Dyke Road

Old Shoreham Road to Highcroft Villas

Reproduced with permission from the Encyclopaedia of Brighton by Tim Carder, 1990

Please note that this text is an extract from a reference work written in 1990.  As a result, some of the content may not reflect recent research, changes and events.

d) OLD SHOREHAM ROAD to HIGHCROFT VILLAS : The Brighton, Hove and Sussex Sixth Form College ('BHASVIC') was erected in 1913 as a grammar school and has its own entry in this text. The adjacent Dyke Road Park , although situated in Hove since 1928, is owned and managed by Brighton Council which purchased the land, then in Preston Rural parish, in November 1914. The north-western part was initially intended for a hostel for the MunicipalTrainingCollege, but the whole area of about ten acres was laid out as a park which was opened to the public on 17 September 1924 by the mayor, Hugh Milner Black {126}.
At the corner of Port Hall Road stands Port Hall itself, a small listed house of about 1800. The unusual building, which was the residence of Sir Page-Dyck in the early nineteenth century when it was quite isolated, has a sham ecclesiastical window with the statuette of a monk, a castellated roof, and the prominent figure of a knight above the doorway; it is said to be haunted by the ghost of a red crusader. Port Hall post-mill stood on Port Hall Mews behind the house and was built by 1795, but it was demolished in 1887. {44,107,108,123,249}
Beyond the Booth Museum of Natural History (see below), the Territorial Army Headquarters has a drill hall erected at the time of the Second World War for the volunteers previously based in Church Street and Gloucester Road . Behind the hall is a large red-brick villa of 1876, Highcroft, which has a south lodge in Dyke Road and a north lodge in Highcroft Villas . {83,306}
Lambourne's Old Mill Works at the top of Highcroft Villas are named from the former Preston Mill which stood on the site. It was originally erected in Belle Vue Field, now Regency Square , as the West Mill, but following complaints from nearby residents it was carried on a sled pulled by thirty-six yoke of oxen on 28 March 1797, an event depicted in a pair of paintings now hanging in Preston Manor . The mill gave Millers Road and the Windmill Inn, now the Dyke Tavern , their names, but it was also known as Streeter's Mill, the Black Mill, and Trusler's Mill. When it was demolished in 1881, parts of the machinery were included in the new Waterhall Mill.  {249a}

Any numerical cross-references in the text above refer to resources in the Sources and Bibliography section of the Encyclopaedia of Brighton by Tim Carder.