Palmeira Square

Palmeira Square (/pælˈmɪərə/) is a mid-19th-century residential development in Hove, part of the English city and seaside resort of Brighton and Hove. At the southern end it adjoins Adelaide Crescent, another architectural set-piece which leads down to the seafront; large terraced houses occupy its west and east sides, separated by a public garden; and at the north end is one of Hove's main road junctions. This is also called Palmeira Square, and its north side is lined with late 19th-century terraced mansions. Commercial buildings and a church also stand on the main road, which is served by Brighton & Hove bus routes1, 1X, N1, 2, 5, 5A, 5B, N5, 6, 25, 46, 49, 60 71,71A and 96.

The land was originally occupied by "the world's largest conservatory", the Anthaeum—a visitor attraction planned by botanist, author and building promoter Henry Phillips. The giant dome's collapse and total destruction on the day it was due to open in 1833 made Phillips go blind from shock, and the debris occupied the site for many years. Work began in the early 1850s and was largely complete in the mid-1860s, although commercial and residential buildings such as Palmeira House and Gwydyr Mansions continued to be added at the northern end throughout the late 19th century. English Heritage has listed the residential buildings on the western, eastern and northern sides of the square at Grade II for their architectural and historical importance, although one building has the higher Grade II* status because of its opulent custom-designed interior.

The ancient parish of Hove covered 778 acres (315 ha) of good agricultural land on the southern slopes of the South Downs, leading down to the English Channel. There was Celtic and Roman occupation of the area, and a Bronze Age barrow was found close to Palmeira Square's northern end when the land was being developed. Inside was a wooden coffin, a stone axe, a bronze dagger and the Hove amber cup, a relic of international significance now held at the Brighton Museum & Art Gallery. Some estimates dated the barrow as early as 1500 BC, but radiocarbon dating indicates the burial took place in about 1239 BC.

One of the main farms was Wick Farm, which covered about 250 acres (100 ha) of land immediately west of the parish boundary with Brighton. The first post-Norman Conquest landowners were the de Pierpoints; in 1573 the estate was bought 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. Western Road and its continuation Church Road, the earliest east–west route through Hove, bisected the estate.

On the land was a chalybeate spring, later called St Ann's Well, which became a popular visitor attraction by the mid-18th century. In the early 19th century, its fashionable reputation increased as neighbouring Brighton began to grow rapidly as a high-class seaside resort. Following the lead of Queen Adelaide, who would ride to St Ann's Well to visit the spa and take the waters, wealthy residents and visitors to Brighton travelled across the parish boundary to walk round the gardens, visit the ornate pump-room and enjoy the apparently health-giving properties of the iron-rich water.

Rev. Thomas Scutt, who owned the Wick Estate land by the 1820s, started to sell plots of land to "capitalis[e] on the insatiable demand for building land along the seafront". Brunswick Town was the first result of this, and when Sir Isaac Goldsmid, 1st Baronet, bought the rest of the land (over 216 acres (87 ha)) in 1830 he continued Hove's residential expansion by commissioning Decimus Burton to design Adelaide Crescent and by agreeing to fund the construction of "the world's largest dome" at its northern end. The ostentatious Anthaeum, proposed by botanist and horticultural writer Henry Phillips and designed by prominent local architect Amon Henry Wilds, was to have been a vast circular conservatory containing exotic plants and trees. It was built between 1832 and 1833 but collapsed spectacularly the day before its scheduled opening date, making Phillips go blind from shock and apparently distressing Goldsmid so much that he abandoned any further plans for development of his land for 20 years—during which time the wrecked glass and iron structure lay where it fell at the north end of the incomplete Adelaide Crescent.

In the early 1850s, Goldsmid (who had been given the title Baron de Goldsmid e de Palmeira by the Queen of Portugal in 1845) decided to restart development at Adelaide Crescent. He abandoned the original plan for a horseshoe-shape plan and in 1851 commissioned an unknown architect to extend it northwards into a bottle shape, north of which (on the site of the Anthaeum) would be a new residential square: Palmeira Square. The remains of the Anthaeum were cleared in the early 1850s (or possibly as late as 1855), and work began.

Houses on the west side of the square, close to the western boundary of the Wick Estate land, were the first to be built. The southernmost houses on each side are attached to the north end of Adelaide Crescent, which was completed in the early 1860s; "the transition from crescent into square is most elegantly handled in a double curve". Between 1855 and 1870, 34 houses were built, all in the same "vigorous and healthy" post-Regency Victorian/Italianate style. It took several years for the houses to be occupied. Numbers 33 and 34 on the west side were the first to be taken, in 1859, and by 1866 none of the 17 houses on that side were empty. The first house on the east side was let in 1864, and it took ten years for the whole square to be occupied. Early residents included a wine merchant, a factory owner, and Lady Emily Fletcher who shared the house with her mother, five children and nine servants.