Hove ( ) is a seaside location in East Sussex, England. Alongside Brighton, it is one of the two main parts of the city of Brighton and Hove.
Originally a fishing village surrounded by open farmland, it grew rapidly in the 19th century in response to the development of its eastern neighbour Brighton; by the Victorian era it was a fully developed town with borough status. Neighbouring parishes such as Aldrington and Hangleton were annexed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The neighbouring urban district of Portslade was merged with Hove in 1974. In 1997, as part of local government reform, the borough merged with Brighton to form the Borough of Brighton and Hove; this unitary authority was granted city status in 2000.
Name and etymology Old spellings of Hove include Hou (Domesday Book, 1086), la Houue (1288), Huua (13th century), Houve (13th and 14th centuries), Huve (14th and 15th centuries), Hova (16th century) and Hoova (1675). The etymology was disputed at length during the 20th century as academics offered several competing theories. Suggestions included an Old Norse word meaning "hall", "sanctuary" or "barrow", in reference to the Bronze Age barrow near the present Palmeira Square; an Old English phrase æt þæm hofe meaning "at the hall"; the Old English hufe meaning "shelter" or "covering"; and the Middle English hofe meaning "anchorage". No other places in Britain are called Hove, and single-syllable names as a whole are rare in Sussex. The modern name was originally pronounced "Hoove" (). The present pronunciation () "is comparatively recent".
Geography and topography
Northern parts of Hove are built on chalk beds, part of the White Chalk Subgroup found across southeast England. There are also extensive areas of clay and sandy soil: areas of Woolwich Formation and Reading Formation clay, pockets of clay embedded with flint, and a large deposit of brickearth in the Aldrington area. Hove's beaches have the characteristics of a storm beach, and at high tide are entirely shingle, although low tide exposes sand between the sea-defence groynes, varying in extent from beach to beach. The water is then very shallow and suitable for paddling. On spring tides a greater expanse of sand is exposed beyond the end of the sea defences. The mean height above sea level of land in the old parish of Hove varied between . After Hove became a borough and expanded to incorporate land from neighbouring parishes, the highest point was approximately above sea level. There are no rivers in Hove, but Westbourne Gardens at the western boundary of the old parish is named after the "West Bourne", which was still visible in the 19th century but which now runs underground, and a map of 1588 shows another stream called East Brook.
Until the 19th century the parish was mostly agricultural. Three farms—Wick, Goldstone and Long Barn—dominated the area and owned most of the land, which was of good quality: agricultural writer Arthur Young described it as "uncommonly rich". Crops including oats, barley, corn and various vegetables were grown. Only in the 1870s were the last of the market gardens near Hove Street built over, and barley was grown near Eaton Road until the county cricket ground was built. Water was provided by wells west of Hove Street and between the coast road and the sea (the latter was destroyed in the Great Storm of 1703). The chalybeate spring on the Wick Farm estate was also used, especially by shepherds who drove their sheep between Hove, the South Downs and nearby villages along ancient drove roads. Some local shepherds supplemented their income by catching larks and northern wheatears and selling them for their meat; the latter were popular among fashionable visitors to Brighton. The birds were common on the hills and valleys around Hove, such as Goldstone Bottom. The practice died out when wheatears became a protected species in the late 18th century. The urban growth of Hove has shifted sheep-farming to more isolated parts of the South Downs, but several drove roads survive today as roads or footpaths. Hove Street and its northward continuation Sackville Road were originally known as Hove Drove and led on to the Downs. A long west–east route which crossed West Blatchington, Hove and Preston parishes on its way to Lewes now bears the names The Droveway, The Drove and Preston Drove. The section called The Droveway, on which the Goldstone Waterworks was built in the 1860s, had to be maintained as a right of way when Hove Park was built. A long diagonal footpath once known as Dyer's Drove runs for several miles from Portslade-by-Sea on to the Downs, and Drove Road in Portslade village may have been used since Roman times.
A large Sarsen stone called the Goldstone stood on farmland northwest of the village, now part of Hove Park. Links with druids were claimed; and some 19th-century sources stated it was part of a ring of stones similar to Stonehenge, and that the others were buried in a pond at Goldstone Bottom, one of the coombes (small dry valleys) between the Downs and the sea. The Goldstone was dug up and buried by a farmer, but was unearthed and re-erected in a new position in the park in 1906.
Hove has little ancient woodland. Only two small areas survive: one in St Ann's Well Gardens, and The Three Cornered Copse in the Tongdean area. The latter covers and belonged to the Marquess of Abergavenny until Hove Borough Council bought it in January 1935. Trees in the copse include ash, beech, elm and sycamore, although more than 120 mature beech trees were blown down in the Great storm of 1987.
Much of Hove is urbanised, but in 1994 there were of downland—about 37.5% of the total acreage of the then borough. In common with other parts of the South Downs, much of land has been used as sheep pasture, but crop farming also takes place and large areas of land were claimed for military training during World War II. Toads Hole Valley, a triangular site south of the Brighton Bypass, is "the last piece of unspoiled downland in Hove". It has been privately owned since 1937 and has been proposed for urban development for many years: in 2002 it was stated that "controversy rages over the future use of this land".
