Shop in Pool Valley, Brighton – Charles Knight

Rising in the Downs north of the town a stream called the Wellesbourne(1) had the habit, when it got to Brighton, of spreading into pools. There was a spot just east of the Royal Pavilion where the water would collect and, after heavy rain, overflow and swamp the Old Steine.(2) In 1806 the Prince of Wales (he was not Regent before 1810) shared with his uncle, the Duke of Cumberland,(3) the cost of diverting the stream to an underground culvert.

Pool Valley was another of these damp spots, a depression where the water would lie caught up between the Steine and the stiff shingle of the beach. It was, however, occupied well before, and liable to inundation well after, 1806 – a tremendous storm in July 1850 flooded it to a depth of 6 feet(4). For these periodical submersions a continuous one has now been substituted, beneath parked buses and cars.

The subject of the picture, standing between Pool Passage (room for one) and what was once 44a Pool Valley, dates from the last decade of the eighteenth century. It was originally two houses, and did not become a bun-shop until 1856 when Mr. Cowley, ‘by authority, fancy bread and biscuit maker’ moved from his premises in Prince Albert Street. One of his descendants, a Miss Cowley, married the present owner, Mr. Pine.(5)

The front of the house is covered with black, glazed, interlocking, ‘mathematical’ tiles,(6) on which Mr. John Denman(7) has been kind enough to comment:

‘I have seen them in other parts of the country, particularly at Canterbury, and Ringwood (New Forest). There are many examples at Lewes, and in Brighton ... especially Patcham Place. Some are red, some buff, as at Ovingdean Hall and Ringwood, and often they are black glazed, when they reflect the blue of the sky from the irregular bedding, and consequently changing faces, with wonderful effect. They were in varying length 9” × 4½” by about 2” to 2½” high, with a splayed tail-piece which turned up behind the overlapping tiles, and this tail-piece was holed and nailed to boarding or battens beneath the tiles, being afterwards bedded in mortar to match the brickwork. It was a very ingenious invention whereby old timber structures could be faced with the “new look” of Flemish brickwork which had then become the vogue, and enabled the owners of old timber structures to emulate the Squire with his sash-windowed, brick-faced dwelling – in fact, English snobbery at its best. I imagine they were first used about 1780.’(8)

Recording Britain, Vol 4, Sussex, p 168-169.

Image: Charles Knight

Text: Arnold Nottage Palmer

1. The Wellesbourne is a lost river that once ran through Brighton from the village of Patcham down to the English Channel. For more on this ancient waterway see Mark Antony Lower’s The River of Sussex, Part II (1864), p247-249, almost certainly a source for Palmer here, and from which the following is taken: “The town of Brighton lies in the hundred now known as the Hundred of Whalesbone, but formerly as Wellsbourne, a name much more intelligible, and signifying 'the stream flowing from a well.' The 'well' or source of this little current is at Patcham, about due north of Brighton, and it is only when the well overflows that the Wellsbourne exists, and then it occasionally assumes the proportions of a small river. Its course is through the parish of Preston by the side of the old London road towards Brighton. Near the 'Amber Ale Brewery' it disappears beneath the surface, and passes through a sewer to the sea. Its ancient bed crossed the 'Steyne,' and entered what is still called 'Pool valley,' to the southward of that well-known enclosure. The modern sea frontage of Brighton shows no trace of its former outlet, though in old times there was a small haven there.”

2. The Old Steine is a major thoroughfare that runs through the centre of Brighton.

3. Prince Henry, Duke of Cumberland and Strathearn (1745-1790), a younger brother of George III, was instrumental in the development of Brighton as a popular resort in the late 18th century.

4. Palmer is most likely referring to the storm of 1852, not 1850, also mentioned in Lower’s fluvial study. Lower quotes a poetic response to the flood published in the Brighton Herald in December that year: “Giles and Tummas walked abroad / On Sunday, to the London Road, / Which the postman did assever / Is a highway turned to river…”.

5. This is Mr Francis Cowley, who ran the bakery from c1856 to 1881, the year he died. By 1891, his daughter Caroline Cowley was running the business. Contrary to Palmer’s text, it is likely that the site was being run as a bakery prior to 1856. In the 1851 census, Sarah Streeter is trading as a baker at the address and documentation exists that suggests an establishment date of 1794. By the time of Knight’s depiction in 1940, the shop is being run by Edith Bessie Cowley. I can find no record of a ‘Mr. Pine’. For anyone wanting to know more, Peter Cowley’s excellent website on the history of the Cowley family contains a thoroughly researched page on Ye Olde Bunn Shop.

6. Mathematical tiles were used extensively as a building material in southeast England in the 18th and early 19th centuries. They were laid on the exterior of timber-framed buildings as an alternative to brickwork, which their appearance closely resembles. A distinctive black variety with a glazed surface was used on many buildings in Brighton from about 1760 onwards and is considered a characteristic feature of the city’s early architecture.

7. John Leopold Denman (1882-1875) was an English architect from Brighton whose work is synonymous with the city. During the 1920s, Denman led the architecture department at the Brighton School of Art. He was a major influence on the career development of Charles Knight himself, who studied at the school between 1919 and 1923. Denman’s firm undertook many restoration projects for Sussex churches in the postwar period. In 1967, Dolphin Press published his A Short Survey of the Structural Development of Sussex Churches on Behalf of the Sussex Historic Churches Trust.

8. One assumes this quote was solicited from Denman directly by Palmer for use in this entry.