20 Brunswick Street West – ‘Lansdowne Cottage’

Near the bottom of Brunswick Street West, right on the corner on the mews lies a cottage that stands out from the surrounding buildings. It is a two-storey flint cobble house with sash windows much larger than what you would expect for a building of this type.

Its house number is hard to pin down in old documents and records, making it an interesting one to research.  Sometimes the building is referred to as No 9, but at times also as No 10, 19, 22 or 28. In Georgian and Victorian times, the numbering of streets was less fixed and standardised than today - especially where new roads and streets were carved out of open land. Sometimes, it appears in records with no number whatsoever.  This was common, especially in the early days of a new road’s existence.

Today, we know it as 20 Brunswick Street West - or Lansdowne Cottage.

Lansdowne Cottage in the 2020s

Next to Lansdowne Cottage, you find the old livery stables - perhaps that is why the council in their local listing refer to the cottage as a coach house, although we are yet to find evidence of this.  Instead, it is the large windows and the former shopfront door on the ground floor that give us a clue for what it is the cottage mainly has been used for over the years.

The cottage is mentioned as early on as 1825, in Charles Busby’s original plans for the estate.  The plan shows Lansdowne cottage just north of the stables at the rear of the garden where Lansdowne Mansions (later Dudley Hotel, now Dudley Mansions) would be built by the 1850s.

Lansdowne Cottage location from C.A. Busby’s 1826 Plan

The first mention of residents that I can find is in 1851 when John and Anne Layzell were listed as living in the cottage - at this point referred to as 9 Brunswick Street West. They live here with a grandson, a niece and a female servant.  The two young women work as laundry maids for Anne who is a laundress. John Layzell, originally from Suffolk, gave his occupation as Ostler, a man employed to look after the horses of people staying at an inn. Interestingly, John lived opposite the Star of Brunswick pub so maybe he provided a service to visitors to that hostelry.

By 1861, Anne, now a widow, still lives in the cottage - this time referred to as No 19 - together with her son John, his wife Eliza and their three children. Anne still works as a laundress and has one servant helping her. John and Eliza run a tailor’s and for the next 80 years this is exactly what this building- with its large windows letting the light in, and its arched shopfront door - will be used for.

In 1867, a Robert Hayden listed as a tailor and habit maker takes over for a couple of years before the Pennicott family moves in from Thakeham, Sussex.  It is during their time here, in 1871, we see the first mention of ‘Lansdowne Cottage and tailor shop attached’ in the Brighton & Hove Directories.  William and his wife Ellen live here with their four children in the first half of the 1870’s before moving back to Thakeham.  The 1871 Census also shows that Henry Knaggs, 32, with his wife Emma and daughter, is staying as a lodger in Lansdowne Cottage. Henry is originally from Yorkshire but has moved all the way to Hove to find work as a butler.

After the Pennicotts leave, the Wards family move in.  They continue to run the tailor shop in Lansdowne Cottage for over sixty years.  Frederick, originally from Lincolnshire, and his wife Susan, born in Kent, left Greenwich and moved down to Hove with their three children in 1874.  During their time here Susan gives birth to another three children.

A few years into their patronage, tragedy strikes.  In the Sussex Express Local Intelligence section of September 1880 a small notice reads:

The Sussex Express of September 1880

BRIGHTON. THE SAD CASE OF SUICIDE AT HOVE

On Friday evening, Wyne H Baxter. Esq. held an inquest at the Hove Town Hall on the body of Mary Farmer, aged 47 years, who committed suicide on Thursday morning by cutting her throat.  Emma Sheerman, cook and housekeeper to Mr Walch, of 48 Brunswick Square, stated that deceased had been staying for the last five or six weeks at Lansdowne Cottage, Brunswick street, and used to come to Mr Welch’s for her meals.  Deceased came to Brighton for her health and complained of her head.  On the morning in question she cut her throat in a very determined manner, and died on her way to the hospital. The jury returned a verdict that ‘the deceased committed suicide whilst in a state of unsound mind’.

Based on information in old Directories, Frederick and Ellen Ward and their children lived in Lansdowne Cottage at the time of Mary’s suicide which suggests that they were the ones who had taken her in.  Mary was buried without a stone on 27th September 1880 at St Andrew’s Old Church in Hove.

Tailors working at home in the early 1900s.  Image source: https://warwick.ac.uk/services/library/mrc/archives_online/digital/trade...

In the 1800s and 1900s, the tailoring industry in Britain was notorious for exploitative working conditions. The Wards continue to run the tailor’s shop but in 1903 they get in trouble with the sanitary inspector who informs Hove Council that the workroom at Lansdowne Cottage is overcrowded.  Frederick is given 7 days’ notice to reduce the number of occupants to four. Thomas Hood's 1843 poem 'Song of the Shirt' published in the satirical magazine ‘Punch’ gives you an idea of what life was like working in the tailoring industry:

Song of the Shirt – from Punch

In 1910, Fredrick Ward dies at the age of 72 leaving effects worth £865 to his widow Susan, equivalent to about £113,000 today.  She stays in Lansdowne Cottage and keeps the shop open until 1928 at which point it seems her daughter Florence takes over. Three years later, in 1931, Susan dies at the age of 85. Florence, who it seems remains unmarried, continues to run the tailors - perhaps with her brother Reginald who, in the 1939 Register is listed as a tailor machinist.  It is unclear when the Ward siblings leave, but for sure, the family who keeps the tailor shop in Lansdowne Cottage running for a good sixty years will have left their mark.

Research by Bella Kosmala (August 2022)

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