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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

…..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.

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.

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.

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.

Pictures of Preston Manor, Brighton

Preston Manor House from the front

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.