Fabricating Lureland: A History of the Imagination and Memory of Peacehaven, a Speculative Interwar Garden City Development by the Sea 9783110734027, 9783110735208

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Julia Winckler Fabricating Lureland

Julia Winckler

Fabricating Lureland A History of the Imagination and Memory of Peacehaven, a Speculative Interwar Garden City Development by the Sea

ISBN 978-3-11-073520-8 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-073402-7 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-073409-6 Library of Congress Control Number: 2021948003 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Cover image: Peacehaven, East Beach, Postcard View, early 1920s. Typesetting: Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com

Abstract This is the first in-depth ethnographic and interdisciplinary study to mobilize and interrogate a vast amount of underexplored vernacular and public archival material relating to the construction of Peacehaven, a speculative development built atop chalk cliffs, straddling the Meridian Line on the Sussex coast, South East England. The author draws on her personal-biographical relationship to the town to trace its changing image over time and make it tangible. Throughout, the book foregrounds the visual and reconstitutes a historical perspective, revisiting propositions of the time, which aspired to secure improved public health and home ownership in direct response to the negative impact of industrialization and WWI. While the Peacehaven estate was marketed in exuberant terms as a garden city development, public voices such as the Bloomsbury group’s Virginia and Leonard Woolf, architect and writer Clough Williams-Ellis, the historian Nikolaus Pevsner and the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England soon began to criticise it as a blot on hitherto pastoral downland. It was also the scene of the denouement in Graham Greene’s crime novel Brighton Rock. Instead of reading and appraising Peacehaven’s narrative in a polarized way, this book breaks new ground by critically interpreting visual representations and commissioned photographs of the estate. Focusing on the interwar period and tracing mutating agendas, this book investigates the hidden and contested inception and construction histories of this town through Histoire Croisée methodology and its intercrossings with memory and the imagination. The study describes how this interwar development was caught in the tension between a social vision for Homes for Heroes and economic concerns. By combining visual and creative research methods with oral history, multi-layered narratives of place come into focus. The study tracks the visual programme of the developer’s in-house magazine, Peacehaven Post, alongside blueprints, photographs, postcards and promotional guidebooks and explores the garden city narrative as a form of social Utopia. The magazine staff drew on a foundation mythology, describing the new development as a Second Eden projected into a prosperous future. Key iconic graphic images, created by the magazine’s illustrator Gordon Volk, are reactivated using myth criticism. The idea of Lureland acts as a vehicle to access the history of the imagination and memory of this particular site. The endurance, into the present, of some of the early marketing imagery and its imaginative reactivation and modification, is discussed. The study also draws on interviews with contemporary residents and descendants of early settlers. The embedded memory within the fabric of the town

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110734027-202

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itself is activated through documentary photographs of surviving landmarks relating back to its early vision. The research has been given additional urgency because the town is currently undergoing large-scale redevelopment and any remaining original landmarks are fast disappearing. The garden city narrative is once again being evoked in debates as a potential solution to the ongoing national housing shortage.

Acknowledgments This book is based on a research study first presented as a doctoral thesis, and I would like to thank my Phd supervisors, Professor Charmian Brinson (Imperial College) and Professor Darren Newbury (University of Brighton) for all of their support, advice and commitment. I owe many insights to them and am so grateful for their encouragement. I will be forever indebted to my family, especially Ian Hockaday and Anke and Lutz Winckler for their consistent enthusiasm, sustenance, ideas and productive comments. Thank you, Ian, for the many conversations, and your invaluable technical expertise and support. A huge thank you goes to current and former Peacehaven residents who so generously shared stories and archival material with me: John Copper, John and Ann Harrison, Jill Hazel, Les Hunter, the late Reuben Lanham, Olive and Colin Martin, Margaret Palmer, the late Margaret Parks, Peter Seed, Rita Williams and the late Haydn Williams. And to the Peacehaven Pioneer group for their energy, enthusiasm and shared passion of local history. I would like to especially acknowledge Sue Sayers and Mike Noble from Friends of Downlands Court, Barbara Martin, Patricia Brady, Winifred Tugg, Christine Poplett, Pat Bowman, Babs Clark and the late David Clark, Joe Nelson, the late Dorothy Penn, the late John Angel, Dominique Wood, Martin Delancourt, Brenda and Guy Hetherington, the late Brenda Troak. I am grateful to all the helpful archivists who facilitated this research and I would like to especially give thanks to Michelle Brooker at East Sussex County Council Library Services for access to the Troak-Poplett collection. I am also very grateful to the following archivists who accommodated research questions: Jonathan Makepeace at RIBA, all the helpful staff at the British Library, The Keep, The Public Record Office Kew, South East Screen & Video Archive, Manx National Heritage, Imperial War Museum Library, Kevin Bacon at Brighton Museum & Pavilion Archive, Francesca Church at Reading Museum of Rural England, Oliver Hilliam at the national CPRE, Gill Linturn at the Society of Sussex Downsmen, Tony Hellier at Newhaven Museum, Rosalind Turner and David Johnson, CPRE Sussex, Marilyn van Winkle, The Autry. At Peacehaven Town Council thanks must go to Deborah Donovan and Cllr Robbie Robinson for their enthusiastic support of the site-specific events, and at the Church of the Ascension I would like to especially thank Charlie Goring and at the Evangelical Church thanks go to Jeff Collingworth for hosting two events. I am especially grateful to Douglas d’Enno and Prof. Chris Mullen who generously shared research material with me, to Prof. Dennis Hardy for his detailed reply and thoughts on Peacehaven’s future, and to Roy Wood, Willy Coupar, Julius Grit, https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110734027-203

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Ninka Willcock, Richard Oakeley, Stanley Bernard, Dr. Geoffrey Mead, John Ross, Barry Parks, David Simkins, David Plumtree and Paula Andrews for the use of archival material and stimulating conversations. Gratitude goes to the dear late Tony Wallis, for his nurturing support, and to my wonderful friends from all around the world who have walked the Downs with me over the years. At the University of Brighton I give thanks to Dr. Dora Carpenter-Latiri, Dr. Annebella Pollen, Dr. Cathy Palmer, Prof. Alan Tomlinson and Prof. Francis Hodgson and to my 2013 MA Participatory Media Production module student group. I also wish to thank Dr. Ulrich Hägele for his much valued feedback on the manuscript. At De Gruyter, I am very grateful to Rabea Rittgerodt for commissioning this book and for her and Jana Fritsche’s practical assistance. Thanks must also go to Suruthi Manogarane and her team at Integra. In memory of Martha Hecker, Viktoria Otto, Patricia Vale, Reuben Lanham, Haydn Williams and Margaret Parks – who all knew Peacehaven well and cherished the sea and Downs.

Contents Abstract

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Prologue 1 A new start: bungalow building site 1 Visualizing the layout of the new bungalow 2 ‘Peacehaven Pedestrian’: exploring the town, 1969–1976 Echoes of Empire 6

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Chapter 1 Fabricating Lureland: A history of the imagination and memory 12 Introduction 12 Threefold research impetus 19 Historic character assessment report on Peacehaven 19 The Troak-Poplett collection 20 The Peacehaven pioneers 23 Organisation of the book 25 Research methodology: Histoire Croisée 31 The main three strands of enquiry into imagination and memory as forms of historical reconstruction work 35 First strand: Cultural memory and working with archival material 40 Second strand: Communicative and collective memory 44 Third strand: Place as archive and archival memory within the fabric of Peacehaven itself 47 Chapter 2 ‘Own your own bit of England’: Peacehaven’s genesis refracted through British town planning ideals 51 Introduction 51 ‘Own your own bit of England’ 55 The 1916 naming competition 59 New Anzac-on-Sea Estate plan and promotional leaflet 62 Anzac lawsuit 66 Renaming of New Anzac-on-Sea Estate to Peacehaven in 1917 68 Use of the word Anzac after Gallipoli 69

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Renaming of streets and War Office and Board of Agriculture take over in 1917 71 Relaunching the idea of Peacehaven after WWI with ‘Homes fit for Heroes’ and Garden City ideals 73 Garden city Utopia: Peacehaven ‘essentially a garden city’ 76 ‘Peacehaven By The Sea’ booklet 80 Peacehaven Economic Homes booklets published in 1920 and 1922 86 Peacehaven imagined through architectural blueprints 93 Peacehaven Estate articulated through a simplified grid map in 1922 95 A seaside Utopia built on the edge of chalk cliffs: The ‘Peacehaven Series’ postcards created by Gordon Volk 98 Circulation of ‘The Peacehaven Series’ 104 Conclusion 105 Chapter 3 Tracking the visual programme of the Peacehaven Post through the magazine’s first volume 106 Introduction 106 Peacehaven’s narration refracted through Gordon Volk’s imagery 109 A second Eden, tapping into Utopian creation mythology 111 The twelve “Posts” of Peacehaven 114 The promise of Peacehaven: ‘What will be Seen’ 116 Young woman in downland 119 ‘A New Year’s Resolution’ selling the benefits of home ownership 123 Health-giving narrative 131 Visions of Peacehaven’s past and future, of youth and maturity 134 Peacehaven Carnival 139 Peacehaven and the world 140 Conclusion: Volume One ‘Curtain Call’ 145 Chapter 4 ‘No shackles of old tradition to bind her’: The Estate’s emerging topography in the photographs of Joseph James Hill and Frank Parks, 1921–1923 149 Introduction 149 Archival source material 151

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Revisiting Volk’s ‘twelve “Posts” of Peacehaven’ through Hill’s and Park’s photographic representations 152 Volk’s ‘A New Year’s resolution: Man with spade’ drawing refracted through Hill’s and Parks’ photographs 161 Volk’s ‘Birth’ of Peacehaven drawing seen through Hill’s and Parks’ photographs 171 Sitting between myth and actuality: Volk’s idealized graphic imagery adopted across commercial Peacehaven postcard series 178 Souvenir of Peacehaven booklet by Avery 183 Conclusion 187 Chapter 5 ‘This Blessed Plot, this other Eden’: The Greater Peacehaven development refracted through local and national protests against speculative development from 1923 onward 189 Introduction 189 Local and National Resistance to the expansion of Peacehaven Estates and strategic SCLRC campaigns 191 Protecting the countryside from development 200 Peacehaven Estates repositions its focus 203 England and the Octopus: Neville personified as ‘Mr. Otherman’ 205 Promises for Peacehaven’s potential future affected by local government intervention 208 ‘Here beats the Heart of England’ 210 ‘The Saddest Monument to the Great Peace that was ever built’ 212 Conclusion 215 Chapter 6 Reading shifting perspectives of Peacehaven 1923–1939 across local guidebooks and other promotional material 217 Introduction 217 Tracking shifting perspectives of Peacehaven across guidebooks (1923–1939) 218 The first two Peacehaven guides, 1923–1924 220 Perpetuating the town’s mythology 224

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Invoking the perspective of the rambler, the ‘jewel in the rough’ metaphor and golfing in order to market Peacehaven in the late 1920s and early 1930s 228 A new kind of visitor: The International Friendship League 232 The image of ‘Peacehaven and the World’ becomes embodied in The Prime Meridian Obelisk and is used in guidebooks during the 1930s 235 1937 Official Peacehaven guide and Sussex guide health and leisure focus 243 Conclusion 245 Chapter 7 Peacehaven as memory-space: Intergenerational conversations with long-time residents 249 Introduction 249 Interview methodology 250 Temporal and spatial reflections 254 Relating the area’s pastoral history 256 Staking up of the land ready for construction 257 Post WW1 construction 258 Home-Life: Conquering the wilderness 261 Childhood, school and play 272 Prosperity: Cultural and business life in the 1920s and 1930s Rurality retained during the 1930s and 1940s 281 War disturbed peace 282 Peace and home-life in the immediate post-war years 285 Nostalgia and change: Disappearances, discontinuities and continuities 287 Conclusion 289

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Chapter 8 Evoking Lureland: Site-marking and site-writing the pioneer bungalows of Peacehaven 292 Introduction 292 Reactivating archival estate agent photographs of pioneer bungalows from the 1950s 295 Reactivating Volk’s 1921–23 ‘Peacehaven Pedestrian’ column nearly 100 years onward through the practice of site-marking 296 Site-specific events: Activating memory and evoking what has become forever lost 307

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Inclusive community celebration events during 2016–2017 on the undercliff path near the Meridian Monument 311 Engaging the community through visual storytelling 313 Additional specific events at The Church of the Ascension and at The Evangelical Church during 2016–2017 316 Collective expressions of the mnemonic imagination 319 Conclusion 322 Chapter 9 Visions of Lureland survive as allegory 323 Introduction 323 Looking at Peacehaven: John Betjeman and Tony Ray-Jones 323 Local media and resident perspectives 329 Commemorations of the past within the fabric of the town and significance of the Meridian Monument 335 Symbolic landmarks and emblems that continue to be activated in the present 337 Future outlook 345 Conclusion 351 Primary archival material and archival sources Appendix 1 Brief Peacehaven timeline overview

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Appendix 2 Brief biographies of key SCLRC staff; Peacehaven Post editorial contributors, early publicists and notable residents 373 Appendix 3 Biographies of interviewees Index

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Prologue A new start: bungalow building site On 1 October 1968, 48 years after the first homes had been built on the Peacehaven Estate, my great-aunt Martha made a deposit on a semi-detached bungalow about to be built on plots 11 & 12 that were part of Block 116. A drawing suggests the construction of the bungalow on land between Phyllis Avenue and Hoddern Avenue (see Fig. 1).

Figure 1: Key plan, indicating bungalow site, drawing by Wagstaff, family archive J.W.

The land certificate reveals that these two plots had previously formed part of The Crest, a property at 58, Hoddern Avenue, ‘on the East side of Phyllis Avenue’, with the title absolute held by a Dorothy White, ‘Femme Sole’, who had registered the deed on 2 June 1956 with a London-based solicitor.1 Earlier in 1968, Ms. White had sold plots 11 and 12 on to a local builder, Samuel Richard

1 ‘Femme sole’ is a traditional legal term referring either to an unmarried woman or a woman who owns property independently. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110734027-001

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Smith, for development. The land had been part of her garden, which was now reduced by more than 50% of its original size. Martha had moved to England from Germany in 1933, shortly after Hitler and the National Socialist Party had gained power, to work in domestic service in London. During the war she met her Jewish refugee husband Hugo Hecker, with whom she first lived in a small rented flat in a building full of Austrian refugees near London’s Paddington station. By 1953, the pair had raised enough money to make a deposit on their first, and only, house together, in Beckenham’s Grosvenor Road. They had eleven years there and had talked about moving to the French Riviera upon Hugo’s retirement from Morley’s, a department store in Brixton where he had managed the men’s clothing department for over a decade. Sadly, Hugo died in December 1964, one month away from his 65th birthday. After a few more years in Beckenham, Martha joined a coach trip down to the South Coast to look for a seaside home. The French Riviera seemed too far away and a return to Germany after a lifetime in England did not appeal to her. Martha and Hugo had frequently come down to Brighton and Eastbourne for day trips and were familiar with the area. Martha settled on the first place she was shown on that coach trip: Peacehaven, a bungalow town right on the edge of southeast Britain, windswept and high up on steep cliff tops overlooking the sea. She thought the sea air would help her lungs, damaged doing war work in munitions factories and through a lifetime of smoking – and that a smaller bungalow without stairs would be more manageable.

Visualizing the layout of the new bungalow As all the correspondence with local estate agent and surveyor Jack Wagstaff has survived, it is possible to track Martha first registering interest in a bungalow on Malines Avenue, and then, when this sold quickly, in a nearby plot on Phyllis Avenue where the same type of bungalow was about to be built.2 On 11 July 1968, Wagstaff completed an amended architectural drawing titled ‘No 313/68/JWB’ for two semi-detached new bungalows (see Fig. 2).

2 In 1920, Jack Wagstaff had been the first baby to be born in the nascent town; his parents had set up the first undertakers and real estate businesses which have run continuously, and have stayed in the Wagstaff family.

Visualizing the layout of the new bungalow

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Figure 2: Block plan of bungalow drawing by Wagstaff, family archive J.W.

Martha’s arrival in 1969 was part of a large wave of migration to the town, primarily from the London area, during which many of the older style large gardens and smallholdings built during the interwar period were relinquished. Some of the unique architectural features of Peacehaven’s housing stock, such as verandas and porches, were dropped in the new designs of the 1960s. Martha’s so-called H-shaped bungalow replaced the more traditional bungalow type (though hers did have a patio) (see Fig. 3).

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Figure 3: Photograph of Martha’s bungalow, 1969, family archive J.W.

Remarkably, our family has retained Martha and Hugo’s domestic expenses book, in which they kept close checks on mortgage costs, household and running costs. This includes Hugo’s funeral and memorial costs from 1964, as well as Martha’s subsequent purchase of the Peacehaven bungalow in April 1969, following the sale of her former house in Beckenham (see Fig. 4). The new property was registered as 53, Phyllis Avenue.

Figure 4: Martha and Hugo Hecker’s expenses book, 1952–1976, family archive J.W.

‘Peacehaven Pedestrian’: exploring the town, 1969–1976

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In her new home, Martha spent much time reading, always with a cigarette in hand, and tending to her modest garden. She also joined a local spiritualist church, where she met her friend Connie Worthington, whose parents had worked in colonial service in China.

‘Peacehaven Pedestrian’: exploring the town, 1969–1976 Together with my parents, we made our first visit to Martha’s new home on Phyllis Avenue in the early summer of 1969 (see Fig. 5).3

Figure 5: On the patio with Martha, 1969, family archive J.W.

During early family visits Martha and I would often sit cross-legged in the lounge, on the turquoise carpet bought at Morley’s (it is listed as an expenditure in her purchase list). Martha would conjure up spirits while the multi-coloured Venetian blinds (bought at Vokins in Brighton) kept the sunlight at bay. A tall woman, Martha always wore bright red slippers and red lipstick; this, together with her big golden earrings from Bolivia, her smoky voice and the strong German accent she had retained when speaking English, made her altogether exciting and lovable to me. Sometimes, we would walk down Phyllis Avenue to the Hotel Peacehaven and

3 The term ‘Peacehaven Pedestrian’ refers to a monthly column that ran in The Peacehaven Post magazine between 1921–1923. I return to this in chapter 8.

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have lunch there. I recall watching badgers play in the sunken gardens, which by the mid 1970s had turned into a neglected patch of overgrown grass and bushes. Martha died just after her 66th birthday in August 1976; having spent only seven years in Peacehaven. My mother inherited the bungalow and kept most of Martha’s belongings. Throughout childhood visits, we would go for long walks across Downland at the back to Telscombe Village, Rodmell and Lewes, or along the cliffs heading East to Saltdean, Rottingdean and nearby Brighton.

Echoes of Empire Peacehaven was in the process of being restructured in the late 1960s, a conjunctural place, with, by that point, an aging demographic. Mrs. Little lived in a chalet bungalow next door to Martha and our families became friendly with one another. She had spent more than a decade in India in the 1920s where her husband, Herbert Little, had been a colonial officer. In 1930, the couple returned to England to have their third child, Patricia. Having lost two young children to malaria in India, they decided to stay, and took on the Castle Restaurant, one of Peacehaven’s early boarding houses on the South Coast Road, and becoming its new proprietors. The restaurant’s A3 size, leather-bound original cashbook, charting the early years of business, from 1922 onwards, was passed on to me by Patricia’s daughter, Paula, after her mother’s death in 2011. Forgotten about for decades, and dislodged by time, it survived, unlike paperwork for many other early businesses. Palpable on its pages are the human efforts and hard work that went into setting up shop. The cashbook is an archival object from the Estate’s first two decades; it can be described as an echo from below. The Castle was one of the first restaurants and boarding houses to open on the Estate. Refracted through a lens in the present, its cashbook acts as a partial stand in for other cashbooks, which would have also recorded initial purchases of essential articles such as Aladdin mantels (oil lamps) and stationary (see Fig. 6).4 Monthly advertising fees

4 Expenses for November 1922 included removals and coal; for December the purchase of Parnall & Sons shop fittings, painting and stationary, home decorating, wood, kitchen and garden fittings was noted. Also jotted down was a regular L.B.S.C.R. carriage cost of 2:2:0d. for travel on the London Brighton & South Coast Railway. The cashbook included further costings for water rates, insurance, trade expenses and wages, which were noted for the first time for 28 February 1923. After the first year of trading, the Castle’s takings, minus expenses, amounted to £118 pounds, but would increase by 1925 through income from the café and boarding house.

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were logged and the first proprietors promoted the Castle as being ‘charmingly situated with nice lawn overlooking sea’.5

Figure 6: Castle cashbook, November 1922, collection J.W.

Starting in November 1922 with entries for receipts, discount, cash, bank, goods purchased and a £200 bank deposit, the cash book charts all of the Castle’s income and expenditure over a twenty-two-year period, up to 1944, when it was still in the hands of the Littles. Amongst the few reminders of the Littles’ time in India had been a green pet parrot, and a handful of faded family photographs, documenting Mrs. Little’s boat journey to India, and the domestic family life she led in the 1920s with two small children. Until Patricia’s death, two fibre-based, sepia-toned, framed archival photographs, entitled ‘The coming badmash’ and ‘Pathan’ adorned a central wall in the family 5 See first advertisement for the Castle, which appeared in the Peacehaven Post, Volume II, No 21, May 1923.

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lounge (see Fig. 7). These studio portraits of Indian men acted as a link and a reminder to her parents’ experience in colonial service, signalling a temporal and spatial continuity and mnemonic presence inside the family home. These highly stylized studio portraits were composed and signed by commercial photographer R. B. Holmes, who created generic character studies from Indian life as souvenirs for the colonial market.6 I would later notice similar kinds of photographs and small souvenir objects in the homes of other residents who I interviewed as part of this book. These frequently referenced the trajectories they, or more commonly their parents, had made across parts of the British Empire, before settling in Peacehaven.

Figure 7: ‘Pathan’, No 122, ca. 1919, courtesy Vale family archive.

6 Randolph Bezzant Holmes was a commercial photographer who took over his father’s photography studio in Peshawar, Pakistan and travelled through Afghanistan, India and Pakistan between 1919 and 1926 making photographs of landscapes and local residents. ‘Pathan’ refers to ‘Pashtun’, a Muslim community in Uttar Pradesh, India. See http://exhibits.library.duke. edu/exhibits/show/holmes, last accessed 26 November, 2017.

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Martha’s bungalow, situated on Phyllis Avenue just North of Arundel Road, had been built on the boundary of an area that was still more sparsely developed and contained large pockets of bramble and gorse patches. Even now, this area is referred to colloquially as ‘where the wilderness began’, and ‘Indian country’ by older residents.7 It was not until the late 1970s that all the plots on Phyllis Avenue were filled in with houses. The development of North Peacehaven and an area called The Annex completely transformed the town’s character during the 1980s (see chapter 9). Next door to the Littles, on the corner of Phyllis Avenue and Arundel Road lived the Miller family. As a child and teenager, I spent a lot of time with Maria, the youngest daughter. The Millers were a family of six living in a two-bedroom bungalow. Maria’s mother Jackie was a Londoner; her father Bob came from Guernsey. Jackie knitted dresses for us and Maria and I played together in the family’s big garden, where they kept chickens (see Fig. 8).

Figure 8: With Maria in her family’s garden, circa 1972, family archive J.W.

Dinner plates on our knees, we would crowd around the television watching Top of the Pops and films set in World War II. Bob owned a 1960s Jaguar and would sometimes take me, Maria and the family on short rides around Peacehaven. He was also a CB radio enthusiast and would communicate with other CB fans across Peacehaven from the family’s kitchen table.

7 Personal communication Patricia Brady, Margaret Parks, Haydn Williams. I return to these location descriptors in chapter 7, where I track early memories of older residents.

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As a child and teenager, although familiar and at home on the beach and throughout the town’s streets, I was completely unaware of Peacehaven’s genesis and historical background. We did not know that Phyllis Avenue was one of the first Avenues in Peacehaven and that the Hotel Peacehaven, with its sunken gardens, completed in October 1922, had been planned as one of the town’s key attractions. Nor did we know that the detached, older style bungalow at number 61, Phyllis Avenue, four houses up from Martha’s bungalow, had initially belonged to Canadian Sergeant Major W. Farnell, a World War I veteran from Toronto, who had been blinded in action. I learned about him through an editorial feature that had appeared in 1923 in the South Coast Land and Resort Company’s promotional magazine the Peacehaven Post (see chapter 3). There he was described as a cultured and modest man, who had received a D.C.M. (Distinguished Conduct Medal) from the Prince of Wales for his bravery in war (see Fig. 9). After recovering at St Dunstan’s for four months, Farnell had decided to stay in Britain, and had his new home, Maplehurst, built on Phyllis Avenue in 1922.8

Figure 9: Mr. W. Farnell, Peacehaven Post, 1 March 1923.

8 The Peacehaven Post Vol 2, No 19, 1 March 1923, pp 192–193. St. Dunstan’s is a rehabilitant centre for blind service men and women. Farnall is also mentioned in an historical account, The Royal Montreal Regiment, 14th Battalion, C.E.F., 1914–1225 by R.C. Fetherstonhaugh, published in 1927, which noted that Farnell lost ‘both his eyes’, and also that 1,192 servicemen from the 14th Battalion (which had fought at Festubert and Ypres) perished in the fields of France and Flanders.

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Throughout my childhood, we would buy hoover bags from the local DIY shop Poplett’s on the South Coast Road, oblivious to the fact that its owner, Bob Poplett, was Peacehaven’s first unofficial collector and archivist, whose collection now forms the most substantial private collection and is stored at the local library (see chapter 1). These brief snapshots, centered around Martha’s Phyllis Avenue bungalow, are included to provide a personal context for this project and to offer a bigger picture. People have arrived there since 1920 for a multitude of reasons: as World War I veterans, in a drive to improve their health, as visitors and holiday makers, to follow relatives, find employment, or to retire, and, perhaps most importantly, because homes have always been more affordable compared to other places in the South East. It was not until I returned to live in my great-aunt’s bungalow as an adult that I became interested in the town’s beginnings, and in the social, cultural and communicative memories associated with its development. Having spent the last twenty years working on projects that have been inspired by archival research, and with an academic background in social, cultural anthropology and photography, I began to photograph and document some of the early pioneer homes, searched for traces of original features and landmarks and embarked on a journey to track, interrogate and reactivate the town’s layered history through archival objects and conversations with older residents. I chose to write this prologue from a child’s perspective, as my introduction to Peacehaven goes back to childhood. This perspective mirrors the communicative memories of the residents I interviewed, who were invited to start their accounts with childhood memories. This book explores a history of the imagination and memory of Peacehaven during the interwar period through archival residues. For this prologue, I reactivated a small number of archival objects, including maps, vernacular photographs and architectural plans from my own family archive. These support an investigation, across time and from multiple perspectives, of one particular place, its mythology, layered narratives and hidden and contested histories.

Chapter 1 Fabricating Lureland: A history of the imagination and memory Introduction Focusing on the interwar period and tracing mutating agendas, this book investigates the hidden and contested inception of Peacehaven, a speculative development built atop chalk cliffs, straddling the Meridian Line on the Sussex coast near Brighton in South East England. Just over one hundred years ago, the developers of the South Coast Land and Resort Company (SCLRC) drew on pastoral, religious as well as regional landscape imagery in order to fuse circulating garden city ideals with the national Homes for Heroes drive. Tropes and mythologies were carefully crafted by commercial writers and artists tasked with creating stories and graphic images that focused on building a new way of life on the Sussex coast in the aftermath of the Great War. Some of the idealized and symbolic narratives mobilized in the developer’s in-house magazine, Peacehaven Post, have long been forgotten – such as imagining the Estate as an Eden environment and presenting Peacehaven’s founder, Charles William Neville, as a shepherd and prospective buyers as his flock. Other representations of Peacehaven (relating, for example, to health-giving properties, happiness, home ownership and self-determination) managed to capture the imagination of the public and continued to embody hopeful longing. This is the first in-depth ethnographic and interdisciplinary study that explores Peacehaven’s inception through the prism of its original marketing programme and which focuses on the creation of a Lureland mythology. The idea of Lureland acts as a vehicle to explore a history of the imagination and memory of this particular site. Through careful forensic work this book traces visualisations of Lureland across time, identifies the origins of select visual representations and shows how these circulated across different media platforms (early newspaper advertisements, Estate blueprints and maps, the Peacehaven Post, Note: Lureland was an epithet used from 1921 onwards in marketing campaigns for the town of Peacehaven (see chapter 3 on the Peacehaven Post magazine). I found several other uses of Lure, or Lureland in conjunction with the South Downs; e.g. in the first Peacehaven Post a Captain Mackay, who was described as one of the town’s earliest and well-respected residents and a returnee from South Africa, was quoted as having said that the ‘lure of the Downs’ had brought him to Peacehaven (Vol 1, No 1, 1921, p.35). He lived at the Warren, a property that long pre-dated Neville’s arrival. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110734027-002

Introduction

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commissioned and vernacular photographs, postcards, promotional guidebooks and ephemera). This approach uncovers malleable, as well as enduring images of Lureland and makes it possible to explore how the original Estate was first imagined, how it subsequently took shape and how it was received by a wider public. I explore how notions of Lureland have survived in the cultural, communicative and individual memories of older town residents and also track the afterlife of the foundation mythology in contemporary narratives. I examine the residues of an original Lureland vision, which only just remain in the historical fabric of the town itself and can now be found in official town insignia. Peacehaven provides a case study set in a particular local, micro setting, but which is part of a wider interconnected context that was also influenced and shaped by some of the circulating cultural, historical, national and transnational narratives of interwar Britain. Specifically, I interrogate the Troak-Poplett collection, a large, previously underexplored archival collection, and track the town’s genesis through purposeful reactivation of select material, engaging with, responding to and extracting material from the archive for closer analysis. Informed by the pioneering work of Maurice Halbwachs (1985) and Aleida and Jan Assmann (1999, 2000, 2006, 2011) I reconstitute the historical context of archival material and address image analysis and foundation mythology together from a cultural and collective memory perspective.9 Following Nicolas Pethes and Jens Ruchatz’ use of the German term Gedächtnis (memory) as a ‘discursive construct’ (2001, p.13), in this book I adopt the well-established German memory term Gedächtnisgeschichte, with its dual meaning of memory and history, and history of memory, to reflect my understanding of the imbrication of processes of remembrance and history.10 To study this productive interaction at a local level, I build on the Histoire Croisée approach, developed by Michael Werner and Bénédicte Zimmermann (2004, 2006), as an organising methodological framework. My research approach builds on three main strands of enquiry into imagination and memory as forms of historical reconstruction work. In particular, I explore the intercrossings of collective memory and archival traces, with collective and communicative memories. The reactivation of cultural memories through archival research and communicative memories through conversations with long-term residents is supported by a conceptual, visual intervention that reproduces aspects of Lureland and the

9 Halbwachs’ work on collective memory was only rediscovered in the 1980s and the Assmanns played an instrumental role in the dissemination of his ideas by extensively validating and referencing his research. 10 As a native German speaker, I find that some of the terms from the German literature on memory can convey more precisely and with greater economy than in the English language the meaning I intend.

