Portslade in the Past: Portslade

Judy Middleton & D. Sharp. 2020

copyright © Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove
Henry Earp, senior, painted this delightful picture of Portslade in 1840. Note St Nicolas Church to the right and the impressive mansion called Portslade House on the hill to the left, the George Inn can be seen behind the grey roof barn in the centre of the painting.

Life and Letters of Sir Gilbert Elliot, 1st Earl of Minto

'12 June 1794 - Lady Elliot settled herself and family at Portslade, on the Sussex coast, preferred by her to London. While living at Portslade, near enough to be within reach of friends at Brighton and far enough away to be out of the bustle, the boys assisted at various military spectacles performed by the troops encamped there in the presence of the Prince of Wales'.
(Sir Gilbert Elliot (1751-1814) was the former Governor of India)

The Encampment at Brighton by Francis Wheatley (1788)
This painting depicts a scene at the Brighton military camp.
In 1793 Jane Austen's brother Henry was there with the Oxfordshire
militia: she refers to the camp in her novel Pride and Prejudice.

The Sussex Weekly Advertiser

In 1795 the Princess of Wales, wife of the Prince Regent, visited Copperas Gap and ‘there, attended by Lady Cholmondley, sat under a hedge for upwards of two hours, when Her Royal Highness partook of refreshments and being enlivened by the salubrity of the air, seemed to enjoy the rural scene with as much felicity as if she had been sitting under a canopy of state and feasting on all the luxuries of the East.’

John G. Bishop Brighton in the Olden Time (1880)

Hence, in the season, by way of change, country parties and ‘pic-nics’ were daily arranged to various districts – some going to the Preston Tea Gardens or the Grove, whilst others went to Copperas Gap or Southwick – latter a favourite resort of the Princess Caroline of Brunswick during her residence in Brighton.

copyright © Royal Pavilion & Museum, Brighton & Hove
An early 1800s painting of the windmills at Copperas Gap, an area frequented by Princess of Wales and the 'Brighton society'. The painting attributed is to Frederick Ford

The Sussex Weekly Advertiser, (29 October 1804)

'Report of the Prince of Wales returning to Brighton, likely to stay most of the hunting season. The Prince of Wales’s harriers to throw off on Mondays near Portslade-Mill '.
(The Prince of Wales, later George IV (1762-1830), while staying in Brighton's Royal Pavilion during the hunting season, the Prince made trips to Portslade on Mondays and Race Hill, Brighton on Fridays)

copyright © Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove
East Hill windmill the venue for the Prince of Wales’s hunting party,
which had easy access to Foredown Hill and South Downs.
Frederick Nash painted this view in 1841.

The Sussex Weekly Advertiser (12 June 1809)

'NOTICE WITH submission, the world's inhabitants are most respectfully informed, that ELGAR'S large Exhibition- room at Portslade, will be opened this day, at ten o'clock, till two in the afternoon, and continue so to be the four following days, with rational amusements, for the benefit of the PORTSLADE WIDOWS, whose united ages make nearly 1300 years, consisting of Ancient, Modern, and Speaking Novelties'
(A rather pretentious notice to the whole world of an important event to be held in Portslade,

Thomas Elgar of Carpenter House, Portslade, was a gentleman and freeholder which qualified him to vote in the 1820 UK General Election, only two other Portslade residents had this right - Harry Blaker and Thomas Peters)

The Gentleman’s Magazine (1814)

‘North-east of Kingston, about one mile and a half, between two hills, lies the small village of Portslade, between three and four miles from Brighthelmstone, it contains several good houses, and an old church, that cannot boast of much beauty, though it may of antiquity; it has a low square tower at the west end, embattled with nave and chancel, the former much altered, the latter of early simple painted style.’

