Preston Manor, Brighton

...write this one, having visited Preston Manor, thanks to Ciao itself. Specifically in this case, due to picking up on hiker and elfriend's ideas on the "my backyard" theme. Do not worry, I am not attempting to dress this review up as something that it clearly is not, I fully intend to let you all have a good old poke around in my back yard (I did say back yard!) sometime quite soon.

Therefore I wish to thank both hiker and ...
...doorstep last Friday afternoon at Preston Manor.

Actually, in truth, I had long wanted to have a look inside this very smart looking, largely Victorian, manor house. I hardly need to describe its' location, a prime site on the main A23 London Road. Coming into Brighton from the north you could hardly miss it, in front of you and slightly to the left (east) at the first set of traffic lights on the main road, half way between the city ... more

As with many of my reviews these days I was inspired to write this one, having visited Preston Manor, thanks to Ciao itself. Specifically in this case, due to picking up on hiker and elfriend's ideas on the "my backyard" theme. Do not worry, I am not attempting to dress this review up as something that it clearly is not, I fully intend to let you all have a good old poke around in my back yard (I did say back yard!) sometime quite soon.

Therefore I wish to thank both hiker and elfriend for inspiring my wife and I to actually visit a place so familiar to us that we had previously never given much thought to it. To the pair of you, this review is dedicated.

Living here in Brighton, the town of my birth, I am probably equally as guilty as the next person of "familiarity breading contempt" when it comes to the buildings and facilities around us. At least I was, no longer!

Since marrying my Polish wife in 2001, we have very thoroughly explored just about all of the attractions in this very colourful City of Brighton & Hove. This process has taken us a full four years and ended right back on our own doorstep last Friday afternoon at Preston Manor.

Actually, in truth, I had long wanted to have a look inside this very smart looking, largely Victorian, manor house. I hardly need to describe its' location, a prime site on the main A23 London Road. Coming into Brighton from the north you could hardly miss it, in front of you and slightly to the left (east) at the first set of traffic lights on the main road, half way between the city boundary and the sea, on the north western corner of Preston Park.

I am not going to describe the park, various gardens and Victorian buildings contained therein, but focus this review on the manor house itself.

Those of you interested in history, and doubtless recognising that "Preston" is a surprisingly common English place name, may be interested to know that the word Preston originates from "Priests Farmstead". In this particular case, all the land here i.e. the "Manor of Preston" belonged originally to the Bishops of Chichester, this being recorded in the Doomsday Book of 1086.

What you see now is the house very much as it was in 1932 when Sir Charles and Lady Thomas-Stanford, the last remaining members of the Thomas-Stanford family, died. The interior in terms of furnishings and technology, for want of a better expression, are from their era, dating from the very earliest days of the last century.

The core of the house and indeed its family history considerably pre-dates the Victorian era, and itself forms an interesting education into how great wealth was created in past times.

There has been a house recorded on this site since the Norman Conquest, however the origins of Preston Manor House, as it is now, stem from around 1600. There is in the council archives a very detailed document describing a "substantial mansion", not so very unlike the present house in terms of internal room layout.

Like many such English houses, Preston Manor underwent a near continuous "evolution" to end up looking as it now does, almost exactly as it did 100 years ago. Since that time the house has been very much preserved, largely in the hands of the local corporation who have opened it to the public continuously since October 1933, this following its passing into their custodianship via the will of its last occupant, Lady Ellen Thomas-Stanford.

To non-locals the names Preston and Stanford will probably have little familiarity. The ancient village of Preston is immediately to the west of the manor house, whilst the "area" of Stanford is to the east and due south of it - bordered by Preston Drove and Stanford Avenue.

The Stanford family association at Preston started in 1758 when one Richard Stanford was tenant farmer of Preston Manor Farm. He also had substantial farming interests in the Horsham area, the Stanford's became such successful farmers that, in 1800, his son, William purchased the Preston Manor House and approximately 1000 acres of farm land that went with it. That land spread extensively to the west of Preston, including a very large area of what is now known as Hove - in those days a couple of houses gathered around the old Church in Church Road.

In 1800, Brighton itself was little more than a fishing village, Preston, consisting of its manor house, church and a handful of small houses was a tiny village, one and a half miles north of the centre of Brighton. Through a combination of good marriage and good fortune, by 1808 William Stanford found himself being one of the largest land owners in Sussex - that same year being appointed to the position of High Sheriff.