Acreage Date Parish area Notes RefsTo 19th centuryExtent of original parish1874Ordnance Survey map of 18741894Aldrington parish added1 April 1928Preston Rural, West Blatchington and Patcham (part) parishes added1940Reported in Victoria County History of Sussex1994
Climate Climate in this area has mild differences between highs and lows, and there is adequate rainfall year-round. The Köppen Climate Classification subtype for this climate is "Cfb" (Marine West Coast Climate/Oceanic climate).
History and development
Pre-Roman evidence Fossilised remains from the Pleistocene era have been found in three locations in Hove: an molar from Elephas antiquus, excavated from the garden of a house in Poplar Avenue; teeth from a juvenile elephant deep in the soil at Ventnor Villas; and a prehistoric horse's tooth in the soil near Hove Street.
During building work near Palmeira Square in 1856–57, workmen uncovered a substantial burial mound. A prominent feature of the landscape since 1200 BC, the -high tumulus yielded, among other treasures, the Hove amber cup. Made of translucent red Baltic amber and approximately the same size as a regular china tea cup, the artefact can be seen in the Hove Museum and Art Gallery. Only one other has been found in Britain. Also buried in the coffin in which the amber cup was found were a stone battle-axe, a whetstone and a bronze dagger whose appearance is characteristic of the Wessex culture.
Domesday Book There are entries for Brighton and Portslade (Bristelmestune and Porteslage) and small downland settlements like Hangleton (Hangetone), but nothing for the location of Hove itself.
Middle Ages and Renaissance The first known settlement in Hove was around the 12th century when St Andrew's Church was established. Hove remained insignificant for centuries, consisting of just a single street running north–south some 250 m from the church, which by the 16th century was recorded as being in ruins. Hangleton Manor is a well-preserved 16th-century flint manor building. It is believed to have been built for Richard Bel(l)ingham, twice High Sheriff of Sussex, whose initials are carved into a fireplace, and whose coat of arms adorns a period plaster ceiling. The Manor is currently serving as a pub-restaurant and whilst it was once on open downland, it is now surrounded by the 20th-century Hangleton housing estate.
18th century In 1723 a traveller, the antiquary John Warburton, wrote, 'I passed through a ruinous village called Hove which the sea is daily eating up and is in a fair way of being quite deserted; but the church being quite large and a good distance from the shore may perhaps escape'. Nevertheless, in around 1702 The Ship Inn had been built at the seaward end of the main street, and was therefore vulnerable to erosion of the coast.
In 1724, Daniel Defoe wrote in reference to the south coast, 'I do not find they have any foreign commerce, except it be what we call smuggling and roguing; which I may say, is the reigning commerce of all this part of the English coast, from the mouth of the Thames to the Land's End in Cornwall."Defoe, Daniel (1724). A Tour Thro' the Whole Island of Great Britain: Letter III. London.
The fertile coastal plain west of the Brighton boundary had significant deposits of brickearth and by c.1770 a brickfield had been established on the site of what would become Brunswick Square. Later, other brickfields were established further west, remaining until displaced by housing development.
Regency and Victorian developments The census of 1801 recorded only 101 residents to Brighton's 7,339. By 1821, the year the Prince Regent was crowned George IV, the population had risen to 312,Middleton J. (1983) Hove in old picture postcards, introduction while that of Brighton, which became a highly fashionable resort during the Regency, had also trebled, to 24,429.The National Cyclopaedia of Useful Knowledge, Vol III, (1847), London, Charles Knight, p. 809. The dwellings were then still clustered on Hove Street, surrounded by an otherwise empty landscape of open farmland. This relative isolated location of Hove, compared to Brighton, was ideal for smuggling and there was considerable illicit activity. Hove smugglers became notorious, with contraband often being stored in the now partially repaired St. Andrew's Church. Tradition has it that The Ship Inn was a favourite rendezvous for the smugglers, and in 1794 soldiers were billeted there. In 1818 there was a pitched battle on Hove beach between revenue men and smugglers, from which the latter emerged as the victors. As part of the concerted drive by Parliament to combat smuggling, a coastguard station was opened at the southern end of Hove Street in 1831, next to The Ship Inn.
Bull-baiting took place on Saint Andrew's Day and on the Tuesday after Easter Sunday, but the practice ceased after 1810 when a bull broke free and ran through the crowd. The bullring was between the coast road and the beach, southwest of Hove Street, and the fights were promoted by the Ship Inn—which also organised cockfighting matches, even after this activity was made illegal.
In the years following the Coronation of 1821 the Brunswick estate of large Regency houses with a theatre, riding schools and their own police was developed on the seafront near the boundary with Brighton. Although within Hove parish the residents of these elegant houses avoided the name of the impoverished village a mile to the west as an address. Straggling development along the coast loosely connected the estate to fashionable Brighton, so that name was used instead.
Dating from 1822, the Brighton to Shoreham turnpike crossed the north of Hove parish along the route of the present Old Shoreham Road.