by Richard Coates
Notes made in 1983, intended for possible offer as historical notes in the local press, not pursued
Oriental Place
The name doesn’t seem too odd in Brighton with its Pavilion and the places that echo it like the former Bombay Arms pub in Kemp Town (now the Hanbury Arms) and the Western Pavilion (no. 9 Western Terrace). But it doesn’t commemorate these. There was a never truly complete Oriental Garden just off Western Road, with an oriental-style cultural centre called the Athenaeum in it from 1825 to 1827 (not to be confused with the (in)famous conservatory called the Anthaeum, which collapsed in 1833, replaced by Palmeira Square). But this was a financial flop and it was built over, leaving us only the street-name. The King’s Hotel close by was once the Oriental.
The site was bought by Sir David Scott in 1827. He owned Sillwood Park at Sunninghill in Berkshire, after which he named Sillwood Road, Place and House (later the Sillwood Hall Hotel, now [2025] part of the premises of Plummer Roddis).
Old Steine or Old Steyne
For centuries this was just The Steine or Steyne, which is what most Brightonians still call it. The name comes from an Old English word meaning a stony place, maybe because of natural massive stone blocks lying in it which were removed in 1823, to be placed around the foot of the Victoria Fountain in 1846. It was common land where fishermen had rights to dry their nets till they were unceremoniously fenced out of it at the say-so of the noble cronies of the Prince of Wales from the 1770s onwards. It had to become the Old Steyne after the New Steyne was laid out with its grassed centre in 1808..
Montpelier Terrace
Brighton doesn’t often allow the names of other resorts inside, so when it does, they have to be classy. The spa town of Montpellier in the south of France (usually spelt Montpelier in earlier times) was nearly coming to the end of its height of fashion when Montpelier Terrace, Street, Road and Villas were built in the early 1820s, but even Cheltenham gained its own Montpellier and Montpellier Promenade. For a while Brighton had the snob appeal that Montpellier once had, and in its turn it has exported its names freely to other places. There are New Brightons in Hampshire and on Merseyside, and two in Clwyd, for example; Hove’s Cliftonville (itself indebted to Clifton in Bristol) was transplanted to Margate.
As Brighton grew it became more confident, and could permit itself a Cheltenham Place which isn’t too much of a compliment to Cheltenham. And Bath Street is tucked away out of sight between the station and Seven Dials.
Grand Parade
The original idea of a Parade was a fine terrace of buildings before which the well-to-do and elegant could ride, drive and generally be seen. Brighton’s first Parade, by name, is Grand Parade, though visitors might be forgiven for wondering how it got that name. Grander is Marine Parade, developed eastwards through the early decades of the nineteenth century, and also Pavilion Parade – an amalgamation of the earlier North and South Parades. Promenade became the fashionable word later on, allowing parade to sink to becoming a desperate town planner’s word for a row of shops, as in Downs Parade (Woodingdean), Loyal Parade (Westdene), Woodland Parade (Tongdean) and Carden Parade (Hollingbury).
Girouard, Mark (1983) City faces: parades and promenades. The Listener vol. 110, no. 2830 (13 October), pp. 16-18.
Queen’s Park
Queen’s Park was just Brighton Park till the German Spa there was visited by Queen Adelaide, the wife of William IV. Thomas Attree, the local landowner, lord of the manor of Atlingworth, had it renamed in her honour, and no doubt with an eye on visitor numbers. There can be few places with such a lot of queens as Brighton. Queen’s Road was built in 1845 on the site of ghastly slums called Petty France and Durham, and named for Victoria. The Steine has its Victoria Gardens, and the North Laine has Queens Gardens. We have Queen Square at the bottom of Queens Road and Dyke Road. Queens Place can be detected by sharp eyes near The Level. Queensway (after Elizabeth II) descends the East Laine. The top end of Hove is a royal mausoleum, with Queen Alexandra, Queen Mary and Queen Victoria Avenues. Oh – and Brighton is Queen of Watering Places.
Seven Dials
Seven roads meet at Seven Dials, of course, and so do Brighton and Hove. But the name was lifted from London WC2, in the region of St Giles’ Square. By the eighteenth century the London Dials were a byword for criminality. John Gay set his Beggar’s Opera there. They progressed to become just about the worst of London’s nineteenth-century slums, and a far cry from the genteel avenues of Vernon Terrace and Dyke Road.
Bernard Road
Off the northern side of Elm Grove runs a batch of ten late Victorian streets bearing the names of places on the Isle of Wight: Bonchurch, Whippingham, Brading, Totland, Sandown, Ryde, Carisbrooke and St Helens Roads; and Shanklin Road and Bembridge Street on the other side of Hartington Road.
In the middle of this zone are Bernard Road and Bernard Place, which seem strange companions to the others; did one of the builder, the council or the signmaker make a mistake for Gurnard, the name of the western offshoot of Cowes? (Oddly enough, there is a Bernard Road in Cowes, too, among just 16 others in England, two of them also in Sussex.) Like other streets around here, Bernard Road is tree-lined, and local lore has it that it was named after the man who planted the trees; I have no idea whether this is true.
The Name To Be 