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Chapter 1 Fabricating Lureland: A history of the imagination and memory

town’s Gedächtnisgeschichte in the present. All of these approaches share a productive engagement with history, memory and the imagination. A detailed overview of the book’s methodological framework is given in the final part of this chapter. Fabricating Lureland tracks temporal and spatial constructions of place and investigates anticipated futures of the Estate. This layered approach reveals how the Estate was first constructed through advertising images and rhetoric, how it was subsequently built and that it continues to remain a highly contested site. This can be traced through the reconstruction of narratives that have taken place in the town’s cultural and collective memory over the past one hundred years, beginning with exuberant descriptions of the Estate’s attraction, which were sustained by Neville, and moving on to positive and negative descriptions by a host of successive town and county planners, architects, visitors, travel writers, local historians as well as residents.11 Peacehaven’s unique geographical setting, atop chalk cliffs on the Sussex coastline, and the controversy surrounding its inception as a grid based, plotland development on pastoral Downland, make it a valuable case study. Located less than ten miles east of Brighton it is an intriguing hybrid, with a population, in 2020, of just over 20,000 residents.12 Promotion of the Estate began in January 1916, when the SCLRC placed the first advertisements in national papers, although actual construction did not start until the autumn of 1920. A persuasive and well-connected businessman, Neville drew on a range of reformist discourses to attract buyers, having previously tried his hand in speculative real estate development in Canada.13 Importantly, he brought together a 11 Local history publications include Poplett (1993), and, with Payne (1991); Payne (2000); Troak (2002, 2004, 2008); Bernard and Payne (2000), Bernard (2007, 2018); d’Enno (1985); Brandon (1999, 2010). Valerie Mellor (2000) describes Peacehaven’s initial connection with the Parish of Piddinghoe. On Neville’s relation to the Ussher family, and his first family in Canada, see Bernhard (2017). 12 UK National Statistics estimate. The 2011 Census reported 18579 residents. In 2018, political affiliations include a Labour MP (since 2015) and a mixture of Labour, Conservative, UKIP and independent councillors (see https://www.peacehaventowncouncil.gov.uk/councillors, last accessed 3 January 2019). 13 Across 26 pages of surviving correspondence between Neville, his defence lawyer and the Middlesex Appeal Tribunal dating from between July 1916 to February 1917 show, Neville described himself as a ‘financier and Director of Public Companies’ and argued that he ought to be exempt from military duties on the grounds of his ‘exceptional financial and business occupation’ (see MH-47-32-43 National Archives). He claimed to have been the owner of an apartment building, Coronation Court, in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, a shareholder in a mining syndicate in Northern Ontario, a director of the British Canadian Bond Corporation and the new owner of ‘an Estate of 600 acres at Piddinghoe, Sussex’, which all required his attention

Introduction

15

host of contemporaries from London and further afield – journalists, writers, composers, artists – to help formulate a promotional strategy for the new Estate. Peacehaven’s strategic marketing narratives were influenced by and tapped into national ideals, such as the fresh air movement, the growth of seaside leisure resorts and, by 1918, the aforementioned Homes for Heroes campaign. The garden city narrative, which dominated much of British town planning during the first two decades of the 20th century, was invoked and put to work in the promotion of Peacehaven from 1916 onward as a form of social Utopia.14 The Estate began as a speculative development to attract war veterans and their families wishing to reintegrate into civilian life, people returning from colonial service, Londoners enticed by the lure of life by the sea and who wanted to get away from the health risks that overcrowding and squalor brought with them in the capital. It further drew people seeking to buy or rent a holiday home as well as individuals who liked the idea of taking on a smallholding and becoming self-sufficient. Even Gracie Fields, one of the most famous entertainers of the interwar period, was an early endorser of Peacehaven, buying two houses for her family there (Fields, 1960, pp.61–64). During the interwar period and beyond, there were frequent visual and linguistic references to Peacehaven being a pioneer town and it was likened to American ‘frontier-towns’ or the Australian Outback. From the Estate’s inception late imperialist, nationalist and interwar debates, dreams and tensions accompanied its development. Across the decades, the town became a site of projection, idealized by developers and imagined as a sanctuary by early settlers. While the new Estate was marketed as a garden city development, public voices such as the literary Bloomsbury group’s Virginia Woolf offered early critiques on Peacehaven. In a 1928 diary entry, Virginia noted that ‘all aesthetic quality is there [Peacehaven] destroyed. Only turning & tumbling energy is left’ (1982, p.156). Peacehaven was loathed and reviled by a succession of countryside campaigners, local authorities, urban planners and architectural scholars, who all came to see it as a failed project. As the site was developed on an area of hitherto unspoiled (ibid, p.8). However, the documents also note that by 1916, several of Neville’s Canadian investment ventures were already in liquidation. Although Neville’s application of exemption was refused, he ignored an order to join the Voluntary Training Corps and further summons were issued (ibid, p.2). Neville’s Canadian real estate involvement also included the development of Belgravia, in Edmonton, Alberta; and Coronation in East Central Alberta in 1911 (see King, 1980, p.171). 14 While promoters drew heavily on garden city ideals, I found no reciprocal mention of Peacehaven in any of the garden city literature I looked at. Dennis Hardy, the expert on the garden city movement, corroborated having had a similar experience when trying to find references. Personal correspondence with Hardy, 20 October, 2018.

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Chapter 1 Fabricating Lureland: A history of the imagination and memory

Downland, its example was quickly picked up by preservationists wishing to protect the countryside and Peacehaven became an obvious target. Development at Peacehaven led to the formation of the Society of Sussex Downsmen (SoSD) and also influenced the creation of the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE), which sought to extend town planning rules to include the countryside. In 1928, only twelve years after the launch of Peacehaven’s marketing campaign, Clough Williams-Ellis was to denounce the ‘dissolute acts of spoliation upon the downs of Southern England, which have already suffered Peacehaven’.15 By 1929, Peacehaven was discussed in the Houses of Lords as ‘one of the greatest examples of the want of town planning’ (Hansard, 6 March,1929). This uncomplimentary view became prevalent across Sussex guidebooks, in local travel writing and newspaper features. A 1929 guide by prolific writer S.P.B. Mais described Peacehaven, barely 9 years old, like this: The walk from Rottingdean to Newhaven was, until a few years ago, one of the finest cliff walks in Sussex. It now remains an everlasting eyesore, and a warning against letting the private speculator ruin the English landscape. Where the hideous and tawdry bungalowtown of Peacehaven (which is neither a haven nor peaceful) now stands there was until recently gorse-clad Downland. Now there is a long, tedious street of shacks and shops, with a happily placed pair of gibbets at either end to show where this unpleasant settlement begins and ends. (1929, pp.52–53)

By 1932, the town was described as a ‘rash on the landscape’ (Sharp, 1932) and had become a ‘national symbol’ of shabby development (Mattless, [1998], 2016, p.68). This might have prompted Graham Greene to use Peacehaven for his denouement in one of the final scenes of his novel Brighton Rock (1938) in which he let the murderous protagonist, Pinkie, commit suicide by jumping over cliffs near the Hotel Peacehaven. In a short tract on Peacehaven, published as part of a series of satirical opinion pieces during the 1930s, Virginia Woolf visualized the image of a sea monster devouring the ‘cheap, greedy, gimcrack houses, raw roads, meaningless decorations’ and the entire population of Peacehaven (2014). In her polemic she imagined everything sinking ‘to the bottom of the sea’ (ibid). Woolf deplored the sea and downs having become a mere spectacle for visiting motorists, ‘dipping alternatively into their paper bags for peppermints and into newspapers for comic cuts, while the downs perform for them the same function that the band performs when they eat ices at Lyon’s’ (ibid). Woolf realized that while the lure of Peacehaven’s natural location was being used to sell plots and attract visitors, the developers sought to dominate it, and in the process,

15 London Saturday Review, 4 August 1928, p. 156, book review of England and the Octopus, by Williams-Ellis.

Introduction

17

destroy its Downland character. Her husband Leonard expressed similar views in his 1967 autobiography, where he recalled a walk with Virginia from their Sussex home on 28 July 1914, the day WWI broke out, through open Downland and past sheep and farms to the sea, where Peacehaven would be built only a few years later (Woolf cited in Brandon, 1999, p.170). On subsequent walks following WWI, they would encounter what he later described as a ‘rash of bungalows, shops, shacks, chicken runs, huts and dog kennels’ that just kept growing (ibid., 1999, p.170). Authoritative academic publications such as Nicholas Pevsner’s architectural guide on Sussex ([1965] 2012) joined the chorus of disapproval by making derisory comments at Peacehaven’s expense. Under the heading Peacehaven, Pevsner simply wrote: What is one to say? Peacehaven has been called a rash on the countryside. It is that, and there is no worse in England. It was criticized by many and undoubtedly contributed to the demand for a system of land-use planning. (1965, p.574)

Instead of reading and appraising Peacehaven’s narrative in this oppositional way this book proposes a shift in focus and a more nuanced analysis. It neither adopts the position that its idealized marketing vision was merely followed by a negative reality, nor the argument, purported by preservationists, that it lacked any aspiration. Peacehaven’s ambivalent character and development have astutely been described by one of the town’s oldest residents, and a descendent of original pioneers, Reuben Lanham. Born only seven years after construction commenced Lanham comments that the town grew up with a stigma from the start, ‘a hybrid, slowly acquiring a character, unsure of where it belonged – whether to the Wild West or Suburbia.’16 Tracking the progress of Peacehaven’s genesis from an early garden city discourse and continuing with an exploration of visual representations and photographs of the town as they emerged during the interwar period, a more complex picture comes into view. Through detailed archival research it is possible to locate Peacehaven within a wider national narrative, whilst also foregrounding the town’s particularities and contradictions. I critique Peacehaven’s garden city ideal as a promotional myth and accept that it never became an actual garden city, but I also investigate what was particular and continues to be appealing about this interwar development through direct experience of successive generations of residents. Despite some similarities with other developments further along the coast that promised affordable homes (e.g. Shoreham Beach, see Hardy and Ward,

16 Lanham, ‘Peacehaven Growing Up’, three-page unpublished memoire. N.d.

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Chapter 1 Fabricating Lureland: A history of the imagination and memory

2004), Peacehaven’s genesis is unique. Its location on tall, precarious and windswept chalk cliff tops, initially with no direct access to the beach, on land that had primarily been used for sheep grazing, made it a very unusual and geographically unsuitable location for a new residential development, thus gaining it international notoriety. Peacehaven’s story encapsulates the wider picture of interwar suburban expansion. It exemplifies and typifies many of the arguments, positive and negative, for and against speculative development. Through its study, I have come to understand just how much the image of the English landscape has been connected to national identity, particularly prior to and after the Great War. There is an established literature that convincingly shows that landscapes are as much cultural as they are natural constructs (Hoskins [1955], 2005, Williams 1985, Schama 1995, Hey 2009, Shirley 2015, Lowenthal 2015, Mattless [1998], 2016). These writers have each tracked the reactivation of rurality as a site of modernity. Mattless argues that far from being anti-modern, preservationist arguments need to be understood in terms of the symbolic meanings associated with the countryside (2016, p.31). He describes how images of rural landscapes were regularly used to articulate Englishness during the interwar period as they ‘served to symbolize and refract national identity’ (2016, p.10) due to their alleged ‘mythic qualities’ (ibid.). This is also a point made by Werner and Zimmermann who call for a situated approach to understanding the construction of categories such as ‘landscape’ and show that these are ‘historically dated and partially structured by the hypotheses that helped to form them ‘(2006, p.18). Schama investigates the evocation of Arcadia in the urban imagination and shows that ‘both kinds of Arcadia, the idyllic as well as the wild [. . .] are mutually sustaining’ as the symbolic narrative of pastoral and orderly rely on each other to work (1996, p.525).17 Shirley traces temporal and conceptual boundaries between country and city historically (2015); Williams explores literary uses of the pastoral in relation to urbanity (1975). Lowenthal discusses ideas of the English landscape being defined by insularity (with the white cliffs of Dover acting as a central national symbol), stewardship, continuity and stability, ‘forever a signifier of a history based on nostalgia’ (2014, p.15–38). Hey (2009) explains that there is a longstanding tradition to draw on rural metaphors in historical studies of British towns and illustrates this with an example from Hoskins, who, in 1955, began to refer to ‘the landscape of towns’ rather than ‘townscapes’ in his work. In Peacehaven, as in many such developments, there is evidence of collision between the ideas articulated in marketing discourses and their realization, and

17 Virgil had defined Arcadia as the home of pastoral simplicity and happiness (Brewer & Room Eds. 2001).

Threefold research impetus

19

in the mobilization of images of the countryside for development ends. Neville and his company also sought to project themselves as ‘lovers of Downland’ – significantly, they activated the same imagery and arguments about the area’s outstanding beauty and health benefits as preservationists to draw investors into their project; a fact that seems to have hitherto been overlooked and is a significant argument this book puts forth.

Threefold research impetus The impetus to work on Fabricating Lureland was threefold. I had read a report produced by local government that presented Peacehaven as the key example of speculative, ‘uncontrolled housing development on the South Downs’ (Harris, 2004) and categorically stated that the town was of no historical value. This, and the public emergence of the substantial Troak-Poplett collection, inspired me to formulate a research project to reassess the existent discourse. I was also spurred on by the invitation of local charity, Friends of Downland’s Court, to facilitate a one year, heritage-lottery funded reminiscence project with older Peacehaven residents during 2013–2014.18

Historic character assessment report on Peacehaven In 2004, an independent consultant, Dr. Roland B. Harris, was commissioned by East Sussex County Council to write a historic character report on Peacehaven. Harris concluded that the town no longer had any significant landmarks worth preserving. His tone of voice, and the conclusion he reached, were scathing: Arguably, it is the main South Coast Road, with (in 2004) its burnt-out hotel, a thin straggle of shops, the 1916 pylons, and occasional boarded-up windows, that retains something of the frontier-town feel of the pre-war settlement, and it is only this that (Harris, 2004, p.16) most non-residents see as they speed through.19

Harris concluded that even if the town might once have had valuable historical features, these had all now been demolished. Essentially this meant that none of the surviving original houses, constructed in the early years of the town’s 18 Downlands Court offers assisted living and extra care housing in Peacehaven. The association runs a local charity which works in the community and offers activities for residents in the area supported by Sue Sayers, the community participation worker. 19 The burnt out hotel was called Meridian Lodge.

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Chapter 1 Fabricating Lureland: A history of the imagination and memory

development, would be listed and that any and all of the remaining buildings across Peacehaven could potentially be demolished to make way for higher density redevelopment. His report made it easier for the council to grant planning permissions and for local developers to disregard the potential cultural value of original buildings, and so they have continued to pull them down to maximize profit. To this day, the town has no real core. Although the Meridian shopping centre, completed in 1978, was built in an attempt to create a central area it has been largely unsuccessful in achieving this goal.20 The planning and construction phase took five years and had already prompted an expectant 1973 newspaper headline in the Evening Argus that, ‘shoppers will be able to walk to the district centre without meeting traffic, and also to the new ‘heart’ of Peacehaven, the brand-new town centre’ (31 August, 1973, p.25). Peacehaven has several commercial and civic areas where people intersect, but the town structure remains polycentric. There is still only one way into the town from Brighton and one way out – the main South Coast Road, which runs through to Newhaven and beyond. The town is now dominated by heavy through traffic, prompting the creation, in 2017, of a local lobby group to devise possible solutions to rising problems of air pollution. Most passersby will fail to recognize any of its material, historical, social or symbolic particularities. Harris was right to conclude that much of original Peacehaven has already been lost. But residents and non-residents alike could still see more than Harris acknowledged, if only they looked more closely at some of the remaining features that continue to reference Peacehaven’s pioneer era, both along the South Coast Road but especially further inland, on some of the avenues and roads as well as along the clifftop Promenade.

The Troak-Poplett collection A second, major opportunity to track Peacehaven’s narrative in real depth came in the form of a large archival collection, which represents an amalgamation of two private collections amassed by local collectors and businessmen Malcolm Troak (1933–2010) and Bob Poplett (1916–2008) over many decades.21 Poplett moved to

20 There are currently (in 2021) plans by a private developer to completely reconfigure the site again. 21 This collection had been kept largely out of public view. Christine Poplett told me that her late husband had set up a private museum in his mother’s bungalow in the 1980s for friends and family. When the bungalow was subsequently sold and demolished, the collection disappeared into storage again. Poplett also kept a detailed record of how Peacehaven was affected by the Second World War which is held in the Troak-Poplett collection.

Threefold research impetus

21

Peacehaven in 1923 aged seven. Over many years he kept a slim business card folder turned scrapbook, which contained more than one hundred separate entries and anecdotes on Peacehaven’s early years and which seems to have been a key reference point for his first and only book on Peacehaven’s pictorial history (1993). Poplett’s notes and book promote some of the town’s myths which are interlaced with factual narratives: they constitute the imaginative effort of the town’s first unofficial archivist to chronicle Peacehaven’s genesis. Poplett saw himself as a privileged custodian, as he explained in the introduction to his book, of the personal collection comprising hundreds of ‘pictures, plans, maps, written material and documents’ amassed over a 60-year period (1993, n.p.). Much of Poplett’s collection was passed on to Malcolm Troak who also collected memorabilia and had compiled four local history picture books on Peacehaven (2002, 2006, 2007, 2008). After Troak’s sudden death, his widow Brenda donated much of the combined material to the Peacehaven Library in late 2011. At that time, I was contacted by East Sussex County Council archivist Michelle Brooker, who gave me full access to this substantial and largely unexamined material as she was familiar with earlier documentary photographic projects I had undertaken. The collection had arrived at the library branch with no catalogue index or any cross-referencing between the two collections, along with a number of large cardboard boxes and personal notes by Poplett, Troak and others. Photocopied articles and prints, and other loose ephemera items were placed on shelving in a store room, where they remained initially (see Fig. 1.1).

Figure 1.1: View of the combined TroakPoplett collection when it first arrived at the Peacehaven Library, and was stored in the librarians’ staff office, 2013. Photograph J.W.

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Chapter 1 Fabricating Lureland: A history of the imagination and memory

Over several years and many visits, I was able to establish all of the collection’s contents. The combined Troak-Poplett collection contains a wealth of archival and photographic material, collated from public, private and commercial sources which are of diverse provenance. This includes early marketing material, original maps, town plans and directories, the 1920s promotional magazines Peacehaven Post and Downland Post,22 and two Economic homes booklets, all produced by the SCLRC. There are residential and business directories, club and society minute books, large blueprints of the Estate and many postcards and photographs. As there is no comprehensive archive of Peacehaven material anywhere else, this collection is of huge historical value to researchers and local residents and represents a significant part of the town’s cultural heritage. I was able to regularly access the blueprints in the staff office and, moving from one map to the next, could learn how the SCLRC had originally envisaged the Estate’s layout and also how Estate boundaries and originally planned sections had shifted, were modified or omitted during subsequent iterations of Estate lay-outs during 1920, 1921 and 1922 (see Fig. 1.2).

Figure 1.2: Series of blueprints, Troak-Poplett collection 2013. Photograph J.W.

22 Subtitled A Journal of Downland, the Peacehaven Post was the SCLRC’s widely promoted inhouse magazine, launched in September 1921. Distribution was local and national, and increasingly aimed to reach an international audience. According to their circulation figures, the magazine attained a circulation run of 5000 copies by September 1922 which had increased to 10000 in March 1924 (Vol II, No 3 March 1924, p.95) when it was renamed Downland Post.

Threefold research impetus

23

Access to the collection, which came with the permission to make photographs, gave me inspiration to develop this research project and to explore in more depth some of the visions and rhetoric I was thus able to reconstitute. This helped give the collection some structure and I sought to gain a deeper understanding of the wider context within which to situate Peacehaven’s genesis. The combined collection is now stored in four filing cabinets totaling 21 archival storage boxes, and a large map cabinet within the main section of the library. Each drawer contains a number of storage boxes which hold the archival material, some of which has been put into archival sleeves. Seven ‘overspill’ boxes, containing items that are too large for the cabinets are kept in the library manager’s office. Since arriving at the library, the two collections have been afforded a certain historical value and in 2015, they were part catalogued by two volunteers.

The Peacehaven pioneers In 2013 I developed workshops and facilitated reminiscence sessions at the Peacehaven Library and at Downland Court with older local residents who wanted to share personal memories and learn more about Peacehaven’s history (see Fig. 1.3).23 The group was named the Peacehaven Pioneers, as many of the participants had grown up in Peacehaven and could draw on childhood memories of Peacehaven from the interwar years. Participants included Christine Poplett, the wife of Bob Poplett, and Malcolm Troak’s widow Brenda who would bring additional mementos along to our meetings. Drawing on popular education techniques, as outlined later in this chapter, we made collective and personal historical timelines and explored participants’ lived experiences. Through photo elicitation and creative writing sessions, several participants recorded their own experiences and in 2014 we put together a travelling exhibition, shown first in the Peacehaven library, then the Community school, the local Health Centre, and finally at the Brighthelm Centre, a community venue in Brighton.

23 During 2013, three University of Brighton Media students filmed some of these workshops as part of their participatory media production assignment.

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Chapter 1 Fabricating Lureland: A history of the imagination and memory

Figure 1.3: Peacehaven Library, Reminiscence session, 2013. Photograph courtesy Zala Jamnik.

The exhibition, which combined images and text, explored the reasons why people initially moved to Peacehaven and why they continue to do so. Through this process, participants had opportunities to share their knowledge and also began to value their lived experiences and recognize these as having importance. Elsewhere, Sarah Mills (2013) shows how researchers can be of service to non-academic communities, and reflects on her own positionality as volunteer and academic while carrying out her own doctoral research. She concludes that working with people, rather than conducting research about them, resulted in enduring bonds (2013, p.16). We had a similar experience, and following on from the exhibition, we continued to meet once a month at the group’s suggestion. A smaller number of core participants now have a keen sense of urgency to share stories. Together, we made a historical Peacehaven calendar in 2016 and also set up a heritage preservation group in 2017. A shared goal has been to get at least one of the Pioneer bungalows listed in order to save it from demolition and set up a local museum. It was this combination of Harris’ character assessment report (2004) concluding that none of Peacehaven’s buildings were of any historical merit, coupled with the arrival, at Peacehaven Library, of a rich collection of archival material and my work with the reminiscence group gave me the motivation to research the town’s contested interwar genesis in much further depth and from a memory perspective. Each of these three starting points constitute and embody distinct forms of cultural and collective memory. Looking at the construction of Peacehaven through this kaleidoscope has made particular and unexpected narratives relating to the town’s Gedächtnisgeschichte visible for the first time. This book reflects these research

Organisation of the book

25

triggers methodologically. I wanted to capture the stories of residents whose recollections stretch back to the town’s early years while this was still possible. To address how the town’s genesis is remembered and reconstructed, I set up and recorded conversations with some of Peacehaven’s oldest long-term residents, several of whom are direct descendants of the earliest settlers. Some original homes and landmarks reflecting Peacehaven’s early vision still exist; however these are threatened and fast disappearing as the town has undergone large-scale redevelopment over the last couple of decades. Save for a single shepherd’s cot on private land in North Peacehaven, listed in the 1970s, no other buildings or structures enjoy listed status. For that reason, I had already photographed some of the original bungalows and surviving landmarks for a photographic project I had titled On the Edge, as I wanted to at the very least preserve them as visual records. Once I gained access to the Troak-Poplett collection, I realized that the town’s origins were much more complex than I could have ever imagined and warranted an expansion of this photographic project into a more in-depth, academic study.

Organisation of the book The upcoming chapters tell a complex, at times contradictory account of Peacehaven’s interwar development and reveal complex changes as well as continuities in the town’s cultural memory. In addition to working with the Troak-Poplett collection, this book also mobilizes archival documents held at The Keep, the British Library, Newhaven Museum, the National Archives, The Museum of English Rural Life at Reading and RIBA archives. I also met and interviewed local dignitaries, including successive Mayors of Peacehaven and Telscombe and the town clerk between 2013–2017, and local historians Douglas d’Enno, Stanley Bernard and Geoffrey Mead.24 Just as importantly, I was given access to personal archives and collections of Peacehaven residents, many of whom I met during the course of doing this research, in order to explore additional material not present in the Troak-Poplett collection.25 I also collected new archival material (interwar

24 There are some factual inaccuracies as well as disagreements in some of the earlier local studies literature, possibly due to a reliance on using Neville’s own accounts and other firsthand testimonies without subsequent corroboration with publicly held records that may not have been accessible pre-internet and in their life-times. Those local historians still active are actively undertaking revisions as material becomes more accessible. 25 The late Margaret Parks and Reuben Lanham, as well as John Harrison, Margaret Palmer, Les Hunter, Jill Hazel and Peter Seed gave me access to their private collections.

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Chapter 1 Fabricating Lureland: A history of the imagination and memory

marketing magazines, postcards, photographs) missing from existing holdings and have constantly expanded and added to the collection. Secondary sources include a brief history produced by East Sussex County Council in 1979 and Dennis Hardy and Colin Ward’s authoritative study Arcadia for All ([1984] 2004; see my chapter 2).26 So far, I have described the circumstances and motivation that sparked the research. The remainder of chapter 1 outlines how the book is organized and then moves on to discuss the methodological framework used. Chapter 2 sketches out Peacehaven’s origins and revisits consecutive promotional campaigns initiated to promote the original Estate from 1916 up to 1923. A purposefully selected bricolage of primarily visual archival material, including advertisements, original marketing brochures, blueprints, early Estate maps, newspaper features and a set of promotional postcards are deconstructed, updated and reactivated. In exploring their provenance, original cultural meanings are retraced where possible. Moreover, I seek to understand their lasting significance in the present. This process makes visible how marketing imagery circulated through national competitions and promotions. The chapter offers a timeline for the various marketing and construction projects that occurred, all of which were informed by Ebenezer Howard’s garden city ideals. I explore the extent to which early planning ideals tapped into wider national debates in British town planning, in particular the national Homes for Heroes mission and a resolve to address the shortage of affordable homes across the South East of England. Frequently the SCLRC appropriated and moulded these public objectives into commercial marketing language in order to sell plots of land. Intercrossings of material reveal that much of the early marketing had focused on creating visions of a prosperous development, anticipating the Estate’s successful future, several years before actual construction could begin. Through discursive imagery, marketeers further visualized the past of a place that had not yet come into existence and invented a foundation mythology, explored in chapter 3. Chapter 3 focuses on the first anniversary volume of the Peacehaven Post magazine (1921–1922). Aside from a short, but excellent section in Ward and Hardy’s Arcadia for All, where the authors foregrounded the magazine’s focus on the Estate’s alleged health-giving properties ([1984], 2004 pp.79–83), little academic research on this magazine exists. Through an analysis of representative images and editorials, chapter 3 reveals how magazine staff attempted to activate the imagination of their readers and portrayed Peacehaven as an Edenic

26 Hibbs, 1979. n.d. (c.1979) East Sussex County Council No. P/191. Hardy & Ward’s influential book was originally published in 1984 and is based on research undertaken in the late 1970s and early 1980s; it was reprinted in 2004.

Organisation of the book

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environment: contributors included the lyricist and composer team Felix and George Powell, whose song Pack up your troubles had become the most famous song of the First World War. The journalist and author, George Sims, wrote the magazine’s first feature article and coined the term, Lureland. Artist and writer Gordon Volk was tasked with devising a visual programme of persuasive graphic images that would document Peacehaven’s progress and promote its future promise to potential buyers. Noticeable amongst Volk’s choices of symbolic imagery in relation to the emerging town is a focus on a mythologized countryside over depictions of urbanity. Indeed, covers of the Peacehaven Post’s first twelve months depict virtually untainted rurality coupled with leisure activities. Three of Volk’s key visual motifs are discussed in detail in chapter 3 and I refer to these in other chapters as interconnecting threads. The origins of these three motifs in particular are traced through time. My selection was motivated by the significance of these visual representations of the emerging town that appeared in the Peacehaven Post, to the articulation of the idea of Peacehaven. The first of three main motifs mobilized by Volk in his visual programme is of a bird’s eye view of the estate, with the sun radiating outwards.27 This motif alludes to the ideal of a garden city, where town and country are harmoniously aligned, thus tapping into both the social reform and garden city agendas, which had gathered strength at that time. Connoting a chosen place, there are twelve signposts all pointing towards the promise of, amongst other beneficial outcomes, health, home-life and freedom. The image of a young woman, with slight variations in age (sometimes she is still a girl, sometimes already an adult) was a second popular motif. This motif was frequently mobilized by Volk to embody notions of youth, springtime and new beginnings, but also leisure and peace. Across the pages of the magazine, this motif became synonymous with the ‘birth’ of Peacehaven.28 The third significant motif discussed in chapter 3 is of a man using a spade; he has just begun to lay foundations for his future house – a thought bubble indicates that he is already visualizing his home once complete.29 Each of these images, while drawing on familiar visual tropes from the past, were aimed to propel the magazine’s readership into an imagined future. Chapter 4 contrasts these three particular motifs with commissioned photographs of Peacehaven Estate’s emerging topography that were published in the Peacehaven Post between 1921–1923. Taken by professional photographer Joseph James Hill, the photographs chronicle the construction of key landmarks 27 The Twelve “Posts” of Peacehaven, in Peacehaven Post, Vol 1, No 12, August 1922, p.329, G. Volk. 28 Cover image, Peacehaven Post Vol 1, No 3, 7 November 1921, G. Volk. 29 ‘A New Year’s Resolution’ in Peacehaven Post, Vol 1, No 5, 2 January 1922, p. 131, G. Volk.

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Chapter 1 Fabricating Lureland: A history of the imagination and memory

and reflect increased commercial, cultural and social activities and the addition of shops, societies, schools and clubs as the population increased. Through Hill’s pictures, the town’s early years, and the arrival of new residents and new houses can be tracked. Following on from Edwards’ suggestion, that ‘material practices of photography [. . .] reveal much about how the makers of the photographs themselves saw the historical potential of their images’ (cited in Tucker 2009, p.7) the chapter examines how photographs were used in the Peacehaven Post, and what kind of a future the captions and juxtapositions of images, drawings and text sought to conjure up. Where possible, Hill’s published photographs are contrasted with vernacular photographs taken by amateur photographer, Frank Parks, who worked on the Peacehaven Estate from 1920 onward and became a lifelong resident. The chapter concludes with a brief section on early 1920s’ postcard views of the Estate that were promoted through souvenir albums and concertina booklets, and as individual picture postcards that were meant to function as souvenir items for visitors. This introduces a further viewpoint, which echoes visual elements that also exist in Volk’s, Hill’s and Park’s images: Avery of Brighton celebrated the Estate’s natural location in a commercial album that was produced as a souvenir item. A leporello booklet with photographs taken by Hill promoted new amenities such as the construction of the Hotel Peacehaven, new shops and beach access. Commercially produced postcards and souvenir booklets, as the final part of chapter 4 describes, changed from pastoral, romanticized representations that combined photography and drawing. to exclusively documentary photographic depictions of the Estate as it developed during the 1920s. Chapter 5 extends Peacehaven’s historical timeline from 1923 to the late 1930s and introduces the wider debates that its development on open Downland generated. The SCLRC’s call to ‘Own your own bit of England’ prompted a local and national backlash, and pressure groups were formed to control further housing developments in the countryside. An increasingly negative external perception added to growing tensions on the Estate. In an attempt to drown out a growing chorus of dissenters, the SCLRC’s marketing images became more idealized in their depictions of a rural idyll, while developers and builders continued to transform open Downland into a built-up area. This chapter further highlights the ambivalent and hybrid character of marketing imagery and it also makes visible long-lost connections that existed between some of the key players of countryside preservation groups and Peacehaven’s developers and marketers in the 1920s. This included Kipling scholar and founder of the Society of Sussex

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Downsmen, R. Thurston Hopkins, who became an unlikely ally, when he endorsed the Estate in 1924 at the invitation of Gordon Volk.30 Chapter 6 tracks shifting perspectives of Peacehaven through nine promotional guidebooks and souvenir items issued during the interwar period and explores their goals, provenance, marketing and visual strategies. A close reading of the guidebooks and their covers helps trace similar and divergent visions: while each painted a forward-looking and largely positive picture of life on the Estate, the individual guides fluctuated between a modernist ideal and a more vernacular, conservative one. A move away from the garden city focus can be seen played out across successive interwar guidebooks; however, all guidebooks continued to mobilize imagery and arguments about the area’s outstanding beauty and health benefits to draw in buyers. The Estate was intended to operate as a residential space for permanent homeowners, as well as a recreational space for second homeowners and short-term holidaymakers. The development of a local community, with emerging social clubs and societies was coupled with a sense of connectedness to Nation and Empire. Guide book narratives were shaped and reshaped by internal and external forces, such as the building boom of the 1920s, the rise of the entertainment and leisure industries, followed by the stock market crash in 1929, which precipitated a huge depression, and a less dynamic period of development during the 1930s and leading up to the Second World War. Chapter 7 focuses on the communicative and collective memories of older Peacehaven residents. Since Peacehaven’s foundation is now just out of living memory, and the respondents are one or two generations removed from its inception, they mainly had to reconstruct secondhand experiences, but could also draw on personal childhood memories. The interview process was guided by an ethnographic approach, using photo elicitation. This was combined with popular education methodology, which acknowledges research participants as experts of their own, lived experience and seeks to understand their perspectives and viewpoints (Freire, 1970). Through a dialectical interview process, key themes were identified together with the interviewees, who recognized the importance of sharing and creating new knowledge about the town’s genesis. This supports Dydia deLyser’s observation that scholarship can ‘give back to and forward the agendas of the people whose lives we study’, and aid communities to better understand their past (2014, p.93) through practising participatory historical geography. This approach, which shares close affinities with the Freirean

30 See Thurston Hopkins’ feature article in the Downland Post, January 1924, ‘A Sussex Downs Society’. See Appendix 2 for brief biographies of the magazine’s main contributors.

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Chapter 1 Fabricating Lureland: A history of the imagination and memory

method, resulted in compelling narratives and accounts. It gave agency to individuals whose families’ lives are interconnected with Peacehaven’s early years. Recalling life on the Estate as children, and looking back from the perspective of old age, was immensely evocative for many of the interviewees. Most respondents shared an emotional attachment to place and I paid close attention to the role of nostalgia and ways of accounting for time, as a dominant perception was that life in Peacehaven had been better in the past.31 Chapter 8 activates and re-imagines the past through creative practice and an engagement with lost and surviving landmarks, historical photographs and local communities. The ideas presented here are informed by architectural historian Jane Rendell and her creative techniques of site-marking and site-writing which explore her emotional responses to historical photographs of buildings that are either threatened by demolition or are already lost (2010, 2011). One of the boxes in the Troak-Poplett collection contained a set of black and white photographs taken for the local estate agent Jack Wagstaff in the 1950s. These featured original houses from the interwar period that were being sold just a few decades after being built. With the aid of a 1930s town map I went for walks and realized that many of these houses are now long gone. I also made documentary photographs of surviving interwar homes to add to my visual record of original landmarks. This approach was complemented by commemorative sitespecific interventions performed as public events in which I sought to suggest what Peacehaven had looked like during the interwar period. Archival photographs of lost landmarks were projected from the undercliff promenade onto one of the town’s key features, its white chalk cliffs, in close proximity to the iconic Meridian Monument.32 Through these interventions, new, layered impressions emerged as photographs of lost structures were temporarily embedded within an eroding, chalk landscape. These evocations of archival imagery made visible earlier visions for and versions of the Estate, and suggested a critique of the ongoing practice by developers to pull down older style homes and replace with more densely packed housing. The process of sharing my growing knowledge of Peacehaven’s past with local audiences, and gathering new archival images and knowledge from audience members, is part of a dialogical engagement and chapter 8 describes these interventions and their reception via an attending public.

