Lewes Road
Lewes Road is a major road in the English seaside city of Brighton and Hove. It was part of the A27 cross-country trunk route until the Brighton Bypass took this designation in the 1990s; since then it has been designated the A270. The road runs northeastwards from central Brighton through a steep-sided valley, joining the A27 at the city boundary and continuing to Lewes, the county town of East Sussex.
The road originated in the 18th century as an alternative to the ancient drove road across the South Downs which was much used by fishwives bringing fish caught in Brighton to the market in Lewes. Lewes Road was turnpiked in 1770, and urban development spread rapidly along the road from the early 19th century.
Most of the road is built up on both sides, and many important buildings flank the road: one of Brighton's largest churches, a former barracks, many university buildings, a major bus depot, The Keep archive centre and a large supermarket. Proximity to Brighton and Sussex Universities makes the area a centre for student life and accommodation, and a major redevelopment scheme started in 2018 to provide more buildings and facilities for the University of Brighton.
The road is a key bus corridor, but the Kemp Town branch railway's Lewes Road station was short-lived and its infrastructure no longer survives. Lewes Road has been altered and modernised several times since World War II and is now a dual carriageway along most of its length. Bus lanes, cycle paths and the Vogue Gyratory—"a fiendish maze of one-way systems, roundabouts and crossings", named after a pornographic cinema—add to the road's complexity.
Description and designation
Lewes Road is one of the main entry routes into Brighton, and therefore gives "many visitors... their first impression of the city." Sitting at the bottom of a dry valley with hills on each side, particularly alongside the northern part of the route, the road is sheltered and hidden from distant views. It is an important commercial and industrial area for its surroundings and the wider Brighton area, and is known as the city's "academic corridor" because of the presence of the city's two universities, Brighton and Sussex. The road's character changes substantially along its length, and the city council considers it to have three separate character areas: the central fringe, largely Victorian in character with a mixture of housing and retail and an "uncoordinated urban realm"; the inner suburban area, dominated by the dual carriageway and "hostile to pedestrians", with council flats, privately rented terraced houses, industrial buildings and the large university buildings; and outer suburban, consisting mostly of rented housing, more university buildings and some open space, giving "a very green approach to the city".Lewes Road is the longest continuously named road in Brighton: it runs for northwards to the city boundary from Waterloo Place, where it diverges from the A23. This point, close to the rear of St Peter's Church, is at the southeast corner of The Level. The area of marshy open land now known as The Level was the meeting point of three winterbournes, including one which occasionally surfaced along the dry valley where Lewes Road runs. It has been used for fairs, sport and recreation since the 18th century. The road forms the eastern boundary of The Level, then meets Union Road and Elm Grove at a major junction. Elm Grove is the main route to Brighton Racecourse; it originated as part of a Roman trackway which formed part of the ancient trackway across the South Downs to Lewes, and was developed with housing from the mid-19th century. The next major junction is the Vogue Gyratory, where Upper Hollingdean Road, Upper Lewes Road and Bear Road meet the Lewes Road. This was the northern boundary of Brighton until the borough was expanded in 1928; to the north and east was the parish of Preston, and the residential area east of Lewes Road and north of Bear Road was historically known as East Preston. In this area there is also some industrial development on the east side of the road, and the University of Brighton has several buildings. North of this, the Moulsecoomb council estate was built in several phases in the mid-20th century alongside the Lewes Road. Further north, the road passes the east side of a deep valley originally known as "Cold Dean", between Hollingbury and Stanmer. Scattered farm cottages near Lewes Road were the only buildings in the valley until Brighton Corporation developed it for council housing from 1950 as the Coldean estate.
The designation of Lewes Road within the British road numbering system has a complex history. For many years the A26 road ran from Maidstone, the county town of Kent, to Brighton, and the entire length of Lewes Road within Brighton bore this number. The A27 trunk road joined it at the Upper Lewes Road junction. When the A26's southern terminus was moved to Newhaven, the whole of Lewes Road took the A27 designation: the section between Upper Lewes Road and The Level became a spur of the A27. The Brighton Bypass was completed in 1995, and Lewes Road took the number A270 as far as the bypass.
