Preston Manor & Gardens: A Historic Manor House and Museum in Brighton
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.6
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- British, English
- Site type
- Domestic
- Remains
- Manor House
On this page18 sections
History
Preston Manor & Gardens is a historic manor house and estate in Brighton, United Kingdom, whose surviving building incorporates a stone structure dating to about 1250 and later Palladian and Georgian work. It was the manor house of Preston, an ancient Sussex village now within Brighton and Hove. Preston probably originated in the Saxon period, during the ninth or tenth century, and its name comes from Preste-tun, meaning “priest’s farmstead.” Roman occupation in the area was confirmed in 1877.
Medieval and ecclesiastical manor
By the Domesday survey of 1086, a record of landholding and taxable resources commissioned by William the Conqueror, Preston was held by the Episcopal See at Selsey. After the see moved to Chichester in 1075, the manor belonged to the Bishop of Chichester. Domesday valued it at £25 and listed 12 ploughs, a church, a manor house, and a mill. The parish population has been estimated at about 50 people, while the ecclesiastical parish covered an area roughly one mile by two miles north of Brighton and Hove.
A steward or bailiff administered the manor for the bishop. From 1510, the bishops began leasing their lands, and Edward Elrington and his wife, Beatrix Shirley, became Preston’s first recorded tenants. Edward died in 1515, but his family remained at Preston. His son Richard and later generations worked as sheep farmers.
The Shirley family and the Western inheritance
During the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the suppression of England’s monastic institutions under Henry VIII in the 1530s and 1540s, the Crown took possession of Preston Manor. The Elringtons then held it as Crown tenants. Richard Elrington’s property passed through his widow to her son Anthony Shirley. When Anthony died in 1624, the manor went to his son Thomas, who bought the Crown’s reversion of the lease in 1628 and became the first Lord of the Manor.
Anthony or Thomas Shirley carried out the first major structural changes during the seventeenth century. These included Classical entrance doors, the establishment of the walled garden, and possibly the lower part of the staircase and a marble chimney-breast dating from the late seventeenth century. A chimney-breast is the projecting part of a wall that contains or supports a fireplace and chimney.
Sir Anthony Shirley, 1st Baronet Shirley of Preston, represented Arundel, Sussex, and Steyning in Parliament. In April 1658, the Council of State under Oliver Cromwell held an inquiry at Preston Manor into a Royalist plot in Sussex. Shirley later won the favour of King Charles II and became a baronet in 1666. Sir Richard Shirley, the second baronet, succeeded him in 1683, followed by his son Richard, the third baronet. When the younger Richard died unmarried in 1705, the manor passed jointly to his sisters Anne, Mary, and Judith. By the early eighteenth century, Thomas Western had acquired the remaining shares and brought Preston Manor into the Western family.
The Western and Stanford estates
Thomas Western died in 1733 and was succeeded by his son, also Thomas. The younger Thomas rebuilt the manor house around its medieval core and created a new interior. A foundation stone in the basement bears the date 1738 and the name “Thos. Western.” The Western family’s ownership ended in 1794, when the manor, house, farm, and about 1,000 acres were sold to William Stanford for £17,600.
William Stanford was a wealthy farmer who sold produce in Brighton and held a contract to remove night soil from the town’s streets and cesspools. He became High Sheriff of Sussex in 1808, a senior ceremonial and administrative officer of the county, and was considered one of Sussex’s richest private individuals when he died in 1841. His son, William Stanford the younger, inherited the estate, but died in 1853. His daughter Ellen then became heir.
Ellen married Vere Fane Benett-Stanford, who adopted the Stanford surname under the terms of William Stanford’s will. Their son, John Montague Benett-Stanford, was expected to inherit, but his difficult relationship with his mother contributed to plans to dispose of Preston Manor. During the nineteenth century, the Stanford family increased its influence around Brighton and Hove by controlling the sale and development of estate land. Railway construction across the estate brought William Stanford the younger £30,000 in compensation, and the Stanford Estate Act of 1871 allowed Ellen to grant building agreements. Parts of the estate consequently changed from agricultural land into building sites.
