Hove Street & Aldrington

Where Hove Drove, or, as it is now called , Hove Street, divides Western Lawns from the Medina quarter, stands the new coastguards' watch-room, and beside it the drill hall of the Brighton Company of the Royal Naval Volunteers. The hall is fitted to represent the deck of a ship, with a six-inch and other quick-firing guns of modern naval pattern. The drill hall stands on the site of a former Naval reserve Battery.

 

Hove Street

Hove Street, which runs from Medina Sea Wall to the New Church Road, is the last remnant of the village from which Hove derived its name. The street still presents something of its ancient appearance; but the neighbouring mansions crept steadily in upon the flint-and tiled cottages, the farm buildings of the Manor House steadily dropped to ruin, and after a few years only the sign of the " Ship Inn " was left to mark the site of the ancient village.

 

The Manor House - or Hove House as it used to be called - is a good specimen of an eighteenth-century patrician mansion. It was built by John Valiance, who bought a hundred acres of land from the lord of the manor in 1785, and thereby became the second largest landowner in Hove. Many anecdotes have as their background the " Ship Inn ." The present building, standing on the site of an older one, was built in 1702, and was from the first the haunt of smugglers. Bull-baiting, cock-fighting, and prize-fighting were the pastimes of the people, when not engaged in their legitimate or illegal pursuits. a diarist writes:

A Bull Bait at Hove, in a ring attached to the " Ship " Inn at the east side of Hove Street, took place on Monday, June 10th, 1810, dinner on the table at two o'clock; this had been postponed from Easter Tuesday, April 24th, when the bull broke loose, charged through the mob, and ran up the gap where the Coastguards' cottages stand, into a field, and hid itself behind a waggon. From there it was hauled out by ropes, amid the jeers of the sightseers, and fastened to the ring where it was baited with dogs till the creature, thoroughly exhausted, succumbed to its brutal captors.

The arena of the old bull ring was visible up to 1908, but is now built over.

 

ST.Andrew's Church

By Vallance Gardens and Vallance Road we may return to the New Church Road, where St. Andrew's, the old parish church of Hove, stands in a picturesque church yard, hard against the utilitarian reservoirs of the gasworks. The church was kept closed, but the sexton, 11, Addington Street, would show visitors the interior.

 

The church, as founded by Bishop Poore, was apparently a Transitional building. A number of prints exist to show the state of the building (which had been partly destroyed by fire in the sixteenth century) in the years previous to its restoration. One, of about 1780 shows the ruins to have consisted of the nave, a part of the tower, and a shattered south porch, which had probably been roughly constructed from the materials of a previous one, because the print shows a bricked-up arcade of five pointed arches on the south side, as evidence of a ruined south aisle.

 

The tower is shown to have been massive at its base, but whether it was embattled, capped, or spired there is nothing to show. The tower ultimately fell, and the materials were borne away to Goodwood, there to be used in some building operations. A print executed in 1833 shows that the tower had by that time disappeared, and a wooden bell-turret had been erected at the west end roof gable. The turret contained the one unmusical bell; a survey of the bells of Sussex in 1686 contains the laconic entry:

     

Hove, bell cracked.

It was marked with a cross and the letters " T.H.," said to indicate Thomas Hickman, a noted bell-founder. The registers date from 1538, and contain some curious entries. The earlier history is traditional, but an imperfect list of the parish priests of Hove before the Reformation is said to exist in the archive taken from the Priory of St. Pancras, Lewes, by whose prior they were appointed. After the Reformation Hove was joined with Preston as Hove-cum-Preston, and remained thus till the resignation in 1878 of the Rev. Walter Kelly, when they were made separate livings.

 

The state of Hove church during the latter part of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries may be judged from the following anecdote told by John G. Bishop, in his 'Peeps into the Past ', often quoted, but worth repeating:

Divine service was conducted at Hove and Preston on alternate Sundays. One Hove Sunday, the vicar, in full stole, went to St. Andrew's, Hove, to do duty; to his astonishment the bell was not going. On his inquiring the reason of the omission the sexton coolly informed him that he had made a mistake, that, in fact, it was Preston Sunday.

The vicar asserted he was right, the sexton as loudly insisted he was wrong, but the vicar would not give in and he ordered the bell to be made to ring. Resolutely the sexton answered: " It's no use, sir, you can't preach to-day." " Why not ? "

demanded the very indignant churchman. " Because," rejoined the sexton, "the church is full of tubs and the pulpit's full of tea." (smugglers contraband).

The restoration of the church was due to the energy of the Rev. Walter Kelly in 1836. It was rebuilt as far as possible on the old lines; the nave was largely retained, and on each side four out of the five early Gothic arches, supported on cylindrical columns with curiously ornamented capitals, were carefully restored, but otherwise not touched. The chancel and tower were added, the whole being the work of Mr. George Basevi, as architect. Basevi was the son of George Basevi, whose sister was the mother of Lord Beaconsfield. He was a pupil of Sir John Soane, with whom he was associated in the designing of several public buildings of importance.

 

His principal work was the FitzWilliam Museum at Cambridge. Basevi met with a tragic death; he was engaged in an inspection of the western bell-tower of ElY Cathedral, when he fell to the ground, and was killed on the spot. He was buried in a chapel at the east end of the cathedral, and the east window at Hove Church was inserted to his memory.

There are a few interesting monuments in old Hove church and churchyard.

 

On the south side of the chancel arch are tablets recording the virtues of the Vallance family, who intermarried with the Brookers, and left their names in Vallance Road, and Brooker Hall in New Church Road. Below is the stone leading to the family vault. On the south wall of the chancel is a brass plate to the memory of the Rev. Walter Kelly, but for whom the church might have remained in ruins much longer, if not to this day. Over the pulpit one may read a Latin encomium on Joseph Pecchio, an Italian political exile, and near by is the vault of the family of Admiral Westphal.

 

The Admiral, who died on January 12, 1875, at the age of ninety, was in that year the last surviving officer who fought on board the Victory, under Nelson, at the battle of Trafalgar. At the age of ten, Westphal was a midshipman; he was wounded in the action, and was carried to the cockpit immediately after Nelson was brought below.

 

Somebody rolled up Nelson's coat and placed it beneath the boy's head, and meanwhile the surgeons did what they could for the Admiral. When it came to be Westphal's turn it was found that the blood from his wound, congealing, had caused one of the epaulets of Nelson's coat to adhere to his face, and the surgeons were obliged to cut it away.

 

The midshipman secured these fragments of the epaulet after his wound had been dressed, and kept them as a memento. It happened that years later Nelson's coat was offered for sale, and the admiralty, desiring to buy it for presentation to Greenwich Hospital, asked Sir George Weslphal (as he had then become) whether he could enable them to determine its genuineness. The Admiral was able to Say that if a part of the epaulet was missing the coat was probably genuine, and the coat was duly purchased, this having been found to be so.

 

 

 

 

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