James Godsmark Memoirs of Mercies and Miseries in the Spiritual and Providential Dealings of Almighty God (1867)

‘In a sequestered spot, near the pleasant little village of Portslade, in the county of Sussex, there stands a house formerly called Stone Hall or Stone House. In this house I was born February 14^th 1816; and, like all progeny of fallen nature “born to trouble as the sparks fly upwards.” My father rented some land, and built the aforesaid house’
(James Godsmark (1816-1891) was a Nonconformist Itinerant Preacher)

copyright © J. Middleton
The Stonery ( Stone Hall or Stone House) amidst its market gardens below the North House Farmhouse, of which James Godsmark describes 'In a sequestered spot, near the pleasant little village of Portslade'

Edward Mogg Survey of the High Roads of England and Wales (1817)

Portslade, Sussex. 'A parish containing 48 houses, and 284 inhabitants. This village has partly risen out of the ruins of the parish of Aldrington, which the encroachments of the sea has entirely destroyed, not a house remaining'.

R. Sickelmore Sen. The History of Brighton and its Environs (1827)

'Portslade, which is to the north of the Shoreham Road, and about four miles from Brighton is erroneously supposed, by many, to have been the Portus Adurni; but its very name refutes the hypothesis, which signifies the way to the port, and consequently could not have been the port itself. It is a parish in the Hundred of Fishersgate, and Rape of Lewes, containing about fifty homes and three hundred inhabitants. It is a vicarage, value eight pounds, eight shillings and eight pence'.

copyright © Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove
This faded watercolour is entitled 'Portslade Farm' with the Old Village in the background, circa 1848
(at the junction of the High Street and Drove Road)

Horsfield’s History of Sussex (1837)

The village of Portslade was ‘delightfully situated on a declivity of the Downs and sheltered by their height. The views of the sea are enchanting; and of the neighbouring town of Brighton … in the highest degree picturesque.’

Dudley Costello The New Norman Conquest; OR, How Paul Brioche Meant To Have Pitched Into Us (1853)

About a couple of miles to the westward of Brighton, there is a narrow ravine running down Portslade to the beach, called Copperas-Gap. It has served the purpose of many a smuggler in days gone by, and was not unknown to Bigrel. Thither he accordingly steered, the darkness of the evening favouring his approach. By one of those chances which will happen, let the look-out be ever so sharp, the boat reached Copperas-Gap without interruption from the preventive service, and then the question arose, what was to be done next?
(Dudley Costello (1803-1865) an Anglo-Irish soldier, journalist and novelist)

copyright © Royal Pavilion & Museum, Brighton & Hove
Portslade's Copperas Gap, Dudley Costello states - 'served the purpose of many a smuggler in days gone by'

C. Kinloch Cooke A Memoir of Her Royal Highness Princess Mary Adelaide, Duchess of Teck, (Vol.1, pub -1900)

copyright © National Portrait Gallery
by Camille Silvy
albumen carte-de-visite, 9 October 1860
NPG x26729
HRH Princess Mary Adelaide
Duchess of Teck

6 November 1860…….We drove up Montpellier Road and then to the left along a country road, which brought us to Portslade, a picturesque village with a Manor House, old grey church with ivy-clad tower, and a charming cottage called ‘Raglan Villa’. Leaving the carriage at the top of hill, we walked back through the village which we explored. Home by the Shoreham Road and Hove.

This was not Princess Mary Adelaide's first visit to Portslade, a month earlier she passed through Portslade on horseback to visit Thunder's Barrow Hill on the Portslade - Southwick boundary.
Her Royal Highness Princess Mary Adelaide (1833-1897) of Cambridge and Duchess of Teck, was a grand-daughter of George III and a great-grandmother of Queen Elizabeth II.

Herbert Mews lived in Raglan Villa until his new house called Whychcote was ready in around 1896. It was in 1884 that the Mews brothers – Herbert and Walter – purchased Portslade Brewery.

