Thanks to a grant from the National Heritage Lottery, the Craven Vale Community Association has just published a book of memories from those who have lived on the Craven Vale Estate for all 60 years, plus later residents. It includes a history of the whole valley from the Racecourse Grandstand down to Brighton College on Eastern Road or, as it used to be called, “Kemp Town Road.”

At 128 pages, half of them pictures, this handy-sized A5 oblong paperback is a pleasure to read. The lay-out is interesting as each page alternates between text and image and the 4 sections (Reminiscences - 50’s, Reminiscences - today, Valley History and Area Histories. ) The contents page seems to function as an index. As a psycho-geographical text it could have been improved but not by much.

The land around Brighton town centre had been open sheep downland or tenanted farm land for years until “taking the waters” became fashionable for the upper classes and royal patronage increased the town population.

Property-land speculators in East Brighton emerged like Thomas Read Kemp (son of the farmer whose villa on the Steine was rented by the Prince of Wales in 1786) who went bankrupt and had to sell the land of Baker’s Bottom to Bill Hallett (builder from mid-Sussex, later Alderman and Mayor) in 1822. It was enclosed to grow barley for brewing and as a piggery. He then sold what remained (after Brighton College was built) in 1882 to John Chester Craven ( northerner, ex-chief engineer for Brighton Railway Works for 25 years, then Councillor and Alderman) who eponymised it as his “Craven Vale Estate.” He died soon after and it then was bought by the Town Council in 1922 for allotments. The estate was developed by Brighton Borough Council in 1953 in order to housing the increasing population after WW2 and caused by slum clearances. The vertiginous land was always difficult to build on but had been highly valued as “the pride of the town’s allotments produce.” Nevertheless, the allotment holders were reallocated land over the hill at east of Whitehawk Hill Road and the vale make way for low-rise flats and terraced houses.

Building started in “the first year that of the reign of Queen Elizabeth the Second” hence the serendipitous naming “Queensway” as the main road through the estate, as opposed to simply continuing Sutherland Road up the hill to the Race Course which would have been complicated for numbering reasons. The “Reminiscences” are fairly predictable but nicely sectioned: given the host of possible memories this list of recollections is pleasing and has not been steered much. Oral history can be boring but this collection is not. The story of the lifeline No. 2 bus is interesting, given that it took ten years before the re-routing of the No. 2 got the estate bus service it deserved. And this was when the buses were run by the Council itself.

Craven Vale was a dry chalk coombe: it is quite nice to imagine the water seeping through the chalk from Race Hill and emerging on the beach at low tide, just below Royal Crescent. Indeed, there is a small fountain water-feature inside Brighton College that seems to taps into the water table there.

It is good to see Baker’s Bottom figuring prominently: it first appears in old maps in the 1700’s as land was being parcelled up for enclosure and divving-up for the property speculators. The first houses were built in Hendon Street in 1872 and the whole complex (Canning - Hendon - Bute - Rochester plus Livingstone St link road) was completed by the 1900’s. Trade directories named them “Baker’s Bottom” after the original Parish maps. The street names came from prominent Victorian land owners. The fact that the Council had tentative plans to demolish the area in the 1980’s would be news to many.

The Craven Vale Estate used an “echelon” pattern to maximise the land-use for the central blocks. The individual blocks have only been recently named as such.

The booklet ends with a series of “big questions” about the future, tempting fate to speculate about wars, storms and various types of marriage. The bookies are calculating the spread-risk for which buildings will fall down first: Craven Vale, The Causeway, Baker’s Bottom or the twelve lock-up garages behind Southwater Close?