Edwardian residence and civic history
Ellen’s second husband, Charles Thomas-Stanford, took part in local public life. He was Mayor of Brighton from 1910 to 1913 and a Conservative Member of Parliament from 1914 to 1922. Preston Manor hosted prominent social and civic events during their association with the house. During the First World War, Ellen and Charles helped organize gifts for Indian soldiers being treated in Brighton’s military hospitals. Ellen also wrote condolence letters to Sussex families whose relatives had died in the conflict.
In 1905 Ellen and Charles made Preston Manor their principal residence and commissioned their friend Charles Stanley Peach to remodel and enlarge the house and grounds. The work added space for entertaining and gave the manor much of its present Edwardian appearance. The Edwardian era is associated with the reign of King Edward VII, from 1901 to 1910, although the term is also used for the years immediately before the First World War.
Ellen and Charles intended the manor to pass to Brighton Corporation because they feared that Ellen’s son might demolish it or convert it into a girls’ school. In 1925, Charles arranged for the house and four adjoining acres to pass to the corporation after their deaths, on the condition that it be preserved in historic condition and used as a museum with exhibits relating to Brighton and Sussex.
Museum and twentieth-century use
Charles and Ellen died in 1932. Charles left Brighton Corporation his books, documents, ancient deeds, and papers relating mainly to Sussex, while Ellen bequeathed the furniture and contents of the house. The transfer was completed in January 1933, and the building opened as a museum of Edwardian life, first under the name Thomas-Stanford Museum. Henry Roberts became curator and lived with his family in the west wing. He remained in the post until his death in 1951, after which his daughter Margery served as honorary curator until 1970.
During the Second World War, Preston Manor served as an Air Raid Precaution report and control centre and as a base for a mobile First Aid post. In 1936, the Preston Road frontage was set back for road widening. The lodge, stables, and gardener’s cottage were demolished, while the northern and western grounds were laid out with grass and shrubs. The Macquoid Bequest was installed in the former library in 1939. The Victorian servants’ quarters were restored and opened to the public in 1988, and the walled garden was restored during the 1990s with assistance from the Heritage Lottery Fund.
Brighton and Hove City Council owns Preston Manor, which is administered as part of the Royal Pavilion and Museums Trust. The museum presents the way of life of a wealthy rural family and its servants before and after the First World War.
The White Lady tradition
Preston Manor has a long-standing reputation for alleged paranormal activity. The principal female apparition is known as the White Lady, and the tradition identifies her as the spirit of an excommunicated nun. The story was first mentioned in the sixteenth century, while reports increased during the late nineteenth century.
In 1896, members and friends of the Stanford family said that they saw the figure in the drawing room, on the staircase, and in the entrance hall. A séance later that year developed a story about two excommunicated nuns. During building work in early 1897, a skeleton belonging to a middle-aged woman was found behind the house. A doctor dated the remains to the sixteenth century, and they were secretly reburied in consecrated ground in St Peter’s churchyard with help from the Stanford family.
A séance in 1898 was said to have established that the spirits had been pacified. Further sightings of a long-haired female apparition were reported in 1903, and white-clad female figures were later said to have appeared in the grounds in 1976 and 1992. Other alleged phenomena included apparitions on the southwest staircase, in the southwest bedroom, boiler room, main staircase, roof parapet, and a landing. Reports also described unexplained noises, moving objects, damaged dresses, opening and closing doors, and a phantom riding a toy tractor in the grounds during the 1960s. The manor’s reputation led to regular ghost tours and the filming of a 2006 episode of Most Haunted.
Remains
Preston Manor combines a medieval stone core with an eighteenth-century formal front, later Edwardian additions, and a walled garden between the house and St Peter’s Church. The building is two storeys high, with a basement and attic, a stucco-covered exterior, Welsh-slate roofs, and dormer windows. Its surviving interiors and service areas extend across four levels, preserving parts of the house’s changing domestic arrangement.
