The History of 1 Arundel Terrace

During its first phase, 1 Arundel Terrace was occupied as a single large house. No.1 was run by a caretaker, Dorinda Nash in 1841, but by 1846 Emma Buckle owned the house. She was succeeded in 1851 by the elderly Maria Swaine, who kept four live-in servants. It seems that in the later 1850s, No. 1 was let as a furnished house, until in 1862 a most distinguished owner moved in, the Chevalier François de Rosaz, with his wife and four servants; he had been a prominent lawyer in Paris, and became a philanthropist in Brighton, founding two orphanages. To this day, his generosity benefits children by £56,000 a year.

When the Chevalier’s widow died in 1877, the 49-year-old Capt. Edwin Friend moved in, together with his wife, his sister, and eight children under the age of 10, not to speak of the seven live-in servants; what a lively and noisy house it must have been! The atmosphere changed again when the elderly Rev. G.A. Clarkson arrived in 1890 from his tenure at Amberley, some 22 miles from Brighton; he had received Holy Orders 50 years previously, so must have been in his late 70s at least (Cox 1841). This early phase of the house’s occupation ended with the tenure of a widow, Mrs. George Woodhouse, until 1908

Meanwhile, next door at 28 Lewes Crescent, a similar pattern of home and furnished letting was followed until in 1881, when the Census shows John Pilcher in residence, with his family and half a dozen servants. Four years before his death in 1913, he engineered a crucial event for this history: he also bought No.1 Arundel Terrace, to begin the second phase of the house’s history. The motive for this purchase is unknown; it was certainly not to accommodate a growing family, because John was 82 at the time. However, a reasonable speculation is that No.1 was bought to shelter the nurses of the Territorial Forces Nursing Service, which had been formed the previous year 1908; its purpose was to supplement the regular service in emergencies and all its members worked as nurses in civilian life, in this case presumably at the nearby Sussex County Hospital, as it then was.( Nurses were employed from allm over the country Ed.) This scenario is likely because although No.1 is recorded under Mrs. Pilcher’s name during the Great War, it is Matron Warters of the T.F.N.S. who is listed as the occupier in 1918 and 1919. to discover more about the TFNS http://www.scarletfinders.co.uk/92.html

No.28 continued to be at least partly occupied by John’s widow until her departure in 1919