31 The chapter updates Hardy and Ward’s interviews, conducted for Arcadia for All by a group of their students from Middlesex University 40 years ago. 32 Built in 1936 to mark Peacehaven’s location on the Greenwich Meridian Line. The monument’s inauguration and symbolic meaning are discussed in chapter 6.

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In the final chapter I juxtapose two external perspectives on Peacehaven by Sir John Betjeman (in 1969) and photographer Tony Ray-Jones (in 1970) to explore the persistence of different perspectives of the town. I also seek out surviving visual referents to Peacehaven’s foundation mythology, which had spurred the imagination of the town’s early settlers, and that have endured across time and space. I investigate residual traces that continue to be palpable in the town’s popular and cultural memory today, for example on the town council’s logo, the naming of civic spaces (such as the council’s Anzac room), the football club logo and through enactment, at annual community events, of aspects of the town’s genesis. However, original meanings have mutated and changed. I revisit a small number of symbolic images, including the image of white cliffs, Downland and representations of the Meridian Monument. I also track the reemergence, within contemporary narratives, of garden city ideals to show that many of these are still present today. This chapter highlights the continued existence of some of the mythology that had been invented and was represented through Volk’s imagery. While some of it has been maintained, much has been lost.

Research methodology: Histoire Croisée As will be clear from the discussion above, of central interest to this study was the adoption of different viewpoints and a range of historical and archival sources in order to open up new ways of understanding the town’s genesis, its continuities and discontinuities and to acknowledge the temporalities and nuanced facets of Lureland as an object of study. I had, therefore, to find a specific methodological solution that made the interpretation and evaluation of different source materials possible, that facilitated a range of historical viewpoints and was able to highlight their entanglements. For that reason, the Histoire Croisée methodology, developed as a relational practice by Michael Werner and Bénédicte Zimmermann (2004, 2006) provides the central conceptual framework and research approach which I adopted, and extend, for this study. This method was developed within a social science context and both researchers are concerned with understanding cultural representations, histories and experiences through at least one and up to four categories of analysis which are outlined below. In its most basic and general application the Histoire Croisée term refers to the juxtaposition of different viewpoints in the practice of research, the bringing together of different temporal and positional perspectives or world views within a single methodological framework. The resulting intercrossings of Histoire Croisée facilitate ‘a structuring cognitive activity that, through various acts of framing, shapes a space of understanding’ (2004, p.39).

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The authors, who sought to challenge purely comparative studies, were motivated by the idea of relational approaches, but sought to broaden these. Emerging out of migration, acculturation and transcultural studies, this interdisciplinary method seeks to unite anthropologists, historians, sociologists. Werner and Zimmermann originally developed this approach while engaged in postcolonial research within a Francophone context and in order to challenge power dynamics and encouraging a shift and questioning of perspectives, whilst highlighting differences and interdependencies (2004, p.49). There is now a precedent to using this method to amplify crossings and interfaces that reside at different temporal and spatial levels and are difficult to capture (2004, p.31, also Werner and Zimmermann 2006; Bailleul, 2004, 2006, 2010). Werner and Zimmermann combine past and present perspectives and work with overlapping histories and temporalities. In order to achieve this, they mobilize four categories of analysis that each explore different sets of intercrossings and can be adapted as a research methods tool box. The first category looks at intercrossings within the object of study itself. With a focus on source material including photographs, written documents and place, this method calls for and values a multiplicity of complementary and opposing perspectives, thus enriching the reading and interpretation of archival material and providing an interface for archival research. Through the engagement of interdisciplinary methods such as visual analysis, archival research and reflective practice, a richer and varied discussion and a more complex way of knowing and understanding develops (2004, p.49). The second category of analysis investigates intercrossing viewpoints. Werner and Zimmermann refer to these as Regards Croisés, which recognizes the plurality of perception and experience and works with juxtapositions, and can also be a standalone method.33 For example, Regards Croisés was recently used by French urban studies scholar Hélène Bailleul (2010) as part of a study in which she worked with local residents in a French urban neighbourhood that had fallen into disrepair, due to disinvestment. She wanted to learn how residents invest and give meaning to familiar urban spaces and how these could be enhanced. Her collaborative social-spatial research accounted for differential experiences and micro histories. Bailleul described the growing chasm between town planners, architects and residents, whose voices and lived experiences were not being heard. In her study, she worked with simulated images developed by architects and sought the

33 See Winckler, 2009, where I first worked with this method to contrast the European travel account of a 19th century African guide, James Henry Dorugu, with that of the European explorer Heinrich Barth, his employer.

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input of older and younger residents. She also explored residents’ mental images of place, investigating the symbolic and functional values specific places were invested with, and asking how these could possibly be improved and redesigned in future. Her research confirmed that people’s relationship to place is based on personal experiences and interactions with and in space. Older people had a stronger sense of the neighbourhood’s identity based on its prior economic role, whereas younger residents could relate less, and were not attached to the preservation of, for example, an old factory building whose functional usage had ceased. As noted above, this approach has already been successfully used within archival and living memory research and as Bailleuil’s research approach shared here has helped to illustrate, it can facilitate the exploration of spatial memory in intergenerational projects. I explore Regards Croisés alongside Histoire Croisée and investigate the juxtaposition and imbrication of viewpoints (see particularly chapter 7 for contemporary narratives that recollect past experiences of place, and, for historical regards, chapters 4 and 5). The application of a range of contemporary and historical Regards Croisés to this study reveals gaps and foregrounds some of the spaces in between that had not hitherto been captured in any studies. Most importantly, this category helps to highlight the extent to which myths and reality were intermeshed in the Lureland project, as the following chapters illustrate. The third category of analysis seeks to understand the relationship between the object of study and the researcher. It involves the researcher as an active and engaged participant, asking for the position of the observer to be acknowledged (2004, p.34). I am aware that my status as a former Peacehaven resident has given me the advantage of some insider perspectives while I have also at times had to navigate differing viewpoints expressed by other residents and people I met through this research project. Drawing on my training in social and cultural anthropology, and in tandem with Histoire Croisée methodology, throughout this book I work both with an internal position (see specifically preface, chapters 7 & 8 where I acknowledge my own intersubjectivity, entanglement and advocacy role) but also seek out external positions and critical distance (see chapters 2, 3, 4, 5, 7 and 9). In earlier research projects I had to learn to be reflectively attentive. This is largely due to the fact that as a professional photographer, the medium of photography itself affords an outsider and insider perspective: making work requires immersion and proximity, but experiences and encounters are at the same time mediated through a photographic lens. The perspectives of focus, depth of field and macro, micro, wide angle or telephoto lens could indeed be related to the Histoire Croisée framework itself as these call for a range of different viewing angles and categories of scale.

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Chapter 1 Fabricating Lureland: A history of the imagination and memory

One consequence of using Histoire Croisée to frame research is that it can offer a solution to the dilemma of partiality, as it acknowledges plurality, intersection and convergence in active, dynamic ways. Relationships and interactions are investigated through one another, and the effects of these intercrossings are explored further, and can be repeated in process-oriented approaches to gain deeper insights (2004, p.38). This same level of reflexivity is brought to bear on the fourth category, which calls for an exploration of the intercrossings of scales, for example the relationship between macro and micro histories. Most importantly, Werner and Zimmermann suggest not to read these scales in opposition to each other. Instead, they show that macro and micro histories are interconnected and influence each other, are imbricated and intermeshed. This also holds true for categories of analysis such as the national and the local, urban and rural, official and vernacular narratives and visual referents that contain symbolic and literal representations. Histoire Croisée explores connected and shared histories, and reveals the entanglement of discourses at local, national and transnational levels. It seeks to bring new constellations into focus. Examining connections between formations that are historically constituted, this approach acknowledges the partiality and malleability of experience, culture and society.34 I recognize that some elements of Histoire Croisée and its four categories of analysis can be related to approaches regularly employed by anthropologists and cultural historians, as can be seen in studies in the connected fields of cultural anthropology (Edwards, 2009), cultural geography and history (Schwartz, 2009), memory studies (Assmann, 2006), visual studies (Rose, 2006) and archival scholarship (Bastian, 2014, DeLyser, 2014, Mills, 2013). Of particular interest to the approaches noted above is the concept of multiple possible readings of Peacehaven’s early development and the interrogation of particular viewpoints by way of comparison. These works are all cited below and have influenced my own research approach. However, the bringing together of the four categories of analysis that Histoire Croisée contains, including Regards Croisés and their adaptability and relatability to this study and its multiple research and memory strands have given this book a clear, comprehensive and coherent base. This is the reason why I have adopted and adjusted Werner and Zimmermann’s relational framework. I see this work of reconstruction through the vehicle of Histoire Croisée methodology as a dynamic, ongoing process that relies on an interplay between experience, remembrance and the imagination. This process evokes and works with the past in order to reveal change and continuity, create new meanings and productive insights in the present. Below, I show that processes of remembrance

34 Werner and Zimmermann. 2004, p. 15–49.

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and imagination do not take place in opposition to each other, but instead come together to facilitate an active, creative engagement with the past, present and future. I build on the productive relationship between memory and the imagination to reconstruct narratives. I track historical visualizations of memory and am interested in the culture of remembrance and conceptual, aesthetic forms that the reactivation of histories can take. I also draw on the work of Emily Keightley and Michael Pickering, who emphasize that ‘imagination is vital in reactivating memory, and memory is vital in stimulating imagination’ (2012, p.51) and seek to describe the interplay between situated and mediated experience that humans move between. Keightley and Pickering utilize the term mnemonic imagination in order to show how this can facilitate the reconstruction of experience by ‘hold[ing] the work of memory and imagination in productive tension’ (Keightley and Pickering, 2012, p.198). I work with this concept in some detail throughout the book in order to emphasize imaginative properties of remembering (see particularly chapters 7 and 8). Keightley and Pickering take an epistemological approach and are mainly interested in the critical potential of remembering and the productive relationship and interconnectedness of memory and the imagination linked to individual and collective experience, thus taking a narrower focus than Werner and Zimmermann. I completely concur with Keightley and Pickering that experience is a dialectic process and I build on the concept of the mnemonic imagination, primarily as it relates to communicative and aesthetic experience, but crucially, I propose its inclusion within the Histoire Croisée methodology as a fifth category of analysis used to consider the intercrossings between memory and the imagination within communicative as well as cultural memory.

The main three strands of enquiry into imagination and memory as forms of historical reconstruction work If Histoire Croisée has provided the main methodological framework for the study, I have nevertheless drawn on the wider literature on cultural memory, in particular in relation to visual materials, which are a central component of this enquiry. My own practice consists of investigating archival traces within the context of collective memory and migration narratives. A key research question has been to probe how neglected archival sources can reveal forgotten histories that in turn reshape our understanding and awareness of the present. Applying a creative and interpretive approach, I have frequently used the medium of photography to think through cultural, historical narratives and have foregrounded

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Chapter 1 Fabricating Lureland: A history of the imagination and memory

different voices and viewpoints as advocated by the Histoire Croisée and Regards Croisés methodology in personal artistic projects.35 I draw on a select number of methodological approaches used within social studies and more specifically within the field of memory and cultural memory studies that engage with histories of memory, or Gedächtnisgeschichten. There are crossovers into social and cultural historiography, visual studies, visual and cultural anthropology, oral history and cultural geography. This next section reflects on contemporary developments in memory studies and links these to my research. Debates on memory within the expanding field of memory studies, both in the English-speaking world and also in Germany and France, have been a key stimulus. As I show, my research is embedded within a German and French tradition of scholarship on memory. Astrid Erll highlights an interdisciplinary and international preoccupation with memory as ‘a key concept of academic discourse across established fields’ over the past two decades (2011, p.1, 2). Addressing transdisciplinary, international dimensions, Erll acknowledges significant national differences within methodological approaches to the study of memory, and indeed points to ‘veritable guerres de memoires’ within and across disciplines (2011, p.10). A decade earlier Pethes and Ruchatz discussed memory research within a German speaking research context, as well as a transnational and interdisciplinary phenomenon with many crossovers, interconnections and entry points (2001). The aim of their memory lexicon was not to pin the term memory down, but to understand its discursive qualities and to problematize and articulate forms of memory in distinct ways (2001, p.13).36 These shifts in perspective, away from a culture of grand narratives, are at least partially due to a newer – now more established – culture of memory that is less linear and more decentralized, concerning itself increasingly with localized, everyday, micro histories, private archives, dispersed narratives as well as transnational and ‘travelling’ memories (Erll 2011). These acknowledge the movement of memory, its discontinuities and ruptures, and the continuous acceleration of new online data from infinite locations that makes memory research both richer and more fragile. Across interdisciplinary fields, an interaction with cultures of

35 See, for example, my photographic projects Two Sisters (2004), Retracing Heinrich Barth (2008), Traces (2012). For academic evaluations of artistic engagement with archival source material see, for example, Winckler (2013), Brinson & Winckler (2015). 36 In the German language there is a greater variety of memory terms and a clear distinction between ‘Memory’ – Erinnerung, and Gedächtnis – which in English translates into either memory, retention, remembrance or mind depending on context. This is reflected in a vast and nuanced literature on memory in culture and histories of memory in German speaking memory research clusters.

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commemoration, and an exploration of the uses of the past within contemporary culture has been another major preoccupation in recent years, constituting an openness towards multi-stranded readings of the past.37 Welker (2016) recently proposed the need for closer investigations into the relationship between different forms of micro memory, personal memory and cultural imagination. His theoretical approach contains overlaps with Keightley and Pickering’s definition of the mnemonic imagination and helps to illustrate that within a German cluster of memory studies, greater emphasis had already been placed on the interdependence between memory and the imagination in processes of recall and remembrance. Halbwachs, the Assmanns and Keightley and Pickering have in common a shared understanding that memory is a discursive construct that is dependent on a relationship between memory and the imagination. Of course, the reconstruction of histories and experience is an ongoing and dynamic mnemonic process, also interdependent upon political, social and economic factors as shown by Werner and Zimmermann (2006) and psychological factors such as the ability to recall. The groundbreaking work of German memory experts J. Assmann (1997, 2000) and expanded upon by A. Assmann (1999, 2006, 2011) not only updated but also developed the intellectual base within the field of memory studies. In a now seminal text on cultures of remembrance, and reflecting on our relationship with the past, J. Assmann asserted that, ‘the past only emerges when we invoke it. In the process of remembrance, the past is reconstructed’ (2000, p.31).38 Here, J. Assmann referred to the work of Maurice Halbwachs, who coined the term collective memory, and in particular to the latter’s theory that memory and history are social and cultural constructs. ([1925] 1985). Halbwachs had argued that respective contemporaries remember and reconstitute the past shaped by social frameworks of memory, based on their own changing needs to make and give meaning (1985, p.48). Halbwachs saw individual memory as being shaped or formed through collective memory and had noted that individual memory only works within the context of a collective. Halbwachs identified the main frames of reference that shape individual memory as those in relation to family (collective, intergenerational memory), home, class and social group, work and/or religious affiliation. According to Halbwachs, these frames contain spatialized, localized, temporal and internal dimensions and are enacted through social interaction and communication across and in time-space. Intergenerational memory is transmitted by eyewitnesses able to recall an event, 37 See, for example the 2014 conference ‘Cultures of Remembrance’ at the University of Portsmouth, or the work emerging out of the Centre for Memory, History, Narratives at the University of Brighton. 38 My translation.

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Chapter 1 Fabricating Lureland: A history of the imagination and memory

who in turn can share it with their descendants. Changes or modifications of particular frameworks may result in forgetting, both on a personal as well as on a collective level. Lewis Coser explains that Halbwachs was the first sociologist to emphasize that humans’ understanding of the past, ‘is affected by mental images we employ to solve present problems, so that collective memory is essentially a reconstruction of the past in the light of the present’ (1992, p.34). Halbwachs’ discovery is of great value as this book works with first and second-hand experiences of descendants of original settlers, who draw on mental images and intergenerational and collective memories in order to reconstruct past experiences. Halbwachs also distinguished between memory as lived experience, and ‘Historie’ as written history, which each engage in processes of (re)construction work. Memory expands the horizon of history (and the archive) as it includes the everyday, work, family. The archive is no longer only constituted by official, ‘big’ histories, but now also includes ‘remains’ drawn from the everyday: diaries, postcards, everyday material objects, and oral histories, photographs and family albums. Focusing less on single events than on structures, Halbwachs acknowledged the spatial properties of time. His starting point was continuity based on transgenerational connections within collective groups (such as the church, work, family), and he made major contributions to the exploration of the relationship between history and memory (memorial topography) and memory and space (historical topography). Through Pierre Nora’s (1989) work, these insights became radicalized and Nora claimed that the official grand narratives of nation and progress are over, and that there is a crisis if not an end to collective groups as carriers of collective memory. This division was picked up and further explored by the Assmanns, who make the case for an interconnection between the processes of writing history and engaging in memory work (1999, p.132).39 Arguing against a separation between these two categories, A. Assmann instead has described them as two components of cultural memory (2011, p.113). Nora had already identified a key problem with doing historical reconstruction work, noting that the ‘acceleration of history’, coupled with a ‘break with the past’ and a loss of traditional ‘environments of memory’ had led to a fragmentation of history and a disembodiment of memory (1989, p.7). As societies have become transformed, traditional culture – and with this a particular way or tradition of remembering – have disappeared. Nora located a shift away from embodied forms of remembrance (usually perpetuated and supported through structures of remembrance

39 My translation. Erinnerungsräume means Memory-spaces, but in German Raum can be used to refer to the English room, space and/or place; A. Assmann refers to all three.

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such as rituals and traditions) towards archival memory deposits or traces, arguing that, ‘modern memory is, above all, archival. It relies entirely on the materiality of the trace, the immediacy of the recording, and the visibility of the image’ (1989, p.13). Nora believed that memory in the modern world was located in three primary locations, operating on several levels and coexisting (1989, p.18). He referred to tangible, geographically situated sites, to symbolic functions, such as an idealized concept of equality and freedom, and to forms of remembrance, and thirdly, to historical and traditional memorial and commemoration practices which shape national discourses of remembrance (1989). Only when an object, event or site becomes a site of memory it escapes forgetting, for example as the result of a community or government putting up a memorial plaque to remember the historical significance of a particular location or event in the present. Nora made a careful distinction between individual, personal acts of remembrance (for example through genealogy work within families) and collective, cultural forms of remembrance, or communities of memory. Something only qualifies as a memory site when the act of remembrance is a collective one. Nora further articulated the existence of memory sites in the form of abstract, shifting symbols, for example those promoted by nation states, which in turn influence collective memory and identity formation of communities across time and space, and who define themselves through symbolic affiliations (2011, p.122). A recent suggestion has been made to update Nora’s idea of memory sites by speaking of knots instead, in order to acknowledge the entanglement of an ‘increasingly globalized, networked, and mediated world’.40 Drawing on Nora’s and Halbwachs’ work on collective memory and its social construction, the Assmanns have both further developed methodologies of interpreting memory, distinguishing in particular, between forms of communicative memory (Assmann, A. 1999) and introducing the theory of ‘cultural memory’ (Assmann, J. 2000). They set apart two systems of memory: episodic memory, ‘what has been experienced’, a subjective form of knowing, and semantic memory, based on ‘what we have read or learned’ (1999, p.27). Distinguishing between three levels of memory, they note that the first level of memory is personal memory, its duration defined by individual life spans. The ability to recollect is based on what individuals experience. Secondly, they outline collective and communicative memory as an intergenerational form of memory that is based on three generations of a family, or one hundred years. Like personal memory, collective, communicative memory is subjective and

40 Transnational Memories: Sites, Knots, Methods 3/8/2015 blog entry, accessed 18 July 2015.

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Chapter 1 Fabricating Lureland: A history of the imagination and memory

therefore may be contradictory. The third form of memory is cultural memory; it is transgenerational and aims to establish connections through time and space. These forms of memory are connected and operate alongside each other, informing each other in complex ways, as both Assmanns have researched, in particular in relation to archival reconstruction work, ‘whereby each contemporary context puts the objectivized meaning into its own perspective, giving its own relevance’ (J. Assmann, 1995, p.130).

First strand: Cultural memory and working with archival material As the first research strand works with the cultural memory of archival traces within the Troak-Poplett and other collections, some observations on the archive in relation to cultural memory are necessary. A. Assmann describes cultural memory as the transformation of history into an archive made up of a ‘myriad of mediated presentations and representations, which have to be constantly examined, acquired and relearned’ (1999, p.51) and explores how cultural memory can be put to work. Unlike living memory, cultural memory is constituted from cultural and political experiences, draws on symbols and myths, and can be ‘functional’ and embodied or disembodied and stored away (2011, p.123). Her argument is that cultural memory is akin to an archive which contains objects that are without their original producer and functions as a storage container or a holding place, awaiting future reinscription. Having lost their original function archival objects may become elusive and ambiguous. A cultural memory approach aims to reconstruct embodied and disembodied forms of memory through archival records, and, in so doing, ‘make visible new connections where previously only separate elements could be seen’ (Assmann, A. 2002, p.40). Continuing to work with the idea of stored memory, A. Assmann likens the archive to ‘a collective store of knowledge that fulfills several different functions. As with every form of storage, it involves three main aspects: selection, conservation, and accessibility’ (2011, p.329). She goes on to discuss how the amount of functional memory and storage memory within an archive is determined by levels of inclusivity (in a more democratic society) or exclusion (in a totalitarian society). A key problem of working with archives, and archival memory, is that archival holdings are selective, may be regulative (Schlak 2008), and frequently material is discarded as storage is limited. Michel DeCerteau notes that archival systems of classification represent a rupture with the original everyday uses and functions of the objects that have been archived. He described the archive as containing displaced material, which no longer circulates in actual time within ‘a

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universe of usage’ (1985, p.4).41 The role of the archivist and institutions in ordering and potentially excluding pertinent documents is discussed. Another, but related problem with collecting, put forth by Susan Stewart, is that objects become ‘consumed’ and ‘naturalized into the landscape of the collection itself’ (2007, p.156). A distinction has to be made between private collections and official, institutional archives, and between processes of deliberate, systematic collecting and the thrill of collecting as a hobby, as was the case with both Troak-Poplett’s collections. As the examples given here illustrate, a collection reflects on the one hand the processes and practices of procurement, but also contains traces of past actions and experiences that exist as archival remains. Adrienne Chambon draws on Foucault’s work on archives and suggests combining an archaeological and a genealogical approach to access historically located materials and practices in order to look at material in fresh ways (1999). She applies Foucault’s concept of ‘a history of the present’ to contemporary case histories and describes a slow archaeological process, which is capable of revealing hidden elements (1999, p.54). Chambon explains that, wishing to emphasize the historical dimensions of his work, Foucault later added the term genealogy, drawing on Nietzsche, in order to begin with questions about the present, ‘through a descent in time’ (1999, p.55). The Histoire Croisée approach, through its four categories of analysis, mirrors these distinct, compelling research approaches set forth by Chambon. Like Histoire Croisée, Foucault’s model of adopting both an archaeological and a genealogical approach is dialectical and self-reflective and necessitates continuous cross-referencing. On applying Foucault’s archaeological approach to the field of photography, David Bates argues that archival photographs are culturally produced objects, part of a ‘media-driven archive’, that always need to be recontextualized in the present in order to highlight historical and cultural connections that may have been lost (2007, pp.4–5). Visual material plays a central role in this inquiry, and in the brief section that follows, I show how photography, memory and the archive intersect in two key areas.42 Like other archival material, photographs support processes of memory recall and they also carry multiple, expanding meanings requiring ongoing recontextualization. Secondly, making a photograph can itself be an archival practice, or can later become a memorial act in itself. Walter Benjamin wrote

41 My translation from French. 42 The use of photography within qualitative research has long been prominent within visual sociology and visual anthropology (Collier 1967; Curry & Clarke 1977; Emmison and Smith 2000; Rose 2001; Pink 2001; Tinkler 2013), participatory research (Barndt 1980; 2001; 2013) and oral history (Freund and Thomson 2012). The visual turn within the humanities, and within history and memory studies in particular, occurred from the early 1990s onwards.

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extensively on photographs as traces of memory; he used the word Spur to describe a photograph – in German this can mean trace and track, a metaphorical, symbolic and physical referent. Benjamin developed the idea of trace further in his work on the unconscious optics, again using a metaphor drawn from photography, and linking this with a psychoanalytical process, suggesting that the camera lens can record and render visible what is not visible (and cannot be seen) by the photographer at the moment of making the photograph, and has the ability to store this for future retrieval in the form of the negative imprint (1972, p.7).43 He also employed the idea of a photographic developer, which can make all the detail encapsulated on a negative glass plate visible in a near future, ‘Only the future has at its disposal a developer strong enough to let the image appear in all its details’,44 to illustrate that it might be possible to decipher history like a literary text provided one has access to the necessary tools. Benjamin’s observation suggests a process of reconstruction via an ongoing dialectical engagement with a whole range of cultural perspectives across time and space. This metaphor resonates with the category of scales from the Histoire Croisée approach as well as Keightley and Pickering’s conception of remembrance as a creative practice from the position of the present but that considers the past and future. Mirroring Benjamin’s concept of a photographic developer that may help elucidate a now distant past, Jacques Derrida reflects on the archive’s significance in and for the future. His observation that ‘the question of the archive is [. . .] a question of the future [. . .] of a promise and of a responsibility for tomorrow’ (1996, p.36) are key to my own approach of analyzing and reactivating archival materials. It is now widely accepted that photographs can function both as visual document as well as active agent within research inquiries (Tucker 2009). However, Judith Tucker cautions that researchers need to ‘consider the photograph in relation to the complexities of the historical use of any document’ (2009, p.5) and argues that photographs ought to undergo the same interrogation as other historical sources, which includes establishing a photograph’s authorship, audience, reception, circulation and reception (2009, p.5). Like Tucker, Elizabeth Edwards is concerned with the circulation and usage of visual material over time; photographs travel in time and frequently they have historical, social, cultural and market-driven lives (2009, 2012). Whether made for personal enjoyment or the products of a commission, marketing campaign or an assignment targeted at

43 This optical unconsciousness is due to technical advances of the lens (e.g. double focus both on distance and nearness) as well as to a durational component (e.g. looking back at an image with the knowledge one has now of a building no longer existing – so the photograph has become a stand-in and trace of what once was). 44 Benjamin, 1991 [1940] GS I.3, p.1238.

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a particular audience, photographs can be and often are used in completely different contexts. Edwards explores how they gain meaning through the ways in which they circulate within a local, national or global image economy. Long removed from everyday circulation and usage, many archival images of Peacehaven’s early days have been discarded over time, others were stored for safekeeping, some may lie forgotten and dormant in an attic or are held in folders, on the pages of the Peacehaven Post, in vernacular photo albums and archival holdings for example. These ‘remains’, to use Nora’s expression (Nora, 1989, p.7) can now be reexamined and explored; they can be recontextualized in the present as much as this is possible.45 Whilst of course not by themselves capable of doing the work of memory, they straddle personal and collective forms of remembrance, and a range of memory work can be performed through them. This could involve an exploration of the ‘multiple cultural meanings’ (Howe, cited in Schwartz 2006, p.16) they embody within particular cultural contexts. Through interpretive engagement, their material condition, content (what they represent), usage and meaning can be interrogated. Photographs denote a wide range of partial, disjointed and decontextualized cultural, collective and private actions that speak of aspirations, planning, private and public gestures and activities. They act as containers of memory and their historical value often grows with time. The mnemonic potential of photographs resides in their representational qualities as traces of lived experience that can facilitate the activation of memory and the imagination in productive ways. The theme of the photographic archive acting as an invitation for careful exploration of cultural histories and memories was discussed by Darren Newbury (2014), who urged viewers to practice ‘slow’ looking.46 Christoph Hamann discusses three possible methodological approaches to reading photographs within historical inquiry and suggests paying attention to the cultural context from which they have emerged (2006). Drawing on Roland Barthes’ assertion that a photograph is always a representation, or reproduction as well as an image – encapsulating indexical and iconic properties – he makes the case for a methodology that acknowledges a photograph’s denotative and connotative qualities more fully (2006, p.286). Barthes’ concept of a photographic punctum (1980) works with the idea that some images have the potential to move, unsettle and comfort viewers in profound ways, whereas through the process

45 Christopher Pinney discussed archival photographs as ‘messages offered to an unknown future’, in his book review of Darren Newbury and Chris Morton’s co-edited The African Photographic Archive (2015). 46 Newbury, ‘The invitation of photography: slow looking at ‘strange places’ and contested pasts’ inaugural professorial lecture, 3.12.2014, University of Brighton.

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of studium, an image can provide context. Secondly, echoing Tucker, Hamann suggests that when a historical photograph is drawn upon within an academic research context, in order to represent a past event or an experience, a methodological approach which recontextualizes and interprets what is seen within the photograph is needed. He suggests an iconographic analysis and hermeneutics so as to reveal representational practices of the time and to articulate past cultural practices. Thirdly, when a photograph is used as a key, stand in image for past collective experience, Hamann argues that it has to be deconstructed through both analytical interpretation and reconceptualization, unpacking and making transparent its own canonization (2006, p.287). An additional approach, not discussed by Hamann, would be to reinterpret historical images through new associations, facing outward, and working with the imaginative properties and possibilities of a photograph, as, for example, suggested by Martha Langford, who explored the connection between memory and imagination and illustrates how memories can be ‘expressed and activated by photographic works of art’ (2007, p.3).

Second strand: Communicative and collective memory Working with the intergenerational memory of contemporary, long-term residents of Peacehaven helps establish personal connections to the town’s own, somewhat fragile history and sheds light on how a history of the imagination and memory has been constructed in the minds of long-term residents. The second strand of inquiry explores communicative memories and juxtaposes and foregrounds individual family histories and subjective responses to place. The Assmanns show how living memory, also defined as communicative memory, is influenced by locality and social interactions, and ‘emerges in an environment of spatial proximity, regular interactions, collective forms of living and shared experiences’ (2006, p.25).47 As already mentioned, Halbwachs’ work on the frameworks and social construction of collective memory included an exploration on how communicative memory is shaped by place, for example the place of the family (the home), education, the place of work, and/or administration and worship. He was also interested in the process of memory retrieval, in how memories are accessed across and over time-space. Commenting on questions of accuracy and truth of memory within the practice of oral history, Paul Connerton noted that, ‘here [within oral history] it could be argued that there is no sense in talking

47 My translation.

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of false or true statements, since what the oral historian wants to reach is the subjective experience of his/her interviewee’.48 This observation also resonates with Halbwachs’ work on memory as a construct, mediated and adjusted through a range of social frameworks, and Nora’s concept that memory has a symbolic dimension, and that within each society, there is a social need to readjust stories in order to make meaning in the present. Lucy Lippard illustrated the importance of storytelling when she described ‘telling’ as ‘the process for understanding and drawing strength from one’s past’ (1990, p.57). Oral history, and more broadly social history from below, adds an important dimension to archival and theoretical research. ‘Without stories’, Vera Rosenbluth argues, ‘we lose our sense of the past and its connection to our present and future’ (1990, p.7). Storytelling is of course a non-linear, diachronic process; the emphasis and weight of meaning given to particular times varies hugely from person to person, and Connerton has described the cyclical nature of storytelling, with the life of interviewees organized around seasons, years and generations (1989, p.20).49 I have already demonstrated that memory is an interactive process; for example, a mental image of life in Peacehaven, gained during childhood and re-told by an older self, will still be inflected by a childhood perspective. Past and present experiences and places merge and converge, and stories shared almost always inhabit multiple temporal planes. This ability has been articulated by Mikhail Bakhtin (1981) who describes how we can mentally exist in more than one place, and in more than one time, at the same time. Bakhtin refers to this as a ‘chronotype’, to indicate intrinsic temporal and spatial connections. When sharing stories of their own life stages (see chapter 7), each of the interviewees drew on this imaginative ability to offer distinct temporal perspectives. By making space for storytelling in relation to self, time and place, the past is reimagined and at times enacted. I experienced this through conversations that activated remembrance processes and allowed embodied memories to resurface, e.g. through walking around the garden or house together, and physically going through photo albums, handling photographs and artefacts that held a personal significance. I am mindful of social and cultural conventions within family photography, and of the social constructedness of family albums in particular, as they tend to represent carefully framed and curated versions of self and family, with a prevalence to document specific moments (holidays, events, festivities) more than 48 Pre-workshop position paper by Connerton, n.d. Last accessed online at ESF.org, 25 April, 2015. 49 Moreover, Connerton (1989) emphasized the significance of bodily, or embodied memory in social remembrance processes.

