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Grand Avenue, Hove

Personal view

By John Knight, actively retired

Regency is not our only architectural delight. Look and be impressed by the terracotta mansions on Grand Avenue, each different from the other in detail but sharing features from the Tudor manor in porches and windows and the Gothic pile in items like twin dragons high up on one. Also from the Victorian era, admire the cleaned-yellow brick and brightened stonework of the houses in Denmark Villas. And there are many others.

Grand Avenue, Hove

This page was added on 22/03/2006.

Comments:

Congratulations on your piece. Could you extend it to include the three Victorian houses?

By Gwen Shaw (19/11/2003)

Grand Avenue has been the site of the worst vandalism in living memory. The west side from the seafront northwards used to have the best architechture anywhere. Houses built in their own sunken gardens and maintained to the highest standards. I did a paper round in this area in the late 50s and the toffs in these houses were most generous at Christmas time (with the Furze Croft residents a close second!).

By Vic Stevens (29/02/2004)

I used to be the postman of this road from 1970-1982. The houses that were left in their original state, were excellent. Number 2 was all chanderliers and polished brasswork. I believe Tommy Walls, the empresario of skating shows, lived there. Across the road in Grand Avenue Mansions lived Lord & Lady George Robey, old music hall stars. The last private house on the west side was Number 15, it was demolished to make way for Victoria Court. The area was full of noteries, lawyers, doctors and knights of the realm--all very cordial people, I came to know by name. Lady Robey helped me to get into my car when I left the keys in the ignition. She was so slim her arms were able to go through the gap in the window to release the door. A lovely lady, sister to the theatre producers Prince and Emile Littler.

By Bob Wells (06/04/2005)

Surely those lovely terracotta villas shown on this page are, in fact, in The Drive, Hove?

By Marjorie Burnell (19/06/2006)

Is anyone in possession of any photos of the west side of Grand Avenue, they seem to be very few and far between? Particularly looking for the area near the Queen Vic statue, house numbers 18/19.

By Rod Brain (10/08/2006)

I used to live in Demark Villas in the early fifties. The house had a hotel apartments behind it leading to The Drive. I was born at 77 The Drive 1946.

By Lesley (09/06/2007)

Does anyone have a photo of the Seeboard building (now the Council offices), including the large Seeboard garage that was immediately to the north, before the garage was demolished and the present extension built on the site of it sometime in the 70s? My dad worked at Seeboard for thirty-five years and, when I was about five (in 1953), he made me a fabulous model of the garage for all my Dinky toys, complete with lights, sliding door and removable roof! As a student in the mid-60s I worked as a labourer on several of the blocks of flats on the west side of Grand Avenue, including Victoria Court, during the summer holidays. Incidentally (with reference to Bob Well's comment above), there was still one remaining private house (Dorothy Norman's?) in existence on the west side at that time (the summer of '65), on the plot immediately to the north of Victoria Court. I remember the house mainly for the beautiful bright red and chrome Jaguar saloon parked outside. I now live in one of those blocks and have a copy of the original sales brochure, which describes Grand Avenue as 'the South Coast's most prestigious address'! The promenade has changed scarcely at all in fifty years, since the metal railings and sea wall were built.

By Nick Rosewarne (19/10/2008)