Hove in the Past: Cambridge Road, Hove.

Judy Middleton & D. Sharp 2002 (revised 2024)

Early Days

The 1851 census noted that there were two houses in the course of construction; the Street Directory for 1854 recorded there were two finished houses, while by 1859 there were four houses and St Patrick’s Church.

copyright © Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove
Brighton Herald 4 July 1868
In 1868, two 7 bedroom houses in Cambridge Road could be rented for £115 and £125 per year, a discount of £200 was on offer, if both houses were bought together for £4200.

The 1877 Ordnance Survey map revealed that on the east side of the road there was a steep bank with steps at intervals leading up to formal gardens that extended as far as the gardens at the back of Brunswick Road. But that amenity was of short duration because by 1904 the east side was fully built up, necessitating the erection of two additional lamp-posts at a cost of £15. It is notable that some of the houses on the east side have elegant railings and plaster decorations.

Jabez Reynolds, senior, was responsible for building at least four houses in Cambridge Road in the 1880s. In 1881 Council Minutes reported that two houses built by Jabez Reynolds (whether senior or junior is not recorded) were contrary to the plans approved by Hove Commissioners. The trouble was that the back of the building was within 17-ft of the boundary wall, whereas there should have been a depth of 25-ft. However, Reynolds took note and within a month the problem was rectified.

It is incredible to think that in 1895 the rental value of a 7 bedroom house in Cambridge Road was slightly lower than in the above 1868 advert.

The later houses on the east side were built by G. M. Nye – ten semi-detached houses, and two semi-detached houses from 1901 to 1903.

In 1889 residents applied to Hove Commissioners for the removal of a water pillar that was sited opposite to St Patrick’s Church. It was used to fill water-carts that went around streets in the summer months spraying the surface to keep down the dust. The surveyor said he would try and find a more suitable place.

In July 1926 the surveyor stated that Cambridge Road had been tarred in the centre, leaving a strip on either side for the convenience of horse traffic.

St Patrick's Church

The church in Cambridge Road was the fourth church to be built at Hove. The ancient church in Hove was St Andrew’s Old Church, restored in 1836; St Andrew’s Chapel in Waterloo Street was built in 1827, followed by St John the Baptist in 1852. See the St Patrick's Church page

Wartime

On 21 October 1940 machine gun fire caused a slight fire in the road.

Fire

On 3 August 1993 a fire broke out in a third-floor flat. Fortunately, a resident living on the floor above smelt the smoke and alerted the other people occupying the building. Seventeen people, including a mother and baby, were evacuated safely. John Young, aged 26, was the hero of the hour, and survivors claimed they owed their lives to him.

Balcony Railing Collapse

In June 1995 Timothy Smale, aged 16, of Kingston near Lewes, died when a balcony railing collapsed and he fell twenty feet. His friend Roger Paisley, aged 17, also fell, but he was said to be in a stable condition.

House Notes

Number 1 – Captain M. P. Wolff lived at this address in 1886. He was a retired German army officer and a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society in London. Captain Wolff was the author of Food for the Millions (1884) and The Rational Alimentation of the Labouring Classes (1886) which endeavoured to prove by statistical analysis that the poor of England could enjoy cheap and nutritious food through the setting up of Public Kitchens in poverty stricken areas. By setting up nationwide Public Kitchens, Wolff ‘s aim was to cut out the middlemen in the food industry who over charged for food, and his Public Kitchens would bulk buy foodstuffs directly from farms. Wolff had already successfully run a small scale Public Kitchen scheme in Germany but now wanted to run a nationwide operation amongst the poor of England.

An advert in the 1884 The Academy for Captain M. P. Wolff's Food for the Millions

Wolff envisaged that the poor would visit these Public Kitchens and Dining Halls each day and for a small fee, either eat cooked food on the premises or take it back to their homes. The Public Kitchen and Dining Hall premises would be novel for its time, as separate women’s and men’s toilets would be available. Wolff believed the Co-operative Stores system was for the middle classes and there was nothing for the destitute poor districts of England except for soup kitchen hand-outs in winter.

Captain Wolff predicted, by using his statistical analysis, that the poor would make between a 30% to 50% saving on the cost of buying and cooking food. Food Kitchens would remove the drudgery for women of having to cook on their own coal fired stoves, which invariably for the poor was also in the same room they lived and slept in, while investors in his scheme would realize a 17% return on their capital.