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others (e.g. the everyday). The family album as an established medium through which meanings are made and which has its own syntax or language has been well researched (see, for example, Bourdieu 1965, Gardner, 1990). Pierre Bourdieu mapped out everyday photographic practices, exploring processes through which images become meaningful. Common shared themes include portraits of immediate family members, extended family groups, celebrations, pets, photographs of new homes (1965, pp.25–84). In a study of twenty family albums which include images of family life spanning full life cycles, Saundra Gardner concludes that people make careful decisions on which events, what and whom to include in their family albums (1990, p.78). Photographs have weight and volume, aspects discussed extensively in the work of Elizabeth Edwards (2009, 2012) who investigates the significance of photographs as objects of memory, urging researchers to pay closer attention not just to their content but also to their usage over time. She invites viewers to consider the ‘embodied meanings’ of photographs, their tactile, haptic qualities (2005, pp.40–43). Vernacular photographs (drawn from respondents’ personal archives) help facilitate processes of recollection, shape the flow of narratives and in turn may trigger new ones (Tinkler, 2013). Importantly, photographs can provide information that interviewees would not consider important to mention, or ‘that they may not have worked through before’ (Tinkler, 2013, p.79). Penny Tinkler discusses how photo-interviews ‘bring out the personal significance and meaning of what is depicted in photos’ (Tinkler, 2013, p.178). She expands that while photographs may initially decentre the interviewee, they also provide space for meanings and perspectives to emerge (ibid, 2013, p.174). Tinkler explains that ‘feeling (holding the pictures) and seeing (looking at the pictures) are intimately connected to remembering, learning, expressing’ (2013, p.180). These ideas are further explored by Margaret Olin who discusses the ability of photographs to ‘touch’ and move us, but also looks at how viewers interact with and physically handle images (2012). In addition to photographs, other archival objects ought to also be considered as a valuable way to elicit memories. Indeed, Leora Auslander made a case for including human-made objects in historical reconstruction work, arguing that humans activate all five senses ‘in their intellectual, affective, expressive, and communicative practices’ (2005, p.1016). She believes historians should be more attentive to objects ‘that are [. . .] felt and touched’ (2005, p.1016), identifying three reasons that highlight the importance of engaging with objects as they contain different types of information, are both products and agents in history, and as objects drawn from material culture offer another ‘vital source of historical knowledge’ (2005, pp.1017–1018).

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Third strand: Place as archive and archival memory within the fabric of Peacehaven itself The third strand draws on Pierre Nora’s work on the sitedness of memory which provides a useful structuring device (1989). Halbwachs and Nora have discussed the locatedness of memory in a range of actual and symbolic places, retrieved or enacted through ritualistic memorial practices. This section explores place as archive, and investigates the town as a multi-layered topos, interrogating intercrossings in two distinct ways: firstly, to map surviving traces and secondly, to reimagine and conjure up landmarks that have already been lost through a practice-based artistic process. Some remnants of Peacehaven’s early vision, including pioneer bungalows and road pylons, which demarcate the entry and exiting points of the town’s original boundaries, are still visible. It is still possible, with a trained eye, to read Peacehaven as an archive. The concept of place, and indeed space, like memory and archive, is a multivalenced category of analysis that has engendered many conversations as to its function as a social construct and the effect it has on people. Below I briefly discuss a sociological interpretation of space/place (Emmison and Smith), a political, material approach (Harvey, 2004 and Bastian, 2009, 2014), and an approach focusing on mythology and archetypes (Bachelard, 1994). A more psychological approach concerned with space and embodiment (Connerton, 1989) was discussed earlier. The different ways of thinking about space briefly outlined below are all helpful in thinking through the second and in particular the third strands of this project. The notion of place of course shares certain properties with memory and archive; for example, they each have tangible, mnemonic, and intangible dimensions. They can be traversed (physically and/or metaphorically), experienced, remembered and/or imagined.50 Humans can have a physically powerful emotional response to particular places, which can trigger strong feelings; this is an area explored in great detail within the sizeable field of psychogeography, sparked by Guy Debord, which concerns itself with the power of place, consciously and unconsciously, on human affect and experience (see, for example, Coverley, 2010, p. 10). Emmison and Smith pay close attention to how people interact with – and move through places and settings, decoding verbal responses to build environments such as personal, or private spaces (the house, garden), and public spaces such as shops, open public spaces (2000, 152–189). This, they

50 McFarlane discusses the process of walking as a memorial activity, noting that place ‘shapes and forms’ humans (2015 Arena talk, University of Brighton, p.c.).

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call ‘lived’ visual data (2000, p.152). David Harvey is interested in human attachment to physical, social and symbolic space and views space as relational and interactive – and, referencing Henri Lefebvre, he discusses the possibility of exploring space from three perspectives: physical space, representation of space, and spaces of representation, such as imagination or emotion (Harvey 2004, p.8). Harvey’s understanding of the social and symbolic modulation of space echoes Nora’s concept of memory sites, and the idea that places are inflected with localized as well as symbolic and abstracted value. Building on Halbwachs’ work on collective memory, the Assmanns show that both collective and communicative memory is influenced by locality and ‘emerges in an environment of spatial proximity, regular interactions, collective forms of living and shared experiences’ (2006, p.25).51 They explain that historical awareness is a process that takes time and requires stories to be shared and retold and physical landmarks to endure long enough to become points of reference. With this in mind, I also take inspiration from archival historian, Jeanette Bastian’s ground-breaking work on community archives, landscape and memory as sites that help sustain personal and collective identities (2009, 2014). Bastian explores how historical records both reflect and affect community identity and collective memory. Noting that a sense of place, and ‘constancy of place’ (2014, p.46) are pivotal in shaping cultural and community identities, Bastian describes situations where places have become unstable after physical surroundings underwent dramatic changes and discusses implications on how this could affect collective memory. Commenting on the role of archival records, she notes that community members: often refer to [these] to support their interpretations, while others, standing outside a particular community or even within the same one may read those same spaces and those same records in very different ways. Whose interpretation takes precedence is continually challenged and under siege; the predominant stories and the master narratives compete with the less acknowledged minor narratives for recognition. (2014, p.48)

Bastian suggests a reading of the landscape as ‘both a text and a context’ (2014, p.57). She notes that ‘the meaning of the text invariably depends upon the reader or interpreter’ (2014, p.57) and that it is by trying to absorb ‘the nuances of a textual landscape that embraces the histories and stories of all its varied inhabitants’ (ibid) that new ways of understanding become possible. Bastian’s invitation to practice nuanced readings of place and to carefully read and engage with the landscape, have been central tenets, as later chapters demonstrate. This approach also relates back to Histoire Croisée’s first and last categories of analysis: 51 My translation.

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to investigate intercrossings within the object of study itself and to explore categories of scale: here the idea of the ‘master’ narratives versus the ‘minor’ ones as well as the categories of constancy/change and permanence/loss. An additional category of analysis through which to approach place as a category of study has been suggested by Gaston Bachelard, who made the useful distinction between inhabited space and dream space, in particular focusing on the relationship between the intimacy of home and the ideal of domesticity and the outside world (1994, [1958]). He explored the role of the imagination and spatial representations in literary texts and extracted what he considered to be reproducible and almost universal archetypes. His tight focus on the central image of ‘home’, ‘being our first universe, a real cosmos in every sense of the word’ (1994, p.4) resonates with Peacehaven’s early marketing discourses, as well as the stories told to me by local residents. Much of the SCLRC’s narrative fed into the centrality of home ownership, and many Estate advertisements were based on this lure. Bachelard further observed a human tendency to anticipate the future being brighter than the past, encapsulated in the image of an imagined ‘dream house’, set in a future time. His perceptive text reveals the same emotion that Peacehaven sales brochures and town guides also tried to tap into, ‘sometimes the house of the future is better built, lighter and larger than all the houses of the past’ (1994, p.61). Bachelard’s work on mnemonic literary texts and Benjamin’s ([1940]1982) work on the flaneur, a modern spectator and investigator of urban spaces, which further relates to Jane Rendell’s (2010, 2015) method of site-marking and site-writing, explored in chapter 8, and the broad field of psychogeography, each represent valuable examples from literature on how to approach place from a memory perspective.52 As the above research methodology section demonstrates, the visual, and the use of photographs and graphic marketing images in particular – as mnemonic device as well as strategic intervention tool – have a privileged status within this book and feature in all three memory strands. However, in each one of these strands: cultural memory, communicative memory and situated memory, the visual has a separate function and is put to use in a new way. Cutting across and intersecting with all three strands, the visual is a medium of representation, and in the first strand, primarily acts as archival source activating cultural memories of an imagined and actual past. In the second strand images function as an aide memoire and an invitation to revisit and look more closely at an event, drawing on communicative and collective memory. In the third strand, exploring situated memory, the visual helps document changes and

52 On the flaneur, see Benjamin, W. 1982; pp 524–569.

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continuities in the landscape over time, when compared with original marketing images, blueprints and maps of the Estate. Fabricating Lureland excavates hidden narratives and reconstitutes lost connections. By contextualizing and historizing the Troak-Poplett collection in the present and reinscribing select materials with the knowledge gained through a slow interpretative process, it is possible to reactivate and challenge some of the original marketing ideals. By responding to the archive, and by taking clues from the material itself, the documents take on expanded meanings. The combination of archival research, visual methodologies, qualitative and practice-based research allows for multiple, fragmentary and nuanced perspectives of place which aid the process of reconstructing cultural and collective memories. The Histoire Croisée approach acts as a vehicle to explore Peacehaven as topos, and helps draw out the tensions encapsulated within it, both as an imagined, wished for place, as well as a real, lived in Estate. Histoire Croisée has been adapted as a framework to organize the complexity of source material, with a specific focus on the three strands of inquiry into memory outlined above. The book mobilizes these strands and examines their discursive possibilities. The emerging collage of multiple viewpoints, intersections and threads, teased out via the above strands, makes for a more nuanced and complex way of understanding a history of the imagination and memory of Peacehaven. This approach reveals that complex visual, temporal and spatial narratives were activated throughout the initial marketing phase, during construction and when the Estate began to consolidate.

Chapter 2 ‘Own your own bit of England’: Peacehaven’s genesis refracted through British town planning ideals Introduction Scrutinizing an archival auction plan from July 1912 that featured two lots of ‘Valuable Freehold Property known as the Piddinghoe Estate’ for sale, it is hard to imagine that much of this freehold land, indicated in blue and pink, was subsequently turned into a busy overspill suburb wedged between Eastbourne and Brighton (see Fig. 2.1). Writing in 1909, the Sussex poet and author Arthur Beckett had felt confident enough to assert that: at the present rate of progress, no man living will see the South Downs wholly transformed; it is almost safe to say that they will never lose their distinctive character, for the absence of water in sufficient quantity for irrigation purposes seems to prohibit any designs men might entertain of exploiting possibilities for any domestic purpose rather than the pasturage of sheep. (1924, p.6–7)

But less than ten years after the publication of Beckett’s Spirit of the Downs the Peacehaven development was gathering speed. The mediation of Peacehaven as a desirable, residential Downland location to move to played a key role in its genesis and in how it was promoted through naming and other prize competitions from early 1916 onward.53 This chapter revisits early marketing campaigns devised by the SCLRC and draws on original blueprints, maps, newspaper reports, marketing brochures, two promotional Economic Homes booklets and a set of publicity postcards.54 By reactivating and reassembling fragmented and hitherto dispersed archival material this chapter seeks to reconstitute a timeline for the inception period (1915–1923) in order to foreground cultural and historical connections that were subsequently lost and to further position Peacehaven’s genesis within wider garden city and town planning ideals. Histoire Croisée is

53 Local residents are frequently unaware that their town initially had another name. This has been my experience in discussing Peacehaven’s history and name change at workshops and when meeting local residents during the Community exhibition in 2014. 54 East Sussex Record Office, for early SCLRC correspondence. Box AMS6233. Note: The caption refers to a 1925 advertisement in the Peacehaven Gazette. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110734027-003

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Figure 2.1: Plan of ‘valuable freehold property known as the Piddinghoe Estate’, July 1912. Courtesy Geoffrey Mead.

concerned with reconnecting histories that have become separated and seeks to highlight intercrossings that have influenced each other (Werner & Zimmermann, 2004, p.40), a methodological approach this chapter puts to work. Through a review of authoritative primary and secondary literature the chapter illustrates how

Introduction

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Peacehaven’s promotional strategies were regularly motivated and adjusted in response to local and national discourses. I highlight how these were appropriated and moulded by the SCLRC in marketing language deployed in order to sell plots of land. In order to contextualize the town’s development, the chapter considers some of the wider economic and social Utopian town planning discourses that impacted on how Peacehaven was marketed throughout the interwar period. Peacehaven’s promotion and subsequent development occurred at the height of imperialism; the British Empire had peaked in 1914. At national level, it coincided with increasing pressures for substantial social reforms driven by utopian ideals. Gillian Darley (2007) describes some of the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth century pressures for housing reform that were due to largely inadequate living conditions for tenants across Britain. She offers examples of philanthropic town and village planning for workers in and around growing industrialized cities (e.g. at Port Sunlight near Liverpool from 1888, and Bournville near Birmingham from 1895, preceded by New Lanark near Glasgow several decades prior, in 1825). By the end of the Nineteenth century ‘the pressing urgency of providing housing for a vastly expanding urban population’ (2007, p.179) led to ‘featureless sprawl’ (ibid, p.180) frequently built by speculative developers. These expansions in turn triggered resentment and were considered ‘a bastardized version of any other recognized pattern of living’ (ibid, p.181). Taking a political approach to the idea of Utopia as a modernist concept, Hardy traces overlapping ideas, paths and experiences and observes that the first half of the last century saw unprecedented change, due to ‘the impact of war, the social effects of economic dislocation’, totalitarianism and modernity (2000, p.11–12). As the scale of change experienced during this period was dramatic it had an inevitable, ‘direct impact on people’s ideals, revising views of the present, and creating new expectations of the future’ (ibid.). The interwar years were influenced by external forces, including increased accumulation of capital as a result of colonialism and industrialization, an expanding sports and leisure industry, wide scale economic change, upward mobility and city tenants increasingly seeking to become homeowners, which added to the national shortage of affordable housing. This period saw an unprecedented construction boom across Britain, and a mass move from large towns and cities to its fringes, resulting in ribbon developments and urban sprawl leading to the suburbanization of substantial parts of the British countryside until the economic slump and Great Depression in late 1929. Feldman writes that ‘almost 4 million houses were built between the wars, 72 per cent of them by private enterprise’ (2001, p.202). John Lowerson shows how this increase in housing over just two decades enlarged the urban areas of England and Wales by 26 percent, but only led to a 15 per cent increase overall in the number of urban dwellers (1980, p.258). This was partially

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due to the fact that a quarter of new housing stock was built by local authorities to replace so-called slums, and secondly that the Homes for Heroes scheme included the construction of large suburban housing estates on the edges of many cities, including Moulsecoomb in Brighton (1980, p.258). Representing the equivalent of 200,000 homes a year over a 20-year period, this boom was not only driven by demand, but, as David Feldman argues, by ‘domestic Utopias’ and ‘fantasies of suburban life’ that embraced modernity (Feldman 2001, p.202). In their compelling study Arcadia for All ([1984] 2004) Hardy & Ward, social historians and authorities on British Utopian reform movements, Plotlanders and the Garden City Association, show that these groups were connected through an emotive force and the desire to become self-sufficient by attaining basic land and home ownership.55 They describe a selection of makeshift developments along marginal land such as riversides, marshland and along the chalky South and East Coast. Set against the context of pre – and postwar planning issues, Hardy and Ward use Peacehaven as one of their case studies and describe it as the ‘bête noire’ of plotland development (ibid, p.72).56 This chapter concentrates on two distinct phases: the decade leading up to WWI which saw the Town and Country movement and the Garden City Association (founded in 1899), both influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement, promote the realization of garden cities, originally envisaged by Ebenezer Howard (1898, 1902). I show how the garden city rhetoric was invoked by the SCLRC in promotional campaigns. Of course, Neville was not the only developer to activate this terminology. John Walton demonstrates that existing British seaside towns like Southport, Dunfermline and Montrose also endeavoured to present themselves as Garden Cities during the interwar period, but with ‘limited success’ (2000, p.35). Tracking debates that focused on the garden city concept as a healthy solution to a growing housing crisis, I also review the national ‘Homes Fit for Heroes’ mission launched in 1918. This represented a national drive to provide economic homes for veterans and their families, to be built in healthier, greener environments, away from industrial areas (Swenarton 2008, Yorke 2017). 55 Plotland ‘was coined by planners for [. . .] areas where, until 1939, land was divided into small plots and sold, often in unorthodox ways, to people wanting to build their holiday home, country retreat or would-be smallholding’. (Hardy & Ward, Dec 1984, p.38). Claeys (2015) tracks the origins of Utopian thought to Thomas More (1516), who applied rational ideas of urban planning to an imagined island state and William Morris (1890), who advocated a return to country life and self-sufficiency. 56 They draw on material from urban planning departments as well as testimonials by local residents gathered by their Middlesex Polytechnic students in 1980. Dennis Hardy told me that unfortunately interview transcripts and records no longer exist as so much time has passed (personal communication, October 2019).

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‘Own your own bit of England’ Peacehaven’s multi-stranded narrative is mired in mythology and controversy. In late 1915, in the midst of the First World War, the well-connected and enigmatic developer Charles William Neville acquired almost 700 acres of land, representing just over one square mile of coastal cliff tops between Newhaven and Brighton, with the view to develop a new estate east of Brighton laid out on a grid system. A map from 1911 shows this area was still mainly rural, but for three large farms, Upper and Lower Hoddern and Hoddern Farm, four cottages and farmhouse buildings, a sheepfold in the Heathy Brow area, an old pit and tollhouse, all within the Parish of Piddinghoe to its North.57 The area immediately adjacent to the cliff top was referred to as Bears Hide and was depicted covered in gorse and with five small dells. The tollhouse appeared as a tiny square just South of the South Coast Road on the Eastern fringe.

Figure 2.2: Map of area, 1911, Troak-Poplett collection.

57 See ‘Abstract of land title’, which noted the existence of seven cottages, farmhouse buildings and an old pit by 1861. ACC10142, East Sussex Record Office, The Keep.

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Late in life, Neville would claim that the inspiration to start a new estate had come to him in the summer of 1914 whilst travelling along the South Coast Road with his wife Dorothy, and seeing: The land, which is now Peacehaven [. . .] lay without a house upon it for a mile to the West with the exception of a tollhouse alongside the road, which was situated where the eastern Pylon of Peacehaven now stands. On the western side was Telscombe Cliffs with a few scattered houses and the Restaurant Post Office [. . .] it did not take long to visualize this site as ideal for development as a seaside resort and I could not understand why someone had not previously realized its possibilities, but on going further we came up Telscombe Cliffs where an attempt at development had been made; but its derelict appearance showed that it had failed. [. . .] To the north of the South Coast Road it was level arable land, but south of the road to within 50 yards of the cliff edge it was covered with a heavy growth of furze, a fine sight when in bloom and pleasing to the eye for a few weeks in the year, but it did not add to the National Economy in the shape of crops or in homes in which people can live and enjoy life, and when the land was acquired it took many days of hard work and a great deal of burning to get rid of it.58

This was part of the mythology he cultivated when in fact, Neville had purchased the land cheaply early into the war. Although he claimed otherwise, development of the area by two other speculative builders had already begun and Telscombe Cliffs Estate had been roughly laid out on a grid system, which incorporated a pre-existing droveway and tracks. On the western boundary the 1911 map above (Figure 2.2) already included the Telscombe Cliffs Estate, developed by the Cavendish Land Company Ltd from 1898.59 This Estate had strong ties to Telscombe Village just to the north and included a sales office and tearoom and had integrated the former Portobello Coastguard Station cottages, built between 1800–1840, and The Warren, a large manor house. By 1911, Telscombe Cliffs Estate already had ten roads and its own water supply but in Neville’s recollections he was scathing and hardly acknowledged its existence. The land demarcated on a second map from 1911 indicates the emergence of a further estate on the eastern side (see the western section marked up in blue, from the South Coast Road up to the dotted line see Figure 2.3).60 This land belonged to businessman Arthur Harrison who had purchased two sections, an area of 23 acres and a further 14 acres – a little later he was offered a further 100 acres north east but declined.61 When Neville recollected how he 58 Downland Review, (1959, Vol 1 No 1, pp.12–13). ‘The Founder of Peacehaven sends this inaugural message. Mr. C. W. Neville recalls the early days’. 59 See Bernard, (2007, pp.8–9). 60 A copy of this map (no archival reference number) is in the Troak-Poplett collection at East Sussex County Council. 61 Personal communication with John Harrison, 29 November 2015 who explained that his grandfather purchased the land from Harper-Bond, who had bought it from Mabel Strey Attenborough,

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came to purchase his own land in 1914, he failed to mention Harrison’s Estate altogether.

Figure 2.3: Plan No 2 Arthur Harrison’s land, 1911, courtesy John Harrison.

John Harrison, Arthur’s grandson, who is one of the interview correspondents (see chapter 7), still has a copy of the 1910 issue The Smallholder, in which the editor, a Mr. Henry Vincent, author of Up-to-Date Gardening, described his meeting with ‘a gentleman all the way from Leeds at Newhaven Harbour’, to provide expert advice on the land purchase and how to maximise its use: His business in Leeds is a good business, but his children are not healthy, so this man means at once to turn into a smallholder. This land is exposed to all the winds of heaven, the land overlooks the sea, it is on a ridge that slopes towards the north, also to the east, and from the centre of the slope a part slopes a little towards the west. I should think it would be one of the most healthy spots on the south coast. (3 Dec 1910, p.384)

the adopted daughter of the Earl of Sheffield who had held the original ownership of the land. In 1912, Harrison sold a small middle section of his estate (now Headland Close) to Isaac Wagstaff.

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The account of health-giving properties attributed to the area in the editorial thus predated Neville’s own marketing description. Vincent even advised Harrison where to build the first two cottages and suggested that he should rent one to a good tenant ‘who fully understood fruit, flowers and vegetables’ and build one for himself so that he could learn to be a smallholder under guidance.

Figure 2.4: Postcard of Friars Bay Smallholder’s Cooperative Colony, courtesy John Harrison.

Harrison left Leeds in March 1911 and moved to Brighton initially, from where he would commute by bicycle to his new estate, to oversee the construction of Lavinia Cottage, named after his first wife, which is visible in the distance in this landscape view from 1912. This unique surviving photograph also shows Harrison himself standing on his land (‘Friars Bay colony’ would subsequently be renamed ‘Cliff Park Estate’) (see Fig. 2.4). Most importantly, the archival photograph shows the mile along the coast that was going to become Neville’s town, stretching westwards towards Brighton and confirms, as John Harrison explains, that ‘by the outbreak of war, my grandfather had been the only one who had built there, and there would have been five cottages’. Into the early 1920s Harrison leased water to Neville, which facilitated construction of the Peacehaven Estate.62

62 See Bernhard, (2007, p.9) and J. Harrison, personal communication with JW, December 2015.

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The 1916 naming competition To launch his own estate scheme, Neville set up a company, the South Coast Land & Resort Company (SCLRC) and placed advertisements in major national papers in early January 1916, including the Weekly Telegraph, with a deadline of 12 January (see Fig. 2.5). To garner interest, he announced a naming competition for the new estate, and offered prize money for the winner, and further prizes of plots on his new estate for up to 50 runners-up.

Figure 2.5: Weekly Telegraph, Estate promotion, 8 January 1916, Troak-Poplett Collection.

The text was framed by a graphic image showing a steam train, cliff tops and beach with bathers and Victorian-style bathing huts. A close-up vignette depicts a tree-lined avenue with bungalows, a motorcar and pedestrian. Parts of the same drawing, slightly modified, were reused in further publicity material. The competition gained much publicity, including in British colonies. For example, The New Zealand Herald, a broadsheet for British expatriates, reported

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in April 1916 that over 8,000 entries had been received.63 In total, Neville had offered £2600 in prizes; with: ‘£100 cash for the first prize, and 50 consolation prizes of freehold plots of land on the estate similar to those the company were offering at £50 each’.64 Two entrants, E. Kemp from Maidstone, Kent and C.L. West from Ilford, shared first prize, as they both entered the winning name New Anzac-on-Sea.65 This was a tribute to the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps – who fought alongside British troops and suffered huge losses at Gallipoli. The first publicity and marketing leaflet for the estate followed in February 1916 (see Fig. 2.6). It was called ‘an imaginary view of New Anzac-on-Sea of the Future’. Under the heading ‘from the City to the Sea’, it reused the same image of a train previously shown in the first Daily Express advertisement, which now appeared to be heading full steam towards a thriving town by the sea.

Figure 2.6: From the City to the Sea, 1916, TroakPoplett collection.

63 New Zealand Herald, 8 April, 1916. 64 New Zealand Herald, 8 April, 1916. 65 New Anzac-on-Sea, February 1916, SCLRC pamphlet, Document AMS5798/1, The Keep. On 16 January 1916 The Times announced West and Kemp as winners. In Neville’s own recollections from June 1959, (Downland Review Vol 1, No 2) he stated that Anzac was a popular name at the time, ‘owing to the exploits of the Australians and New Zealanders at Gallipoli Peninsular, but there were too many of just Anzac, but in sorting them out we found just two with the name New

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This imagined place included a large tower, a train station with clock tower, a carousel, a hotel, several two and three storey buildings, wheeled carriages and tents on the seashore, and visitors in deckchairs and sea bathers. The 24-page brochure opened with a short poem by Rudyard Kipling deploring the high war losses of ordinary soldiers (1916, p.3), followed by a resolute comment on public attitudes to the war: The present War has already been, and is likely to be for many years, far-reaching in its effects, and he is wise who realizes this in time, and adapts himself as soon as possible to new conditions. (1916, p.3)

A sales narrative followed which was saturated with promises of a well-planned, safe and desirable new Estate which would become a regular retreat for the ‘tired city man’ and ‘overworked woman’ who could escape to it at the weekend, rather than going on foreign holidays. The brochure also appealed to the, ‘weary dweller in the tropics [who] is often heartened by the memory of life-giving air of England’s Southern Coast’ (1916, p.5–6). Overseas readers were invited to send their children to school in Peacehaven, ‘to enable them to succeed [parents] as Empire builders of the future’ (ibid). The text further promoted sports opportunities and cultural activities in nearby towns as well as London. Aside from one photograph showing white cliffs, the brochure did not include any photographs of the area that was to comprise the Estate. There were photographs of Brighton, Worthing, Hastings and surrounding countryside and, under the heading ‘Your First Step’, (see Fig. 2.7) were seven photographs of substantial looking country houses and cottages (1916, p.23), which look similar to some of the designs published in North American publications and those that would circulate in the Daily Mail three years later (see further below).

Anzac on Sea . . . and after more than a week’s work of careful examination the Judges finally decided to award the first and second prizes to New Anzac on Sea and that became the well-advertised name of the new resort.’

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Figure 2.7: From the City to the Sea, brochure, 1916, Troak-Poplett collection.

The brochure asserted, that the Estate ‘has before it a future of great prosperity and successful enterprise there cannot be the slightest doubt’ (ibid, p.20).

New Anzac-on-Sea Estate plan and promotional leaflet Oscar Wilde summarized the potential of geographical maps in alluring ways, ‘A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not even worth glancing at’ (Wilde, 1910, p.27). Most maps and blueprints have temporal and spatial qualities and Italo Calvino describes their potential complexity. He argues that maps are able to contain the anticipation of future promise when he writes that, ‘the need to contain within one image the dimension of time along with that of space is at the origins of cartography [. . .] and time as the future’ (Calvino [1984] 2013, p.19). Despite being ‘static objects’, geographical maps rely on narratives being shared about what they are meant to represent (ibid).

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An original 1916 plan of New Anzac-on-Sea showed approximately one third of the envisioned Estate (see Fig. 2.8). The plan transformed the earlier brochure’s ‘imaginary view’ into an organized grid system of 151 plots.66 A fairly consistent grid pattern remained part of the Estate’s concept and practice.67 Grid systems were of course not unique to Peacehaven – they began to be more common in Britain with the onset of the Industrial Revolution and had become the norm for new North American towns, which relied on chequerboard patterns with diagonal streets and building blocks (Unwin, 1920, p.xiv). The leading British garden cities architect Raymond Unwin remained critical of this model and was opposed to ‘cutting up the land into small parcels, all approximately of the same size and shape’ (1920, p.xiv). He was also against suggestions to increase house density per acre and further argued that proper town planning had to first consider a main centre, followed by secondary centres in ‘proper relation and proportion with it’ (ibid, p.xvi). Unfortunately Neville did not heed the advice to allocate a clearly defined town centre; his first plan included three main arteries running from east to west that would reappear in a revised Peacehaven Estate Plan a few years later: the Promenade, South Coast Road and Arundel Road to the North. In addition to the central axes thirty avenues ran perpendicular to these, giving the Estate clear geometrical shapes and forming many cross-sections. Clearly Neville did give some thought to creating a structure with clear axes points and roads and avenues operating along latitudes and longitudes, aiming for a double symmetry. On original plans Peacehaven was organized around two main axes, in a geometrical way, with Roderick Avenue being a central axis. The plan below includes two sets of steps to the seashore, to the left and right along the Estate and a site for a bandstand and pavilions, along a proposed pier just south of the bandstand.

66 This is one of two town plans of the Estate whilst it was called New Anzac-on-Sea. It only shows one third of the whole Estate. Depicted is the South West section. 67 The pattern did not change until the 1970s, when closes were introduced in the North Annex, and the strict pattern of Avenues and Roads was punctured.

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Figure 2.8: Section of New Anzac-on-Sea, Troak-Poplett Collection, 1916.

A large area just north of the South Coast Road had been set aside for a hotel. All the roads running north-south to the East of the bandstand carried references to the First World War, such as Anzac and the names of 1915 battle sites in France, Belgium and Greece: Louvain, Marne, Mons, Loos, Festubert, Ypres and Salonica.68 Only a very poor quality digital file of the whole Estate survives (see Fig. 2.9).69 This shows the two sections missing from the previous plan: at close inspection one can see plots 92 to 151 to the west of Roderick Avenue, and plots 25 to 78 to the north. There were spaces marked for a Lake Park to the Northwest and a second park area aligned symmetrically to the South on the Promenade. To the Northeast a third circular park area was demarcated, not quite aligned on the Southern seaside section with a bandstand. One further notices that Phyllis Avenue had been named Liege, echoing the naming of other avenues predominantly on the East Side of the Estate in reference to the First World War.70

68 The 1916 plan lists Salonica as Balonica (sic) – a presumed spelling mistake. 69 I received the digital file from Mike Noble, chairman of Friends of Downlands who in turn obtained it from the Payne family – it looks like a scan from an old slide. Payne did not use this image in either of his two Peacehaven publications (both 2000). 70 This is corroborated by Bernard & Payne (2000, p.16).

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Figure 2.9: Full Estate Map, New Anzac-on-Sea, 1916, from a slide, courtesy Noble/Payne.

Unwin wrote favourably about the straight lines and cross streets of Ephesus and Pompeii, where the two chief thoroughfares had been marked by crosses and temples (1920, p.45). Pylons had formed gateways to temples, demarcating sacred boundaries. Neville tapped into this symbolic rhetoric when he decided to place four concrete pylons along the South Coast Road in 1916 near Second Avenue to the West and Loos Avenue to the East to demarcate the Estate’s boundaries, consolidate an orderly grid structure between Telscombe Cliffs and the Friars Bay Estate and sub-divide and stake out plots.71 A drawing of the pylons featured in a fold-out marketing leaflet, which, although undated, has to pre-date February 1917, as the Estate was still called New Anzac-on-Sea. This was probably sent out to prize winners, as it included drawings and floor plans of six vernacular bungalow designs, an area map, a grid section of Estate Area No 6, situated near the proposed bandstand, conditions of sale and a proposed construction schedule. In line with the Australian Anzac reference, the featured designs were called Adelaide Villa, Sydney Villa, Hobart House, Melbourne House and Brisbane Bungalow; and the leaflet purported that these represented examples of ‘bungalows which are being erected’ (in actuality, construction did not begin until 1920).

71 Historically, pylons were used as gateways to ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman temples. Today, only three of Peacehaven’s pylons remain. The second pylon on the North side of the South Coast Road near Second Avenue was deliberately demolished in 1958 by a local service garage owner.

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Anzac lawsuit Neville’s marketing scheme quickly became the subject of a substantial lawsuit leading on to a trial lasting from February to August 1916 as the Daily Express, under the leadership of its owner, Max Aitken (later known as Lord Beaverbrook) who mounted a fraud trial against Neville’s scheme.72 The trial was reported in national papers such as the London Standard, The Times and attracted coverage in international papers. For instance, the New Zealand Herald and the South Australian Gazette and Colonial Register reported on the pre-trial and proceedings. This widespread media coverage was beginning to give the New Anzacon-Sea Estate a bad name. At the heart of the lawsuit was the question of whether Neville had tricked entrants of the naming competition into buying into a scheme that was essentially a scam. Presumably in order to quickly register all the plots on the new Estate, and to make a substantial profit on the land purchased, Neville had given £50 to each one of the two competition prizewinners and 50 freehold plots as ‘consolation’ prizes to runners up. However, Neville’s prosecutor, Mr. Bennett, claimed that Neville had actually given nearly three thousand plots ‘away’ – in return for 3 guineas per plot for ‘conveyancing charges’. At least 140 prizewinners of freehold plots joined together in a lawsuit against Neville, who fought back immediately and produced a pamphlet containing forty letters ‘received from plot owners at New-Anzac-on-Sea to say that the new South Coast Resort was indeed a valuable and genuine proposition’.73 Neville had rallied correspondents at local and national level and quoted from letters sent in from Norwich, London, Dorset, Liverpool, Edinburgh as well as Friars Bay and Newhaven. Correspondents claimed to have recently visited the new Estate, commenting that they looked forward to its development. These early endorsers may of course not have existed in actuality or could have received payment from the SCLRC to write favourable reviews. In the pamphlet, Neville further claimed to have had 80,000 entrants to the naming competition and argued that this high response rate had prompted him to give out more building prize plots than he had originally intended. Highly adept at self-promotion, Neville had exaggerated the number of entrants tenfold. Trying to preempt a court case and to instill renewed confidence in his scheme, he attempted to underscore the new Estate’s significance by referring to an illustrious host of plot holders. He

72 Beaverbrook was Canadian – it is possible that he was aware of Neville’s previous business dealings in Canada and wanted to expose him. 73 AMS5798/1 New Anzac-on-Sea pamphlet February 1916 The Keep.