Medieval core and eighteenth-century rebuilding
Medieval structure
The earliest surviving part of the manor began as a simple stone-built house dating to about 1250. It faced north and measured approximately 50 by 25 feet, with walls about two feet thick. The building contained two unequal rooms. The western room was the main hall, about 27 by 21 feet, raised over a cellar, while the eastern room measured about 18 by 21 feet. Each room had a chimney stack on the southern rear side, rising from a fireplace to the roof. The basement now preserves the general layout, parts of two original arched doorways between the rooms, and a chamfered arched opening.
Georgian façade and wings
Thomas Western’s rebuilding of 1738 retained the medieval core but placed it behind a symmetrical five-bay façade about 50 feet wide. Palladian architecture draws on the classical principles associated with Andrea Palladio and emphasizes symmetry, proportion, columns, and formal façades. The new front was also Georgian, a term for British architecture of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It originally had five entrances, with the central one forming a porch that led to the entrance hall, although the unequal medieval rooms kept the interior plan asymmetrical.
The rebuilding added unequal pavilion-like wings. A dining room occupied the western wing and a library the eastern one. The lower part of the staircase may date from about 1685, and a late-seventeenth-century marble chimney-breast survives to its east. The house retains sash windows and louvre-style shutters. Its principal north front has five windows, while the main hipped roof has a central chimney behind a parapet. A parapet continues around the south front, where several chimneys rise at the sides.
Principal fronts and Edwardian alterations
North entrance
The central north entrance is approached by steps with iron railings. Its Classical porch has Doric columns, circular paterae, and a cornice. Paterae are round ornamental features used in Classical decoration. Rectangular side windows flank a panelled door. Although Charles Stanley Peach remodelled the entrance in 1905, the porch itself dates from about 1800.
Garden front and additions
The south, garden-facing front has a central porch built of flint and stone. Its paired entrances have segmental-arched pediments and keystones, while the windows have architraves and the front includes a panel carved with a coat of arms. The wings contain arched French windows and balconies. Early twentieth-century cast-iron verandahs with copper roofs flank the north porch. Peach added the right-hand verandah in 1905, and a matching verandah was installed on the left about five years later.
Peach’s 1905 work included a western extension with a new dining room and rooms for visitors and servants. He also added a porch on the south elevation, richly decorated corridors on the northeast and northwest sides, altered the basement servants’ rooms, created new attic rooms, and widened the entrance hall. The present route through the house includes the entrance hall, former library now called the Macquoid Room, morning room, ground-floor corridors, Cleves Room, drawing room, dining room, main staircase, and former bedrooms on the northwest, north, northeast, southwest, and southeast sides.
Domestic interiors and service spaces
The attic contains a former maids’ workroom presented as a nursery, together with a lavatory, bathroom, and housekeeping storage rooms. Restored Victorian servants’ quarters occupy the basement and provide physical evidence of the staff accommodation that supported the household. Two servants’ bedrooms and an Edwardian bathroom are also included among the preserved rooms.
Garden and ancillary structures
Walled garden
The eighteenth-century walled garden lies between Preston Manor and St Peter’s Church and is reached by a wooden bridge flanked by hedges. Its arrangement follows the slope of the ground and links four areas: the walled section, a lower formal lawn, a sensory garden for blind visitors, and an area containing lily ponds. The southwest corner contains a pet cemetery with the burials of four cats and 16 dogs.
Flint walls from the eighteenth century enclose the garden on three sides. They measure about 280 feet in length, although the western wall is a twentieth-century reconstruction. An arched sixteenth-century doorway removed from the manor during the 1738 rebuilding was inserted into the south-facing garden wall.
Wellhouse
A wellhouse east of the manor dates from the 1730s. It is built mainly of flint, with red-brick quoins and other brickwork, and is enclosed by a brick wall. Its east, west, and north faces contain one, two, and three brick-dressed arches respectively. These arches are now blocked. The wellhouse is in poor condition and has lost its original horse-operated iron pump and capstan.
