Old London Road

Patcham's main village street

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.

e) THE SQUARE: Between 137 and 138 Old London Road is the entrance to the Square, an attractive group of eighteenth-century cottages. The listed nos.8-9 have weather-boarded fronts, while nos.10-20, included on the council's local list only, are built of flint although mostly rendered in cement. Nos.19-22 opposite are single-storey flint cottages. {44}

f) OLD LONDON ROAD : The main village street was part of the main London Road until the Patcham bypass opened in 1926 {115}. The section between Church Hill and Ladies Mile Road retains many listed buildings dating mainly from the eighteenth century, which are detailed below.
On the western side, nos.43-47 are knapped-flint cottages with very small windows. No.49, Flints, has a cobbled facade and was once the stable of the adjacent Southdown House, no.51, a handsome grade II*-listed building. An early Georgian house, it is faced in knapped and squared flint with red-brick dressings, and has a doorway with a decorated surround and pediment leading to a fine interior; the small front garden is bounded by a fine cobbled wall with an iron fence. Nos.53-57 are faced in flint , with small windows and low doors. {44}
On the eastern side, at the northern end in the part once known as Spring Street, stands the Elizabethan Cottage Tandoori Restaurant, nos.132-136 faced in knapped flint , and the adjacent nos.124-130, plain cottages with added bow windows and shutters; all these cottages may well date from before the eighteenth century. The modern development of Old Patcham Mews occupies the site of a paint works behind nos.110-112; the new houses, opened in 1989, are in traditional flint and plain cottage designs and won a R.I.B.A. award. Nos.110-112 themselves were the Black Lion Hotel, until the present large hotel was rebuilt from an older house in 1929, and have a nineteenth-century facade; they were converted together with heavily-restored flint stables at the rear at the same time as the modern development. Nos.106-108 were formerly one house built of stone. At the junction with Ladies Mile Road stands Wootton House, a late eighteenth-century house faced in black glazed mathematical tiles with a slate roof, cobble-fronted extension, and flint  stables which have been converted to flats. {44}
To the south of Ladies Mile Road , Old London Road runs through some 1930s suburban development which is not included in the conservation area. PatchamHouseSpecialSchool occupies the former village NationalSchool building of the mid nineteenth century, while Patcham Memorial Hall was built by public subscription after the First World War in 1929. On the eastern side stand two large villas overlooking the Peace Gardens . Ashburnham House, faced in yellow brick, was built in 1888 and has a lodge by the Old London Road . Patcham Grange in Grangeways is a large, timber-framed residence of 1893, now a nursing home.
By the bend in the footpath from Grangeways to Overhill Way once stood Ballard's Mill, a squat smock-mill of around 1780 but removed just prior to 1900, although the ground floor was retained as a store until the 1920s; this was probably the site of the mill mentioned in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Mill House and some flint outbuildings remain, while nearby, at the southern end of Highview Avenue South, are the heavily-restored Mill Cottages which probably date from the same time as the mill. Old Mill Close nearby is named from this mill. {83,107,128,249a,249b,311}

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.