Photograph taken c1950s
Ashton Street
Image reproduced with permission from Brighton History Centre
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I lived with my parents in number 38 from the end of the war until the slum clearance scheme. Not very happy days with stone yards and outside toilets and condemned rooms. Some good neighbours but the majority were introspective and lacked drive. (I wont name names).
My father, at the time of his marriage in 1936, also lived at 38 Ashton Street, Brighton.
Haha, that’s funny because my father in law lived there at that time, and he remembers it very well but not the same as your story, he lived at number 45.
I remember Ashton Street well. The Bushby’s ( who produced a child every year – there were 11 to my knowledge), The Short’s who took in foster children and knocked two houses into one to make more space (the son Alfie never worked from school days to long into maturity) and many others.
My Dad William Cooper lived at 7 Ashton Street 1940/50s. Does anyone remember the Cooper family?
On my birth certificate it says my mum and Dad and me lived at number 29 Ashton street, Dennis Standen, bus conductor, and my Mum Margaret. I was born in hospital in Brighton. My mum is 90 and my Dad passed away about 30 years ago. I was born in 1954. It’s the first time I have seen this place – I’m quite shocked.
My Nan along with her parents, James and Ellen Savage and her sisters lived at 10, Ashton Street in the early 1900s. Of the other addresses that my Brighton ancestors lived this was the only street demolished.
I’ve been trying to find Ashton Street for a while. Glad to find it on this site. My paternal grandmother Helen Rose Finch was born at 34 Ashton Street on 1 Nov 1900. Her family on later records are listed as living at 11 Ashton Street. Her parents were John Roland Find and Frances Elizabeth Finch (nee Akehurst). Was moving between addresses in the same street a common occurrence? What conditions might have facilitated this?
My great grandmother Louisa Elizabeth Stone (Ming on marriage) was born at number 1 Ashton street on 23rd March 1853. From research a lot of my mum’s side of the family lived around the Albion Hill area in various locations from the 1800s until the 1950s at least.
My 2x great grandmother Ann Corke (mistakenly written as Cooke) lived at 40 Ashton St on the 1871 census. She was widowed the year before and had 5 young children listed. Also listed was a visitor, 2 couples and a family of 5 – makes a total of 16 people! Would the houses in the photo be the same as those on the 1871 census and what type of area would Ashton St be like then. Ann was a needlewoman who emigrated to Canada in 1873. I am Australian.
I lived in Coleman Street in the late 1970s- early 1980s. It was two blocks north of Ashton St and had similar houses: those with basements had six rooms including the kitchen. I traced the former occupants of my house and found a similar pattern of occupancy to no. 40 Ashton St:
In 1861 it was home to two families, totalling three adults and seven children
In 1871 it was again home to another two families: five adults and two children.
In 1891 and 1911 there was only one family, but they had taken in several lodgers.
In 1861 and 1871, most of the adults in the Coleman St house were from other Sussex towns. Brighton’s population was still growing quite fast at that time, so my guess is that there was a shortage of housing and that this kind of over-crowding was common in working class streets. A shortage of accommodation will likely have driven up rents, so sharing houses/taking in lodgers was probably a financial necessity. (Sobering to see houses in the Hanover area being converted into flats, which means they are again occupied by multiple families.)
Encyclopaedia of Brighton (Carder) describes the Albion Hill area (which includes Ashton St) as a development of ‘dense, poor quality housing…(which) degenerated into appalling slums’. The worst of these were demolished in the 1930s.
There’s another photo of Ashton St in the James Gray Collecttion (link below). The caption describes it as a mid-Victorian street but I think the author meant mid-19th century – maps of the period imply that Ashton Street was under construction in the 1850s. The houses in the photos are typical of that era, so I’m certain the houses in the photos are the same ones as in the 1871 Census. https://regencysociety-jamesgray.com/volume27/source/jg_27_075.html
In answer to Steve Blunt’s query from 2022, when I lived in nearby Coleman St my next door neighbour had lived in three different houses in the same street. She was born in the street in 1900. As a young married woman, she had moved to a house a couple of doors away from her parents. Later, as her children grew, she moved to another, slightly larger house immediately opposite. (Slightly larger because houses on that side of the street had basements.)
I don’t know how common this was, but landlords often owned several houses in the same street and may have preferred tenants whose track record (or their family’s) they already knew. Equally well, someone already living in the street would be the first to know when a property was about to become vacant so could get their bid in quickly.
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