Adelaide Crescent is a mid-19th-century residential development in Hove, part of the English city and seaside resort of Brighton and Hove. Conceived as an ambitious attempt to rival the large, high-class Kemp Town estate east of Brighton, the crescent was not built to its original plan because time and money were insufficient. Nevertheless, together with its northerly neighbour Palmeira Square (with which it is continuous), it forms one of Hove's most important architectural set-pieces.
Building work started in 1830 to the design of Decimus Burton. The adjacent land was originally occupied by "the world's largest conservatory", the Anthaeum; its collapse stopped construction of the crescent, which did not resume until the 1850s. The original design was modified and the crescent was eventually finished in the mid-1860s. Together with the Kemp Town and Brunswick Town estates, the crescent is one of the foremost pre-Victorian residential developments in the Brighton area: it has been claimed that "outside Bath, [they] have no superior in England". The buildings in the main part of Adelaide Crescent are Grade II* listed. Some of the associated buildings at the sea-facing south end are listed at the lower Grade II.
Location Adelaide Crescent is immediately behind Hove seafront, bounded by Kingsway (the coast road) to the south and Palmeira Square to the north. The earlier Brunswick Town estate of Brunswick Square, Brunswick Terrace and its associated buildings are to the east. It developed at the west edge of the Wick Estate, whose western boundary is the present St John's Road. This estate, based on a farm of the same name, covered open land east of Hove village as far as the parish boundary with Brighton. Although it was within Hove parish, the crescent and Brunswick Town were originally considered "scarcely part of Hove at all", because they were distant from the village but adjoined the western edge of Brighton. Furthermore, their architectural character aligned them more closely with Brighton, as did their historical associations.
The crescent forms part of the Brunswick and Adelaide ward of the city Brighton and Hove. This has the highest population density of any ward in Britain. it is one of 21 wards in the city.
History Brighton was a small town based on fishing and agriculture until the early 18th century, after which it experienced several phases of rapid growth and developed into a large, fashionable seaside resort. Its western neighbour, Hove, was still a small village well into the 19th century, though, its development being constrained because the land around it was divided into several estates owned by wealthy local families. One of these was the Wick Estate. Owned after the Norman conquest by the de Pierpoints, it was bought in 1573 by the Stapley family, of which Anthony Stapley became famous as one of the regicides of King Charles I. In 1701 it was acquired by the Scutt family from Brighton, and in the 1820s it passed to Thomas Read Kemp. He intended to replicate his Kemp Town development—an architectural set-piece of high-class houses set in crescents, squares and terraces around central gardens, built in the 1820s east of Brighton—but could not afford to do so, although the plans were announced in the Sussex Advertiser newspaper in 1825 and in other media. (14 March 1825 edition of the Sussex Advertiser claimed that "Kemp Town east and Kemp Town west would be a splendid addition to Brighton".) In 1830 he sold the land to Sir Isaac Goldsmid, 1st Baronet for £60,000 (£ as of ).
Most of the Wick Estate's of land lay north of the present Western Road. This main east–west road links Brighton and Hove and was developed from the early 19th century; originally it was a merely a narrow path between fields. Just under lay between it and the sea; was developed in the 1820s as the Brunswick Town estate, leaving the southwest corner of the estate undeveloped apart from a brickworks and a footpath leading to St Andrew's parish church. In 1830, Goldsmid commissioned architect Decimus Burton to design a crescent of high-class houses which would be built on the site. Burton exhibited his designs at the Royal Academy the following year. Building work started in December 1830, and Goldsmid sought William IV's permission to name the development after the queen consort Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen. Accordingly, it was officially named Queen Adelaide Crescent. (The name Royal Adelaide Crescent was occasionally used as well, but it was soon shortened to its present form. The original name was still in use for legal purposes until 1873 or later, though.)
The original design, as exhibited at the Royal Academy, consisted of a half-moon-shaped sea-facing crescent similar to, but much larger than, the earlier Royal Crescent in Brighton. Between 1830 and 1834, ten houses were completed in accordance with this layout: numbers 1–3 (originally called Queen Adelaide Terrace) faced the sea and formed a terminating feature of the crescent, and numbers 4–10 curved inland to the northwest. At the time, Burton was also working with his father James on the new resort of St Leonards-on-Sea further along the coast; accordingly he did little more than "provide the general design of the façades", and the construction work was carried out by local architecture and building firm G. Cheesman and Sons.
At the same time, the Anthaeum was being built immediately to the north. This grandiose project was conceived by botanist, landscape gardener and writer Henry Phillips in conjunction with architect Amon Henry Wilds. Under the world's largest dome would be a tropical garden filled with exotic shrubs, flowers, birds and fish. Construction work took place in 1832–33, but the builders removed a supporting pillar crucial to the design and took away temporary scaffolding holding up the glazed dome. On its opening day in 1833, the structure spectacularly collapsed, shocking Phillips so much he went blind. The wreckage lay where it fell for the next 20 years. After the disaster there was a long delay in building work on Adelaide Crescent, and Burton's semicircular design was abandoned; Goldsmid, who gave land and money towards the Anthaeum scheme, may have lost enthusiasm for the project, although there is no firm evidence for the cause of the delay.
