WW1 commemoration in Hove Cemetery

An avenue of 30 Fagus Sylvatica Dawyck beech trees has been planted in Hove Cemetery to commemorate the centenary of World War One. Each tree represents around 100 men from the city who gave their lives.


The Lord Lieutenant of East Sussex, Mr Peter Field, planted the final tree to complete the avenue in a ceremony also attended by the High Sheriff of East Sussex, Mrs Maureen Chowen, the Mayor of Brighton & Hove Councillor Mo Marsh, and veterans from the Brighton & Hove branch of  the Royal British Legion.

The avenue is in the south side of Hove Cemetery.

"Phiz" gets a Blue Plaque

At a small ceremony today, the City Mayor, Cr Geoff Wells, unveiled a plaque to commemorate the famous Dicken's illustrator, Hablot Knight Browne, at his last home in 8 Clarendon Villas, Hove.

This had been preceded by an opening address from Cr. Averil Older, Chair of the Commemorative Plaque Panel and followed by an account of Hablot's life and career from a local member of the Dickens Society, Andrew Carslake. Mr Carslake revealed, among many other fascinating facts, that Hablot was the son of his elder sister Kate with  Captain Nicholas Hablot of Napoleon's Imperial Guard. Hablot Knight Browne is buried in a handsome grave in Brighton's Extra-Mural Cemetery.

The ceremony was also attended by members of the City's Plaque Panel and the well-known actor Brian Capron who kindly hosted a coffee reception at his nearby home.

New Hotel for Queen Square 2

Further to previous post:-

The roof of the old skating rink can be identified by the row of skylights above the foreground tomb. The yellow brick taller building beyond is Queen Square House on the eastern side of the square.

Looking north up Queen Square to the single-storey skating-rink building.

St. Nicholas Churchyard 100 years ago

According to the Brighton Mortiquarian public health legislation enacted to curtail cholera and other epidemic diseases forbad burial in St Nicholas from around 1854, and this was followed in the 1870's by a clearance of monuments. This clearance must presumably have been rather selective, since in the early 1900's, as this postcard (postmarked 1906) shows, the churchyard was still well crammed. 

The low stature of the trees in this picture also remind one that Brighton was originally a very treeless town (Trees in Brighton - an earlier opinion) and it was not until the later half of the 19th. century that tree-planting began in earnest. By the 1940's the tree-cover in the churchyard and along its boundary was quite extensive. Some trees and shrubs were removed during the second clearance in the 1950's leaving the churchyard more like it is today.

See also: "St Nicholas Churchyard".

Into the Labyrinth

Often visitors to older burial grounds assume that the box tomb – coffin shaped as it can be – holds the body of the deceased. Sometimes they will even pry away at loose capstones trying to peek within. The bones are not within the stones however – but far below them.

Read complete article at:- The Brighton Mortiquarian.