Preston: Landscape & History

by Geoffrey Mead

Preston village is one of the many areas of Brighton that receives a huge amount of through traffic, but one that deserves more than a glance from a car interior waiting for the traffic lights to change. The parish of Preston has one of the bigger areas than is usually found on the dipslope of the South Downs [1286 acres] where the usual parish pattern is of a small close-knit community grouped around the core of the village as we have at West Blatchington, Stanmer or Ovingdean; these are termed ‘close villages’ with land held by few people. It was described in 1870 as “…beautifully situated in a dale…”. Preston, lying across the northern side of the old parish of Brighton is large and stretches from an easterly point at the top of Bear Road, westward across the Lewes Road valley, the reason that the former Preston Barracks is so named though a considerable distance from Preston village. On up to the Ditchling Road ridge before it descends down to the valley of the Wellesbourne, the site of the village, church and manor, before climbing ever westward from Preston Road up to the Dyke Road ridge across the north side of Hove parish and eventually meeting West Blatchington on Nevill Road by the Greyhound Stadium. East to west it is of a considerable size, but north-south much more limited, its dimensions here are defined within the area north of Bear Road and Viaduct Road, Preston Circus and Old Shoreham Road, stretching up to its entire northern border with Patcham, just north of Preston village. Preston was a separate parish until most was merged into Brighton in 1873, with a small area moving into Hove in 1927.

The village is of ancient origin, its place-name ending ‘ton’ being originally ‘tun’ and is thought to indicate being named by the Anglo Saxons as already having a settlement there when they arrived. The first part of the Preston name reflects it being held by the Bishops of Selsey, later of Chichester. The presence of a Romano-British villa at the south end of Preston Park also indicates an area of settlement before recorded history. It is noteworthy that the power bases for the village, the manor house and church are separated from the rest of the village by the stream.

Preston is at variance to its Downland neighbours in regard to its size, but also its geological makeup gives it a separate identity. The chalk ridges west and east of the village are formed in three different beds of chalk, with the Dyke Road ridge on the west having a capping of later, younger rocks, the sandy and clay deposits of the Lambeth Beds. Over millennia the weathering of the chalk caused it to disintegrate and, with the flint deposits within it, to slump downslope into the Wellesbourne valley. The bed of the stream, which arises in the Downs just north of Patcham, is composed of this chalk and flint material, termed Coombe Head Deposits, a rich fertile soil in this well-watered valley.

Preston has another card in its agricultural hand; the sandy clays of the Lambeth Beds that lie along Dyke Road have similarly slipped down the valley sides and have added different elements of minerals and soil particles to the Preston valley, enriching the already fertile, sheltered valley. This will have been the origin of the well-wooded landscape we have today around Preston; although much of the tree growth is due to post 18th century planting schemes, it will always have been more wooded than its neighbours. Until the late 18th century, the Wellesbourne flowed overground from Patcham, through Preston and along the valley to the Steine where it ran along the west side, near Kemp’s farmhouse that became the Royal Pavilion. As The Steine became more of a leisure landscape, a promenade area rather than its former use as a workplace, the stream was put into a barrel drain here, before it ran out to sea at Pool Valley. It still flows, as many will testify who live in Patcham village or along Old London Road, as it has broken the surface on several occasions in the 21st century. The Valley Gardens in central Brighton are watered in the summer from the underground stream.

All Downland valleys will have been cut by running water in the several inter-glacial periods we have had over the past two million years; but there is no evidence of any glacial activity in the Brighton area, as the nearest a glacier came to Preston would have been in an area of north London in the Barnet-Finchley-Edgeware district; however the Downland would have been covered in great depths of snow for thousands of years. Each short Arctic summer would cause the south facing slopes to collapse, with the snow meltwater unable to soak into the frozen chalk below, flowing over the surface, carrying razor-sharp flints within the slushy ice-cold chalk and carving out the present valley system.

This took place over many inter-glacial periods, removing vast amounts of chalk, all carried south to what would very much later become the English Channel. Stand on Hollingbury hillfort and look east over Lewes Road or west over London Road and note how deep and wide these valleys are. The rainfall in the historic period is far less than it would have been only 10,000 years ago and so most Downland valleys are these days referred to as ‘dry valleys’ although in times of intense rainfall may revert to water-course valleys. This has caused flooding and landslips locally in Rottingdean, Woodingdean, Bevendean and Mile Oak.

Downland valleys, dry or water bearing are invariably ‘asymmetric’ with one slope being a shallow angle and the opposite slope steeper. In Preston, the difference in walking west up South Road and Millers Road is at variance with walking east across Preston Park. This landscape of fertile soils and well-watered fields in a sheltered valley ensured the land was held by wealthy families. Preston Manor was formerly Preston Place and, in the 18th, century was held, but probably not lived in, by a wealthy north Essex family, the Callis-Westerns; they also held large areas of west Brighton and we know them today as the main thoroughfare of Western Road is named for running through their landholdings. In 1794 the Stanford family, renting the then Preston Place and farming its rich landscape, managed to buy out the Westerns for £17,600 and become the landowners until it was passed to Brighton Corporation in 1932.

With its long history, its distinctive landscape, its attractive Park, Rockery Gardens, Manor House museum, the old church of St. Peter, the flint houses and cottages, the area deserves more than a rapid glance from the car-thronged A23!