Number 4 – One would have thought that someone in his position might have lived a little closer to the seashore. He was Commander James B. Willoughby R. N. who was doing a stint as Inspecting Commander at the Coastguard Station, and he was to be found living at this address in 1851 together with his wife, three daughters and two sons.

copyright © Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove
Brighton Herald 1 March 1913
In the Edwardian period, Number 4 was a dancing school

Number 7 – Lieutenant Colonel Felix Augustus Victor Thurburn was born in the Alexandria Governorate of Egypt in 1823, the son of the British Consul. He was a veteran of the Bengal Army, during the Indian Mutiny of 1857 he escaped from Faizabad, with his wife and child.
In 1863 after his retirement from the army he lived at Number 7 and served as a director of The London & Paris Hotel Company.

Charles William Catt (1855-1949) who was born at Brighton could boast that he was baptised in the Chapel Royal. He became a master brewer for Vallance & Catt and lived in this house from 1880 to 1885. In 1899 he sold the business and moved to Derbyshire.

From around 1886 to around 1894 Mrs Phebe Lane Rooke occupied Number 7. Her husband and son were related to Queen Emma of Hawaii. In 1892 Crown Princess Ka’iulani of Hawaii stayed in this house to further her education, most probably because of the family link. Phebe's son, Major George Rooke who was related to the Princess, lived in nearby York Avenue.

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.

Mrs Rooke died in 1931 at the grand old age of 91

Number 8 – Dr John Bates Hoffmeister lived at this address from 1881 until 1884. He was born on the Isle of Wight, the son of Dr Sir William Hoffmeister, surgeon to Queen Victoria and the Royal Family at Osborne House. In July 1885, Dr John Bates Hoffmeister was a guest at the wedding of Princess Beatrice and Prince Henry of Battenberg.

In 1891, Dr John Bates Hoffmeister moved to the Isle of Wight to succeed his father as surgeon to Queen Victoria at Osborne House.

Number 11 – Lieutenant Colonel George Henry Pocklington lived at this address from 1876 until 1878 when he moved to 52 Brunswick Square. He was a veteran of the Burma Campaign of 1852 and saw action in the Crimea War in 1855. He was present at the siege and capture of Sevastopol. In 1877 he was appointed to the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen of Arms (Queen Victoria’s bodyguard) and also served as the Deputy Lieutenant of Suffolk, the location of his family’s ancestral home.

Number 12 – John Gadsby (1808-1893) was a Strict Baptist author and printer. He lived at number 12 from 1884 until his death in 1893.

In 1835, he started The Gospel Standard magazine, and served as the first editor of the magazine with his father the Revd William Gadsby.

John Gadsby was the author of the following publications:-

A memoir of the late Mr. William Gadsby (1844)
A trip to Sebastopol (1858)
Memoirs of the principal hymn-writers & compilers of the 17th, 18th, & 19th centuries. (1861)
My wanderings : being travels in the East (1862)
A visit to Canada and the United States of America also a second visit to Spain (1873)

Number 14 – This gentleman was certainly well-travelled. He was Lieutenant-Colonel Augustus Kirkwood, late of the Indian Army, and one-time Deputy Commander of Assam. But it is fascinating to note that he was actually born in France – at St Servan, Brittany. By the early 1880s he was living in this house. Hove was an excellent choice for him because there were so many ex-India hands living here with whom to swap reminiscences.

Number 15 – In this house lived Frank Victor Richardson and his wife Emily Caroline, and they attended St Barnabas Church. They were not a famous couple but their son is certainly well-remembered. He was born at Hove in 1895 and became Lieutenant Victor Richardson, being awarded the Military Cross, and dying of his injuries in 1917. He was buried in Hove Cemetery. He had hoped to marry his sweetheart Vera Brittain after the war, but this ambition was not to be fulfilled. Instead, Vera immortalised him in her book Testament of Youth, which remains in print to this day. (See also First World War)

Number 19 – Charles Edward Petre Esq lived in this house in 1866. He was born in 1823, and later became a captain in the Dragoon Guards, and then Deputy Lieutenant of Essex. His wife did not need to abandon her maiden name because she was the daughter of William, 11^th Lord Petre, and thus it was a marriage of cousins.