The Church Builder by Incorporating Society for Promoting the Enlargement, Building and Repairing of Churches and Chapels. (1862)

Portslade, St Andrew, near Brighton, Dio. Chichester – This Church was built A.D. 1863, assisted by grant of £200 from the Society. It has now been found necessary to add a new aisle to this small Church. The population of the parish consists almost exclusively of the working class. Estimated cost, £850. Applicant, Rev. C.A. Morona, Architect, Mr R.T. Bloomfield, London - £40 voted.

copyright © G. Osborne
North Street, one of the main roads in Portslade-by-Sea of which, the Church Builder's Magazine describes as
'almost exclusively of the working class'

Sacramento Daily Union (24 February 1865)

The following scene in Portslade was described in the above newspaper:

‘The Festive enjoyments of Christmas Eve were brought to a terrible conclusion by the ungovernable passions of two drunken men – one the host of the evening, John Coom, a cripple, the other his guest, John Sharp, whose uproarious merriment gave offence to his entertainer, and at last so exasperated him that, taking down a loaded gun from the wall, he deliberately raised it and shot his unfortunate visitor. We might multiply instances almost without limit but enough has been shown to prove that the humanizing influence of Christianity are yet but imperfectly developed in the lower strata of society.’

Although John Sharp probably came from Southwick, the Coom family did live in Portslade. In the 1770s both George Coom and his wife Fanney died and their sturdy tombstone is still to be seen today in the churchyard of St Nicolas. In the Burial Register of St Nicolas, between 1813 and 1841 no less than eleven Cooms were buried in the churchyard, although unhappily three of that number were babies, and four were children or youngsters.

copyright © J. Middleton
W.H. Ainsworth:- 'The pretty little village of
Portslade, with its ancient church on
a gentle hill surrounded by trees'

This number did not include Charles Coom aged 21 who was lost at sea in 1833. Also, in 1841 there was an Abel Coom(s?) who worked as a blacksmith at the forge on Foredown Hill. Perhaps the tragic incident recorded above obliged any remaining Cooms to leave Portslade – at any rate the last date of a burial there was in 1861 when Ellen, daughter of William and Many Ann Coom, died at the age of 28. St Nicolas churchyard was closed to burials in 1871.

Harrison Ainsworth Old Court (1867)

‘The pretty little village of Portslade, with its ancient church on a gentle hill surrounded by trees, had been visible long before they reached it, and as they turned off on the right, and came to the green, Sir Hugh ordered the driver to stop.’

‘The resting place of her he had loved best was soon discovered. It was a retired spot, shaded and sheltered by tall trees and the plain stone bore this simple inscription, already nearly obliterated by lichen AMICE.’

(William Harrison Ainsworth (1805-1882) was a historical novelist, he made ‘Dick Turpin’ famous in his novel Rockwood in 1834, Ainsworth wrote 39 novels. Besides Old Court, another of local interest was the celebrated work of fiction entitled Ovingdean Grange (1860) which told of the Royal Escape through Sussex of King Charles II).

The National Gazetteer (1868)

'The village, which is of considerate extent, is situated at the base of the southern slope of the South Downs. The parish is bounded on the S. by the English Channel, and intersected by the road from Brighton to Portsmouth.

Copperas Gap, a portion of Portslade, is about 3 miles W. of Brighton, on the Brighton and Shoreham road, near the railway station. The population and property of Portslade has greatly increased of late years, owing to the formation of a canal and basin which is connected with the harbour of Shoreham. Many of the inhabitants are engaged in the coal and general trade of Brighton and its vicinity'.

copyright © Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove
Watercolour by Brook Harrison of coal sailing ships moored at Portslade circa 1860

Mark A. Lower A Compendious History of Sussex (1870)

'Portslade – This sea-side parish, though only on an average a mile in breath, is four miles long.
I have before remarked that in the majority of Sussex parishes those oblong dimensions are found, and their general direction is north and south. The village occupies a pleasant declivity of the South Downs, and commands excellent land and sea views. The parish contains several mansions and residences, particularly the Manor-House, belonging to the Borrer family, Portslade House to the Rev. W. Hall, East Hill to Edward Blaker Esq., and Portslade Lodge to Miss Borrer'.

copyright © J. Middleton
The 1807 Portslade Manor House, built by the Borrer Family, the Victorian 'castle folly' can be seen on the left.

