9 Pool Valley is a late 18th-century house and shop in the centre of
Brighton, part of the English city of
Brighton and Hove
Brighton and Hove () is a city and unitary authority in East Sussex, England. It consists primarily of the settlements of Brighton and Hove, alongside neighbouring villages.
Often referred to synonymously as Brighton, the City of Brighton and H ...
. Built as a bakery and shop for a local family, with two floors of living accommodation above, it later passed to another Brighton family who kept up the baking tradition until the mid-20th century. Since then it has had various commercial uses. Described as "one of the most famous surviving early buildings" in Brighton and "a charming relic",
the exterior is clad in distinctive black glazed
mathematical tile
Mathematical tiles are tiles which were used extensively as a building material in the southeastern counties of England—especially East Sussex and Kent—in the 18th and early 19th centuries. They were laid on the exterior of timber-framed ...
s.
English Heritage
English Heritage (officially the English Heritage Trust) is a charity that manages over 400 historic monuments, buildings and places. These include prehistoric sites, medieval castles, Roman forts and country houses.
The charity states that i ...
has
listed
Listed may refer to:
* Listed, Bornholm, a fishing village on the Danish island of Bornholm
* Listed (MMM program), a television show on MuchMoreMusic
* Endangered species in biology
* Listed building, in architecture, designation of a historicall ...
it at Grade II* for its architectural and historical importance.
History
Brighton is situated on the
English Channel
The English Channel, "The Sleeve"; nrf, la Maunche, "The Sleeve" (Cotentinais) or ( Jèrriais), (Guernésiais), "The Channel"; br, Mor Breizh, "Sea of Brittany"; cy, Môr Udd, "Lord's Sea"; kw, Mor Bretannek, "British Sea"; nl, Het Kana ...
coast at a point where several valleys meet the sea. One of these was formed by the flow of the River Wellesbourne, a
winterbourne which came to the surface at
Patcham
Patcham () is an area of the city of Brighton & Hove, about north of the city centre. It is bounded by the A27 (Brighton bypass) to the north, Hollingbury to the east and southeast, Withdean to the south and the Brighton Main Line to the west. ...
.
The intermittent flow of the stream created a boggy, marshy area of land around which the old village of Brighthelmstone developed.
Just before entering the sea, it formed a small pool. As demand for land grew in the late 18th century during a period of rapid growth, the Wellesbourne was diverted into a
culvert and built over: the
Prince of Wales
Prince of Wales ( cy, Tywysog Cymru, ; la, Princeps Cambriae/Walliae) is a title traditionally given to the heir apparent to the English and later British throne. Prior to the conquest by Edward I in the 13th century, it was used by the rulers ...
and the
Duke of Marlborough
General John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, 1st Prince of Mindelheim, 1st Count of Nellenburg, Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, (26 May 1650 – 16 June 1722 O.S.) was an English soldier and statesman whose career spanned the reign ...
paid for this.
The pool was hidden under a new road, Pool Valley, in 1792–93.
Pool Valley connected the south end of
Old Steine
The Old Steine () is a thoroughfare in central Brighton, East Sussex, and is the southern terminus of the A23. The southern end leads to Marine Parade, the Brighton seafront and the Palace Pier. The Old Steine is also the site of a number of Cit ...
and the seafront. Old Steine (or The Steine) was the name now given to the marshy valley bottom previously used by fishermen drying their nets, and for the growing of hemp: it had been drained, and by 1790 it formed the focal point of the growing town of Brighton.
Houses and entertainment venues surrounded it and faced the grass, which was used for
promenading;
railings were built around the land; and the fishermen were evicted.
As soon as the new road opened, buildings were built on both sides.
The structure at number 9, on the northwest side of the street, was built for both commercial and residential use: the ground floor was used as a bakery, and there were two floors of accommodation above. It may have been built for the Streeters, a local family who were involved in the baking trade.
In 1845, the business was run as a bakery and shop by Sarah Streeter.
The Cowley family, long established in Brighton, took over at some point before the 1861
Census
A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording and calculating information about the members of a given population. This term is used mostly in connection with national population and housing censuses; other common censuses in ...
, after which the business became known as Cowley's Bun Shop and, later, Ye Olde Bunn Shoppe.
Around the middle of the 20th century, the building passed out of the Cowley family's ownership, and the ground-floor shop unit was converted to other commercial uses such as a restaurant.
The building was
listed
Listed may refer to:
* Listed, Bornholm, a fishing village on the Danish island of Bornholm
* Listed (MMM program), a television show on MuchMoreMusic
* Endangered species in biology
* Listed building, in architecture, designation of a historicall ...
at Grade II* on 13 October 1952.
Such buildings are defined as being "particularly important ...
ndof more than special interest".
As of February 2001, it was one of
70 Grade II*-listed buildings and structures, and 1,218 listed buildings of all grades, in the city of
Brighton and Hove
Brighton and Hove () is a city and unitary authority in East Sussex, England. It consists primarily of the settlements of Brighton and Hove, alongside neighbouring villages.
Often referred to synonymously as Brighton, the City of Brighton and H ...
.
Architecture
The building is one of the oldest surviving houses in Brighton,
and has been called "one of
tsmost famous surviving early buildings".
Its modest appearance and small size prompted architectural historian
Harry Stuart Goodhart-Rendel
Harry Stuart Goodhart-Rendel (1887 in Cambridge – 21 June 1959 in Westminster, London) was a British architect, writer and musician.
Life
Harry Stuart Goodhart was born on 29 May 1887 in Cambridge, England. He added the additional name Rende ...
, a former resident of Brighton,
to call it "as charming a relic of ... Brighthelmstone
righton's former nameas anyone could wish to see".
It is a three-storey building with a modern shopfront on the lowest floor, two storeys in residential use above, and a large
hipped roof
A hip roof, hip-roof or hipped roof, is a type of roof where all sides slope downwards to the walls, usually with a fairly gentle slope (although a tented roof by definition is a hipped roof with steeply pitched slopes rising to a peak). Thus, ...
with
dormer window
A dormer is a roofed structure, often containing a window, that projects vertically beyond the plane of a pitched roof. A dormer window (also called ''dormer'') is a form of roof window.
Dormers are commonly used to increase the usable spac ...
s.
![Pool Valley Missing Mathematical Tiles](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/Pool_Valley_Missing_Mathematical_Tiles.JPG)
The top two floors are laid with black glazed
mathematical tile
Mathematical tiles are tiles which were used extensively as a building material in the southeastern counties of England—especially East Sussex and Kent—in the 18th and early 19th centuries. They were laid on the exterior of timber-framed ...
s—often used in the 18th and 19th centuries on buildings in Brighton, and a characteristic feature of the local architecture.
The second and third storeys also have
canted bay window
A bay window is a window space projecting outward from the main walls of a building and forming a bay in a room.
Types
Bay window is a generic term for all protruding window constructions, regardless of whether they are curved or angular, or ...
s; to the sides and rear (facing an ancient
alleyway), original
sash windows remain.
The left dormer window is a
casement, while the right has a sash window.
Notes
Bibliography
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{{Commons Category
Commercial buildings completed in 1794
Houses completed in 1794
Grade II* listed commercial buildings
Pool Valley, 9
1794 establishments in England