| | Robert Stuart NemethA man with a keen eye on the City's Architecture |
Foredown
Tower is a great example of an imaginative new role that a building can
play once it is no longer needed for its intended purpose and is well
worth a visit on a clear day. Foredown
Hospital was built in 1883 up on the Downs on the site that is now
occupied by Crest Way in Portslade. The handsome brick and flint
building opened as an isolation unit for treating infectious patients
with illnesses such as scarlet fever, diphtheria, tuberculosis and
typhoid. It was approached by a long country track in the Victorian
tradition of placing such patients as far away from any other
development as possible. It 1913 it became ‘Hove Borough Sanatorium,
Portslade’. The building luckily escaped
serious damage from two bombs that landed close (one a 500-pounder)
during the Second World War, suffering just a few smashed windows.
Unfortunately, the hospital didn’t have such a luck escape in 1988/9
when it was demolished for ‘development’ due to infectious diseases
becoming less prevalent. Three important features were saved, namely
some boundary walls, the water tower and a terracotta plaque bearing
the date ‘AD 1883’ which is now set in a wall at Benfield Heights
nearby. The tower, now known as Foredown Tower,
was built in 1909 by J. Parsons & Sons with a 27,500 gallon tank
made by Every’s of Lewes. The immense weight of the water and tank was
supported by brick walls which are up to 33 inches thick in places. The
original ballcock and water depth gauge have been preserved along with
lots of the massive pipes that served the tower nearly one hundred
years ago. After financial help from American Express and much
deliberating, the tower opened in 1991 as the home of one of England’s
only operational camera obscuras. Windows and a pitched roof were added
above the tank to facilitate the camera which is built into a tower at
the very top. It projects a television-like image onto a dish at floor
level and can be pointed in any direction from the sea to Worthing to
the Devil’s Dyke to Eastbourne. The view is spectacular. Call (01273)
292092 or go to www.virtualmuseum.info for details of opening hours. This
situation is remarkably similar to the case of the ‘Pepper Pot’, the
tower of a demolished building on Queen’s Park Road which currently
stands covered in graffiti, awaiting a new use. Ideas anyone?
Of
all the tree-lined streets and grand boulevards of Hove, there is one
that captures best the Victorian spirit that many of the others have
lost. Running from Blatchington Road to Hove Station, Denmark Villas
with its tall elms and sycamores has retained its character from all
those years back. The west side of the street
has a tall terrace of houses at the top and one at the bottom but it is
the villas that make it special. They are all semi-detached except
numbers 47 and 49, which are detached. No. 49, or Denmark House as it’s
also known, has a particularly fascinating history and was once owned
by Nicholas van Hoogstraten. In 1983, the property tycoon claimed that
‘anarchists’ tried to blow it up. Rather than rely on hearsay I asked
him about it. He told me that the building was found empty except for a
lit candle alongside a sawn-off gas main! He also blames the culprit
for fires at a property of his on Cromwell Road and also at the
original building Victorian manoe on his High Cross Estate in Uckfield.
This is at least a better explanation than that of the
cigarette-dropping seagull that apparently burnt down the West Pier
(twice)! At the top is Ralli Hall, the road’s only Listed Building
(Grade II). This red-brick community centre was built in 1913 by the
Ralli family to perpetuate the memory of Stephen Ralli, who made his
fortune in grain. On the east side, numbers 2
and 4 are missing. Instead, there is Granville Court, an ugly modern
block. After this monstrosity, there are more villas, this time built
with a beautiful peachy yellow brick which I imagine is particularly
hard to replace. There is a pretty terrace of houses above this which
is unfortunately followed by a nasty row of shops, which was built on
the site of an old cinema. At the top is Hove Station, which opened in
1893. One of Hove’s newest roads, “Robbie’s Approach” was recently
created in front of the station to deal with the queues to the hand car
wash, owned by local businessman, Robbie Raggio. Over
the years, residents have clearly fought hard to keep Denmark Villas’
unique character in place. This wonderful conservation area is an
excellent example of what can be achieved when a general architectural
principle is adhered to; in this case yellow-bricked Italianate villas.
Reproduced by courtesy of 'Latest Homes Magazine'
Mail Robert at - robertstuartnemeth@yahoo.co.uk
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