Hollingdean

Potted history and photo gallery

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.

A large housing estate which lies between Round Hill and Hollingbury , and Ditchling Road and the Lewes railway. The name belonged to one of the large open fields or 'laines' of the parish of Preston in the early nineteenth century, but there was no housing development until the 1890s when the Hollingbury Road/Roedale Road area was built; the Hertford Road area followed in the 1920s. The council estate to the east was built mainly in the early 1950s, but the Brentwood and Uplands Road areas were added in the 1960s, while the tower-block flats off Upper Hollingdean Road opened in 1966. In 1981 the Hollingdean area had a population of about 8,000 {277}.
Much of the land was associated with Harrington Farm , which stood on a site between Hollingdean Terrace and the southern end of Hertford Road from the mid nineteenth century until the 1920s; in 1931 Hertford Road School was built on the site of the farmhouse. The only buildings in the area now surviving from before 1890 are Lower Roedale cottages and stores in Stanmer Villas, which were actually situated in the parish of Patcham. Once part of the Roedale Model Dairy Farm, the remaining flint buildings and cottages date from the early nineteenth century and are used by the council's Parks and Recreation Department; the corporation's Roedale Nursery lay to the east until the 1950s, and an associated mid-nineteenth-century house stands nearby.
St Richard of Chichester's Church and Hall, The Crossway, is a single-storey chapel of ease to St Matthias's Church, and was built in 1954 to a design by Clayton, Black and Daviel {311}. Hollingbury Gospel Hall, Hollingdean Terrace, opened as the Hollingbury Hall in 1932 and is now used by the Christian Fellowship. Hollingdean Community Centre, Thompson Road, opened in December 1985.
Hollingdean Road was originally known as Dog Kennel Road from the Union Hunt's kennels which were on the site of the abattoir. It ran from the Lewes Road straight through to the Jolly Brewers at Florence Place to form the Brighton/Preston boundary until 1928 {112 }, but the western part is now a private access road to the borough council's technical services depot (once the site of the town's dust destructor - see "Refuse"), wholesale meat market  and to the former municipal abattoir. This latter facility opened on 30 June 1894 and put an end to many of the forty or so insanitary slaughterhouses that were to be found in the more densely populated areas of the town. Nearly 7,000 animals were handled in the first year, and by 1928 the figure had risen to some 34,400 animals with only eleven other slaughterhouses remaining. However, after several years of private leasing the abattoir was closed in 1986 on hygiene grounds. No.84 Hollingdean Road, a knapped-flint and brick house, was the home of the abattoir superintendent. A siding from the Lewes railway line formerly served both the abattoir and the depot.

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.

The following resource(s) is quoted as a general source for the information above: {83,93,107,109,115,123,126}