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asserted that owners of plots already included, ‘several members of the Peerage, as well as a large number of Barristers, Doctors, Solicitors, Clergymen, Bank Managers, Artists, Architects, Surveyors, Estate Agents, Accountants, Civil Servants.’74 It is worth citing the New Zealand Post at some length, as its April 1916 coverage clearly states the full nature of the dispute: Practically anyone who sent in a name got a consolation prize, and [. . .] each successful competitor would obtain his conveyance upon paying three guineas for the conveyance and stamp duties. A considerable body of literature was sent out showing, apparently, that there was a thriving estate being developed, with all kinds of attractions. A large number of people appeared to have actually paid their three guineas and received intimation that in 30 days ‘they would receive a conveyance of a plot of land of not less than 2500 superficial feet.’ The evidence showed that the estate was absolutely derelict, and that there was no access to the sea. His Lordship suggested that it was possible to cut steps. Mr. Bennett said even if they could get down to the sea there was little beach, and the cliff was falling away, making it dangerous at spring tides, even if they got there. Counsel said he did not know how many persons had been foolish enough to pay the three guineas, but at any rate the 60 plaintiffs had done so. Their case was that their money was handed over for the specific purpose of paying the conveyance and stamp duties, and not as the purchase price of the land, and, in the circumstances, they claimed that they were entitled to repudiate the gift.75

In another twist to Neville’s court case, it was the Register, originally called the South Australian Gazette and Colonial Register, which reported in detail on the outcome of the case. Under the heading ‘Anzac-on-Sea Judgment’ it reported on 12 August 1916, that Mr. Justice Younger had entered judgment in favour of the plaintiffs.76 Damningly for Neville, the court concluded that: The estate was bleak and exposed and thickly overgrown with gorse. [. . .] The offer of a block of land to those who suggested suitable names for the property, his Lordship said, appealed to the vanity, not to say the stupidity, of the public; and 8000 people competed. There were no roads on the Estate, and no system of lighting, water, or drainage, and under the Newhaven Council bylaws no building in the existing circumstances was possible. In return for their three guineas the plaintiffs had received something that was absolutely and utterly worthless, while the defendant was calculated to have made a profit (less cost of advertising) of £28 per acre, or a total of £6,872. In his Lordship’s opinion it was a clever fraud.77

74 AMS5798/1 New Anzac-on-Sea pamphlet February 1916 The Keep. 75 ‘NEW ANZAC-ON-SEA, story of a derelict estate.’ New Zealand Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16199, 8 April 1916, Page 2. 76 The Register, 12 August 1916. 77 The Register, 12 August, 1916.

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Renaming of New Anzac-on-Sea Estate to Peacehaven in 1917 Following the loss of the court case the Estate’s name was changed to Peacehaven in February 1917, but the SCLRC continued to use up its old stationary.78

Figure 2.10: SCLRC letter 1917, courtesy The Keep.

A letter issued by the SCLRC to one of the plot holders in March 1917 included a PEACEHAVEN sticker which was used to cover up the word New-Anzac-on-Sea and asked recipients to, ‘please note that the name of our South Coast Resort has

78 In 1959, Neville relaunched a very short-lived magazine, the Downland Review (Volume 1, No 2, 1959, p. 15.), which he tried to use as a way to promote ongoing business interests in Saltdean. In an editorial, he claimed that, ‘more than 200 people sent in the name ‘Peacehaven’ in the competition so that no one had a monopoly of it, but we still receive letters from people, and had one in this year 1959, from a person who sent in that name or claiming to have done so and asserting they were entitled to the first prize’.

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been changed as from 12 February from New Anzac-on-Sea to PEACEHAVEN’ (see Fig. 2.10).79 Peacehaven remained the subject of much controversy and dispute over land use throughout WWI. Following the initial fraud trial, Neville started an action for libel against the Daily Express and between 1917 and 1919, he was embroiled in further libel suits against the paper he had originally used to further his own marketing ends. He described it as a ‘half-penny paper’, claiming it had sent reporters to the Estate in 1917 to investigate its value and to verify or dispute the growing concerns of prizewinners and had deemed it unsuitable for building purposes. In a tug of war, Neville won a minor libel case, but the Daily Express went on to win an Action in the Court of Appeal, which Neville challenged in a costly and lengthy campaign via the House of Lords. Despite later claiming that he eventually won the case, the outcome of the final court case in April 1919 concluded decisively that the defendants had won, and that costs had to be paid for by Neville.80

Use of the word Anzac after Gallipoli In the wake of the defeat and heavy losses amongst Allied forces during the Gallipoli campaign, which lasted from April 1915 to January 1916, the Estate’s name change to Peacehaven in 1917 would have resonated with a growth in public sentiment to end the increasingly brutal war. Generally, this is the narrative widely held in local history books and the reason offered on the Town Council website.81 In actuality, Neville had no choice but to change the name (due to the negative wide spread attention the project had already attracted, this might have even been a welcome move). By 1916 Anzac had begun to be widely used by businesses in Australia to sell commodities such as soap, drinks, but, notably,

79 See East Sussex County Council document AMS5798/2 Letter from SCLCR to A.J. Durrant, March 1917, The Keep. This document includes the sticker, ‘please note that the name of our South Coast Resort has been changed as from February 12th from New Anzac-on-Sea to PEACEHAVEN’. 80 See Downland Review, 1959, Vol 1 No 2, p.17 for Neville’s version of events, Box 4, TroakPoplett. See The Times, London, England, Saturday, March 1919, p.4, Issue 42055, ‘High Court of Justice. New Anzac-on-Sea: Libel Action. Neville v. The London Express Newspaper (Ltd)’ for the final verdict. This feature also noted other names originally put forward, such as ‘Brighthaven’, ‘Haven-sur-Mer de Luxe’ and ‘Sunnyside-on-Sea’. A folder in the Troak-Poplett collection (Box 14) contains further correspondence from 1959 by an unnamed researcher who went to Colindale Library to reexamine the drawn-out court case. 81 http://www.peacehavencouncil.co.uk/historic-peacehaven/peacehaven-a-brief-history/ Accessed 2 March 2015.

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also other speculative developments (see Fig. 2.11).82 The Commonwealth Government became increasingly critical of the misuse, for commercial gains, of a word which was associated with such heavy loss of life and launched Paragraph 20, a War Precautions Regulation, which made the use of the word Anzac in association with ‘trade, business, calling or profession’ illegal.83 It is therefore highly probable that Neville was subject to Paragraph 20. The Anzac site hosted by the Australian Government explains that the developer of the Anzac Estate Murrumbeena, near Melbourne, Victoria, New South Wales, was asked to change its name after already having sold more than half of the available plots.84

Figure 2.11: Anzac Estate, 1916. Courtesy National Archives of Australia.

82 Stanley Bernard drew my attention to the Commonwealth government’s critique, from 1916, of the word Anzac for business usage. 83 http://www.anzacsite.gov.au/5environment/anzac/anzac. N.P. Accessed 8 March, 2015. 84 ibid Anzac Estate Map Item 29/3484, Part 1, A432/86 National Archives of Australia.

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Songs about the Anzacs, however, continued to be published. The back cover of an Australian songbook, ‘The House that Jack Built’ displays the word A-N-Z-A-C prominently across the top of the page (see Fig. 2.12).85 There are astonishing similarities when comparing Neville’s own marketing strategy and choice of visuals with this songbook cover and the motif of a path leading up to contented home ownership here.

Figure 2.12: Song sheet, 1916. Courtesy National Archives of Australia.

Renaming of streets and War Office and Board of Agriculture take over in 1917 Far from being the end of Neville’s scheme, the name change to Peacehaven instead marked the beginning of a new chapter of the still non-existent, South Coast Estate. References to French and Belgian battlegrounds in the scheme’s original street systems disappeared and Liege became Phyllis Avenue, Louvain

85 http://www.anzacsite.gov.au/5environment/anzac/anzac. Accessed 8 March 2015. Song book 29/3484, Part 14, A432/86, National Archives of Australia.

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changed to Gladys, Marne to Vernon Avenue, Southdown replaced Mons, Seaview substituted Loos, Friars was chosen instead of Festubert and Balonica turned into an altogether more innocent Cornwall; Ypres became Searle, named after one of Neville’s company foremen. Anzac Avenue disappeared and reentered the new Peacehaven estate plan as Sunview Avenue. All other roads and avenues were renamed after nearby places and towns predominately based in Sussex (e.g. Arundel, Mayfield, Keymer, Capel, Slindon).86 A few roads were given popular girls names such as Gladys, Victoria and Dorothy (after Neville’s wife); one avenue was named after Neville’s son Roderick. Some names related to locations within the empire and a couple of WWI site names were kept (e.g. Cairo Avenue and Malines Avenue). Edith and Cavell Avenue were retained. These two avenues had been named, in 1916, in memory of the British nurse Edith Cavell, who was shot by a German firing squad in late 1915 in Belgium. She had been known to have nursed soldiers on both sides of the war and, following her execution, became a national heroine.87 One can speculate that on the whole English names were deemed preferable to foreign ones – in particular as the initial street names would have acted as constant reminders of battlegrounds of the First World War, encoding the planned estate as a memorial to lost soldiers and civilians, in effect giving the impression of living in a war cemetery.88 Correspondence between plot holders, Neville’s SCLRC, the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries and the War Office, uncovered at The Keep, reveals that in early 1917 the area making up the Peacehaven Estate was taken over by the War Office and the Board of Agriculture to be used for the war effort. Sections of the land were only released back to the Company in 1919, and it took until 1920

86 Barker writes that the streetmap.co.uk website ‘gives a total of 496 Mayfield’ street names for England, Wales and Scotland (2009, p.17), making it one of the most popular of street names. Barker believes that ‘suburban land developers have always liked vaguely rural names, with undertones of Housman, Elgar and Morris dancing’ (2009, p.17). 87 Cavell had been the head of a nurse’s training school in Brussels, and there was international and national indignation at her execution. For further information on Cavell, see Herbert Leeds (1915), and ‘Duty and Dissent. The Great War and British voices of resistance’, 2015 exhibition at Senate House Library, University of London. 88 This idea is based on a conversation with Darren Newbury and Charmian Brinson, October 2014.

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before Neville could write back to plot holders: ‘The Estate Now Free’.89 However, all the stakes and fencing to demarcate the original plots, and any groundwork had been destroyed by the Ministry in order to grow food on the land in the final years of the war.

Relaunching the idea of Peacehaven after WWI with ‘Homes fit for Heroes’ and Garden City ideals Hardy describes how the Great War and huge loss of life destroyed many a Utopian dream of a better future and initially gave way to dystopia and despair (2000, p.249). However, it also engendered a desire to return to the land and large numbers of veterans and their families dreamt of a quieter, simpler life in the countryside, away from the squalor and fast pace of cities. This is a point underscored by Richard Mabey (2013) and Robert McFarlane (2013). Mabey shows that veterans and their families were drawn towards seemingly unspoiled natural landscapes on the fringes of large towns and cities, and to new developments. McFarlane writes that the ‘shock of the Great War provoked intense British interest in the old ways’ (2013, p.21) which was coupled with a desire to ‘slip back out of the modern world’ (ibid., p. 21). This nostalgia mixed with desire to reconnect with and restore traditional ways of being is also echoed by Esty, who notes that the motif of salvage signaled a major shift ‘from metropolitan pastoralism to lateimperial pastoralism [. . .] the idea that cultural wholeness [. . .] could be restored to England rather than simply mourned at the core and projected onto the colonies’ (2004, pp.42–43). It would have certainly been easier to claim that the country and its citizens could be restored, rather than acknowledge the high casualty numbers and lasting scars. In this spirit, the British Prime Minister David Lloyd George ‘promised Homes fit for Heroes at the end of the First World War’ in 1918 (Lewis, 2014, p.26).

89 AMS 5798/5 A letter from Mr. C.W. Neville, 1920, The Keep.

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Figures 2.13 a+b: The Home I want, book cover, Richard Reiss, 1918; Your Country’s Call, n.d,. Imperial War Museum, reproduced in ‘Lowther’s Lambs’, East Sussex County Council Your Country Magazine, Summer 2014, p.16.

On the cover of Richard Reiss’ 1918 book The Home I Want is a composite drawing that features a soldier pointing at a substantial house set in a suburban environment and surrounded by a garden (see Fig. 2.13a). This home stands in stark contrast to a second illustration depicted underneath, which includes rows of small terraced houses, factory chimneys and the absence of any green space. Only a few years earlier the image of country life had been invoked as a reason to join the war effort in order to protect it, as this WWI recruitment poster, captioned ‘Your Country’s Call. Isn’t this worth fighting for?’ amply illustrates (see Fig. 2.13b). Each of the soldiers depicted in either drawing points towards picturesque looking houses. Mabey (2013) notes that there was a general mood in Britain that it needed to do good by its war veterans – to compensate for the horrors of the First World War. Government policy and social reform responded by adopting the Garden City design as a ‘basis of the National Housing Act which introduced local authority housing throughout England’ (Miller 1995, p.9). The so-called Housing,

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Town Planning Act of 1919 swiftly authorized the building of new homes, and the Homes fit for Heroes scheme, which promoted low cost suburban homes for veterans, was rolled out on a national scale. Leonard Woolf would later argue that one of the unexpected outcomes of the Great War had been the partial destruction of the countryside because of the scheme’s success in triggering a building boom (Woolf, 1967). Under the aegis of Homes fit for Heroes, plots on the Peacehaven Estate were promoted to prospective buyers. By 1920, the area comprising Neville’s Estate was still largely open, exposed, Downland, partially covered in gorse and with several working farms. In order to raise funds to begin construction on the Estate, Neville introduced a Housing Bond scheme and sent a circular to existing plot holders. A copy of the 1920 circular, viewed at The Keep, urges plot holders to buy into the scheme ‘to quickly make Peacehaven a Success’, and the same year, London County Council tram tickets advertised plots for a ‘Garden City by the Sea’, further aiding promotion (Hall &Ward, 1998, p.71). In another letter sent to plot holders in 1920, Neville reiterated that ‘Peacehaven will be essentially a Garden City, and in order that the style of building shall be in keeping, we encourage the use of our own plans of bungalow-type houses as far as possible’.90 The first six brick homes in Peacehaven were completed in October 1920 in Seaview Avenue, using materials available after the war, which included WWI army huts and surplus material purchased from a nearby WWI military camp at Seaford.91 Right on the boundary of Peacehaven Estate and Telscombe Cliffs Estate and set up by the Ministry of Agriculture in the autumn of 1920, was a small rehabilitation and agricultural training centre for veterans who had suffered major injuries (Peacehaven Post, Vol.1, No 5 Jan 1922, p.126).92 The centre’s goal was to support ‘disabled ex-Service men to win back to health and strength’ by teaching them agricultural and poultry skills (ibid, p.126). It comprised of a small number of wooden buildings and was in operation between November 1920 and December 1921 (ibid, p.126). Captain Tutt, who himself had been severely injured in combat at Etricourt when fighting with the Welsh Division directed the centre and supported the 100 veterans who stayed there at a time (ibid, p.126). Many veterans stayed on

90 AMS 5798/6 The Keep, Neville ‘To the Plot Owners of Peacehaven’, J920. 91 See Troak, (2007, p.16). 92 The training centre was situated near land that had been used as an airfield during WWI – see Tyrrells List (2002) by Peter Longstaff-Tyrrell, under ‘Peacehaven’. One of several centres set up across Sussex, Telscombe Centre was the last one to close and it was its imminent closure that had prompted it to be featured in the Peacehaven Post’s November 1921 issue.

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the new Estate, including aforementioned Canadian veteran, Mr. W. Farnell (see prologue).93

Garden city Utopia: Peacehaven ‘essentially a garden city’ Neville knew how to draw on popular town planning ideals by social reformers, who, inspired by Ebenezer Howard (1902), sought to marry ‘town and country’, believing that this new union would lead to ‘a new civilization’ (ibid.). Colin and Rose Bell chronicle the growing public interest for Howard’s garden city principles, fuelled by desire to escape industrialized cities and ruthless landlords (1972). Howard’s garden city concept was considered by some as ‘salvation’ (Hardy, 2000, p.60) and it became a blueprint for international town planning ideals. For example, the Deutsche Gartenstadt-Gesellschaft issued a survey of English garden cities in 1910. Darley notes that by 1914, there were at least fifty housing schemes inspired by garden city lines being built (Darley, 2007, p.196).94 Howard saw the garden city model ‘as a key to a great social problem’ (Hardy, 2000, p.62) and had the skills of adapting international responses to an English setting. He had researched problems in overcrowded British cities, but also in Berlin, Paris and Vienna. For solutions, he looked at new American and Australian developments, such as Adelaide, with grid systems and public gardens. A hybrid, transnational mixture of ideas informed his ultimate vision (ibid., p.61). Howard placed little faith in government interventions due to their slow take up of new ideas (Barker, 2009, p.70). His prominent ‘Three Magnets’ diagram suggested merging town and country into a town-country garden city where, amongst other advantages, residents would encounter, ‘freedom, co-operation, fresh air and water, bright homes and gardens, no smoke, no slums, drainage, bright homes and gardens at low prices’ (see Fig. 2.14). Many of these modern ideals were picked up and activated in Volk’s visual programme for the Peacehaven Post (see chapter 3).

93 Another veteran of note was Noel Ede, who also remained in Peacehaven, where he founded the International Friendship League in 1931, which had a peace-making mission. See chapter 5. 94 Darley cites publications by Nettlefold (Practical Town Planning, 1914) and Culpin (The Garden City Movement Up To Date, 1913) to corroborate this figure. For comprehensive surveys of the Garden City movement see Ward, S. (1992); Hardy (2011); Hall, C. & Ward C. (1998).

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Figure 2.14: The Three Magnets, Garden Cities, 1902, from introduction (no pagination).

In his Town-Country-Magnet chapter, Howard invited readers to walk through an imaginary garden city, asking them to envisage ‘an area of 6,000 acres’ with boulevards, and ‘beautiful and well-watered gardens’ laid out in circular shapes (1902, p.2,3). Howard’s ultimate goal was to create affordable, harmonious communities with homes built by citizens through cooperative building societies (to avoid speculative developers). The first garden city was to be a blueprint for a cluster of six circular Garden Cities with 32,000 residents each, near a larger city and an even larger ‘social city’ (Miller, 1995, p.7). His proposals led to the formation of the Garden City Association in 1899 (Hardy, 2000, p.66) which was successful in raising enough financial support to develop Letchworth. By 1901 the Association had commissioned the architecture team, brothers-in-law Unwin and Parker to prepare architectural plans and building designs (2000, p.68).95 The architects were hugely influenced by John Ruskin and William Morris, and their first book (1901) combined their interest in building affordable homes with the promise not to impose a plan but to take the lead from the landscape. Completed in 1903, Letchworth became very popular with its residents but due to Howard’s radical vision, it attracted some derision from Edwardian society, which this cartoon tried to subvert (Ward, 1992, p.6).

95 Unwin and his family chose to live at Letchworth for three years as early pioneers before moving on to Hampstead Garden Suburb, their next project.

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Figure 2.15: ‘Garden Citizens of the Future’ by Horace Taylor, in Ward, S. 1992, p.6.

Entitled ‘What some people think of us’, and created by commercial artist and cartoonist Horace Taylor, this image portrayed some of the new residents being inspected by curious visitors (see Fig. 2.15).96 Three key figures were introduced in verse style: Walter Gaunt, promoting plots, Raymond Unwin at the drawing board and Howard Pearsall with spade, tending to a vegetable patch (Ward, 1992, p.6). The deliberately self-conscious style of Taylor’s drawing and the accompanying verse resemble features published in the Peacehaven Post just over a decade later (see chapter 3). It is highly likely that Volk would have been familiar with Taylor’s work and in fact might have been commissioned by Neville to model his cartoons on those of Letchworth and Welwyn Garden Cities. Two other idealized views by Diana Robinson and Frank Dean were created to promote

96 Taylor designed posters for London transport during the 1920s. See https://www.ltmu seum.co.uk/collections/collections-online/the-collection?q=horace+taylor; Accessed 1 April, 2018.

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Letchworth. In Robinson’s representation, used on the cover of a promotional guide she depicted an avenue lined with trees and cherry blossoms and a resident trimming his hedge, indicating a sense of well-being (see Fig. 2.16a). It is reminiscent of the Peacehaven marketing images, as is a view created by Frank Dean as a promotional Letchworth postcard series (see Fig. 2.16b) (also see further below).

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Figures 2.16 a+b: Illustration by Diana Robinson, Letchworth promotional guide, no date, collection J.W.; Illustration by Frank Dean, Letchworth promotional postcard, 1906, collection J.W.

The conventional and romanticized nature of the persuasive imagery could be seen to indicate a shift from ideals of co-operative living to a promotion of individual home ownership and the project ultimately failed to implement Howard’s substantial social reform agenda (Hardy, 2000, p.73). 1909 saw the publication of Ideal Homes for the People, which offered guidelines for the construction of ‘working class’ housing. Its authors, architects George Clare and Walter Ross borrowed design features of earlier vernacular cottage and craft-based architecture that echoed Arts and Craft, but with a much-reduced budget. Unwin published a guide on Town Planning in Practice in 1909.97 This included sections on the success of Letchworth Garden City and his next project, Hampstead Garden Suburb, built in 1906 (on a detailed history of the latter, see Galinou 2010). Elsewhere in Europe, Canada, the US and Australia the Garden City Movement had become equally popular, and garden suburbs were constructed close to cities, for example in Toronto, where the

97 The book met with huge interest and was reprinted seven times by 1920, at which point Unwin wrote a new introduction and added new illustrations.

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Lawrence Park Estates opened in 1910 as a popular garden suburb (see Fig. 2.17). The designs of the homes, labelled ‘artistic’ are similar to some of the chalet bungalow models promoted for the Peacehaven Estate, and included a veranda, porch and garden, as the next figure illustrates.

Figure 2.17: Photograph of Lawrence Park Estates, Historical Atlas of Toronto, Hayes, (2009, p.115).

By 1914, around 10,000 residents lived in Letchworth, and ‘this alone represented no mean achievement when compared with the many earlier schemes that had never progressed beyond the printed word’ (Hardy, 2000, p.73). When WWI broke out in 1914 nothing more came of plans to build further garden cities in Britain until 1920 when Welwyn Garden City was founded.

‘Peacehaven By The Sea’ booklet The language of longing for harmonious new beginnings was mirrored in the marketing literature for Peacehaven, epitomized, of course, by the name change itself. Free standing, detached single storey and chalet bungalows had come to represent the idea of freedom and independence, and a healthier life away from the overcrowded slums of the big industrial cities. This desire was articulated in a

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subsequent promotional booklet titled Peacehaven by the Sea from about 1919.98 It contained idealized drawings including seven one-storey and chalet bungalows and a stylized gilded text invitation, that read: ‘The Call of Health and Happiness for You & All’ (see Fig. 2.18a). It was flanked by the motif of a youthful woman in flowing white dress, windswept hair and walking barefoot across a sandy beach with her hand raised sideways, as if calling out to prospective buyers. As already discussed, the use of an allegorical female figure was to became an emblematic feature of the SCLRC’s visual marketing programme and represented the ideals of the birth of Peacehaven. The image also included white cliffs and a raised British flag, which would have aimed to instill a sense of national pride in the viewers and was a marketing attempt to associate these iconic and widely used motifs with the Estate.

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Figure 2.18 a+b: Peacehaven by the Sea particulars; Brochure cover, courtesy Newhaven Museum.

On the brochure cover was an ‘idealistic view’ of a large bungalow with established garden framed by a neatly cut hedge and tidy lawn on which a couple could be seen playing croquet while other residents were enjoying the sunshine 98 Newhaven Museum, ca. 1919, A026P018. The artist and writer were not named.

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resting and two women chatting near the entrance gate (see Fig. 2.18b). On the road outside a child could be seen pushing a hoop. The motifs of sailing boats and white cliffs would have helped underscore a narrative of comfort and leisure on the Estate. Just a little over a decade earlier, in 1906, the postcard artist Frank Dean had been commissioned to create images that could be used as postcard views in order to promote Letchworth Garden City (see Fig. 2.19). Dean’s idealized ‘General View from Norton’ depicted a mother and daughter enjoying the pastoral location of the new Estate which itself suggests spaciousness and substantial looking new homes.

Figure 2.19: Frank Dean ‘General View from Norton’ 1906, collection J.W.

Dean’s colour palette of greens, blues, reds echoes those of the Peacehaven booklet as does the motif of imposing clouds, which was frequently drawn upon in graphic images to connote change (see chapter 3). Another page in the brochure included a drawing in several sections (see Fig. 2.20 below) with, at the top a pond and a pair of swans with five cygnets (this motif was subsequently used on promotional Peacehaven chinaware tea sets). The vignetted image of a thriving seafront promenade with established flowerbeds, sailing boats, pedestrians and cars is flanked by two seagulls. Underneath it there is a detailed topographical map adopting an aerial view of the Estate and its location on the Sussex Downs and close to Brighton, Lewes and Newhaven. An arrow points towards London, inferring that this is within easy

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reach. Interestingly in this representation the Estate was still depicted without any houses and as open Downland.

Figure 2.20: Peacehaven by the Sea particulars No 3 courtesy Newhaven Museum.

The map motif was subsequently reused in marketing campaigns throughout the 1920s to conjure potential development futures. Stylistically these images are a hybrid between modernity and nostalgia for the past – the scroll design, ribbons and round golden frame are reminiscent of a traditional Victorian family photograph album; combined, these three figures are an interesting mixture still residing somewhere between imagination and reality.

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Figures 2.21 a+b: Peacehaven by the Sea Approach No 2, Troak-Poplett Collection; Letchworth Garden City Directory cover 1907, collection J.W.

One view survives that used the motifs of the two pylons with Peacehaven signposts, a tree-lined avenue, pedestrians, two horse-drawn carriages and several redroofed houses in the near distance (see Fig. 2.21a). These impressions represent an Arcadian landscape that has been domesticated but here neither the clifftop location nor a central estate have been included. The view might have been modelled on an earlier artist’s impression of a Letchworth directory cover from 1907 in which a straight tree-lined avenue with pedestrians and a motorcar leads towards a centrally placed town (see Fig. 2.21b and chapter 3). By coupling Peacehaven with a Garden City and seaside resort narrative and promoting the idea of a coherent internal look ‘in keeping’ with the Garden City concept, Neville succeeded in asserting his business interests disguised as concern for the look of the new Estate. Howard was able to start the Welwyn Garden City development in 1920, which, like the early construction phase at Peacehaven that had begun the same year, started by recycling army huts due to lack of material (Hardy, 2000, p.78). Early promotional material for Welwyn and Peacehaven relied on similar tropes, including the promise of sunshine away from ‘the smoke’ (Rook, 2001, also see chapter 3). By 1921, the SCLRC had changed its letterhead to fully endorse the garden city ideal through its new logo ‘Peacehaven, The Garden City by the Sea between Brighton and Newhaven’.99 In a strategic move Neville opened a new Estate office next to the

99 AMS 5798/9 The Keep. Letter, dated 26 April 1921, from Neville to plot holders to outline the results of arbitration against the Board of Agriculture claiming this had to pay so that the land could be re-surveyed and re-staked following war use.

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site where construction of the Hotel Peacehaven and Lureland Dance Hall were about to begin.100 Although names of avenues running North to South were not included on the first sectional block plan of Peacehaven,101 Block 116 and Phyllis Avenue (where Martha Hecker was to buy her bungalow in 1969, see Prologue) is clearly visible below (see Fig. 2.22). Plots were offered at a cost of £75 for a full acre, but south of the South Coast Road and nearer to the seafront promenade they cost £100. It was also possible to buy a quarter acre in the North Annex section for £25 and generally plots were most expensive nearer to the main road. This and the earlier Anzac map characterize how the Estate mutated from idealized representations into a controlled grid system in which space became regulated and attributed varying monetary values.

Figure 2.22: Early block plan, Troak-Poplett collection, East Sussex Library and Information Services.

100 He retained an office at Pall Mall, London, but by 1922 had moved to Vernon Place in Holborn, from where he ran the company’s national marketing campaigns and expanded his business interests. 101 Exact date unknown, produced circa 1920.

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Peacehaven Economic Homes booklets published in 1920 and 1922 Neville continued to promote the Estate in national newspapers, including paying for two illustrated full-page spreads in the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror in July 1921 and in November 1921 in The Times (see Fig. 2.23). Each featured designs of economic homes alongside endorsements and the advertisements were made to look like feature articles, claiming a ‘chance of a lifetime’ by securing a freehold seaside or acre plot for a £1 cash deposit.102 Utilizing writer George R. Sims’ assertion that ‘Peacehaven, designed by experts whose experience of town planning is world-wide, is to be a haven land of ideal homes in an ideal situation’, each advert claimed that the Estate was being developed on ‘model lines’ with ample space and light, and suggested homes could be purchased for all year-round use, as second home or for investment.

Figure 2.23: Peacehaven promotional advert, The Times, November 18, 1921, Collection J.W.

102 The Daily Mirror, 25 July, 1921, p. 4 and Daily Mail, 20 July, 1921. On 18 November 1921, The Times also ran a half page advertisement featuring Sims’ endorsement that ‘the future of Peacehaven is assured’.

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Sims, (who also wrote the first editorials for the Peacehaven Post in 1921, see chapter 3), had previously denounced the tough living conditions in London’s slums in two books (both 1889), which were set against a vision of fresh beginnings in healthier surroundings.103 Readers were offered information booklets which were also promoted locally in the 1921 Brighton Season magazine and the new Peacehaven and Newhaven Gazette. Boasting the title, Economic Homes: Containing Seventy-Five Designs of Bungalow Type Houses, ‘designed for the purpose of erection at Peacehaven, the Garden City by the Sea’ (1920) the first booklet had a plain text only cover, and included a preface explaining why the Estate was the perfect place to move to (see Fig. 2.24a).

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Figures 2.24 a+b: Economic Homes No 1, Troak-Poplett collection; Economic Homes No 1 Area map of Peacehaven & Annex Estate, Troak-Poplett collection.

It promised future railway links to London, as well as a map which already included an additional Annex Estate planned for North Peacehaven and cited the development’s proximity to Brighton and London (see Fig. 2.24b). The first booklet contained interior layouts and detailed drawings for each of seventy-five timber and brick bungalows. It was divided into sections for houses with one, two, three or four rooms, including a kitchen and, in some cases, a bathroom and a maid’s room. Bungalow model No 001 was offered for £300 and had the simplest design, constituting a modest one bedroom, one storey bungalow which came with the option of adding an outhouse with toilet (see Fig. 2.25).

103 Dennis writes that overcrowded London was not only at the centre of the British Empire, but due to the Greenwich Meridian GMT, from 1884, ‘at the centre of time’ (2000, p.125).

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Figure 2.25: Economic Homes Model Design No 001, Troak-Poplett collection.

Each design was represented through an actual photograph and an authoritative floor plan that prospective clients could select from (but neither the image source or photographer’s name were offered). The photographs had been taken on a cloudless day with 3/4 angles, resulting in a visual effect that made the homes look more substantial. The homes’ design layouts allowed buyers to project and imagine themselves into each house, with its own veranda or porch, and more or less space for gardening or growing food. Some of the larger designs were for bigger size plots vying for buyers seeking a smallholding. Interestingly, many of the model homes already included garage spaces, as Peacehaven’s development coincided with increased use of the motor car. These design types resonated with national changes to housing designs after the First World War, which now frequently included space for a garage, but no basement and larger gardens.104 There were vegetable patches, poultry runs, porches and terraces. In 1922, a second booklet was issued by the SCLRC, Economic Homes (No.2) Containing Designs of Shop-Bungalows, Two-Storied Houses and Garden Designs (see Fig. 2.26a). By the time it was published, several hundred houses had already

104 Some early bungalows built by local developer Harry Edgerton along Tor Road in North Peacehaven did have small basements.

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been built at Peacehaven. The new edition included designs of homes with garden lay-outs, as well as chalet bungalows and bungalow shops. In total, there were over 150 different designs. Many of the early Peacehaven homes contained a mixture of Mock Tudor, vernacular and classic elements. Lowenthal explains why Mock Tudor was ‘the favoured interwar style. Praised as ‘quaint’ and ‘oldfashioned: to be up-to-date now meant to look as old as possible. ‘Olde English’ vernacular buildings catered for such nostalgia’ (2015, p.45). Whilst the first booklet had a plain cover, the second booklet included a colour drawing with four bungalows, two of which have expansive porches.

