Belchem wrote them, and the two volumes were published in 1946. However, there was absolutely no acknowledgement of Belchem’s assistance, which hardly smacks of fair play, and of course the books were published under Montgomery’s name. Belchem’s three books were as follows:

A Guide to Nuclear Energy (1958)

All in a Day’s March (1978)

Arnhem: The Battle of the Five Bridges (1981)

Belchem died at the age of 70 in July 1981.

Hove Planning Approvals

1905 – Denman & Matthews for Page & Miles, one pair semi-detached houses, south side (Page & Miles were a well-known firm of electrical engineers)

1908 – T. Garrett for G. H. Gregory, one detached house, east side

1909 – G. Lynn & Sons, one pair semi-detached houses, west side

1910 – T. Garrett for W. & T. Garrett, two pairs semi-detached houses, west side

1912 – W. R. Andrews, one pair semi-detached houses, west side

1912 – W. R. Andrews, one pair semi-detached houses, east side

1912 – W. R. Andrews, two detached houses, east side

Sources

Encyclopaedia of Hove and Portslade

Hove Council Minutes

Information about Princess Ka’iulani from the research undertaken by Marilyn Stassen-McLaughlin of Hawaii

National Library of Australia

National Portrait Gallery, London

Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove

Additional 'Eminent Residents' research and page layout by D. Sharp

19 December 2023

York Avenue, Hove.