Over the following century, the town was to expand out of all recognition, bit by bit the Stanford family sold off their coastal farm lands for the building of, what was turning into a grand Victorian and then Edwardian city-scape, now familiar as the City of Brighton & Hove. Obviously this process landed the Stanford family with huge wealth.

Preston Manor was by now - the late 1800's - merely their Brighton "villa", the family split their time between their main residence Pyhouse in Wiltshire - a large country pile - Preston Manor, a villa in Madeira and yet another residence in Norway….that as well as spending time on their large steam yaught…….

…..and into this elegant and more gracious era you step as you ascend the front steps entering Preston Manor though the modestly porticoed front door.

We visited on a perfect sunny September Friday afternoon, parking to one side of the circular carriage driveway in front of the house. The front door was open, rather amusingly, there is a notice on the small window to the left of the front door: "Knock on Door for Admission". Upon entering the large hallway there is a discreet pay desk to your right and a small stand of cards and information leaflets to your left. This is certainly a refreshingly low key attraction by Brighton standards at least!

It is at this point I have a guilty confession to make. We only spotted the "No Photography" notice on the way out - Mrs R. took rather a lot of pictures that afternoon - certainly none of the many staff challenged her over it!

Having parted with your modest £3.90 admission charge (£2.25 under 16's or £3.20 "Concessions") one of the very friendly staff members hands you a small "walk around" leaflet guide and points you in the right direction. I also paid a very reasonable £2.95 for a superbly comprehensive guide book.

As we quickly discovered this is not a place to come if you enjoy rubbing shoulders with crowds of people - apart from a school party, all dressed in Victorian costume - including the teachers, we seemed to be one of only two couples viewing the house that afternoon.

In most respects one would have to say that the Robert Adam inspired entrance hall is the most impressive room in the house, it is the largest room containing, as was the fashion of the Victorian era, the best quality items of furniture. It is also the most colourfully decorated, all painted in cool white and ultramarine blue.

Starting out on the recommended clockwise tour of the house, the first room you enter from the hall to the left is the "Macquoid Room". This was the original, pre-1905, dining room and is linked to the below stairs kitchen by a flight of service stairs. When the new west wing was built on the house, completed in 1905, the kitchen and dining rooms moved over there, leaving this room as the library. After the Stanford's death, the Corporation inherited from Percy Macquoid's widow, Theresa, a fine collection of wood panelling, furniture and the superb pink marble fireplace that you see now here in this room. Percy was a renowned collector of, and well known writer on, English furniture. The room was transformed to its present appearance in 1939 and as such was the last substantial change to the house as we now view it.

From a door in the south west corner of this room you enter the "Morning Room". This is a fascinating contrast to the two rooms already experienced, it being of much more modest proportions and plainer decoration. It is a very typical Victorian morning room, maybe we would today refer to such a room as a study. The lady of the house, Ellen Thomas-Stanford used this room, overlooking the lawn to the rear, as a sitting room. The 1910 telephone in there is a poignant reminder of the rapidly changing times in which these people lived.

Exiting this room through another door takes you back into the hallway and thence to the adjacent "Cleves Room". For me, this was the most extraordinary room in Preston Manor. Indeed we have visited several stately homes and THAT castle this year and this room, relatively small in size, in terms of interest ranks alongside the far more elaborate library at Kenwood.

The Cleves Room takes its name from an early 18th century copy of a Holbein portrait of Anne of Cleves which hung in this sitting room during the mid 1800's. However, what makes this room so extraordinary today, is the fact that the walls are covered (or "hung" in the way that you would wallpaper) with the most extraordinary square gilt leather panels, made in the Netherlands during the 17th century. They have adorned the walls of this room since the 1880's having been moved downstairs from one of the bedrooms. Quite where these superb leather panels came from originally is not known.

For me, seeing this one unique room alone was well worth a visit to Preston Manor!

The next two rooms, the Drawing Room and the new Dining Room are much larger, but rather less interesting being very typical of the early Edwardian era. As well as ornately framed wooden communicating doors these two formal, used only when entertaining guests here, rooms are linked externally by a very attractive barrel roofed corridor overlooking the garden at the front.

Upstairs, having climbed the fairly modest wooden staircase, you find four principal rooms, originally all bedrooms, plus to one side Lady Stanford's maids room and the head housemaids room.

One of the bedrooms has been transformed into a library, the larger downstairs one having been turned over to the Macquaid collection in 1939. The book collection housed here is entirely Sussex history related, and written by Sussex authors at that. What you see today represents a small part of the Thomas-Stanford's whole collection.