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Figures 2.26 a+b: Economic Homes cover (No 2) Troak-Poplett collection; Oval promotional card 1921/22, Troak-Poplett collection.

Each house was shown lined by shrubs, and walking towards the bungalows along a simple path with low grassy borders, an elderly couple comes into view. The man wears a suit and hat, the woman is in a red dress and hat. They seem to be taking in the view of the bungalows and seaside. Just visible in the distance are some sailing boats (connoting leisure time), white cliffs to the right and on the horizon a naval vessel. The couple appear to be taking in this restful, calm scene. The same drawing was also used in a full colour advertisement on an oval promotional postcard, making the clouds in the distance (only faintly visible on the monochrome cover) much more pronounced and the overall image livelier (see Fig. 2.26b). Neville had decided that according to his scheme only shops could be built directly facing the South Coast Road; therefore, the second booklet featured many chalet shop-bungalows, including two-storey homes with shops on the ground floor and living accommodation on the first floor, such as Design No.104, which many local shops, such as the Cairo Store, (see chapter 4), were indeed modelled on (see Fig. 2.27).

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Figure 2.27: Economic Homes No 2, Troak-Poplett collection.

Some of the designs in the second booklet further differed as they included people, bicycles and ornaments, as in the drawing for Design No.104 (1922, p.16). Here, a female shopkeeper was depicted conversing with another woman; the fenced garden looks well established and a British flag flies on a flagpole in the back garden. The little vignette connotes home comforts, prosperity and contentment. In addition to promoting a range of business opportunties, the booklet contained an index of plants, shrubs and garden designs that would be suitable for a garden city located by the sea, suggesting a host of different ideas for Peacehaven gardens in particular, depending on the chosen plot size. The booklet gave detailed instructions on what types of flowers, trees and vegetables to grow, in various garden lay-outs, such as these two, one modelled on a 75x 140-foot plot, the other on a 40x120 foot plot (see Fig. 2.28).

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Figure 2.28: Economic Homes, No 2, p. 38, Troak-Poplett Collection.

Each imagined garden contained sections set aside for a vegetable garden, ornamental garden and porch. Bungalows advertised in North American publications – see Gustav Stickley’s monthly magazine The Craftsman (1901–1916), architect Henry L. Wilson’s Bungalow Book (1910) and the Building Brick Association of America’s bungalows with floor plans by Rogers & Mansons (1912) – bear a striking resemblance to some of the models advertised in the two Economic Homes booklets. They highlight transnational architectural influences and mirror Neville’s marketing strategy of using competitions to win plots and even a prize house. A comparison with a 1910 bungalow scheme by British builder William Cooper also reveals similar design features to early Peacehaven bungalows, such as Kenya House, built in 1922.105 During 1919 and 1922 (and coinciding with the publication dates of Peacehaven’s SCLRC’ Economic Homes booklets introduction) the Daily Mail circulated their own ideal homes booklets and featured winning entries from competitions it held (see Fig. 2.29 a&b). The homes looked more like cottages, rather than bungalows and mirrored some of the more upmarket houses showcased in the American Craftsman magazine.

105 See William Cooper Builder Ltd, Old Kent Road, London, Merchants’ store and residence, 1910, (p.483).

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Figures 2.29 a+b: Daily Mail Ideal (Workers) Homes cover 1919 J.W. collection; Daily Mail Bungalow Book cover 1922, J.W. collection.

Yi-Fu Tuan describes how architectural spaces help to create ‘a tangible world that articulates experiences, those deeply felt as well as those that can be verbalized, individual as well as collective’ (2008, p.100). One of the key aims of these booklets was to instill confidence in potential buyers: the designs, drawings and photographs made aspirations tangible. Staying with Tuan’s idea and returning to Peacehaven, the world of the imagination was made real through the photographs and proposed floor plans and gave the impression that buying into the new Estate’s vision was a safe investment. The homes and gardens featured in the booklets became the site of more than thought: they turned into vessels of longing and projection and made the idea of living in Peacehaven palpable. Bungalows were already a favourite choice of affordable housing and the interwar period saw them becoming a proto-type for urban and suburban expansion (King, 1984) alongside ‘suburban semis’ (Bentley, Davis and Oliver, 1981, p.10). Bungalow designs borrowed from architectural motifs from India, North America and Australia; therefore, they have been described as ‘both a product and symbol, of a complex yet inter-related world’ (King, 1984, p.262).106 In the most comprehensive overview on global bungalow development, which includes a section on Peacehaven, Anthony King traces the emergence of bungalows to their colonial roots and provides a social and cultural context. He situates the bungalow as being ‘part of two phenomena characteristic of modern,

106 King traces the term bungalow itself to rural Bengal in India, where the word ‘banggolo’ has been used since the seventeenth century to describe a ‘peasant’s hut’ (1984, p.1). Although the first bungalow in Britain was built in Kent in 1869, ‘the bungalow phenomenon “took off” between 1870 and 1914, at the height of empire’ (King, 1984, p.262,263).

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urban-industrial and essentially free market societies: large-scale suburbanization and the growth of mass leisure’ (King, 1982, p.39; King 1984). This has also been well documented by J.M. Richards ([1946] 1973), who discussed the partial fulfilment of fantasy and individualism in the English suburb and gave a more sympathetic evaluation of interwar housing. More recently, Phillipa Lewis has tracked the arrival of British bungalow estates.107 In a brief section on Peacehaven, Lewis showed that the 1924 Housing Act favoured ‘bungalow building, as the government granted subsidies for building houses under a certain size’, primarily to increase housing for working class families (2014, p.245).

Peacehaven imagined through architectural blueprints The Troak-Poplett collection contains two original blueprints of architectural floorplans for houses and shops that were actually built, and which are based on designs from the Economic Homes booklets. I chose this floorplan as it is based on the previously discussed shop-bungalow Design 104 and lists actual combined costs for concrete, brick and timber materials and includes spaces for cupboards, a larder and a fuel store (see Fig. 2.30).

Figure 2.30: Design for a House and Shop Peacehaven, early 1920s, Troak-Poplett collection.

107 In 1873, bungalows were advertised in Birchington-on -Sea in North Kent (Lewis, 2014, p.228).

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A large blueprint map of the entire Peacehaven Estate and dating from the early 1920s survives and now forms part of the Troak-Poplett collection (see Fig. 2.31). Comparison to another early blueprint reveals that the Annex section was swung around, whereas the New Anzac-on-Sea map had a north section over to the east side, this blueprint now shows it on the north west side. On further examination plots already sold and homes under construction become detectable as little handcoloured red squares. The dots evoke the process of the land being filled in and the appearance of new houses, coupled with the arrival of settlers. Each dot can be said to embody a series of choices to purchase a plot as a future investment, or in order to make a go at personal success by moving to the emerging estate. The dots further help confirm that the SCLRC sold plots indiscriminately all over the Estate based on market forces, as opposed to developing specific sections first in order to create distinct neighbourhoods and a town centre.

Figure 2.31: Blueprint, early 1920s, Troak-Poplett Collection.

An original, ink drawn and now ripped street plan is still visible layered underneath the blueprint. Discernable at closer scrutiny are Peacehaven’s first ave-

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nues, Lincoln and Cairo, directly adjacent to Second and Third Avenue (not yet named on the map).108

Figure 2.32: Close-up detail of Figure 2.31, Troak-Poplett collection.

Peacehaven Estate articulated through a simplified grid map in 1922 The first Peacehaven street plan from circa 1922 presented a simplified grid system of avenues going north-south and roads running east-west (see Fig. 2.33). The Estate was bound by the Promenade to the south, which continued along the entire length of the seafront and cliff top. In parallel, but on the northern boundary, was Arundel Road. The western boundaries now continued further north all the way to Outlook Road and the plan now included Harrison’s Cliff Park Estate, but not its roads, nor did the map show Telscombe Cliffs Estate just to the west of Second and Third Avenue. It did, however, indicate rough farm tracks leading to nearby Lewes, Piddinghoe and Telscombe, as well as the main road to Brighton and Newhaven.

108 I am unsure whether Peacehaven’s first road was named after Abraham Lincoln or the town of Lincoln. Given Neville’s desire to align the new Estate to the idea of individual landownership and independence, it is conceivable that he wished to encode the history of America’s independence.

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Figure 2.33: Original Peacehaven Estate Map, circa 1922. Troak-Poplett collection.

As the red squared dots began to fill in as more settlers arrived, the SCLRC devised a town directory for 1923, which listed residents, houses, including their location and names, businesses and shops including Optima Stores, Arcadia Stores, Kia Ora (an Anzac connection as this means Welcome in Maori), Cairo Stores and Percian House (see chapter 4 and chapter 6). House names echoed many of the public sentiments that the SCLRC tapped into when marketing the Estate. Taken from the 1923 listing, these included evocative names such as Tinkerbell for Neville’s own house on the Promenade; Minnedora, Sleepy Hollow, Garden Reach on Arundel Road; Doonroving and Arcadene on Firle Avenue; Accacia on Bolney Avenue; The Nook, Maple Hurst, Buena Vista, Quite Content, Chez Nous and Cozy Cut, all on Phyllis Avenue; Ivanhoe, Nutshell, Pax and Croydon Camp on Roderick Avenue; The Merrythought, The Rest, and Windyridge on Seaview Avenue; The Homestead and Montrose Lodge in Valley Road; Nevahescaep (Never Escape) on Capel Avenue, Mon Repos on Piddinghoe Avenue, the list goes on. Some new owners would spell words backwards Lahcisum (Music Hall), or use names from popular record companies (Thistledew, Ersamine). These names encapsulated the individual dreams and aspirations of their owners and reflected their desire to grow new roots and set up permanent homesteads. References to the war lingered with Aftermath on Seaview Avenue (see chapter 4). An aerial photograph from 1925 reveals the grid system of roads and houses now superimposed onto the landscape, with a promenade very near the cliff edge,

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and the main South Coast Road running East to West (see Fig. 2.34). The red dots from the earlier blueprint, which indicated future homes, can be seen here in actuality while divisions into large block sections remain visible. Also perceptible are Arundel Road and Phyllis Avenue, which stretches far into the distance towards Lewes and the quarry and joins up with Peacehaven’s South Promenade, right near the Hotel Peacehaven, its sunken garden and Lureland Hall.

Figure 2.34: Aerial View of Peacehaven, Courtesy Historic England, 1925.

In order to continuously feed the imagination of prospective buyers, and to sell off the many remaining plots, as this aerial photograph is able to illustrate, the SCLRC continued regular promotional campaigns, which, like earlier initiatives, tried to convince buyers by emphasizing Peacehaven’s fresh air and alleged health-inducing location.

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A seaside Utopia built on the edge of chalk cliffs: The ‘Peacehaven Series’ postcards created by Gordon Volk The idea that Peacehaven was now officially open for business was disseminated in promotional SCLRC postcards from 1922 onward, thus mobilizing one of the most popular visual media genres of the period and replicating the example of Dean’s Letchworth cards (see above).109 Gillian Rose’s (2013) work on promotional imagery for contemporary housing developments indicates that this continues to be a popular marketing technique today. Jordana Mendelson and David Prochaska see postcards as objects that are ‘responsive and emergent in character’ (2010, p.10). They create a double sense of longing and desire, travel through time and space, sit between myths and actuality and constitute ‘communication acts in a representational form’ (Mendelson & Prochaska (2010, p.10). Susan Stewart describes the postcard’s main property as a ‘mass-produced view of a culturally articulated site’ that also operates on the level of a portable souvenir (2007 [1993], p.138). The ‘Peacehaven Series’ was reproduced as half-tone productions from original paintings by Gordon Volk, who, as I have already suggested, was the most important in-house artist and writer of the Peacehaven Post magazine (see above and chapter 3).110 Cards were for sale as a full set of six, with a suggestive envelope cover that urged readers to ‘become interested in this beautiful Garden City by the Sea’. Each of the postcards included a short text on the back offering full particulars by postal order and featured idealized views of the Estate, which drew on established visual motifs. These included imposing cloud formations (connoting change and transformation) and summer sunshine (suggesting happiness, health and freedom). Much of the visual iconography tapped into local and national symbols such as the pastoral British countryside with rolling hills, white cliffs, and seashore. Short captions appeared on rolled out scrolls, reminiscent of biblical regalia.

109 Mathur writes that in 1908 ‘more than 860 million cards were reported to have passed through the British post’ alone (2007, p.114). She charts how demand for postcards exploded in the first two decades of the 20th century, and quotes from a picture postcard magazine from 1904, which was enthused by the ‘attraction of these persuasive agents’. 110 Volk revealed himself as artist in a Peacehaven Post column, and explained he used reverse initials, V.G.

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Figure 2.35: Peacehaven Postcards No.1, J.W. collection.

The first postcard in the set, No 1 ‘Peacehaven: Way to Beach’, showed the Bastion Steps, which from 1922 secured access to a so far inaccessible beach (see Fig. 2.34). Reminiscent of the 1916 brochure, a couple of beach tents, bathers and children playing safely can be seen, but with no sea in sight. Steps have been carved into the tall, white cliffs, but the Estate itself is out of view. This view emphasized leisure and freedom, and denoting that any obstacles associated with the precarious cliff location could be overcome; it did not reveal that at high tide the sea comes up right against the cliffs, swallowing up the narrow beach. Postcard No 2, ‘Looking towards Brighton’ showed a wide-angle landscape view with Peacehaven centrally placed and consisting of approximately thirty red-roofed single storey, detached houses, framed by the sea and Downland (see Fig. 2.35). It could not have been immediately obvious from this view that the Estate sat high up on tall cliffs.

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Figure 2.36: Postcard No 2, Looking towards Brighton, Collection J.W.

In the foreground Volk depicted a man standing next to his motorbike with sidecar high up on a hill from which to enjoy a pastoral scene. Two women in white summery dresses sat on a picnic blanket with a basket filled with food. In the near distance a charabanc travelled from Newhaven towards Peacehaven whilst a cyclist headed in the other direction. To the left two children flew kites. Volk’s scene brings to mind a pointillist painting by the French artist Henri Edmund Cross titled ‘Excursion’, which featured in the exhibition Utopia Matters at Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin, 2010. In this painting, made some twenty years earlier, in 1895, Cross used a similar colour palette, and created a highly romanticized viewpoint with four subjects seemingly absorbed by the natural landscape, and by each other, in harmony with their surroundings. ‘Outlook from the Dew Pont’, used the motif of a shepherd and flock and was a visual symbol mobilized in the marketing of Peacehaven throughout its first decade (see Fig. 2.36 and chapters 3 and 6). This arcs back to biblical imagery of Eden that had survived, and was thriving, in the immediate postwar years, but also to Sussex folklore and natural myths and the idea of guardianship of land and animals. With its history of having been sheep grazing pasture, this is the kind of view any traveller through the area would have come across for centuries prior to development. In Volk’s version the shepherd looks inland, his gaze turned towards fertile farmland and Lewes to the West.

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Figures 2.37 a+b: Postcard No 3, J.W. collection; Hills of the South, n.d., S.P.B. Mais, painting by Audrey Weber, J.W. collection.

In a version of the shepherd theme by the Sussex artist Audrey Weber, simply captioned ‘A Sussex Shepherd’ the sea is in the background, and the shepherd is shown resting with his dog and sheep by a footpath (see Fig. 2.37b).111 This theme was again picked up in an early photographic view of ‘The Dewpond near Peacehaven’, (photographer unknown see Fig. 2.38). It seems odd that the caption here only mentioned the dewpond, omitting the shepherd and sheep, although this could indicate what a common sight both were on the Downs, perhaps too obvious to be noted.

(a)

(b)

Figures 2.38 a+b: Postcard of the Dew Pond near Peacehaven, black & white, J.W. collection; Postcard of The Dew Pond Near Peacehaven. ca.1920, hand-coloured. J.W. collection.

111 This painting appears on the cover of Mais, Hills of the South, published by the Southern Railway Company, London as an enticement for walkers. No publication date, but the preface is signed 1939.

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In a second version of the same view, the shepherd, water and grass areas have been hand-coloured. Another observation worth noting here is that the photographic view shows that it would have been close to impossible to see both the Dewpond and the adjacent hills and Sussex Downs in quite the same way that Volk had shown them in his much more dramatic representation featured above. The fourth card in the series was a grand view of Peacehaven Heights and showed a steamship approaching the nearby harbour at Newhaven (possibly arriving from Dieppe, see Fig. 2.39). Two couples and a child were shown walking along a clifftop path with their dog, with Seaford Head and the start of the Seven Sisters visible in the distance.

Figure 2.39: Peacehaven Postcards No. 4, courtesy Margaret Palmer.

The fifth card shows the Peacehaven Estate Office, with a red PEACEHAVEN flag flying at high mast (see Fig. 2.40). In this scene a biker was depicted going past, while several residents were shown standing and talking with each other near the office; a motorist has pulled up outside.112

112 This became the Rosemary Tea Gardens in 1922. In folklore, rosemary has a long association with aiding memory. The herb grows wild on the Gallipoli Peninsula and sprigs of rosemary are used as a symbol on Remembrance Day in both Australia and New Zealand.

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Figure 2.40: Peacehaven Postcard No.5, J.W. collection.

The sixth card presents the Hotel Peacehaven and sunken garden (see Fig. 2.41). Completed in October 1922, but much anticipated from late 1921 onwards, this hotel, originally announced as a bungalow hotel, encapsulated much of the Estate’s early vision (see chapter 4). It was built in an elevated position, away from the cliff edge nearer to the South Coast Road at the intersection with Phyllis Avenue.

Figure 2.41: Peacehaven Postcard No.6 Hotel Peacehaven & Gardens postcard, J.W. collection.

With its large terrace, sea views, tennis courts, tea pavilion and statues, all visible here, it was envisaged to become Peacehaven’s central landmark and focal

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point. In this glamorized scene several guests with children, deck chairs and umbrellas were shown to enjoy the sunken Italian gardens. Volk added shadows and captured the movement of the water fountain, just off centre view near the ornamental wooden bridge, which would have further helped viewers to project themselves into these scenes through an imaginative investment.

Circulation of ‘The Peacehaven Series’ One can only speculate on how widely known these promotional postcards were locally and nationally during the early 1920s. They have remained, until very recently, in relative obscurity, both in academic texts and local histories. They did circulate at regional and national level from August 1922 onwards and I have been able to acquire several postmarked cards online. Where present, the postmark and the receiver’s address offer a glimpse as to their national circulation. Three of the six postcards I acquired were posted in Sussex. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the messages inscribed are all rather mundane, with only one of the senders referencing Peacehaven indirectly. Sent in September 1923, and posted from Brighton, card No 3 was sent to a ‘Miss Pryce’ in North Wales. The sender, who used the initials E.T. H., mentioned attending a local bridge party and a tennis party. No 2 was sent from Fred in Hailsham to his father in nearby St. Leonard’s on Sea in October 1923, and includes the brief message, ‘just a line to say I hope to come over and see you Thursday afternoon. Hope you are feeling better’. No 1 was sent from Belfast in August 1922, to a Mr. Richardson Esquire in Newton-on- Hythe, Scotland, stating, ‘hope you are getting about and enjoying your holiday. Things are quiet and dull here and the weather is not what might be desired’. No 5 was sent from Preston on 12 February 1923 and bears a stamp advertising the 1924 British Empire Exhibition. It is impossible to reconstitute whether the senders had much interest in Peacehaven itself and meant to promote it. One postcard (No 3) was sent to Upper Norwood as late as 1933 by a visitor who had stayed on the Peacehaven Promenade, indicating that the postcards continued to be available and stayed in circulation for some time. It carried the simple message ‘We are staying here’. The combined marketing strategies met with some success and the constructing of housing quickly expanded. Between 1922 and 1923, nearly 600 homes were built through speculative development across the Peacehaven Estate.113 Unsurprisingly, 113 Only 44 houses were built by municipal authorities across the entire Chailey and Newhaven rural district councils (which included the area of Peacehaven Estates), however, a total of 2326 houses were built through private enterprise. See Brighton, Hove & District Regional Planning Scheme Report Table IV (1932, p.58, 68). Report at CPRE central London office library.

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the scale and speed of this development brought its challenges and problems as can be gleaned from the brief example offered here. An original black and white picture postcard depicts ‘sands & cliffs at Peacehaven’. Printed by A.E. Parker who ran Peacehaven’s first post office it captures the difficulties early settlers often faced upon arrival on the Estate. Posted at Newhaven on 26 June, 1922, the postcard carried a message by two new Peacehaven residents, WH and M. Haslam, to friends in Sheffield, informing them of their arrival in North Peacehaven at their new address at 293, Telscombe Road: We have had a very rough time since we came both for wind rain and the place was not finished nor is yet. The builders are very busy our goods arrived two days after us. We had to make the best of it. [sic]

Conclusion This chapter investigated the Estate’s genesis in conjunction with developments of an expanding housing sector nationally. Through an exploration of interconnections, the chapter showed that the SCLRC drew on and was in turn influenced by marketing imagery that already circulated nationally (i.e. in the Daily Mail’s own Economic Homes booklets, as well as across the promotional postcards for Letchworth Garden City). Moreover, existing bungalow designs promoted in, for example, Australia, Canada and America were reused in the two Economic Homes booklets produced to sell new homes on the Peacehaven Estate. Particular styles of architecture, such as the dominance of bungalows with front porches and verandas, were inspired by their Indian counterparts, as this chapter has discussed in some detail. Designs were copied and architectural styles were adapted to suit home buyers. As mentioned earlier, street and house names on the Estate were drawn from actual places across the Empire and were also used for new businesses: for example, one early resident called his new home Mailsi, after a town in Punjab, (now part of Pakistan), and, as already mentioned, one of the first shops on the South Coast Road was named Cairo Stores.114 These intercrossings and entanglements help locate Peacehaven’s inception within a much wider national and transnational context, while also being attentive to the specificities of its development at local level.

114 See Peacehaven Post, 1921, p.22, Vol 1, Issue 1, Mr. Sankey’s new home.

Chapter 3 Tracking the visual programme of the Peacehaven Post through the magazine’s first volume Introduction Launched in September 1921 the Peacehaven Post magazine was published monthly until December 1923, with a print run totalling 28 issues before its name was changed to Downland Post.115 This chapter focuses on the first twelve issues of the Peacehaven Post published between September 1921 and August 1922 and explores the magazine’s key themes.116 During this period the magazine became an integral marketing tool, with significant circulation figures, aimed at influencing the purchase of plots and homes as construction on the Estate had now begun.117 Neville had succeeded in hiring several public figures and personalities of the day to set up the promotional magazine in order to help consolidate the Estate’s publicity. The main magazine contributors frequently used pseudonyms, not atypical in magazine publishing of the time, and included the established writer George R. Sims, the musical brothers duo George and Felix Powell, accomplished lyricist and composer, and the aforementioned journalist and illustrator Gordon Volk (1885–1962).118 Their contributions found articulation through monthly 115 From September 1921 (Vol 1 No 1) to December 1923 (Vol 3 No 28) the magazine ran up a sizeable 496 pages. Chapter 5 considers possible motives that caused the name change to Downland Post and switch in editorship and focus. 116 I obtained a copy of the 1922, limited-edition, first anniversary volume of the Peacehaven Post from an antiquarian bookshop in Melbourne. It is bound in dark green cloth and has the words Peacehaven Post embossed in gold on its spine. The Australian bookshop owner informed me that the volume had been brought into the shop by an elderly, English-born resident. I imagined the possibility of this anniversary volume having travelled to Australia in a trunk in the 1920s; but it is of course entirely possible that the book could have been sent to an early overseas subscriber in 1922. 117 Although actual subscription and circulation figures of the Peacehaven Post can no longer be established, its successor, the Downland Post claimed circulation figures to go up from 5,000 in March 1924 to 10,000 the following month (No 3, Vol 1, p.25). 118 From 1877 until his death in 1922, Sims wrote the popular column ‘Mustard and Cress’ under the pseudonym of ‘Dagonet’ for the Sunday Referee, a national British broadsheet newspaper (Wilson, 2007). In 1959, one year before his own death, Neville revisited the genesis of the Peacehaven Post in the short-lived journal Downland Review, 1959, Vol.1, No.1, where he https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110734027-004

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articles, drawings and sketches, special features and regular news columns. Sims had been an extremely prolific journalist, playwright, poet and the author of books such as Dagonet Ballads (1879), The Theatre of Life (1881), How the Poor Live (1883) and Horrible London (1889), which made use of satire as a way to reflect on social reform. By 1921, Sims had lost much of his personal fortune due to a gambling habit. This may go some way to explain why he took on the Peacehaven Post’s commission to become the first feature writer. Sims playfully baptized the Estate ‘Lureland’ in the opening lines of the magazine’s first issue.119 George Powell was the magazine’s first editor and during 1921, George and Felix Powell composed several songs for the Peacehaven Post. Gordon Volk was one of the magazine’s most instrumental contributors, tasked with devising a visual programme of persuasive graphic images, cartoons, drawings and editorial features that would document Peacehaven’s progress and promote its future promise to potential buyers. He had already worked as a reporter and cartoonist for over a decade, first at the Brighton Herald from 1901, and between 1910 and 1914 at the Cape Town Cape Argus. A WWI volunteer, he had also taken part in the Gallipoli Campaign (Volk, C. 1971, p.191). The magazine’s overall tone was one of wishful fantasy: key themes aligned with earlier marketing campaigns and included the vision of a new healthinducing garden city by the sea, surrounded by open Downland, yet in close proximity to Brighton and London: a place for returning veterans, colonial servicemen and women from different parts of empire and high density urban areas such as the capital. The Estate was promoted as holding significant potential for prosperity, growth and social reform, including enhanced social equality. The unfolding narrative, over the course of the magazine’s first year, fluctuated between language that was at times self-referential, serious, pseudo-scientific or emancipatory. Editorials amplified some of the live debates which circulated in the media in the early 1920s and an aspirational class discourse is still palpable. The branding and advertising embraced a utopian Garden city rhetoric, but stripped of its more collectivist ideals, and also referenced the Fresh Air and Back to the Land movements. The editors aimed to reach readers with laissezfaire libertarian views, who were opposed to trade unionists and perceived ‘agitators’ and, in the main, wanted to get on with their own lives unencumbered

referred to ‘Dagonet of the Referee’ as an original contributor. Appendix 2 gives brief biographical notes on the Powells, Sims and Volk. It is unknown what fees were paid to the magazine’s contributors nor who proposed the themes, whether Neville, or the editorial team. 119 Sims even wrote a promotional editorial published in the Referee, entitled ‘By the Sussex Sea. A Garden City of the Hills’ (2 April, 1922) in which he praises the aspirations of the hotel and estate under construction.

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by perceived external intrusion. They believed in privately owned property and sought to run their own businesses or smallholdings with as little state or local government interference as possible. A close reading reveals how Neville, through the vehicle of the Peacehaven Post, tapped into a vacuum created by the British government’s slow building programmes following WWI, which had led to only a small number of economic homes being realized through state intervention. The idea of a new freehold estate created through private enterprise, and which offered a fresh start, would have appealed to many. The editorials were inflected by quotations from popular culture (entertainment, film, music), allusions to classical references, and settler narratives, including frequent mentions of descriptors such as pioneers, pilgrims, settlers, new frontiers, laying foundations, the birth of a town and borders. Tracing the history of several large, private enterprise in-house staff magazines produced just before World War I, Alistair Black shows that these were used as propaganda tools, aimed to chart progress, highlight achievements, and transmit corporate branding, while being ‘laden with imperial spirit’ (Black, 2016 p.300). A common aim was to create a sense of connectedness in order to ‘bridge distance’ (ibid., 2016, p.293). This type of rhetoric can be read adapting Benedict Anderson’s observation that imagined communities connect through the circulation of shared values, as well as ‘shared sets of images and styles, perceived affinities and aspirations articulated and circulated through printed media’ (Anderson, cited in Edwards, 2012, p.217). Elizabeth Edwards convincingly shows how some early twentieth century print media succeeded in creating a sense of cohesion and togetherness despite vast differences (2012, p.217). These goals intersected with Neville and the staff at the Peacehaven Post, who used the magazine as a platform to generate a sense of community spirit and disseminate updates on progress made with construction and sales at Peacehaven. The magazine’s primary function was to activate the imagination of prospective buyers by tapping into their emotions and desires and also to reassure the readership and investors that they had made the right choice by having bought into the Estate’s vision. In the aftermath of war, there was raised interest in spiritualism as people sought solace (Winter, [1995], 2014) This might have made some readers more receptive to manipulative marketing material that activated language more commonly known in the happy endings of fairy tales and which promised a worryfree home life and orderly development, where even the seasons and months followed a predictable rhythm of increasing growth, prosperity and happiness. Older and younger readers were invited to draw on their own imagination so that they, too, could become part of the vision unfolding on the pages of the magazine; some appear to have participated by sending in letters and commentary. Of course, it is highly likely that most of these submissions were in actuality

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composed by the magazine’s staff.120 Each issue carried endorsements, not all quite as glowing as that of a young Louie Wagstaff, who had anticipated what Peacehaven would look like twenty years onward, imagining a garden city filled with trees, parks, a pier, pleasure boats, an Electric Railway, aerodrome and even a cathedral (Vol 1, No 9, May 1922, p.264). In actuality, this endorsement was probably by Louie’s parents as the Wagstaffs had recently opened a local real estate office and would have been eager to promote the Estate.121 Katherine Parkin (2018), who has extensively tracked the history of North American commercial advertising, highlights the importance of historical grounding to sharpen analysis and the need to deduce cultural references of marketing language from the past; this is addressed below. In order to explore how cultural tropes were transmitted in the Peacehaven Post, I have disassembled and newly reconstituted a number of visual motifs and recurring themes and have tracked their symbolic connotations. Because of their production as promotional images, these have to be approached with caution. I investigate the motifs’ shifting meanings, intercrossings and resonances across time and space, through different historical contexts. The contextualization of visual motifs is particularly meaningful now as some of the imagery has survived into the present, where it has found articulation in social and civic practices, but without being fully comprehended or historicized. There is a cultural awareness at a subconscious level of recurring visual motifs, but little or no knowledge of their origins.

Peacehaven’s narration refracted through Gordon Volk’s imagery One of the most striking features of the magazine was Gordon Volk’s graphic imagery, which frequently invoked the concept of an idealized environment with Peacehaven modelled on a second Eden. A recurring motif was the idea of Peacehaven’s birth followed by youthful growth, which was epitomized through the visual representation of a young woman in various guises and locations who also represented the embodiment of Peace.

120 A letter attributed to E.M. Woodley was more likely produced by one of the magazine’s paid contributors as it celebrated Volk’s art work, ‘For visions of the fairest spot [. . .] just read the leading article in the Peacehaven Post. These visions are personified and Art is uppermost, as depicted by the artist in the Peacehaven Post’ (Vol 1, No 8, p.212). 121 A joke submission included a drawing alleged to have been by ten-year old H.P. Harrow – this was however a made-up name referencing a WWI bomber plane (see Peacehaven Post, Vol. 1, No 6, p 154).

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Another main thread which continued to run through subsequent volumes was that of home ownership, represented through a variety of playful and serious imagery. Health benefits were featured widely and through a range of irreverent and playful cartoons; the carnival theme was mobilized as a way of reflecting on renewal, as was a regular feature which celebrated ‘The Borders of Lureland’, and depicted the beauty of nearby downland, but also alluded to the transformation of a natural landscape, likened to a partial wilderness (aside from the old farm buildings), into a civilized one, with arranged flowerbeds and designated beauty spots. Another popular theme was to imagine ‘what will be seen at Peacehaven’ and to contrast these images with ‘what will not be seen’: there were not going to be any slums, heavy industry or peddling in Peacehaven. Two other themes were also invoked regularly: the idea of returning pilgrims arriving on Peacehaven’s shore, coupled with imagery reflecting on the estate’s growing relationship with a wider world and the development of a personal identity and sense of an independent, self-reliant community. The magazine featured other themes and columns not discussed here, for example, it had a regular children’s page, a women’s page, a horticultural section, residents of note, short stories and carried advertisements. In addition, there was an activities section, which included documentary photographs of the Estate (see chapter 4). Volk’s graphic images are able to act as stand-ins for the varied forces that influenced their creation and are therefore ideal tools for analysis. They contain different spatial and temporal elements, and work with ideas of past, present and future through the use of allegory and symbolism. In order to create a feeling of confidence in potential buyers and new residents, much of Volk’s imagery invoked myths of origin that linked Peacehaven’s genesis with religious iconography. As this chapter illustrates, some of Volk’s images were inflected with Christian connotations and he also made creative use of imagery drawn from Greek and Pantheistic mythology. Volk also drew on cultural, social, political and patriotic values that circulated nationally in the early 1920s, but also created visual motifs that contained more specifically English and even local associations. Emerging from an educational system still steeped in religious education and classicism, readers would have been receptive to the Peacehaven Post’s style, format and content. In order to unpack the layered iconography of Volk’s graphic images, I draw on Mircea Eliade’s (1980 [1952]) extensive work on visual and iconic religious symbols. I also take inspiration from Ernst Gombrich’s (1972) study on the use of visual metaphor and signs, in which he made the case for the provision of a historical context for emblematic imagery and also traced the main functions of images. These included: an ‘image’s specific motifs; the question of what these motifs represent [. . .] symbolically, and third, what they are meant to express’ (Johnson, 2012, p.56). Describing the difficulty of unpacking complex

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metaphors, W.G. Sebald observed that humans usually hold at least two meanings in our minds simultaneously, emphasizing the need for careful interpretative work.122 Due to the complexity and layers within some of the images, Chevalier and Gheerbrant’s dictionary on symbols offers important contextual knowledge (1982).