Number 21 – Wigram Elliott Money was born in Calcutta in 1809 and lived at this address from 1879 until his death in 1885. He attended the East India College before taking employment with the Bengal Civil Service. Wigram married Anne Jean Turnbull at Calcutta Cathedral in 1840. After his marriage he was sent to the Fort at Agra to act as an auditor for the North West Territories of India. While living in Hove he was an active member of the Brighton Relief for the Sick and Distressed. He was buried in St Andrew’s churchyard. Sadly, this section of the churchyard is now covered by a Tesco’s car park.

Number 22 – Major Alfred John Martineau was the younger son of Judge Martineau who was familiar figure on the Sussex circuit for many years. A. J. Martineau was a doctor in civilian life, and became a throat and ear specialist and surgeon at the relevant Brighton hospital, living with his wife in Cambridge Road. However, he also found the time to be a member of the Sussex Garrison Artillery for twelve years. When the First World War broke out, he was in charge of the Fort at Newhaven. Then in April 1916 he was sent to the Front in charge of a siege battery. He was aged 44 when he was killed and Captain J. E. Davidson wrote the following letter to Mrs Martineau:

‘He was forward in an advanced post in a wood recently captured from the enemy, and was shot by a sniper while engaged on observation duty. The bullet passed through his brain and death was instantaneous. Immediately after, the enemy raided the wood making it impossible to recover the major’s body until today, when we managed to bring him in after the enemy had retired. Apparently, the enemy carried away his binoculars but, as far as I can tell, all the rest of his private belongings are complete and will be forwarded to you along with his kit.’

The Sussex Daily News (30 April 1917) stated he was an ‘exceedingly keen soldier, and a very able artillerist, he was greatly respected by his officers and men.’

Number 23 – Arthur Bigge J.P. lived at this address from 1866 until his death in 1885. In 1830 at the age of 12 he enrolled at Rugby School under the mastership of the famous Dr Thomas Arnold.

Arthur Bigge was appointed Brighton’s first Stipendiary Magistrate in 1855, a position he held for 29 years.

In 1985 six monks from from the Community of the Servants of the Will of God at Crawley Down moved into the house, which was opposite St Patrick’s Church. Father Alan Sharpe said the aim of the new project was to form a community to carry out church work in the Brunswick area. In November 1989 a forgetful monk caused a fire by leaving a vat of candle wax on the boil in the candle workshop on the first floor while he and his brothers were attending a Remembrance Day Service at St Patrick’s. A passer-by spotted the smoke and firemen managed to contain the fire to one room, although the roof was damaged.

Number 25 – Lady Ellen Berwick lived here in the 1920s. She must have had friends or relatives in high places because she was the proud recipient of an official invitation to the coronation of King Edward V11 on 9 August 1902 at Westminster Abbey. He was the heir to Queen Victoria – a hard act to follow – and he was considered something of an elderly sovereign, being all of 59 years old when he came to the throne but of course that age has been exceeded by King Charles III.

Lady Berwick was much concerned with the welfare of animals, and in particular the vile practice of conducting experiments on live animals. She was associated with the Hove branch of the Anti-Vivisection League.

Number 27 – Major General Alexander Robert Fraser lived at this address in the late 1870s until the early 1880s with his wife, six children and five servants. He was a veteran of the Mahratta War of 1845 and served with the Madras Staff Corps until his retirement.

Number 29 – Lady Letitia Louisa Kerr MacGregor lived at Number 29 from 1875 until her death in 1885.

Letitia was born in London in 1800. Her father was Lord Mark Robert Kerr, a Vice Admiral in the Royal Navy, who was the third son of the Marquis of Lothian. Her mother was Charlotte MacDonnell, the Countess of Antrim. Letitia was the eldest child amongst her seven brothers (four brothers died at a young age) and five sisters.

In 1838, Lady Letitia Louisa Kerr attended Queen Victoria's Coronation as Lady in Waiting to Princess Augustus of Cambridge, who was the granddaughter of the George III.