The three fully furnished bedrooms here display varying levels of opulence from Lady Stanford's plush room, with adjoining bathroom, through the comfortable guest room, where the main point of interest is a highly colourful gilt mirror, to the relatively Spartan appearance of Sir Charles Thomas-Stanford's bedroom which is all decorated in white wooden panelling.

The two adjoining (through a tiny corridor) servants rooms are fascinating due to their complete contrast in style and furnishings from the 'masters' rooms. Loud patterned wallpaper and clashingly colourful bead spreads, on little iron bead-stead's - taking me right back to my boarding school days! However, unlike servants quarters in other houses, these are at least spacious and light. According to one of the staff that we were talking to, the Stanfords had a reputation for treating their servants well - including paying them above average wages.

One more, very plain, flight of stairs takes you up to the attic rooms. A more recently re-constructed nursery here is used to display a large collection of Victorian toys belonging to Brighton Museum. The rooms adjacent are a bathroom and toilet added in the 1905 refurbishment of the house, intended for use by the guests. Don't ask me why but I was surprised to see a fully authentic 100 year old brass "over-bath" shower installed here - an item I believed to be a much later innovation! That is what places like this are so very good at - educating us in the way our ancestors lived.

To continue the servants story, once back downstairs in the main hall, you can request a staff member to take you below stairs. In order to do this, however, avoid the 13.00 to 14.00 lunchtime period when they are not open. In truth, leather "Cleves room" apart, herein lays the great charm of this house, not only are you enlightened as to how the gentry of the day lived, but here also you get a very real taste of the understairs, servants, life as well.

At the foot of the basement stairs is the most appropriately named "Bells Passage". Each room in the house had a bell push, which was used to summons the appropriate servant from the downstairs servants hall. Each bell had a different tone in order to identify the room in which the master(iss) required attention. These bells pre-date 1901 when a new electric system with a repeater board was installed.

In the 1905 major update of Preston Manor a new kitchen was built to the west of the existing one, it is the original Victorian kitchen that is now on display. This has been fitted out with pots and pans of the period as well as food in preparation on the table.

Food was also prepared and cooked in the adjacent Servants Hall, the place where the servants ate and spent most of their day. This was the place where tradesmen would be seen by the senior servants, either the butler or the chief cook / housekeeper. Naturally there was a below stairs "tradesmen's entrance" here. To one side, at the front of the house is a smaller room, the Butlers Pantry, in a sense the nerve centre of the house logistically, the butler being the most senior member of staff. As such he had some (now) seemingly rather odd duties such as ironing his masters newspapers as well as more practical ones such as polishing the silverware.

From the servants point of view, historically, the most interesting room is the "Boot Hall" or laundry as we would more readily recognise it. This is a large room, originally the 1750 kitchen, which in the Victorian era was used as a food and wine store. In 1906 it would have appeared much as it does today, although a 1910 gas heater, 1920's electric fridge and a "Daisy" washing machine of around 1930 are obviously later additions.

Here ends our tour of this fascinating manor house. Over the years Brighton Corporation (now Brighton & Hove Council) have done a superb job of maintaining this house.

It is, as I commented in my Brighton review, particularly interesting due to the way the whole life of this house, both upstairs and downstairs is so very well portrayed. This was an era when rigid class structures were strictly adhered too, here you can clearly define how the working class, i.e. the servants lived and also of course the landed gentry who employed them.

During our visit to Preston Manor we found ourselves commenting that this felt very much like a family house - indeed I was amazed when one of the staff here told us that nobody had actually lived in this house since November 1932, the year my parents were born.

Whilst behind Preston Manor is to be found the large expanse of Preston Park, to the rear of the house are two wonderful gardens, one an immaculately lawned area bordered by a superb rose border, the other a recently restored Edwardian walled garden, the only one of many in Brighton and Hove to have survived the ravages of time. In the south west corner of the walled garden is a pet cemetery, where during the last years of the 19th and early years of the 20th centuries, 16 family dogs and 1 cat were buried.

Above all this does feel very much like a family home, as if the family have merely gone away and are expected to return any day now.

Truly a gem on our very own doorstep!

PRESTON MANOR HOUSE is OPEN:

April to September (Inclusive) - Closed October to March.

Tuesday to Saturday 10.00 to 17.00

Sunday 14.00 to 17.00

Monday closed all day.

 

...less