A second Eden, tapping into Utopian creation mythology Eliade argued that new foundations, such as the development of a town, always played out rituals of origin. He discussed Utopia as a non-place that had to be imagined and invented first: a place that needed to be clawed back from a disorderly world. In Peacehaven’s case, this could be seen to have been the natural wilderness. He argued that in the development of towns certain rites of passage and rituals are enacted, and a key symbolic feature is the way both place and time are reorganized. Eliade believed that new developments were frequently positioned at the centre of the universe in the imagination, modelled on Jerusalem, and that ‘Towns, temples, houses [only] become real, because they are made to become the centre of the world’ (Eliade 1966, p.11).123 This strategy of placing Peacehaven centrally was already apparent in early Estate maps and blueprints (see chapter 2) and can be productively revisited as part of the analysis of the magazine’s visual programme. Eliade (1966) contrasted human experience of time as linear whereas he considered mythological time to be non-linear and circular – visualized as time repeating itself in the form of, for example, sunrise and sunset and through the location of a central place. Humans could enter this eternal, mythical present, of course epitomized by the Garden of Eden, through ritual enactments. At Peacehaven, this would be enacted through the construction of the Hotel Peacehaven with its sunken landscaped gardens, tea pavilion, fountain and ornamental statues, that were to become a central attraction and feature landmark.124 From its start, the graphic and textual language made references to new beginnings and new life, which involved a return to ‘virgin land’. Drawings of the Estate frequently depicted it as being centrally located, a place where citizens could start afresh by purchasing a plot, building a new home, and developing a town with shops, places of worship and businesses. By referring to himself as founder, and including columns like, ‘the founder says’, Neville adopted a close 122 Sebald, Westdeutscher Rundfunk [radio] 16 February 1999. 123 My translation. 124 Once the town’s strategic location on the Meridian line was discovered, a monument was erected in a widely advertised ceremony in 1936 (see chapter 6).

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to god-like status in the articulation of the town’s own myth-making and relied on the creation story to construct a convincing narrative. Volk’s cartoons and drawings, alongside editorials by Sims and the Powells, epitomized the two faces of Utopia. They already anticipate a future for Peacehaven, a place that was only just beginning to emerge. They further articulated expressions of a shared past in a not yet existing present, which gave the impression of solidity and connection to tradition. By using polysemic symbols such as anchors, pillars, a globe and repeated imagery of a sailing ship, cliff tops and clouds, the Peacehaven Post deployed visual metaphors to create the illusion of connectedness to mythologies from the past. Sims discussed Peacehaven as ‘an Eden Environment’ in the magazine’s first issue and invoked the poetry of William Blake in relation to its Sussex location (Vol 1, No 1, p.3). He introduced the Estate’s possibilities as residing ‘in the near future’. Sims returned to Eden imagery in the third issue, when he referred to Peacehaven as ‘a second Eden’ (Vol 1, No 3, page 59) in the editorial feature, ‘The Birth of a Town’ (see Fig.3.1).

Figure 3.1: ‘The Birth of a Town’ Peacehaven Post Vol 1, No 3, p.59, Volk.

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Sims’ feature was framed by Volk’s illustration of a shepherd gazing towards a town nestled in Downland, with the sun rising to the East, and a basket in the form of a large horn, filled with pears and apples. Strong visual metaphors were invoked by drawing on the image of the shepherd (representing Jesus), but here replaced by Neville as founder, and sheep (here the flock connotes prospective settlers heading towards the centrally placed town visible in the distance) and the horn or shell (signifying baptism in Christianity, as well as fertility, but also the horn of plenty in Paganism). The iconography of the shepherd of course also implies leadership and pastoral qualities. Large clouds fill the sky; during the interwar period these were a very strong theme within British caricature, the idea being that clouds contained someone’s vision or impending change.125 They also acted as an invitation to readers to project their own imagination. Historically and in religious terms clouds have frequently been used to connote a godly presence. Perhaps this stretches the argument too far, but it may be possible to argue that clouds could also stand in for Utopian ideals, picturing a place emerging out of imaginative investment. With the double feature of essay and drawing, Powell and Sims conjured up metaphors which Eliade would have described as the myth of the eternal return (1966). By calling the new estate a second Eden, Sims implied that incoming residents would find Eden on earth in the shape of Peacehaven. This paradise could be attained by working the land, which in turn mimics a reenactment of the original biblical founding mythology of the world. In using a metaphor as strong as Eden, Sims effectively appealed to readers to use their creative powers and project themselves into a shared future, asking them to imagine a community of like-minded settlers. He described the role of the Peacehaven Post in persuasive marketing prose, promising ‘to do all that in our power lies to help little Peacehaven to grow up into a fair and comely town worthy of her sisters by the sea’, (Vol 1, No 1, 1921, p.59) and celebrating the estate’s seaside location and health-giving properties. This vision for a future (purported to already exist), joined with the notion that part of the future already resides in the past, presented an extraordinary promise to the readership. It is possible to compare this marketing strategy to that used to sell the Coral Gables Estate in Florida, which was promoted as a ‘miracle’ in the first sales booklet launched in 1926. Like the Peacehaven Post, it included drawings and persuasive text, and used rhetoric and visual motifs such as ‘Trail Blazers on a New Frontier’ (1926, p.25). Most of the brochure’s iconography, created by pro-

125 I owe this insight to Chris Mullen, whose visual primer contains 4000 cartoons from 1900–1920. http://advertisingcliche.blogspot.co.uk. Accessed 2 March 2018.

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fessional illustrator Edward A. Wilson, was represented in a modernist style and writer Rex Beach evoked the developer’s ‘vision’ in similar terms to those used by the magazine editors at Peacehaven. This extract resonates strongly with the SCRLC’s evocation of giving birth to a new Estate, aiming for perfection and harmony, and conjuring up the idea of a new Eden.126 His dream was to build a City Beautiful without a blot or blemish, without ugliness or dirt; a city of majestic size but perfect harmony. A city planned with reverence and with care and built after the old Grecian ideal that nothing is so sacred as the beautiful: that was his vision’. (1920, p.11)

Similarly, references to antiquity were used at Peacehaven in order to reassure buyers of the viability of the enterprise.

The twelve “Posts” of Peacehaven In Volk’s image captioned ‘The Twelve “Posts”’ twelve signposts signal towards a promising estate, where peace, prosperity and good health are plentiful (see Fig.3.2). This image encapsulated the magazine’s entire pictorial programme and summed up Neville’s marketing aspirations. The idea of the birth of a town, located in an idyllic countryside environment, with all signposts pointing towards a place where health, happiness, recreation, freedom and prosperity lie, epitomized an ideal. Here Volk drew on the town nestled off-centre in a half moon frame – the sun again rising in the East.

126 The use of ‘Eden’ in estate promotion is not new. It is interesting to note that in the late 1910s, along the French Cote d’Azur, hotels and cinemas were built in an art deco style, with several buildings named ‘Eden’, such as the Eden-Cinema in Menton, completed in 1917.

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Figure 3.2: Peacehaven Post, The Twelve “Posts” of Peacehaven, Vol 1, No 12, August 1922, p.329 Volk.

The image contains different planes of vision. The bird’s eye view of the town, with the sun radiating outwards, and a tall expansive horizon, could be seen to resemble depictions of a New Jerusalem. The town thus connotes a chosen place, wherein the twelve principles represented on individual signposts all point towards the promise of, amongst others, health, home-life and freedom. Indeed, this motif reflects a long history derived from utopian ideals (Claeys, 2011).127 A second plane of vision works with the perspective of an approaching rambler, who encounters the signposts on foot. Significantly, it is the signposts and their articulated ideals leading to the town, rather than any visible road. These posts could be seen as mirroring the Ten Commandments and the implication is that, if

127 Claeys tracks the quest for ideal societies throughout history and up to modernity, confirming that ‘medieval ideal cities often reflected some version of the concept of New Jerusalem’ (2011, p.116). He argues that this was due to Jerusalem’s key religious role but also because of its ‘aesthetically ideal urban space’ (ibid.) Ward quotes from William Blake’s poem ‘Of England’, in which the poet dreamt of rebuilding Jerusalem ‘in England’s green and pleasant land ’to offset ‘these dark Satanic mills’, referring to industrial cities. (1974, p.24). Interestingly, this same stanza was also used by Howard to introduce the ‘Town-Country Magnet’ concept (1902, p.1), which demonstrates the popularity of this symbolic narrative at the turn of the 20th Century.

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ramblers follow these signs, they end up in a promised land. Signpost number 12, ‘A Haven’ has mystic spiritual connotations of its own. The image of Peacehaven that emerges is projective – a product of dreams, as the landscape does not resemble the actual setting of the selected location. In Volk’s drawing the town had a central core and was crescent-shaped. There is no sea in sight, nor does the viewer get a sense of the cliff-top location upon which the development of the Estate had already started to take shape. Depicted is an urban Utopia transposed onto the countryside and a town surrounded by – and in harmony with nature, away from industry; which begs the question whether this image was a truly utopian imagined ideal, grafted onto the Peacehaven Post.128 The accompanying editorial equated the magazine itself with a guiding signpost, assuring the readership that the magazine was ‘pointing the way to a desired end’ and boldly stated that ‘in Peacehaven freehold homes there is no anxiety for the future, and no rent collector calls to annoy, while a home once owned is owned for all time’. (Vol 1, No 12, August 1922, pp. 329–330). A clear subtext here, that would have been understood by the readership, was that by following the signposts, and buying into the vision, settlers could lead a heavenly life right here on this earth, ‘in measureless content’ (ibid, p.330). This sense of security was promoted by magazine contributors who worked with starkly contrasting imagery, juxtaposing ‘what will be seen’ with what will ‘not [be] seen at Peacehaven’.

The promise of Peacehaven: ‘What will be Seen’ The graphic image below depicts an electric railway, reminiscent of Brighton’s Volk Railway, delivering passengers to Peacehaven, where tennis courts, sailing boats, and a wide, tree-lined boulevard await (see Fig.3.3). A few ambling pedestrians, a motor car, and a chalet bungalow with small outhouse and established gardens with potted plants are framed by a neat border. Readers would have easily been able to project themselves into this vision, which connoted an easy life of leisure. Rather than depicting an actual place,

128 The timing of this drawing is worth noticing, as this might have been in direct reference to T.E. Lawrence’s autobiography Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1922). It recounts a British officer’s experiences amongst the Ottomans during 1916–18. Lawrence had based his autobiography on a quote from the Proverbs, ‘wisdom hath built her house; she hath hewn out its seven pillars’ (chapter 9, Verse 1, King James Bible). In this passage a woman called wisdom builds a house using seven pillars; she turns out not to be real, but to symbolize solidity.

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this image constructed a narrative of possibility, and was similar to promotional imagery of other new estates of the time, including Letchworth Garden City (see chapter 2).

Figure 3.3: ‘What will be seen at Peacehaven’ Peacehaven Post, Vol 1, No 7, p.185 Volk.

Utopian visions, such as Howard’s garden city ideal, were evoked and their meaning transferred into populist imagery, but interestingly, neither the cliff top location nor Downland, which define the location, were featured. Commenting on politically motivated cartoons, Emmison & Smith write that these work by juxtaposing binary oppositions in order to create meanings (2000, p.87). Part of Volk’s vision was to construct cartoons that tapped into a range of topical debates. Under the heading ‘Not seen at Peacehaven’, he drew on familiar representations of rent collectors, pawnshops, political agitators, an ironworks factory, city congestion, overcrowded train stations and child poverty (see Fig.3.4 a&b).

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Figures 3.4 a+b: ‘Not seen at Peacehaven’ Peacehaven Post Vol 1, No 6, p. 159, Volk; Peacehaven Post Vol 1, No 5, p.129, Volk.

Oppositions were generated through a main caption and emphasized in individual storylines and vignettes. A drawing depicting a downtrodden looking pipesmoking drinker, hands in pockets (to indicate that he may have spent all his money in the public bar), a barrel organist (a regular feature in working class neighbourhoods), a policeman disgruntled that there was ‘no promotion’ for him in Peacehaven (presumably as this was crime free), and a ‘Down with work’ agitator (probably a stereotype of a socialist trade unionist), as well as a bookmaker. A visual discourse of class was enacted here, with the images projecting stereotypical views of inner city, working class neighbourhoods. On the one hand, both types of graphic images contained reassuring messages that located the idea of Peacehaven where developers wanted it to be – by the same token, they captured the imagination of a post-WW1 public afraid of the health risks that overcrowding and squalor brought with them in the capital, mass unemployment and social unrest. Equally, recruitment of soldiers had revealed the poor health of a large number of working class recruits during the war, who were frequently malnourished and had problems with teeth and eyesight (Marks, 1996, p.3). This narrative would have appealed to entrepreneurial settlers drawn to smallholdings, to sympathizers of the social reform movement, and to aspirational working-class people.

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Young woman in downland These images were frequently contrasted with the allegorical figure of a young woman, simultaneously representing freedom, the birth of Peacehaven and its future growth (see Fig.3.5a). Indeed, the image of a young woman, which also embodied new beginnings, became synonymous with the ideal of Peacehaven itself. This can perhaps best be characterized in the following assertion, that ‘No shackles of old tradition to bind her, she is free as the air that waves her tresses. Free to weave her own future from the silken threads of her ideals’ (Vol 1, No 11, July 1921, p.301). The motif of freedom from convention was referred to over and over again and was also mobilized to underscore the advantages of being free from local, municipal corporation or council interference. In a June 1922 feature article, entitled GROW-ING, Peacehaven was again directly linked to the image of a female character: Peacehaven, like a girl, whose loose limbs are gradually and surely modelling into the grace and fullness of approaching maturity – Peacehaven, born but a year ago, is keeping pace with the rest of Nature and presenting to the world a picture of purpose achieved, obstacles overcome, and visions realized’. (June 1922 Vol 1, No 10, p. 271)

The article indicated progress and an increased yield in value and prosperity. In Volk’s imagery, the figure appeared in different guises and locations and with slight variations in age (sometimes she is still a girl, at other times, she is already a woman). She was first seen as a young girl centrally placed amongst other customers in Volk’s idealized drawing of the Rosemary Tea Gardens, which was used as the first cover of the Peacehaven Post (Vol 1, No 1, September 1921). She was again invoked for the cover of the November 1921 issue, where she was now represented as a young woman, standing near the cliff top on open Downland. The surrounding landscape is still full of possibility; there is a small flock of seagulls nearby but it is noticeable that there are no houses in sight. The woman’s cropped hairstyle and dress echo the fashion of the early 1920s, connoting that she is a modern woman. This is further underscored by her central presence within the frame. As there is no ring on her index finger, she is not yet bound by marriage to any conventions, traditions or regulations. She holds a summer hat in one hand and her right hand is stretched out towards the sea. Palpable in this image, is the idea of a new way of life emerging at Peacehaven. The woman’s gesture could be read as an invitation to prospective settlers and also to welcome back returning veterans, colonial servicemen and women from other parts of the British Empire. The gesture is also one of reaching out towards other shores, beyond the edge of England, connoting, and underscoring a notion of possibility. This sense of futurity was of course not exclusive to the Peacehaven project, and

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instead was embedded within national discourses, utopian ideals and post WWI sentiments of hope that rippled through the first half of the twentieth century.

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Figures 3.5 a+b: Peacehaven Post Cover Vol 1 No 3, Volk; Marketing Poster by P. Chisholm, 1925 (n.d.) © Manx National Heritage (P.6203).

Of course, the iconography of a young female with raised hands invoked a range of established visual conventions. A conventional intercrossing between Volk’s recurring female motif can be made by looking at British guidebook motifs and resort advertising posters from the interwar period, where the female figure was regularly invoked to attract visitors. In this painting by Peter Chisholm, which circulated as a commercial marketing poster by the Isle of Man Publicity Department in the early 1920s, a woman in striking red jacket, holding an umbrella, was placed within a well-ordered landscape, to promote Douglas and open air rambles, and offering a sense of perspective and freedom, in which nature is presenting as a spectacle to be enjoyed from a high viewpoint (see Fig.3.5b).

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It is, however, also possible to make connections to the Goddess Britannia and to highlight connections between the magazine’s visual programme and a palpable imperial, settler narrative. Still, the differences were significant: unlike Britannia, depicted as mature, and militaristic, with trident, helmet and shield, Volk’s representations of young women were more naturalistic, focusing on their, and by transference Peacehavens’, alleged carefree properties. Volk would have had a deeply embedded cultural awareness of Britannia’s image, as it had extensively circulated in vernacular culture after WWI on memorial items, for example on commemorative mugs, where Britannia was framed by the inscription Peace, doves, a globe, lion, a plane, canon, sailing ship, open sea, shield, flags and Union Jack (see Fig.3.6). Some of these motifs were also picked up in the Peacehaven Post’s visual programme for promotional purposes.

Figure 3.6: Commemoration Mug, 1919 at the Museum of Branding and Advertising, London, Close up Photograph J.W.

Following WWI, the figure of a winged, angelic woman, in classical dress, and holding up a wreath, had come to embellish war memorials across Britain. In the example of the Bexhill memorial, the female figure appears as a bearer of Peace (see Fig.3.7a). These memorials are highly likely to have influenced the depiction of Peacehaven as a young female figure, signifying hope for a better future.

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Figures 3.7 a+b: WWI Memorial, Bexhill seafront ‘Winged Victory’ (1920) is by Louis Frederick Roslyn, photograph 2016, J.W; Postcard view of La Semeuse, L.R. Roty 1921, collection J.W.

There is a further potential reference to the Egyptian Goddess Isis, who represented fertility, birth and rebirth. Like Isis, the figure in Volk’s drawing wore a dress adorned with winged feathers. Volk’s representation is further reminiscent of the iconic agrarian image of Marianne la Semeuse, which continues to be a national, republican symbol in France, symbolizing a nation that is in a continuous state of renewal and growth. In the representation of Marianne by Louis Oscar Roty, Marianne is seen from the side, sowing the seeds for a new republic following the Great War; her image embodies reason and liberty (see Fig.3.7b).129 There is also a striking, and somewhat sinister resonance to John Gast’s commissioned painting, ‘American Progress’, which featured a centrally placed female figure and was meant to connote progress and civilization of the hitherto deemed ‘uncivilized’ American West (see Fig.3.8a). Inflected with imperialism, the disembodied female figure is seen to guide settlers westwards to conquer and colonize the land, protected by the ideal of ‘manifest destiny’ (Colberg, 2012). This myth promoted the notion that Western expansion and technological advances justified the domination and submission of America’s first nations. ‘It is the benign domestic influence of [her] allegorical figure [. . .] Gast seems to indicate, that is responsible for the smooth and uplifting transformation of wilderness into civilization’ (Greenberg 2005).

129 A very similar representation of Roty’s ‘La Semeuse’ circulated on French stamps from 1903 to 1945, and on French coins until 1999. The same motif, based on a drawing by Eugène Grasset, has also featured on the Larousse dictionary cover since 1905. Statues of Marianne can be found in almost all French towns and villages.

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Figures 3.8 a+b: John Gast, Oil painting, ‘American Progress’, 1872, courtesy Autry Museum of the American West, TheAutry.org; Detail of Figure 2.20, chapter 2. Peacehaven promotional brochure, ca 1919, courtesy Newhaven Museum.

That these wide-ranging international examples are not too far-fetched can be illustrated by comparing the representations of ‘La Semeuse’ and ‘American Progress’ with imagery created to promote Peacehaven, for example in an early marketing booklet, dating circa 1919 (see Fig.3.8b). Here an angelic looking female figure, bearing a surprising resemblance to Gast’s figure, was invoked. The main difference between these representations is that the figure here is located in a distinctly English landscape and white cliffs and a British flag come into view behind her (also see chapter 2). These examples highlight that the Peacehaven imagery drew on the same imperial imagination and was hugely influenced by historical representations and popular culture. Reproduced as a lithograph poster, Gast’s painting had circulated widely and it is highly likely that Neville would have encountered it while he lived in North America.130

‘A New Year’s Resolution’ selling the benefits of home ownership A second leitmotif was the ideal of home ownership. This was represented in a large number of drawings, cartoons and articles published during the first year of the Peacehaven Post, which all focused on the advantages of home ownership. 130 Chicago-based clothing manufacturers Montgomery Ward & Co.’s also used a similar motif, ‘The Spirit of Progress’, in their own marketing catalogues from the mid-1920s onwards. This figure was made into a statue that has stood stop atop the Ward Administration building since 1928. This is also referred to as ‘Progress. Lighting the way to commerce’. See: https:// chicagology.com/goldenage/goldenage015/spiritofprogress/.

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There was, for example, a four-page song sheet insert in the magazine’s maiden issue, ‘Come to Peacehaven’, specially written by the Powell brothers (see Fig.3.9).131 An evocative drawing by Volk reproduced on the song sheet cover further added to the alleged urgency to act on this invitation.

Figure 3.9: ‘Come to Peacehaven’ song sheet cover, Peacehaven Post Vol 1, No 1, September 1921 insert, Volk.

Volk’s drawing was infused with iconic biblical and vernacular symbols; again, the image of a young, happy looking and well-dressed woman was invoked to illustrate the song. Here she stood with a bunch of wild flowers and hat in one hand on a small patch of grass, near the white cliff tops, her right hand raised to underscore the message of welcome to the magazine’s readers. A nearby anchor represented hope and fidelity (Becker, 2005, p.17) whereas the dove and olive branch signified the act of baptism and peace (ibid., p.17). These iconic symbols were also part of local and national discourses of Englishness, health and leisure. A seagull, an almost ubiquitous symbol of hope, framed the song

131 This would have been a familiar format as sales of song sheets were high in the early 1920s due to the popularity of home musical entertainment.

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title. Just to the edge the sea came into view, with water of course connoting a source of life. Chevalier & Gheerbrant discuss water also standing in for purification and regeneration (1982). The song’s two stanzas and refrain, are condensed here; the main focus was on health, recreation and home life: There is a spot upon the sunny side of Lureland/And it sparkles like a jewel on the sea/On the dreamy downs where all around is Pureland/ Mine and your land, fair and free [. . .] Come to Peacehaven/Come to Peacehaven and build a bungalow [. . .] as many have done you know up on the Downland/ Purple and brown land/ And near enough to townland/If ever you want to go.

References to the countryside continued to run like a thread through the first volume of the magazine and might have prompted further songs to be composed by members of the public (see chapter 6). Each of the twelve issues included a drawing invariably titled ‘The Borders of Lureland’. These particular images drew on ideas of Eden and Arcadia, and would have incited a sense of stewardship, security and tradition in the readership. These borderland drawings depicted fields and the downs, sheep grazing, four-leafed clovers, which connote luck, fertile farmlands, a primrose, which in Latin means first rose, connoting youth and spring, but also featured remaining natural wilderness. Within the borders of Lureland orderly grid systems could be seen emerging, an infrastructure was taking shape.

Figure 3.10: ‘The Borders of Lureland’ Peacehaven Post, Vol 1, No 9 p.241 Volk.

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The drawing selected as an example is representative of the romanticized style of this particular series (see Fig.3.10). Three different horizons can be seen to open into each other; these are separate, yet connected views of valleys, such as the nearby Ouse Valley, seen from North Peacehaven, and native Southdown sheep. On the one hand, these Downland images deflected from the building work that was under way, but would have also appealed to veterans and their families under the Homes for Heroes scheme. In the next section I situate the Peacehaven Post’s lighthearted and optimistic narratives within a wider Homes for Heroes discourse. It is useful to take a brief look at a couple of representative sketches that circulated in the national media at the time. The cartoonist David Low made several cartoons for The Star, which lambasted what was widely believed to be the government’s slow response to this scheme.

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Figures 3.11 a+b: The Star ‘Homes for Heroes’ 18 July 1921, collection J.W; The Star ‘Homes for Heroes’ 25 April 1922 both David Low, collection J.W.

Each of Low’s cartoons clearly draws on cultural stereotypes. In a cartoon published on 18 July 1921, Low created the character of a potential tenant (presumably working class, judging by his attire) who was shown the door to a pigsty, captioned ‘same old pigsty conditions’ by a ‘slum’ landlord, depicted standing on top of a housing pledge document (see Fig.3.11a). The landlord figure was drawn looking short and fat, and it is likely that he was meant to be Jewish as Low’s sketch contains stereotypical and highly problematic undertones and relies on visual clichés. A second cartoon by Low, published in The Star in April 1922, showed a caricature-version of industrialist, financier and politician Sir Alfred Mond, who was the Minister of Health at the time talking with an economist, described as

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‘hard faced’ (see Fig.3.11b). Standing in WWI trenches, Mond is depicted asking who will pay for spades, to which the economist’s replied, ‘Let every hero dig his own home. They will love the idea. So reminiscent of the happy days of the war – (and so cheap).’132 Contrast this with Volk’s much more positive image of the clean-shaven, slender entrepreneurial home builder (see Fig.3.12a). Whereas this man is depicted with a spade firmly entrenched in the ground, the gesture of the young woman in the drawing discussed above is one of lightness. Both kinds of gesture are highly performative and deeply symbolic as each image plays with the idea of new beginnings. Here the man has just begun to lay foundations for his future home – a thought bubble indicates that he can already envisage the finished house. His choice of clothes project aspiration. On a symbolic level, the image draws on foundation mythology, and the man could also be digging the foundations of an emerging new world, as there are only a few other houses visible. Yet this drawing transcends a mythologized view of the Estate through a concrete action. The new settler and his work are foregrounded; the adjacent landscape is secondary. This image resonates with some of the pictorial elements contained in the ‘12 Signposts’ drawing discussed earlier: a tall horizon, curve-shaped downs, a few trees, but again no sign of the sea, or the Estate’s cliff top location. A key difference is that there is no town visible. Instead of a compact Estate, emphasis here is placed on individual homes, each with fencing and a garden, and small smoke clouds emerging from chimneys, connoting a homely hearth and fireplace. Rather than celebrating collective effort and community, this drawing celebrates robust individualism, freedom and homeownership, and also taps into Homes for Heroes imagery.

132 In an uncanny resonance with Peacehaven, the little holes in the trenches carried the names The Laurels, The Elms, Sea View. However, it was common for homesick soldiers in the trenches to use familiar names on the holes they dug out for protection.

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Figures 3.12 a+b: ‘A New Year’s Resolution’ Peacehaven Post, Vol 1, No 5, p.131 Volk; ‘THIS is the AXE!’ Peacehaven Post Vol 1, No 8, p. 213 Volk.

This cultural trope of home ownership found its strongest visual articulation in a stark cartoon entitled ‘This is the Axe!’ which featured in the April 1922 issue of the magazine. Here an axe representing ownership could be used to give a ‘death blow to rent’ (1922, p.213). Hardy and Ward also discuss these two images and conclude that Neville exploited the political connotations of home ownership by appealing to a ‘petty bourgeois market’ (2004, p.81), and indeed making it possible to purchase a plot as these were considered affordable by comparison. Volk’s visual language drew on reassuring visual clichés that located the narrative where Neville needed it to be. Two feature cartoons published in the magazine’s first issue explored the ideal of home ownership from other angles. The ‘Peacehaven Beehive’ column occurred four times in the first volume and presented various chiefs of staff working for the SCLRC (see Fig.3.13). This would have been an attempt to reassure readers of the high levels of organization on the Estate. Implying the idea of cooperation, the charge of works (Mr. Alfred Cripps), estate agent with block plan (Wallace Sangster), architect (George Kay Green)

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and so-called time keeper (possibly Frank Pegler, the land surveyor) were each introduced in the first issue (Vol 1, No 1, p.9).133

Figure 3.13: ‘Peacehaven Beehive’, Vol 1, No 1, September 1921, p.9 Volk.

This image mirrors Taylor’s Letchworth cartoon from 1909 (see chapter 2, Figure 2.15), and indicates a common marketing device to present a cast of estate characters in order to personalize the narrative of plot and home purchase and make it accessible. Subsequent magazine issues featured other staff members and also made regular references to an alleged building boom with the intention to create a sense of urgency for readers to act and buy into the scheme. A graphic image captioned ‘The Race for the ‘Home’ Stakes’ even presented a large number of anthropomorphic characters that were in actuality building material (cement bags, glass panes, timber, nails, screws), racing towards a goal post, indicating keenness to be used as building material. Another early cartoon, ‘A quiet business day at Peacehaven’ (Vol 1, No 1, September 1921, p.11) was set out like a comic strip and featured vignettes blending into each other: in the top left corner the SCLRC ‘office boy’ appeared to have hanged himself (‘through overwork’, the reader was told), while the Rosemary Tea Gardens appeared completely overrun with customers desperate for service (see Fig.3.14). Hundreds of visitors where shown to have arrived on a Southdown bus, and

133 Successive issues of the Peacehaven Post featured various chiefs of staffs. See Appendix 2 for brief biographies.

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the editor (‘complete with smile’),134 artist in knight’s armour, agent, gardener and architect all made a reappearance too, seen here trying to stem the tide of visitors.

Figure 3.14: ‘A Quiet Business Day at Peacehaven’ Peacehaven Post Vol 1, No 1 p.11, Volk.

In a nod to music hall culture, Volk depicted a lady buyer asking the gardener’s advice as to whether ‘bananas do well here’. This would have been another reference to a song, ‘YES! We have no Bananas’, which was a music hall hit during 1922.135 Looking on at the chaotic scenes in alleged disbelief was Peacehaven’s ‘oldest native’. This character, and others, were reused by Volk throughout the first volume as I show later.

134 Volk’s in-house tongue in cheek reference to George Powell’s ‘Pack up your troubles and smile’ WWI success. 135 ‘Yes We Have No Bananas’; recorded by Frank Silver and Irving Cohn, 1922, for complete lyrics see http://www.traditionalmusic.co.uk/ww1-songs/yes-we-have-no-bananas-frank-silver -1923.htm. Last accessed 2 January 2016. With thanks to Darren Newbury for drawing my attention to this.

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Health-giving narrative Another, key signpost within the magazine’s narrative, and which complemented the ideal of a self-reliant estate, was the focus on its health-giving properties. The January 1922 magazine opened with the headline ‘The New Year and Peacehaven’ above an evocative drawing by Volk, featuring the two-faced Roman god Janus, known as god of all beginnings and endings, as well as god of future and past (see Fig.3.15).

Figure 3.15: ‘The New Year and Peacehaven’ Peacehaven Post, Vol 1, No 5, p.123, Volk.

Volk’s drawing was divided into two sections. The left half of the drawing represented a solemn looking Janus looking towards an apocalyptic inferno of a barren stream and factories, whose chimneys were seen to emit dark polluting smoke. On the right side, a younger Janus was smiling while he contemplated a landscape free from industry, that only included nature, plants, and a windmill next to a small house. Here a clean stream meandered past. The editorial itself relates the story of Janus, and embraces a forward-looking narrative:

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The Roman deity, Janus, was a god with two faces, one looking forward and one looking backward. [. . .] It is a month in which all thinking people look back at the past and forward to the future [. . .] we have nothing to do with the frowning face in Peacehaven. We have only eyes for the smiling face that looks forward [. . .] we give glad greetings to all our readers, and whether they are dwellers in the new Hygeia by the Waves, or actual or potential plot holders, we wish them the Happiest of New Years. (Vol 1, No 5, 1922, pp.123–124)

The extended narrative focused on the actualization of a second Eden at Peacehaven due to the efforts of the SCLRC and the town’s new settlers. The reference to Hygeia, who in Greek and Roman mythology personified good health further harnessed the belief of Peacehaven’s status as a health-giving resort.136 This narrative was further exploited in a subsequent cartoon by Volk, captioned ‘While there’s life there’s hope’ which appeared in the next issue (see Fig. 3.16). Readers were introduced to a Mr. Oldboy, who, upon relocating to Peacehaven, undergoes an extraordinary transformation. Seen initially in a wheelchair, he ends up rejuvenated and jumping around on a spring stilt.

Figure 3.16: ‘While there’s life there’s hope – at Peacehaven!’ Peacehaven Post, Vol 1, No 6, p. 161, Volk.

136 Hygeia was the daughter of Asclepius, god of medicine and Epione, Goddess who soothed pain.

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The storyline explained that Mr. Oldboy had been of frail health and had lived on Abernethy biscuits (a supposed digestive enhancer) and water. Upon receipt of a copy of the Peacehaven Post, he had gone to live in Peacehaven, where his appetite returned. In addition to this text, four speech bubbles confirmed that ‘there’s life in the old dog yet’. Revealing a racist undercurrent palpable in some of the Peacehaven Post features, the character’s reference to ‘that coal-black mammie of mine’ related to another popular song from the variety revue The Co-optimists in 1921. Playing on two political keywords circulating at the time, co-operation and optimism, the show was hugely successful.137 These ideals prevailed throughout the magazine’s existence, alongside its performative style, which is why Volk would have felt that the review made for a good cartoon in-joke. Moreover, due to the editors’ affinity with show-business, it is likely that they would have personally known members of the performance troupe whose play Volk invoked. Another cartoon that drew on the health narrative whilst also referencing popular knowledge circulating at the time was ‘Quite Unnecessary’, were readers were presented a young woman in a white summer’s dress with a Peacehaven beauty sash draped across her shoulder, and an opened-up book in her hands (see Fig.3.17).

