Adam Trimingham, in his interesting piece about Swiss Gardens, in Shoreham (The Argus, May 28), wrote: "There was also, at one time, a steam tram which ran from Shoreham to Hove".

The Brighton and Shoreham Tramway Company was the first tramway in the wider Brighton area and was opened on July 3, 1884, with ambitions to provide a service, as its title suggests, between Brighton and Shoreham.

Although it began running with steam traction, a battery-powered locomotive was tested but found wanting and the service reverted to horse traction between 1893 and 1913, when it closed.

The tramway's intention to run through to Brighton was frustrated by the intransigent Hove Urban District Council and its successor, Hove Borough Council, which would not allow rails in the streets and which regarded trams as too plebeian for its superior residents. This attitude was also the reason why Brighton's electric trams were refused permission to run over Hove territory.

When the Shoreham tramway opened, the parish of Aldrington was not part of Hove Urban District Council but was added to the newly-created Borough of Hove in 1893. This was why the trams were able to traverse New Church Road to the Hove boundary, which ran just to the east of Westbourne Villas and past the back gardens in Westbourne Street.

Hove council was displeased to find about two miles of its streets covered in rails. Therefore, when the last tram left Westbourne Gardens for Portslade on October 23, 1912, council workmen tore up the hated tramway within minutes.

According to tramway expert Nick Kelly, they made such a mess reconstructing the road it was the subject of local complaints for months to come.

-Peter Bailey, Brighton