Moulsecoomb - Bevendean History Project
The Bates Estate
The Bates Estate or West Moulsecoomb
This estate is built on land which was originally part of the Moulsecoomb Estate owned by Richard Monkhouse Tillstone in 1833.
In July 1918 Brighton Corporation agreed to purchase the Moulsecoomb estate then owned by Benjamin Rogers-Tillstone, an area of 424½ acres.
The land not immediately required for housing continued to be used as farm land or for nurseries. The land on the West side of the Lewes Road between Moulsecoomb Place and the railway bridge over the Lewes Road was used to grow cabbages, other green vegetables, root vegetables, fruit trees, currant bushes, flowers and bulbs. For a full list of the produce being grown use the link below to the inventory made in November 1949 when the nursery was being taken over for housing.
Inventory
and valuation of the Moulsecombe Market Gardens, made the 9th November 1949.In July 1918 Brighton Corporation agreed to purchase the Moulsecoomb estate then owned by Benjamin Rogers-Tillstone, an area of 424½ acres.
The land not immediately required for housing continued to be used as farm land or for nurseries. The land on the West side of the Lewes Road between Moulsecoomb Place and the railway bridge over the Lewes Road was used to grow cabbages, other green vegetables, root vegetables, fruit trees, currant bushes, flowers and bulbs. For a full list of the produce being grown use the link below to the inventory made in November 1949 when the nursery was being taken over for housing.
The Bates Estate is built on
an area of land, which was used by the Bates Family as a Nursery until
required by Brighton Council for house building shown on the map below
and coloured green on a map from 1938.
School Boys take Apples from the Bates Nursery
In September 1950 the Parks
and Gardens Department wrote to the Headmaster of Moulsecoomb Secondary
School as follows. “This Department is looking after the
Borough Surveyor’s interests in the nursery which was once Mr.
Bates, opposite your School. It is now the height of the apple
season and forms an apparently irresistible attraction to many of the
boys from your School. I know it is very difficult to keep small
boys and apples apart, but when 40 to 50 start to make organised raids
it assumes proportions we cannot ignore. I wonder if we might ask
your co-operation by telling your boys that any repetition of these
activities is likely to lead them into serious trouble”
On the 15 September 1951 the Brighton and Hove Herald published the following article.
On the 15 September 1951 the Brighton and Hove Herald published the following article.
125 More Homes for Brighton
Two new projects costing £169,000
Two new projects costing £169,000
Two schemes for a total of 125 new homes costing £169,000 will be put to Brighton Town Council at their next meeting.
One plan is for 65 houses costing £85,000 on the North Brighton Estate, and the other is for sixty flats on the Bates Nursery site costing £84,000.
These have been made possible by Brighton’s extra allocation of 111 new homes. Of these, 22 will be built privately. The total of 125 is completed by the balance of 36 left from the original allocation.
Brighton’s total programme for this year is now therefore 551 Corporation dwellings and 138 privately built houses.
One plan is for 65 houses costing £85,000 on the North Brighton Estate, and the other is for sixty flats on the Bates Nursery site costing £84,000.
These have been made possible by Brighton’s extra allocation of 111 new homes. Of these, 22 will be built privately. The total of 125 is completed by the balance of 36 left from the original allocation.
Brighton’s total programme for this year is now therefore 551 Corporation dwellings and 138 privately built houses.
The flats along Selsfield
Drive and Thorndean Road were built between 1951 and 1955 with the
flats in Ryelands Drive being built sometime later. The planning
register gives a date of April 1971.
Later still blocks of flats was built in Highbrook Close and Wild Park Close.
The roads are all shown on a Brighton street map from the late 1970s.
Later still blocks of flats was built in Highbrook Close and Wild Park Close.
The roads are all shown on a Brighton street map from the late 1970s.
Plan showing the layout of the flats on the Bates Estate dated December 1951. © ESRO
More Building Plans for the Bates Estate.
Photograph showing Bates Estate Flats under construction on 23 June 1953.
Photograph showing the arrangement of the flats on the Bates Estate in 2018.
Flats on the Bates Estate photographed in February 2018.
More photographs from the time that the estate was being constructed and of the estate up to 2018.
Building the new block of flats on the Bates Estate in 2019 and 2020.
More photographs of the Bates Estate taken in 2020 and 2021.
