Round Hill 100 years ago
from The Round Hill Reporter August 2002
Few people realise that one street in the area has disappeared during the last century: Lennox Road.
At Brighton's reference library you can find a map of the Round Hill Estate. Drawn up in the 1860's it shows the original plans for Round Hill Crescent and Richmond Road.
The plans show two connecting roads. D'Aubigny Road and Lennox Road.
Each road was 7 houses up from the north and south ends of the Crescent. Ashdown Road was not in the plan. This arrangement gave it a satisfying symmetry on the plans.
However, Lennox Road was considerably steeper than Ashdown Road and would have proved difficult to get a cab down.
Perhaps it was because Lennox Road is so steep that it had such a short life - the hill here has at least a 1 in 4 gradient. This is steeper than any other road in Brighton today.
The !860's plans for the estate never quite worked - the estate was designed to be as exclusive as Park and Hanover Crescents, but the area went a little down market over the years (Who of us today could afford to buy an entire 3 story balconied house? - or to put it another way, why else are nearly all the big houses in Round Hill turned into flats?)
By 1900 Lennox Road was called Lennox Passage. Nowadays it is not graced with a name although to most it is The Cat Creep.
If we are to take pride in our community's heritage, maybe we should persuade the council to rename the lost road Lennox Passage.