Collections

1870s Town Plans of Brighton

Two large boxes of tightly-rolled town plans were gifted to us by an archivist at Brighton City Council. The task now is to gently unroll them to explore and interpret.

Bevan and Dewar family letters

Provided to us by Patrick Baty, a descendant of the Bevan family, these letters give a fantastic insight into family life in the Regency period, covering topics from the everyday domestic, to war and the death of a child. Here we have reproduced the letters together with transcriptions undertaken by volunteers.

Jackson architectural ornament

George Jackson and Sons were an ornamental firm who assembled a vast collection of sample boards of 'composition' and reverse cut and positive blocks. We are currently cataloguing and building online access to the collection.

Denman architectural drawings

The Denman family were long associated, locally, with the building and architectural professions. The bulk of the Denman archive has found its way to the RIBA's British Drawings Collection. Here at the Town House though, we retain a small archive that represents the work of the family, particularly in relation to Sussex-based projects.

The House Library

The library contains mostly books on architecture, construction, interior design, and social, political, and economic history, principally of the Georgian and Victorian eras, together with some earler works from the 18th and 19th centuries and a number of our own self-published pamphlets.