After the death of her parents around 1840, Lady Letitia undertook the ‘Grand Tour’ along with extensive travels around the whole of the United Kingdom with her sketch book and watercolours.

copyright © Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove
Brighton Gazette 22 January 1859
An aristocratic soirée musicale held at Lady Kerr's Belvidere Terrace home.
(Belvidere Terrace was in Norfolk Road, Brighton, ten minutes walk from Cambridge Road, Hove, where Lady Kerr eventually moved to)

In the 1860s Lady Letitia was living at 6, Belvedere Terrace in Brighton with a lady's maid, cook and housemaid. On 2^nd September 1871 at St. Nicholas Church in Brighton, Letitia, at the age of 71, married 73 year old Captain Cortlandt George MacGregor Skinner, widower, of Carisbrook House, Isle of Wight.

In 1875 the Hove Street Directories show Lady Letitia living at 29, Cambridge Road. She was by now a widow and living with her were a housekeeper, cook, housemaid, under-maid and a foot-boy.

Lady Letitia is still remembered today because of her skill as a very talented silhouette cutter. The subjects of her silhouettes came almost entirely from members of the aristocracy of whom she had a very wide circle of acquaintances, Lady Letitia produced a silhouette study of Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle. Lady Letitia’s silhouette cuttings command high prices at Art Houses today on the rare occasions they come up for auction.

Number 31 – Is this a record? The Revd Robert Poole Hooper (1826-1918) lived in this house for an astonishing 55 years. He was born during the reign of George IV and lived long enough to see five monarchs occupying the throne. In addition to his longevity, he also possessed a first-class brain, gaining his M. A. at Trinity College, Cambridge, becoming an expert on the complexities of the Poor Law, and was a sportsman too, acting as the stroke of the 1^st Trinity eight for five years; he was also a fine, left-handed tennis player, considered the finest of his day, and an excellent cricketer – in fact the Duke of Norfolk picked him to play in his own team for five seasons.

Revd Hooper was ordained in 1852 and served his curacy in Langham and Thornage, two villages in Norfolk. Presumably, he was comfortably off seeing as the Hoopers were extensive landowners in Shoreham and Upper Beeding, and so he did not need to earn the meagre wage of a curate. Instead, he turned to public good works, and he must have had a remarkable amount of energy because he served as chairman of seven various organisations, not to mention being vice-chairmen of three others. When he retired from the Steyning Board of Guardians, he was given copious thanks, an illuminated address and a silver ink-stand. Another of his interests was in the Shoreham Harbour Trustees.

On 13 November 1849 he married Harriet Brereton at Blakeney, Norfolk. The couple had six children, and it is amusing to note that the three daughters came first, followed by three sons, the last three being born at Hove. However, there was tragedy on 14 January 1881 when one son was killed in action in South Africa. This must have been a particular loss to his mother, because she died on 22 February 1886. These two deaths are noted on the plaque at the church of St Mary de Haura in Shoreham where the grieving priest donated the clock still to be seen today.

The brass plaque in the Church of St Mary de Haura, Shoreham, reads:- THE CLOCK IN THE TOWER OF THIS CHURCH WAS GIVEN BY ROBERT POOLE HOOPER, M.A. CLERK IN HOLY ORDERS , IN MEMORY OF HARRIET BRERETON / HIS WIFE / WHO DIED FEB. 22nd 1886 / AND OF / RANDLE BRERETON HOOPER / THEIR SON / KILLED IN ACTION IN SOUTH AFRICA / JAN. 14th 1881. ----- UT HORAE SIC VITA. ----- 1898.

Revd Hooper died at his Hove home on 12 September 1918 aged 91. His funeral was held at nearby St Patrick’s Church with Revd C. M. A. Tower, vicar of Shoreham, officiating, assisted by Revd Walker Marshall of St Patrick’s. Revd Hooper was buried in Hove Cemetery.

Number 33 – In 1866 John Chichester Knox lived in this house. He was born in 1815, the son of the Rt Hon George Knox, the MP for Dungannon. Young Knox became a captain in the 2^nd Dragoon Guards, and married the daughter of another military man, Captain the Hon Henry Dawson-Damer. The wedding took place on 3 March 1853 and the bride was Lady Louisa Georgiana Dawson-Damer but there were to be no children of the marriage. J. C. Knox died at the age of 68 on 22 March 1884.

It is such an unusual surname and it is fascinating to note that in 1873 Margaret Mary Damer Dawson was born at 1 York Road, Hove. She became a prominent figure in the evolution of women police officers.

