of the Prestonville area. The arrow points North. The ancient parish of Preston, a area of arable land cut through by the valley of the
Wellesbourne, was the first parish north of both
Hove and
Brighton. encouraged by its "rapid growth as Britain's premier seaside resort". Prestonville's development contributed to an increase in population in Preston parish from 756 at the time of the 1841
census to 2,470 30 years later. The
tithe map of Preston parish before it became urbanised shows that most of the land between Dyke Road and the future route of the railway line was owned by Thomas Stanford and farmed by his son Thomas junior. Thomas senior himself farmed a field in the southeast corner of present-day Prestonville, and another by the Old Shoreham Road–Dyke Road junction was owned by
Sir Isaac Goldsmid, 1st Baronet. A
post mill called Port Hall Mill, next to the house called Port Hall, existed between 1795 and 1887. Another mill, Preston Mill, occupied the present site of Old Mill Works in Highcroft Villas between 1797 and 1881. Before 1797 it stood on the land now occupied by
Regency Square on Brighton seafront. Two paintings of 36
yoke of
oxen transporting it up the hill to its new location can be found in Preston Manor. Later names for the mill included Trusler's, Black and Streeter's Mill.
Waterhall Mill at
Patcham contains some of the machinery salvaged when it was demolished. then between 1848 and 1858 roads such as Chatham Place, Russell Crescent, Howard Terrace and the southern part of Prestonville Road were laid out. Old Shoreham Road had not been reached by this time, though. North of the road was an area of farmland on the west side of the Wellesbourne valley, cut off by the
Brighton Main Line from
Preston village, the church and the manor house. The land belonged to New England Farm, established in the 1810s south of Old Shoreham Road (therefore in the parish of Brighton), and an
abattoir had been proposed to be sited there. A developer called Daniel Friend bought the land, however, and laid it out with middle-class housing from the 1860s. He bought about of land from the
London and Brighton Railway, who had in turn acquired it in about 1839 (just before the railway line was laid out) from William Stanford of Preston Manor. In the early days of the railways, it was common for the newly formed railway companies to buy more land than they needed and to sell the remainder for residential development. At this time, much of the housing was rented, and "a move from one street to the next could represent a climb in social status". In ascending order of social position at this time were Brigden Street, Prestonville Terrace, Hamilton Road and Stanford Road. Many of the houses on Compton Road and Inwood Crescent were built by the
London, Brighton and South Coast Railway (LBSCR) soon after 1900 to house families displaced from the streets around Brighton station. In 1898, the LBSCR received permission to
compulsorily purchase 171 houses and demolish them to allow Brighton station goods yard to be expanded. Clearance of the site took place between 1901 and 1904. The company bought some houses privately as well, bringing the total number of displaced households to 225. The
Act of Parliament which permitted the compulsory purchasing obliged the LBSCR to rehouse the people elsewhere in Brighton, based on the terms of the
Housing of the Working Classes Act 1890 upon which it was based. The company bought land from the trustees of the Stanford estate in 1901 and 1903 for £5,600 and erected 123 houses and flats of various styles. They were of good quality and were larger than the
terraced houses they replaced, but as a rehousing scheme the development failed because very few of the displaced people actually moved there. The houses were still owned by the railways (latterly by
British Railways) until 1965. On 25 May 1943, during the
Brighton Blitz, four houses on Compton Road were bombed and one resident died. Postwar flats occupy the site of numbers 20–26. Another bomb just missed Highcroft Villas, landing on the railway line below. The Prestonville area saw little change after the war, although some other houses were demolished in favour of blocks of flats. An example was the former Hove Villa, built in 1840 on Old Shoreham Road but in institutional use from 1899 (first as a
psychiatric hospital, then as a private school). It was demolished in 1972 and twin blocks of flats called Prestonville Court were built in its place. ==Demographics and community==