Frederick F. Whitehurst Hark Away (1879)

On the following morning the Southdown met at Portslade, a pretty village close to Shoreham, and as I passed the vicarage, snugly sheltered by flowering laurustinus, evergreen oaks, and other handsome shrubs, I paused for a moment, suggesting to a companion riding by my side, that such a benefice would exactly have suited me - £800 a-year, a population limited in numbers, healthy and happy in their smiling homes, few deaths, numerous weddings, and many christenings, combined with the opportunity of hunting three days a week.

copyright © J.Middleton
Black’s Guide discribes Portslade Old Village as the 'prettiest village in the immediate vicinity of Brighton'

Adam & Charles Black Black’s Guide to the County of Sussex (1886)

‘and we arrive at the three Portslades. Portslade – the station is between the two villages of Portslade-by-Sea, to the south, on the banks of the Ship Canal – a modern uninteresting place, and Portslade (old village), 1 mile north of the railway line, hidden away in a hollow. This is the prettiest village in the immediate vicinity of Brighton. The Early English church of St Nicolas has a fine ivy mantled tower’.

George Moore Esther Walters (1894)

copyright © Brighton & Hove City Libraries
This group of jockeys at the Paddocks Racing Stables was photographed in around 1914. Tommy Avery is on the left and Molly Archer is in the centre – she was their housekeeper, and lived with her family in the waterworks cottage nearby.

The following is a description of the methods employed in order to make a jockey loose weight before a big race, and is interesting because of the Paddocks at Portslade.

‘The Gaffer had the boy upstairs and handed him a huge dose of salts, keeping his eye upon him till he had swallowed every drop; and when the effects of the medicine had worn off, he was sent on a walk to Portslade in two large overcoats, accompanied by William to make the running. On his return a couple of feather beds were ready. Mr Leopold and Mr Swindles laid him between them and when he began to cease sweating Mr Leopold made him a cup of hot tea.’

(George Augustus Moore (1852-1933) was an Irish novelist, short-story writer, poet, art critic and dramatist)

Joseph A.Gwyer Poems and Prose (1895)
an extract from ‘A Tricycle Ride’

'Portslade we ride so slowly through
Here still a little business do;
Here grocer and draper were combined,
If we the dry goods line entwined
We here a line of each could have
And much expense we thus could save
but Gwyer’s friend at Penge would say

Keep from draper’s trade away'.

(Joseph A. Gwyer (1835-1890) was a potato salesman and poet, a strict Baptist and campaigner for Temperance, his ashes were interned in Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey).

Arthur George Holl’s account of a ramble (1896)

Holl was the corresponding secretary of a society known as the AOFL (Association of Free Lancers). He has left us this nostalgic glimpse of a long-gone Portslade. His writing style seems somewhat breathless because he seems to have had an aversion to using the full-stop.

In 1896 young Holl took a ramble to Portslade, reaching Southern Cross, ‘thence taking a northerly direction, in a few minutes one finds oneself in a charming portion of the Downs where old Portslade is, as it was probably many, many years gone by, save the exception of Messrs’ Mews flourishing Brewery, on reaching which take the road to the left uphill where in the balmy days of summer is to be met one of the prettiest spots within a short walk of Brighton, a road shadowed by a perfect archway of foliage – a finishing touch supplied by a rustic footbridge which spans and connects the private grounds on either side.’

The ‘perfect archway of foliage’ was still there in the 1960s.

copyright © J.Middleton
Arthur Holl described this view of the High Street 'a finishing touch supplied by a rustic footbridge which spans and connects the private grounds on either side.’

G. L. Gomme History of Surrey and Sussex (1900)

‘Between two hills lies the small village of Portslade … it contains several good houses, and has an old church that cannot boast of much beauty, though it may of antiquity.’

(Sir George Laurence Gomme (1853-1916) was a leading British folklorist who helped found the Victoria County History book project).

The Spectator (1900)

An extract from the rules and regulations of the 1st Volunteer Battalion Royal Sussex Regiment:-
An Hon. Member is entitled, with written permission of the Commanding Officer to use the Rifle Range on days and times when not required for Corps purposes. The Range is situated at Mile Oak, Portslade, and the Range Hut is on the road just beyond the Waterworks.

