The demolition of Timpsons in North Street will now go ahead

C17 Puget’s Cottage, 15 North Street (Timpsons) are pre 1770. The gutter and paviored passage pre 1840 have all been designateded grade 11.

All are on the Hannington Lane and Brighton Square development site. Permission has been granted to open up the view of Puget’s Cottage by agreeing to the demolition of Timpsons. The listing was secured by the Brighton & Hove Heritage Commission who had hoped that the plans would be called-in for a public inquiry. This will not now take place.

The reason for the demolition of Timpsons is to open up the a new entrance to the Lanes.

Pugets Cottage: courtesy Roger Amerena

Puget’s cottage, built on an Anglo Saxon paulpiece, is probaly the oldest structure in the Old Town and relates to Brighthelmstone’s fishing or farming use. The north west part of the cottage is constructed of unusually large cobbles and some ironstone, which were not local to the area, but used by ships and discarded on the beach, where it could be collected as ballast and collected by local builders.

Budgen’s 1778 map shows a large garden which appears to be cultivated as a market garden. The curved shape of the site, shown in the curve to the nothern wall of Puget’s cottage, is a rare survival of a strip field known as a ‘paulpiece’ which pre-dates the mid C18 and later alteration and subdivision of these strips into a grid by Georgian developers. Puget’s cottage is a rare example of an old town building pre-dating Brighton’s devlopment as as a seaside resort.

Note tiny twitten on left of 15 North Street

15 North Street (TIimpson) is timber framed , the oldest structure in North Street, and has been in commercial use since the 1790s

15 North Street and the adjacent paved twitten will be demolished under the present proposals to provide a further entrance into the Hannington Lane and Brighton square site and be replaced by a slimmer contemporary building.

The application site is located in the Old Town between North Street, Meeting House Lane and Brighton Place. It includes Hannington’s service yard and department store, Brighton Square and some of the buildings in the north-west corner of Brighton Place.