History
A route has existed for centuries between Brighton and Lewes, the county town of East Sussex, which is to the northeast. The historic route to Lewes ran in a more easterly direction on a drove road across the South Downs; it still exists as footpaths and byways. It was travelled regularly by the wives of Brighton fishermen, who carried the fish to market at Lewes: fishermen were known locally as "jugs" or "juggs", and the eastern section of the old route is called Juggs Road. It lay further south, followed a different valley and entered Lewes at Southover. The present road, which takes a north–northeasterly course along a valley from the centre of Brighton as far as Falmer, existed by the 18th century and became a turnpike in 1770; the toll gate at the Lewes end survives, but that at Brighton—near the Bear Inn—is no longer standing. An intermittent stream flowed along this valley, and the Wellesbourne met it at the area now known as The Level. Before it was landscaped in the 19th century this was a swampy, flood-prone marsh.Development of Lewes Road started at the south end, closest to the centre of Brighton, and was confined to the east side at first because the open ground of The Level was to the west. Until the creation of "Greater Brighton" in 1928, when the borough of Brighton absorbed territory from several surrounding parishes, the borough boundary was at Bear Road. North of this was the parish of Preston, which was wholly absorbed by Brighton in 1928. This section remained undeveloped until the 1890s, when the area east of Lewes Road was developed with housing and industry. Further north, the road was flanked on both sides by undeveloped downland. The present Moulsecoomb area was an outlying part of Patcham parish, with scattered farm cottages and a 16th-century manor house, and the land south of Moulsecoomb and east of Lewes Road now covered by the Bevendean estate was in Falmer parish. In 1940 it was "a small settlement with an 18th-century farmhouse".
Preston Barracks was built on open land on the west side of Lewes Road in 1793–1795, when war was threatening in Europe. Facilities included accommodation, a hospital and a riding school, and "a small community grew up" on the east side of the road in connection with the barracks. Much of the barracks site, which was latterly owned by the Ministry of Defence, was redundant by the 1980s. The southern part of the site was bought by a developer and became the Pavilions retail park, whose first superstores opened in 1989. Halfords, B&Q, Comet and Harveys Furniture were among the early tenants. Brighton and Hove City Council bought the rest in 2002 and unveiled a £150 million redevelopment scheme in 2016 in conjunction with the University of Brighton. This developed into the "Big Build" scheme. An earlier proposal for a mixed residential and commercial development, announced in 2003, foundered during the 2008 financial crisis; an alternative scheme was put forward by the University of Brighton in September 2009. The "Big Build" project started in 2018. The scheme provided five halls of residence for 800 university students, an academic building, gymnasium, student union building, car park and a pedestrian bridge above Lewes Road connecting the various buildings. Work on this, the final part of the scheme, started in January 2022, and the bridge opened in September 2022. As part of the £300 million scheme, the university announced in late 2021 that it would close its three sites at Eastbourne and consolidate their facilities at Lewes Road.
Brighton's first piped water was supplied from a small pumping station on the west side of Lewes Road in 1834. It was expanded in 1853 but was superseded by the new Goldstone Bottom pumping station in Hove in 1866. Attempts to restart pumping work at Lewes Road in 1896 were unsuccessful because the supply had become polluted, and the works was demolished in 1903. Soon after this, in 1910, industrial development began nearby with the opening of Allen West & Co. Ltd's first factory near the junction with Natal Road. This electrical engineering company expanded to become one of Brighton's largest employers, and it opened several factories along Lewes Road in the interwar period. Two munitions factories were also established alongside the road by 1915.
Brighton's first council houses were built in the Elm Grove area in 1897, but only in the 1920s with the commencement of the Moulsecoomb estate did significant council house building start. The development of Moulsecoomb was part of a council policy of "providing good family housing in the more healthy environments away from the town centre". Wartime restrictions and bomb damage in central Brighton meant that by the 1950s much more new housing was needed, and the council's policy of developing outlying estates resumed. Large developments of houses and flats took place in Moulsecoomb—expanding it to cover land on both sides of Lewes Road—Bevendean, at the south end of Moulsecoomb, and Coldean, northwest of Lewes Road.
Between 1869 and 1976 Lewes Road was crossed by a railway viaduct carrying the Kemp Town branch line above the valley floor. It was long, high and had 14 arches, and contributed to the substantial cost of the line: £100,000 at 1864 prices, the year the line was authorised. The opening ceremony for the line, on 6 August 1869, started with the ceremonial laying of the final brick of the viaduct. The west end of the viaduct immediately adjoined the platform at Lewes Road station. Passenger trains and goods trains ceased in 1932 and 1971 respectively, and Brighton Borough Council bought all the infrastructure including the viaduct, which was mostly demolished in April 1976. The remaining arches at the western end were demolished in 1983 as part of the scheme to build the Vogue Gyratory and the Sainsbury's supermarket, which has a series of arches on its façade to commemorate the viaduct.
In relation to politics, "Lewes Road" was the name of a ward within the Borough of Brighton between 1894 and 1983. In 1926, during the general strike of that year, tensions linked to the proposed operation of local tram services with volunteer labour came to a head in the Battle of Lewes Road on 11 May, when "vicious struggles" broke out between 4,000 strikers and police officers.