Historic building, education, later hospital, now flats. Built between 1843 to 1844 as a purpose-built school, which opened on the site in 1846.
Montpelier and Clifton Hill CA.
LLHA0251.
This building was built in 1843 to 1844 as a purpose-built school, which opened on the site in 1846. The school had been founded in 1837 in Newport IoW by Lieut. Charles Robert Malden RN, the first headmaster, and moved to Brighton the following year. It took the name Windlesham House when it moved to this building and it believed to be the oldest independent preparatory school in the country.
It moved to Portslade in 1913 and then in 1934 to its current site near Washington on the South Downs. At that time the building had its entrance in Furze Hill. In 1921 the building was taken over by the New Sussex Hospital for Women and was extended to the west and to the north in the late 1920s and 1930s and extensively remodelled by Clayton & Black. It remained in hospital use until 1998 and has since been converted to flats known as Temple Heights, with a modern rear extension known as Windlesham House. The building is mainly three storeys with a two storey extension on Windlesham Road. The original frontage has segmental bows and Regency proportions but it owes its current appearance much more to the Clayton & Black remodelling.
Henry Charles Malden, the second Windlesham House head, was the eldest son of the founder and ran the school from 1855 to 1888. Whilst studying at Trinity College Cambridge, it was agreed that there should be a meeting to draw up fixed rules for football. The Public Schools sent two representatives each and the university sent a further two who had not been to a Public School. One of these was Malden. At this gathering the Cambridge Football Rules were drawn up and the large majority of these were later to be taken on formally by all players. The code for the game of Association Football was established throughout the country and Malden has been considered a ‘father of Association rules.’
i. It is understood that several prominent suffragettes, including Louisa Martindale (the elder), Elizabeth Robins and Octavia Wilberforce helped to raise the funds to buy Windlesham House. Louisa Martindale’s daughter (also named Louisa) was Brighton’s first female GP and became senior surgeon at the hospital. The hospital was entirely staffed by women. The hospital forms part of the historic development of women’s medical care and the women’s rights movement.
ii. The two former uses illustrate the social development of Brighton & Hove, in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In its first use the building is an example of the role that private education for the boys of wealthy families, funded by private benefactors, played in the 19th century. Many proprietary schools were established at that time, which led to Brighton being dubbed ‘School Town’. This was a very early example. In its second use it illustrates the nature of public health care in the early 20th century. The hospital principally dealt with gynaecological disorders and was staffed entirely be women.
i. The building occupies a very prominent corner site on the edge of the Montpelier and Clifton Hill conservation area and is an imposing presence. Its 1840s origins are evident and relate it well to the area but the 1920s and 1930s remodelling makes it distinctive in its own right.
ii. It is an unusual surviving example of a purpose-built private school in Brighton and Hove and dates from the beginning of the boom in such schools, many of which occupied former residential properties.
2015, entry updated 2023
