The Stanford Estate in Brighton and Hove 

Visitors to Preston Manor often ask how the Stanfords managed to maintain and finance not only the Manor itself but also the Pythouse estate in Wiltshire, 3 Ennismore Gardens in South Kensington, a yacht and large houses in Madeira and Norway known, respectively, as Quinta Vigia (later replaced by Quinta Stanford) and Stanfordhus. Effective land management supplemented by investment in stocks and shares provided the income necessary to support the family and their servants.

Acording to John Bateman’s The Great Landowners of Great Britain and Ireland (1876) the family land-holdings consisted of 6,997 acres with a gross annual value of £25,306. Approximately 1,000 acres was in Brighton and Hove, 800 acres elsewhere in Sussex (mostly Hassocks and Keymer), 5,026 acres in Wiltshire, 170 acres in Surrey and one acre in Middlesex. This land had been acquired and consolidated from the early eighteenth-century onwards.

The transition from tenant farmers to landowners After Richard Stanford’s death in 1769 ‘in an apopleptic fit near Brighthelmstone’, his trustees invested the income from the sale of his livestock and grain in stocks, mortgages and loans. When his son William (1764-1841) reached the age of 21 he was already a rich man and his marriage to Elizabeth Avery in 1789 brought him land at Clayton, Keymer and Hurstpierpoint. In 1794 William’s landlord, Charles Callis Western, sold Preston Manor and the surrounding estates of nearly 1,000 acres for £17,600. William purchased the Preston and Hove estate together with the lordship of the Manor of Preston and Raddingdeane and thus effected a significant transition from tenant farmer to landowner. This purchase was the foundation of the Stanford’s future prosperity.

Portrait of William Stanford 1764 -1841, 1808, PM090061

The Stanfords as landed gentry

As Lord of the Manor of Preston, William was anxious to consolidate his position within the landed gentry. He continued to farm his land and he was able to take advantage of the development of Brighton by selling his farm produce to the town. In 1839 the family fortune was substantially increased when the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway paid William £30,000 for the sale of land which would enable to railway to cross his property.

In 1804 the Prince Regent rented a plot of Stanford land to build a dairy farm. William charged the Prince £170 per annum for a fourteen year lease on twenty acres of land known as the Prince’s Dairy estate (the area was close to Preston Circus). In 1818 he increased the rent to £200 per annum.

The rapid expansion of Brighton in the early nineteenth century prompted William to consider laying out his seafront land as a building estate. In 1825 Charles Barry, the architect of the Houses of Parliament, drew up a scheme for the site now occupied by First Avenue, Hove, and its surrounding streets. The principal elevation consisted of a massive Italianate terrace with a centre block and flanking wings. The scheme was never realised, however, and no significant building took place until the 1870s.

Back to top