John Davidson The Man Forbid and Other Essays (1901)

‘A raw path leading northwards, with an un-barbered hedge on one side and forlorn market-gardens on the other – a path that seemed bound to end in a slough of despond, pulled itself together suddenly, and with a certain air of knowing its business well enough, stepped into Portslade, a village in a cup. This inland Portslade, a mile above the railway one known to the South Coast traveller. On one lip of the cup, a short Early English, ivy covered tower of St Nicolas balances itself sturdily; and the yellow lichen that lacquers the shingle-roof makes it a glory and a wonder – like the roof of heaven, inlaid with patinas of bright gold’
(John Davidson (1857–1909) was a Scottish poet, playwright and novelist)

Edward V. Lucas Highways and Byways in Sussex (1904)

'Beyond Aldrington is Portslade, with a pretty inland village'

Alfred de Kantzow Noctis Susurri: Sighs of the Night (1906)

an excerpt from his ‘Voices of the Downs’:-

The sheep bells tinkle on the air,

The fleecy flock are gathered to the fold;

A medley of far sounds is murmuring there,

And lulls to slumberous rest the darkening wold.

(The poet Alfred de Kantzow lived in Portslade for 46 years, and was a close friend of the renowned philosopher and author John Cowper Powys with whom de Kantzow spent many hours walking the South Downs a few miles north of his home in Carlton Terrace.)

Copyright © D. Sharp
A view from Foredown Hill to Mount Zion near Portslade's Old Village, Alfred would have known this ancient route to the South Downs and an inspiration for his poems 'Voices of the Downs' and 'A Walk to Poynings'.

Arabella Kenealy Memoirs of Edward Vaughan Kenealy (1908)

Edward Kenealy (1819-1880) MP for Stoke, barrister, writer who gained national notoriety as Q.C. in the Tichbourne Claimant case, he chose Wellington Road, Portslade to live because of his love of the sea, of which he wrote,
‘Oh, how I am delighted with this sea-scenery and with my little marine hut! The musical waves, the ethereal atmosphere, all make me feel as in the olden golden days when I was a boy and dreamed of Heaven’.

copyright © Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove
The view from Portslade of Fishersgate, Southwick and Shoreham in 1879 which so captivated Edward Kenealy.
This painting was by James K Kinnear

Frank Rutter The Path to Paris; the rambling record of a riverside promenade (1908)

'That day I went to Harfleur unheroically by tram, and perhaps I was not in a right mood to appreciate its beauties. Its curious admixture of picturesque decay and jerry-built progress, its half-hearted endeavour to be a pleasure resort in spite of grimy bleaching-works and odoriferous chemical factories, reminded me of Portslade and Shoreham'.
(Frank Rutter (1876-1937) British art critic, curator and artivist)

copyright © G. Osborne
Flinn's bleaching and dying works on the boundary of Portslade and Fishersgate which did not please Frank Rutter in 1908.

Martin Cobbett Sporting Notions (1908)

‘I had hoped at one time that with his string location on the South Downs in the stables beyond Upper Portslade, five miles from Brighton where the late Mr John Mannington lived, we might have found them trained to good form. In later years the gallops have been cut-up a good bit by riders from the Brighton livery stables, who would not spare the well-cared-for-turf.’
(Martin R. Cobbett (1846-1906) of the Sportsman's Magazine, was born in Brighton and reputed to be the finest sports reporters of his time).

Ian C. Hannah Sussex Coast (1912)

‘Portslade, approached by the steepest of roads, is a restful village that has grown an ugly suburb on the sea.’