Brighton and Hove were suffering a downturn by the 1830s, though: the popular Prince Regent, a regular visitor to Brighton, had died and his brother King William IV only occasionally visited; the fashionable status of the towns had temporarily declined; and the surge in popularity associated with the coming of the railways was still several years away. Even the original ten houses were not complete and occupied, and "the skeletons of [the] unfinished houses presented a dreary sight" beyond the wreckage of the Anthaeum. By this time, the partly built crescent stood at the extreme west end of a nearly unbroken line of buildings along the seafront all the way to Kemp Town, about to the east. To the west, there was little development until the Cliftonville estate was laid out in the 1870s and 1880s.
Adelaide Crescent was brought under the jurisdiction of the Brunswick Square Commissioners in 1851 when their boundaries were extended by an Act of Parliament. A later Act, the 1858 Hove Improvement Act, officially incorporated the area as part of Hove Borough. In 1873 the Commissioners were abolished in favour of a Hove-wide body, and 25 years later Hove was incorporated as a borough. Between 1852 and 1854, St John the Baptist's Church was built to serve Adelaide Crescent, Brunswick Town and the surrounding area, which Goldsmid intended to develop intensively with housing. The church quickly became fashionable and popular with wealthy people, a status it retained for many years. Princess Augusta of Hesse-Kassel (the Duchess of Cambridge) and her daughter Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge worshipped there when staying in Adelaide Crescent in the 1860s. Around the time the church was built, construction of the rest of the crescent resumed. Burton's designed was abandoned for an unknown reason, apparently without consultation with the architect. Another nine houses were built on the east side in a much simpler style, 19 houses were erected facing them to the west, and the shape of the crescent was amended so it opened out at the top and connected both sides with the south ends of Palmeira Square. Work on this had started in the mid-1850s following the clearance of the Anthaeum debris.
The rest of Adelaide Crescent was built between 1850 and 1860, and by 1866 every house had occupants. Details taken during the United Kingdom Census 1861 show that the crescent was a prestigious address popular with wealthy people, most of whom had several servants. On census night, 29 houses were occupied; landowners, merchants, army officers and captains (serving and retired), members of the clergy, barristers and members of the nobility were all represented, and between them they had 182 servants (excluding governesses). Lt-Col. William Cavendish and his wife Lady Emilia Augusta had 14 servants, the most of any household. Only one of the 29 occupied houses was recorded as having none. Large houses fell out of favour from the early 20th century, and in Adelaide Crescent (as in other large 19th-century residential developments in Brighton and Hove) many houses were converted into flats. Numbers 15–17 were the first to be altered, shortly after World War I. By 1998 only two houses remained in single ownership, and there were about 400 dwellings across the 72 houses of Adelaide Crescent and Palmeira Square together.
Lighting in the crescent was improved in 1894 when new lamp-posts were installed at a uniform distance of apart; the original lamps had been sited haphazardly. More were installed in 1898 and 1911. The ramps leading from Kingsway to the south end of the crescent—an integral part of Burton's design—were repaved in 1897 and 1910 using Yorkstone. Another feature of the crescent is the garden between the two sides. Originally private and enclosed by iron railings, these were taken over by Hove Borough Council under the provisions of the 1947 Hove Corporation Act. The comparable Kemp Town gardens remain in private ownership and are in better condition.
In the postwar period, conservation of the crescent has been an important topic. After the starkly Modernist Embassy Court was built next to Brunswick Terrace in 1934–35, Alderman Sir Herbert Carden put forward a proposal to demolish all of the 19th-century buildings along the seafront and replace them with modern blocks of flats. The idea was put forward again in 1945 after his death, which led directly to the founding of the influential conservation group the Brighton and Hove Regency Society. Adelaide Crescent was granted listed status, protecting it from such redevelopment, but the approach ramps were omitted. In 1965, Hove Borough Council wanted to widen Kingsway to form a six-lane road. Cutting into the lawns between the road and the beach was considered but rejected, so it was stated the ramps would have to be demolished. Little public consultation was undertaken, despite which there was "a storm of protest". The Council approved the plan in July 1965 and confirmed this after another meeting in November, but by this time the public was well aware of the scheme and there was much opposition—including from some members of parliament and from Sir John Betjeman. The Council took the unusual step of holding a "town poll" to gauge opinion. In the first such poll since the 1940s, 7,757 people went to Ralli Hall on 13 January 1966 and voted; 64% were not in favour of demolition. The proposal was withdrawn, Kingsway was not widened and the ramps gained listed status in 1969.