West Hill

Buckingham Road constructed c1850s

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.

West Hill is the name given to the eastern part of Church Hill rising westwards from Brighton Station, Queen's Road and the central valley. It was developed in the 1840s and '50s with 'working-class' and 'middle-class' terraced housing near the station, and in the 1870s with large villa residences in the grounds of the former workhouse {83}. Designated a conservation area in 1977, the streets of main interest are detailed below, but see also "Dyke Road" and "Queen's Road"; also "Railways - Brighton Station", which was added to the conservation area in 1988

c) BUCKINGHAM ROAD: This road is lined with large villas at the southern end, erected in the 1870s in the former workhouse grounds, and some impressive terraced housing of the 1850s to the north, particularly nos.45-58 with their large square bays. No.31 was the birthplace of one of Brighton's most famous sons, Aubrey Beardsley, on 21 August 1872. A famous black-and-white illustrative artist, 'the master of line', he was educated at the nearby grammar school (corner of Upper Gloucester Road) where he illustrated a booklet for a school opera, but he later lived at 21 Lower Rock Gardens. He left Brighton at the age of fifteen to work as a clerk in a London office, but his self-taught skill as an line artist won him a major commission to illustrate an issue of Malory's Morte d'Arthur. Other important commissions followed, including Wilde's Salome and Pope's Rape of the Lock. Beardsley gained something of a notorious reputation with his grotesque and erotic art nouveau imagery, but he died of tuberculosis at Mentone, France, on 16 March 1898 aged just twenty-five. {3,296}

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.