Number 37 – George Augustus Moore lived at this address from the early 1880s with his wife and five servants until his death in 1884. George was born in Cawnpore, India, the son of Brigadier General George Moore of the Bengal Native Infantry. He was married to his cousin Ann, the daughter of the Revd William Moore of Spalding. George was an art collector and served as the Deputy Lieutenant of Lincolnshire, the location of his family’s ancestral home.

Number 41 – Mr and Mrs Callow lived in this house, and had to endure the harrowing experience of losing two sons on active service during the First World War. William Callow was born in 1893 and his brother Edward Callow was born in 1895, both at Hove. Before the hostilities, the brothers were happily engaged in working as printers at 20 Church Road, Hove, on the corner of Second Avenue. Private Edward Callow enlisted in the 9^th Battalion, Royal Sussex Regiment, and was killed in action at Loos in February 1915. Private William Callow enlisted in March 1916 and was killed in action at the Somme.

Number 50 – Major-General Alfred Thomas Etheridge spent a well-earned retirement at this address in the 1890s, having spent many hot years under the Indian sun. In the year 1848 he was serving with Gaekwar’s Horse, and no doubt sported an exotic uniform. He became a Special Commander during the Indian Mutiny (1857-8), now known as the First Patriotic War, and served with a body of irregulars in the North Canara and Bedee operations. It seems he was an able administrator, and for many years worked for the Alienation Department in Bombay, receiving many messages of thanks for his work both from the Indian and British governments.

But perhaps his most interesting time was his association as a member of the Baroda Commission. It was in 1875 that the Gaekwar of Baroda became the figurehead at the tender age of twelve years, the British having deposed the former unsatisfactory ruler. Instead, the youngster became a model ruler. His family was famous for its magnificent jewels, and when he ascended the throne a photograph was taken of him in regal attire that included a collar studded with 500 diamonds, and then there was the Star of India – a diamond of 128 carats.

In 1886 the Gaekwar sent an intricately carved Baroda Pigeon House to be exhibited at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition in London. By accident or design, this unique piece, 20-ft in height, ended up in front of Hove Museum in 1926 and lasted until 1959. It arrived at the same time as the Jaipur Gateway, which fortunately is still with us, but unhappily the Baroda Pigeon House no longer exists.

The Gaekwar visited Hove and stayed in Adelaide Crescent from December 1887 to January 1888. He gave a series of receptions including one at the Royal Pavilion, and another at Hove Town Hall.

Number 54 – Lieutenant-Colonel Edward Archibald Bruce (1849-1918) lived in this house from the early 1900s until his death. He was Indian-born, in what is now Andhra Pradesh, where his father, a colonel in the Madras Infantry, was serving at the time.

Hove had connections with Madras, and it is interesting to note how many were buried in Hove Cemetery – three from the Madras Army, three from the Madras Cavalry, three from the Madras Civil Service, one from the Madras Infantry, and three from the Madras Police.

The Hove Lieutenant-Colonel who lived in Cambridge Road was not born with the surname Bruce, but with the name Brice, his father’s surname. In August 1875 he became a Bruce – this was not for vanity reasons because he was simply re-assuming his ancestral name of Bruce. It is quite extraordinary that anybody would wish to disinherit the surname Bruce because Bruce still has a massive following in Scotland to this day.

Lieutenant-Colonel Bruce was also a talented cricketer, and it is fascinating that in present-day India important cricket matches attract a vast number of spectators that English clubs could only dream of. Bruce is credited with playing in six matches for Gloucestershire as a right-arm fast-bowler. In 1906 he became Honorary Secretary to the Sussex County Cricket Club.

But Bruce did not forget his military past as Commanding Officer of the 1^st Battalion, Yorkshire Regiment because he served as a military adviser for the Sussex Association of Volunteer Regiments.

Miscellaneous

In 1981 Dr Thomas Wilkinson Riddle lived in Cambridge Road. He was the editor of The Christian Herald and at the age of 95 he was in the Guinness Book of Records as being the oldest editor in the world. He died in September 1983.

Sources

Encyclopaedia of Hove and Portslade

Hove Council Minute Books

Ordnance Survey Map 1877

Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove

Street Directories

Hove in the Past

Pages

27 May 2024

Cambridge Road, Hove.