(Ian Campbell Hannah (1874-1944) was a British academic, writer and MP for Bilston, he was the eldest son of Rev. John Julius Hannah, the Vicar of Brighton and later Dean of Chichester).

copyright © G. Osborne
Ian C. Hannah's description ‘Portslade, approached by the steepest of roads, is a restful village'

Arthur Stanley Cooke Off the Beaten Track in Sussex (1932)

Chapter 5, page 63. ‘As you gain the grass after leaving the Dyke Station, if you look westward beyond the range of the Ladies’ Golf Links, you will see, near the north ridge, a double line of furze at the edge of the cultivation. This furze flanks a cart track which will bring you to a dead stop of plough or crop. It is not, however, very wide, and treading delicately, you can cross it, and reach the coombe at almost its top end. Descending into its hollow and following its windings, passing by and through many shallow flint-pits, you will reach Mile Oak, where there are waterworks. Look back and see the two fine hollows that lie to the north. It is the drainage of this immense area that the pumps intercept. The valley continues on to Portslade, but your path curves round to the right and brings you at last to the top of the hill whence you can see Southwick, Kingston, Shoreham, and a beautiful view as far as the Isle of Wight on a clear day.’

R. Thurston Hopkins Sussex Revisited (1929)

Portslade is a place of dual character: a veritable Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde of a place. Portslade Hyde is painfully brutal with its squalid water front and rows of grimy houses and shops. While Portslade Jekyll, a mile from the sea, is a benevolent spot and just as pretty and secluded as nine out of ten guide-book villages’

(Robert Thurston Hopkins (1884-1958) was a writer of the countryside and ghost hunter. he also wrote biographical works on Rudyard Kipling and Oscar Wilde, Robert Hopkins lived in Vale Road, Portslade)

Harold Shelton Upland Rambles in Surrey and Sussex (1932)

Chapter XI – From Brighton to Bramber, page 112. ‘ Where the (Hove) promenade ends, we turn inland, then proceed westward for a short distance along the main Worthing road, and take the second turning on the right. Hastening past the ugly houses of Portslade, we shall reach open country in half a mile.’

Copyright © J.Middleton
John Cowper Powys wrote, 'Here I used to meet one of those emblematic, and, to my mind, with its persistent search for “omens of the way,” mystical figures, messengers of the Grail you might almost call them, that all my days have at intervals crossed my path. Such was the madwoman I used to encounter by those Portslade gasworks'

John Cowper Powys Autobiography (1934)

'I decided without delay to walk out westward from the stately West Brighton terraces in search of rural seclusion. I kept so close to the coast however — for the bare inland downs just there looked uninviting and inhospitable — that I found nothing for what seemed miles and miles but rather desolate expanses. Portslade did not attract me — I speak, you must remember, of nearly forty years ago — and I was getting weary of stretches of bare ground, with nothing but gasworks between the road and the sea, when I reached the little town of Southwick. Here there was a harbour — which pleased me for the same reason that Shakespeare’s Fluellen was pleased by the word “Monmouth” for it reminded me of home'.
(John Cowper Powys, (1872-1963) British philosopher, lecturer, novelist and literary critic)

Copyright © G. Osborne
Powys described the walk along this road through Fishersgate and Portslade-by-Sea to Hove as 'melancholy and desolate’

James Hilton Random Harvest (1941)

'They use to rent a house at Brighton, in Regency Square, taking servants with them – Miss Ponsonby and a maid named Florrie, and every morning they would walk along the front not quite as far as Portslade, turning back so inevitably that Portslade became for him a sort of mysterious place beyond human access – until, one afternoon while his mother was having a nap, he escaped from the house and reached Portslade a doubtless but somewhat disappointed explorer'.
(James Hilton (1900-1954) British novelist, Random Harvest was adapted into a film in 1942, his best selling novels were Lost Horizon and Goodbye Mr Chips)

Copyright © G. Osborne
The Station Road area of Portslade was viewed by the
'disappointed explorer' in James Hilton's novel.

John Thorne Guide to Sussex (1960)

Portslade. 'The old village of this name lies west of Hove, about a mile from the sea, and has a Norman and Early English church as well as the remains of a twelfth-century manor house, but Portslade-by-Sea, its coastal adjunct, is mostly docks and gas works'.

*******

Thanks are due to Mr G. Osborne for allowing me to reproduce seven of his wonderful photographs.

Portslade in the Past

14 February 2020

Portslade - descriptions of