Figure 3.17: ‘Quite Unnecessary’ Peacehaven Post, Vol 1, No 9, p. 243 Volk.

137 It was composed by Ivy St. Helier and ran for six years. For more information on the The Co-optimists, see de Bear, 1926.

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Again, epitomizing the idea of the young estate, itself, she sat in a field with flowers close to the cliff’s edge. Her long hair was wind-swept, and two seagulls and a white sailing boat on the horizon were in the background. Next to her stood an older, bearded, white haired man with a cigarette in hand. Smartly dressed in a three-piece suit he appeared somewhat out of place, whereas young Peacehaven looked at ease. In the caption underneath the drawing the woman tells the man, ‘Non, Monsieur Coué, it is not necessary. My spell is more potent than yours, “day by day, and in every way”. You suggest (like magic) – I act like magic’ (Vol 1, No 9, May 1921, p.243, emphasis in original). It is important to know here that Volk was referring to French pharmacist Emile Coué de la Châtaigneraie (1857–1926) who had introduced popular selfimprovement methods based on ‘optimistic autosuggestions’.138 Readers would probably have been aware of his work, as his book Self-Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion had been published in 1920. Coué’s instruction was the constant repetition of ‘Every day, in every way, I’m becoming better and better’. What Volk seemed to wish to suggest was that Peacehaven already had healing properties and therefore did not need any outside assistance.

Visions of Peacehaven’s past and future, of youth and maturity Features on Peacehaven’s future, imaginatively explored from a temporal spectrum of distant and nearby futures, were common. A cartoon in the second issue (and included below) told the story of a Captain Stubbs, who year upon year, returned to Peacehaven after another voyage at sea (Vol 1, No 1, September 1921, p.39) (see Fig.3.18).

138 see http://www.britannica.com/biography/Emile-Coue Accessed 10 January 2016.

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Figure 3.18: Comic strip featuring Captain Stubbs, No title Peacehaven Post Vol 1, No 1 p.39, Volk.

Each time he encountered more houses, and even a church and hotel, to the point when, returning from a voyage to China, he had to ask a policeman where his home was. Features such as additional scaffolding, increased traffic (in the last image Volk has even drawn a motor vehicle in blurry motion, emulating a photographic depiction of movement), gave the impression of a fast-paced environment. The text captions described how previously, Captain Stubbs had walked from Newhaven across ‘deserted downs’, but now found himself in a busy town. Like many characters utilized by Volk and other staff, my archival research revealed that a Captain Stubbs did actually exist, and in 1921 would have been well known to the magazine’s target audience. Therefore, clues provided, e.g. that Stubbs had returned from China, would have been intentional; the real Captain Stubbs had been a WWI veteran and was the author of ‘Account of China Sea’.

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Figures 3.19 a+b: ‘Old Memories Fresh Recollections’ Peacehaven Post, Vol 1, No 10, p.277 Volk; Welwyn advertisement, ca. 1920, artist unknown, courtesy Hertfordshire Community Archive Network.

In another cartoon published in the tenth issue, entitled ‘Old Memories Fresh Recollections’ Peacehaven’s ‘oldest native’ (who was first featured in Issue 1 in the comic strip ‘A quiet business day at Peacehaven’ discussed above), and by now a Centenarian, recollected memories of a made-up place called Southtone, recalling a time ‘when it was all green fields’ – but which became densely packed with factories and tall buildings (see Fig.3.19a). This vignette was juxtaposed with an idyllic scene in which a young girl, dog on leash, explained to a toddler that when she first came to Peacehaven ‘it was all green fields! – Now look at it’. A much more harmonious view was presented, with only a water tower, and a good number of comfortably sized chalet bungalows with fenced in gardens, and a signpost that indicated the proximity to the beach and hotel. Inscribed in this cartoon was the message that Peacehaven would have a bright future and that its green fields would be turned into a pleasant bungalow garden city. Similar evocative imagery was also being used to promote Welwyn Garden City at the same time (see Fig. 3.19b). A single advertisement containing three graphic images headed ‘yesterday, to-day, to-morrow’ showed an industrial

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landscape filled with smoke, the prospect of living in the suburb yet working ‘in the smoke’, and finally working and living in Welwyn. The Peacehaven Post’s July 1922 issue pushed this vision of a brighter future even further. In the lead feature, entitled ‘Making Hay while the sun shines at Peacehaven’ (1 July 1922, p. 299–300) the editor asserted, that only a year ago, there were hayfields where there are now homes and gardens. However, the writer promised that the nearby farmland would remain untouched for generations to come and that the town would continue to be bordered by nature, ‘[and] by expansive farm lands whose smiling acres will not be encroached upon for generations’ (1922, p.300). This optimistic view that economic and urban growth were possible, while at the same time farmland could be retained, was featured on the same page as a map (also used in the Economic Homes booklets), that showed Peacehaven and the Annex extension surrounded for miles by open Downland (1922, p.300). These cartoons represented a complete reversal of those created by British cartoonist Fougasse (1887–1965), which had been published in the magazine Punch during 1919 (see Fig.3.20). In the caricature below, a veteran was shown leaving a pristine countryside village in 1914, only to return in 1919 to find it had been turned into a smog-filled town.

Figure 3.20: ‘Mr. William Smith returns’, originally in Punch 1919 by Fougasse, reproduced in Williams-Ellis [1928] 1975.

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It is historically interesting that this particular cartoon was also reproduced as a frontispiece in Williams-Ellis’ aforementioned 1928 critique, England and the Octopus, in which he condemned speculative development taking place in Britain’s countryside and had accused developers of exploiting the public’s desire for a better life ([1928] 1975, p.39). A final example drawn from the magazine’s twelfth issue, written by George Powell under the pseudonym ‘Georgemas, disciple of Artemas’, illustrates a humorous attempt by the editorial team to project its readership into a common future, whilst also drawing directly on the story of Genesis, and adopting a psalm structure (Vol. 1, No 12, p.336).139 Powell’s ‘chronicle’ began in 1919, and opened with a reference to the armistice, claiming that nothing could get in the way of the success of the new Garden City. The text moved on to a detailed description of key events in the estate’s inception period. Leading characters made their appearance, one by one, from the Peacehaven Post contributors, to the estate agent, surveyors, merchants, and even the proprietors of the Rosemary Tea Gardens. Powell drew on real sales processes, e.g. he mentioned the preparation of blueprints, and bonds and the creation of avenues. The visionary and pseudoreligious tone of the account is reminiscent of the style successfully adopted by the British Weekly newspaper, the largest faith-based, national broadsheet. By linking biblical accounts to Peacehaven’s inception, Powell gave the impression that destiny was at play, and that the future would unfold in a predictable manner. In order to give a flavour of his tone, a greatly condensed section of ‘Peacehaven in the Early Days’ follows: And they whispered words of wisdom, sincerity and truth to the seekers after plots and Blocks and acres of Peace [. . .] And the Garden City grew and flourished and became more beautiful, and was the envy and even the wonder of the whole world [. . .]. Now, even though the dwellers in the City of Peace are virtuous and abstemious, yet are they but human and occasionally do thirst, and they cried, ‘Build us a temple of Bacchus wherein we may foregather and rejoice, for there are times when wine maketh glad the heart of man, and of she who will not wait at home for him.’ So, a temple was built of design most beautiful, through the gardens of which flow crystal streams from Elysian fountains. (emphasis in original, pp.336–337)

This narrative, and the idea of chosen pilgrims, was nevertheless peppered with satirical wit and playful parody. It had a highbrow veneer, but an irreverent, joc-

139 The historical figure of Artemas was believed to have been one of 70 disciples. By alluding to Artemas as the progenitor of the chronicles, Powell set up the expectation that, although playful, there was weight and truth in his own words.

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ular style, indicating that the classical references alluded to should perhaps not be taken too seriously. There is a strong echo of Eliade’s contention that creation stories tend to include the ideal of a centrally located temple. At Peacehaven, the new Hotel, with its marble floor and Peace statue came as close to the temple ideal as was achievable in the imagination of the 1921 planners.

Peacehaven Carnival Connerton (1989) and Eliade (1966) have described how rituals and rites of passage need frequent reenactment in order to help solidify and strengthen a sense of community and show how this fosters a sense of tradition. Carnival celebrations had been very popular prior to WWI and become so again in its aftermath. Carnival is a participatory experience, and an important ‘time of inversions’ (Steward, 2007, p.85). The Brighton carnival was frequently featured in the magazine; for example, a photograph of a Brighton resident, Frank Rushworth, dressed in a costume adorned entirely by the previous seven covers of the Peacehaven Post, was featured in the magazine’s eighth’ issue (Vol 1 No 8, p.223). The participation of a Peacehaven carnival float as part of the Brighton Carnival was mentioned in the August 1922 issue and was accompanied by an evocative photograph: sitting on garden chairs on top of a float that included a miniature bungalow and dovecot, lawn and floral arrangements were Gordon Volk and a young Flora Robson (see Appendix 2) promoting Peacehaven homes (Vol 1 No 12, p.340). In a drawing made by Volk for the July 1922 issue, simply called ‘Carnival’, the youthful young Peacehaven character, previously featured in drawings like the M. Coué sketch, met ‘Mlle Brighton’, telling her that she would ‘love to come to your Carnival, but I don’t know what to wear’ (see Fig.3.21a). In response, ‘Mlle Brighton’ replied, ‘You are perfectly sweet as you are, dear. When I was your age I needed no artificial adornment’. This dialogue signalled to readers that Peacehaven’s strength was of course its youth, and that it could celebrate its newness with confidence.

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Figures 3.21 a+b: ‘Carnival’ Peacehaven Post Vol 1, No. 11, p. 307 Volk; ‘Brighton Carnival’, Conrad Leigh, 1922.

In the top right corner of his carnival sketch, Volk had acknowledged Conrad Leigh, a Brighton based artist and illustrator, who had designed the Brighton Carnival Poster for 1921 (see Fig.3.21b).140 Comparing Volk’s drawing with Leigh’s the latter’s influence is palpable. Volk had even copied the group of musicians and clowns into his own version. He had however replaced the Brighton Pavilion, shown in Leigh’s original version, with Peacehaven’s landmark white cliffs.

Peacehaven and the world Within the Peacehaven Post, the pilgrimage metaphor was mobilized as readers were invited to follow ‘the call of Peacehaven’ and become part of its foundation. The March 1922 cover depicted a large sailing ship on a calm sea approaching the

140 Leigh worked at 68 Grand Parade, Brighton Art School, now the University of Brighton, and was a member of the Brighton Arts Club.

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white cliffs at Peacehaven; a number of bungalows could be seen on the cliff top (see Fig.3.22a).

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Figures 3.22 a+b: Peacehaven Post Cover ‘Bon Voyage! Princess’ Vol 1, No 7, March 1922 Volk; Horace Taylor, ‘Follow the Empire Makers’, National Archives, PRO CO956/553 in Constantine (1986).

To its right as the ship sailed at full mast, a billowing mass of clouds cleared away. The small caption underneath the drawing read ‘Bon Voyage, Princess’, as a metaphor for the journey the town of Peacehaven was already embarking upon. Udo Becker shows that the depiction of a ship can often be a metaphor for longing, ‘a symbol of journey and passage and thus also for life and its course [and] in Christianity, the ship is a symbol of the church’ (2005, p.268). The idea of the pilgrim is both ‘a symbol for the life of man on this earth, a life that is not final, but rather is only a transitional stage to another life’ (2005, p.233) but, like the ship, a pilgrim has religious connotations, and features in all world religions – including Christianity (Coleman & Elsner 1995).141 In a lithograph made for a

141 ‘My Canadian Pilgrimage’ published by the British Weekly newspaper, recounted the story of a pilgrimage to Canada of more than 1000 people from across Britain in 1929. This was a

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poster campaign for the Empire Marketing Board in 1926, the illustrator Horace Taylor (discussed previously as he was responsible for a Letchworth marketing poster, see above and chapter 2), reconjured this iconic image (see Fig.3.22b). His commission was used as a marketing device to invite the British public to ‘buy Empire Goods from Home and Overseas’ and had the imperialist title ‘Follow the Empire Makers’, connoting a sense of patriotic entitlement. There is of course no single meaning for this nautical imagery; however, as the examples above have shown, it was widely mobilized for marketing purposes during this period in order to signify destiny and experience. A feature article in the May 1922 issue, authored by Sims, returned to the drawing of the Princess, and introduced the readership to Peacehaven pilgrims. The text was framed by another of Volk’s drawings, which depicted a twomasted sailing boat heading towards the shore. The text invoked the story of the iconic Mayflower, which had set sail in 1620 with more than 100 passengers (half of whom would perish during the arduous journey), seeking to create a new Protestant Reformist colony in America (Struthers, 2011, p.144). Narrating how, ‘Three hundred years ago the Pilgrim Fathers set forth from England in the Mayflower to find a Haven of Peace in the New WORLD’, only to miss the ‘green valleys of their home country’ (Vol 1, No 9, p.235). In this ahistorical recollection, the emphasis was placed on juxtaposing the longing of the departed Mayfair pilgrims with the allegedly superior choice of the Peacehaven pilgrims, who decided to stay put, and therefore have, ‘amid the romantic surroundings that have inspired England’s master-singers and England’s master-painters, the home comfort, the love of which and need for which is inborn in the race’ (Vol 1, No 9 p.235). Of course, this narrative is highly problematic; but it resonated with a public mood in the aftermath of the Great War, to seek comforts in the ‘motherland’. By invoking ‘master-singers’ and ‘master-painters’ (presumably artists including Vaughan-Williams, William Turner and Edward Burne-Jones), the editorial sought to further advance its argument. Effectively an invitation to stay in the ‘homeland’, the feature also promised that Peacehaven could offer all the lifestyle and freedom of the New World, and that there was no need to emigrate. By juxtaposing life in the Old and New World, Neville appeared to have sought to entice British citizens abroad to return to Britain and live on his new estate, capitalising on a certain amount of fluidity in the movement of British people away and back to the ‘homeland’. That this was also very much true in the case of

religious journey in order to cross the ocean but then to return to Britain united and strengthened. The narrative differs from that of the Peacehaven Post, as the Canadian Pilgrimage was promoted as a way to offer travellers freedom in a New World free from class bias.

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some of the Peacehaven settlers can be gleaned from personality profiles of ‘notable residents’, who were featured in the magazine from the beginning, and included Captain Mackay, who had returned from time spent in South Africa, and the Kerr toffee manufacturers, resettled to the Estate after decades in New Zealand. Peacehaven and its position within and relationship to the world at large were an important leitmotif. In December 1921, Sims’ feature article, ‘Peacehaven and Christmas’ was framed by a map of the world that featured Peacehaven centrally, accompanied by the message, ‘Greetings by wireless to distant readers!’ (see Fig.3.23).

Figure 3.23: ‘Peacehaven and Christmas’ Peacehaven Post, Vol 1, No 4 Dec 1921 p.89 Volk.

This drawing had put Peacehaven on the world map. Indeed, it seemed to equate it with Britain itself, as the letters PEACEHAVEN ran right across the whole island, and the white cliffs had been made the dominant defining feature. The map also including the USA, the state of California, the Gold Coast, Australia, India, Belgium, Norway, Ireland and Scotland, as well as the cities of Cape Town, Johannesburg, Hong Kong. Only three islands, Guernsey, the Isle of Man and the Isle of Wight were featured. Other countries were conspicuous by their absence (why would Wales not be listed if Ireland and Scotland were); a text explained that these were the countries where overseas readers resided. Another interesting

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feature was the inclusion of the H.M.S. Barham near the Isle of Wight. This had been a battle ship of the Royal Navy; launched in 1915 it was one of forty ships involved in the battle of Jutland in the North Sea in 1916, where it suffered tragic losses after being struck by shells. It would have been a well-known reference point in the immediate post war years, representing heroic sacrifices made by British sailors.142 Sims claimed that there could be, ‘no looking back in Peacehaven. All is fresh and fair around us’ (Vol 1, No 4, pp.89–90). This editorial emphasized the growth of a local identity amongst settlers on the estate. Part of this vision was to deploy visual and rhetorical methods of looking inwards and outwards adopting Peacehaven’s own vantage point. In a further drawing published in the February 1922 issue, Volk had created the character of a man, fully suited and with a tie, but wearing slippers and being comfortably seated in an armchair, feet resting on an ornamental globe (see Fig.3.24). While smoking a pipe he seemed to be taking in the world’s news via the newspaper he was reading.

Figure 3.24: ‘The World and Peacehaven’ Peacehaven Post, Vol 1, No 6, p.153 Volk.

142 Burt (1986). There is Pathé news footage of the H.M.S. Barham eventually sinking with the loss of 859 lives when a German U-boat struck it on 25 November 1941 during WWII.

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In the accompanying editorial, readers were invited to imagine themselves in the place of this male character: Picture yourself on a bright winter’s morning sitting in your Peacehaven home with a London newspaper open before you. The newspaper of today contains the world’s happenings. They are flashed from the four corners of the earth and served up to us with our morning meal. (Vol 1, No 6, p.153)

The editor then claimed that the world was not a place ‘fit for heroes to live in’; instead it would take ‘a hero to live in it’ (ibid., p.153). Peppered with references to the Great War, the piece discussed world unrest across the Empire and questioned Britain’s stability. Another huge threat, it claimed, came from Socialism and Communism within Borough Councils and the House of Commons, which could potentially erode ‘individual effort and private enterprise’ through Municipal control. By apportioning blame to local councils and national government for any future failures, this commissioned piece exposed the political bias of the SCLRC and laid bare Neville’s own laissez-faire politics.

Conclusion: Volume One ‘Curtain Call’ The final issue concluded with a short text, which bade farewell to the first volume, and a drawing by Volk, presented as the curtain call of a cabaret show (see Fig.3.25). This featured characters that had appeared across the magazine’s first volume and included Captain Stubbs and the Oldboy, fairies from the Children’s Pages, two child characters, Pic and Chick, dancing rabbits, a pirate, a farmer, shepherd, a winged elf with halo, a large supernatural fantasy bird and two tiny characters from a cartoon on the building boom.143 Even the landscape was incorporated, seemingly lifted out of actuality, the white cliffs and economic homes formed the backdrop of the performance, and had been turned into a spectacle.

143 The bird, dancing rabbits and anthropomorphised miniature characters may have been references to John Tenniel’s original illustrations for Alice in Wonderland (1865) and Beatrix Potter’s illustrated children’s books. In some of the children’s page adventure stories, Pic and Chick take to the skies with dodo, always looking forward to returning to Peacehaven.

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Figures 3.25 a+b: ‘Vol. 1 Curtain’, Peacehaven Post Vol 1 No. 12, p.339 Volk; G.W. Sims, Theatre of Life book cover, 1881.

It is worth briefly referring to one of Sim’s original books, published in 1881, which used the theatre curtain motif for its cover, and consisted of a collection of short stories presented as character studies (see Fig.3.25b). It was of course not uncommon to make references to the stage and given the background of the Peacehaven Post’s contributors, it is likely that Volk had, at least in part, created the curtain call image as a tribute to his colleagues, the Powells, who had a stage performance background. Volk’s motif of an opened-up book with blank pages, created for the first issue of Volume II, expressed the belief that the Estate’s future was in the process of being written (see Fig.3.26).

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Figure 3.26: Vol II, September 1922, Peacehaven Post, No. 13, p.3, Volk.

This strategy to activate readers’ imagination was underscored by the editorial underneath which claimed that ‘we start again. A fresh page is turned in the history of Peacehaven’. Ripe with promise, the quill pen could be seen as a trope for construction, implying conquest of the Estate, thus mirroring the earlier man with spade metaphor. The examples in this chapter demonstrate that the pictorial programme of the Peacehaven Post was firmly entrenched in foundation mythology and the idealized imagery of the emerging Estate as a second Eden, while also using the technique of playful parody, and striking a tongue in cheek, satirical and jocular tone. Many of the vignettes and characters were based on real life characters, but also personalities drawn from popular culture, literature and the entertainment industry. Volk’s visual narration, and Sims’ and the Powells’ features embraced a narrative of Peacehaven’s progress across space and time, through action and work, carried out by a growing community of settlers. The drawings and editorials regularly invoked the image of virgin spaces being filled in with sensitively designed homes, amenities and aspirational infrastructures. By deploying a settler style narrative, and through the adaptation of preformulated myths of symbolic imagery adjusted to fit the Lureland project, they conveyed the message that by choosing Peacehaven, new residents would obtain New World advantages (self-reliance, prosperity) without ever having to leave the homeland. The circularity of time passing, and the continuity of growth were enacted by focusing

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on the four seasons of the year, from winter, through to spring, summer, harvest and Christmas. Even a reversal of actual time processes seemed possible, as older people were shown to regain their youthful strength and energy. Visualizations had been tailored to the narrative of optimistic make believe, imbued with complex foundation mythology which circulated through the magazine’s widening distribution. Between the magazine’s inception, and its ultimate demise in 1926 (by which point it had undergone two name changes and three editors), many of Volk’s iconic images were recycled and republished (i.e. the shepherd and flock, the signposts). Sims’ features on the birth of Peacehaven and its supposed Eden environment were also frequently reused. This chapter has shown that a creation narrative was embraced by the magazine’s staff, and, inflected by settler discourse, sat at the heart of its pictorial programme. A number of these narratives and motifs embedded themselves in the town’s cultural memory, as they were again mobilized in local guidebooks during the 1930s and beyond. Certain images created by Volk had an enduring temporal reach, stretching into the present, and continue to influence the ways residents come to think about and remember Peacehaven’s foundation, as chapter 7 and also chapter 9 investigate.

Chapter 4 ‘No shackles of old tradition to bind her’: The Estate’s emerging topography in the photographs of Joseph James Hill and Frank Parks, 1921–1923 Introduction Previous chapters have shown that a range of agendas and forces influenced the marketing narrative, and actual construction, of Peacehaven. In chapter 3 I cited a Peacehaven Post feature from 1922, which had made the populist claim that the Estate had, ‘no shackles of old tradition to bind her’144 and was therefore free to develop its own identity. Some of the marketing imagery conjured up modernity, depicting amenities such as electric light and motor cars, the Estate’s connectedness to cultural activities, the capital, as well as parts of Empire. A key emphasis, however, was placed on intercrossing ideas of peace, health and rejuvenation. These aims were predicated on garden city ideals, coupled with home ownership and promoting self-sufficiency through growing food and keeping small livestock. This pastoral image in turn tapped into, and also sometimes triggered, the symbolic image of an idealized Edenic environment, in the form of untainted Downland. The Estate’s initial construction phase, which lasted from 1920 to 1923, was the period when idealized discourses, relating to the foundation of the town were most palpable. These ideals, visually articulated by Volk, and mobilized in pictorial and narrative form between 1921–23, had a direct impact on the town’s actual development. I reactivate and juxtapose three of Volk’s visual motifs (the man with spade, the twelve signposts, the young woman in Downland) and compare these with a number of Estate photographs in order to investigate how motifs from the foundation mythology were translated into, and became absorbed by, the emerging topography. Professional photographer Joseph James Hill (1891–1961) witnessed the Estate’s development, and produced a rich visual record of the town’s first three years that was published in the Peacehaven Post.145 Combining documentary

144 Peacehaven Post, ‘Everything new under the sun’ feature article, (Vol 1, No 11, July 1922, p.301). 145 I am grateful to Sussex photo historian David Simkin for sharing Hill’s biographical details. Although a life-long resident of Brighton, Hill ran a professional photography studio in https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110734027-005

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commissions for the magazine with professional portraiture and printing services, Hill’s photographs map the actual progress of construction. Reprinted from large format negatives, the reproduced magazine images still show a great amount of detail. Through Hill’s photographs interested readers could find out about any building activities and were introduced to the latest amenities, residents and happenings. The ‘Peacehaven Activities’ pages were always presented as double-spreads, with up to five photographs, that appear to sometimes have been cropped. Hill also took panoramic 360-degree angle views of the Estate and recorded the work of local businesses. His views show a range of different aspects, with children playing on the beach, to photographs documenting the emergence of the Hotel Peacehaven in 1922. I juxtapose Hill’s official photographs with images taken privately by Frank Parks (1896–1992) who, as an early local settler, carpenter and joiner was able to offer an insiders’ perspective through the many photographs he took as a keen amateur photographer.146 New insights come into view from a close reading of Hill’s and Parks’ photographic representations, as they shifted the projected marketing image of the Estate from an expansive yet abstract and imagined location to an actual place. Their photographs reproduce and reconstruct some of Volk’s myths while also constituting individual representations of the birth of the town. In their photographs, myths and reality were intermeshed as representations of symbolic acts and gestures moved to concrete acts. The emphasis on creating new foundations continued to dominate and define the Estate’s official, commercial and private image. I draw on key physical landmarks built within the first five years that most closely corresponded with the ambition of the pictorial programme expressed in marketing materials. These included the boundary pylons (1916), the first pioneer bungalows, complete with architectural features such as verandas, porches and ornaments (from October 1920), key local amenities and chalet shop bungalows, such as Optima, the first shop (1921), followed shortly by Arcadia, the Hotel Peacehaven, with tea pavilion and sunken

Newhaven for two decades. From 1918 and 1924 Hill’s studio was based at 30 Meeching Road, Newhaven; he then moved the studio to 27 High Street, Newhaven where he continued to work until 1939. A rare Peacehaven postcard booklet with ten of Hill’s photographs (discussed later in this chapter), and a small number of Newhaven views and studio portraits have survived. However, Hill’s photographic archive seems to have been lost, apart from the photographs reproduced in the Peacehaven Post. These were not attributed to Hill until the June 1922 issue, as earlier images were reproduced without picture credits. This was a common practice in magazines and could have been due to their status as illustrative of the text rather than having intrinsic artistic merit. 146 Parks kept a photographic record of the changing town right up to his death in 1992. For a wider selection of Parks’ photographs, see Troak, (2007).

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gardens, featuring marble statues and a central fountain (1922), the Bastion Steps, which secured beach access (1922), and Lureland Dance Hall and Pavilion Cinema (both 1923). The actualization of these early landmarks meant that a vision of Utopia had, at least partially, arrived in the topography of the Estate. Hill and Parks’ photographs document the construction of some of these landmarks and show their completion. But they also make visible that the actual estate development, aside from this small number of attractions, diverged rather substantially from idealized early visions. I show what some of these ideals morphed into in actuality, and where they differed from the original representation. Unlike Hill’s and Parks’ photographs, which responded to changes and new developments, Volk had created his graphic images prior to the Peacehaven Post’s launch in tandem with a comprehensive marketing strategy. This chapter explores the function of photographs as part of the SCLRC’s visual programme as they bridged Volk’s idealized motifs and infused them with a dose of documentary realism; however, like the drawings and cartoons, they, too, frequently had a performative and symbolic character. Over time, as the number of published drawings would decrease, documentary photographs by Hill and subsequently other photographers, increased.

Archival source material Archival source material has been selected from media and private sources and can be divided into the following categories: a. Official photographs taken by Hill for the Peacehaven Post, for which Hill adopted the role of observer and documentarian. These have been crafted with professional consideration. Hill also advertised a private, commercial service in the Peacehaven Post’s ‘personal needs column’ from early 1922 onward, offering to photograph residents and their bungalows, and to develop and print amateur film. Some of these portraits were published in the Peacehaven Post. b. Private photographs, taken by Frank Parks, whose triple role of local resident, estate carpenter and amateur photographer enabled him to act as an unofficial town archivist while playing a part in the construction of the estate. His photographs, taken on an Ensign Plate camera, represent embodied echoes from below – and are immediate in style with a stronger snapshot aesthetic. Taken together, Hill’s professional and Park’s personal photographs make visible the transformation from an imagined space to an inhabited place. They show how the land was divided and built on; depict work in progress, such as foundations for homes being dug out, carpentry work, workmen and construction materials. They document the various

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stages from construction to new home-owners taking possession of their bungalows. Through photographic exterior and interior views of homes and shops the emergence of a community becomes palpable in these photographs. In order to explore further connections and divergences in visual representations of the Estate for a souvenir market, the final section of this chapter considers a small sample of souvenir booklets and postcards produced locally between 1921 and 1922. These include a booklet made by Avery, a Brighton based photographer and postcard producer, and a second booklet by Hill. Both booklets capture the emerging urban topography whilst also retaining some of the imagery of unspoilt Downland. Avery, in particular, captured scenery such as the beach and clifftops. I also feature a postcard view by K. Aubrey Allen, as he was the only professional photographer and ‘photo artist’ to have actually lived in Peacehaven between 1921–1924.

Revisiting Volk’s ‘twelve’ “Posts” of Peacehaven’ through Hill’s and Park’s photographic representations With the onset of building work, the idealized image of a new estate surrounded by expansive countryside was supplemented by documentary photographs that depicted representations of everyday life. There is quite a stark contrast between Volk’s idealized drawings and Hill’s photographs, which expose a more barren, still vastly uninhabited landscape. Instead of an expansive horizon, the horizon is pulled in, and ends just above the rooftops of the new bungalows. Hill’s panoramic views, in particular, reveal a landscape made up of gorse, bramble bushes and grassland, with only the odd, slightly forlorn looking bungalow dotted here and there across open Downland. An indicative example is a double spread in the magazine’s June 1922 issue (see Fig.4.1). In this series of four 360-degree angle panoramic views, presented alongside each other under the heading ‘Views of Peacehaven from different aspects’ a number of scattered cliff top homes have been recorded in various stages of completion. These have been juxtaposed with a fourth, separate photographic view of the beach. In the first image the cliffs are to the right near a rather imposing, two-storey chalet bungalow with an already fenced-in garden and greenhouse. In the second and third panoramic photographs the same houses are shown; one time facing east and in the second facing west. Echoes of Volk’s key visual themes can be traced in this double spread: these include the vision of a town emerging in unspoilt Downland, although here there are no trees and the cliff top looks barren.

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Figure 4.1: ‘Views of Peacehaven from different aspects’, Peacehaven Post, Vol 1, No 10, pp. 310–311 Hill.

Far from being organized in a centralized way, located in a valley and with a defined core, these photographs reveal an estate in the process of emerging close to the edges of cliffs, and also prominently featuring the beach below the Estate. Hill’s photographs are very much anchored in the present, although temporality is implied via scaffolding and ongoing construction. What is represented and the object at stake are now identical and have become aligned. A small image overlaid in oval shape on the right side of the beach photograph shows the emerging Bastion Steps, which were to provide direct access to the beach. Three centrally positioned children who return the gaze of the photographer animate the foreshore itself. The boy in the middle has dug a spade into the ground. The heading underneath this image reads ‘Leading to the Children’s Paradise – the Beach’. Also palpable is the idea of new foundations and individual home ownership; and the promise of youth, in this case the three young children can be seen to represent Peacehaven’s future. There is a later variation to Volk’s signpost drawing, published in the November 1922 issue, which represents a somewhat more accurate depiction of how the town emerged in actuality (see Fig.4.2). Whilst Volk retained the idea of

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the signpost pointing towards the town, and a sun radiating from it, the words were modified to, ‘Tranquility, Peace, Prosperity, Freedom from Adventures and Commitment’. It could be argued that tranquility comes close to the idea of a haven, and that the idea of freedom from adventures and commitment corresponded with the carefree image of Peacehaven that was being projected. In this drawing the town is organized alongside a road leading in, cliff tops are clearly visible to the right as is the new Hotel Peacehaven. The scenery comes a bit closer to the actual landscape, although there is still a sense of a clear core. Here there is more of a visual rapprochement to Hill’s panoramic photographs.

Figure 4.2: Peacehaveners Electorified Peacehaven Post, Vol II, No15, November 1922, p.63, Volk.

Another view of the Estate, circulated during 1921/22, and captioned ‘Peacehaven Town, Bird’s Eye View’ shows the easterly pylon and looks inland north from the South Coast Road towards a number of one-storey double fronted and single fronted, free standing bungalows (see Fig.4.3).147 The pylon resonates with Volk’s wooden signpost, but is further enhanced by the globe that has been added to the top of its concrete post. Like the imagined signpost, the real signpost represents a clear demarcation, or gateway, of Peacehaven’s boundaries and is a symbolic antiquarian landmark (see chapter 2). Both

147 Stamped A. E. Parker on the back. Parker ran Peacehaven’s first shop and post office. He also published a small number of early postcard views.

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Figure 4.3: ‘Birds Eye View of Peacehaven’ photograph, 1921/22, A.E. Parker, postmarked 1922. Postcard view. Source J.W.

signalling arrival and staking a claim to the land contained within the Estate, the post, or pylon, represents a site of passage and of transformation and a world contained within as well as outside its boundaries. The globe featured frequently in Volk’s imagery too, connoting a connectedness to the world, but also putting Peacehaven centre-stage.148 The photograph does not reveal the main road just to the left, but instead foregrounds a few staked out plots awaiting the construction of new homes. It also includes some of the earliest homes, completed in late 1920, but this can only be deduced by comparing this image with another photograph taken by Frank Parks, in which he had photographed the same bungalows in Seaview Avenue, having been part of the team working on their completion (see Fig.4.4). Seen from an elevated angle, these bungalows were built by reassembling army hut material, but their appearance has been domesticated through the addition of verandas, outhouses and fencing. In the background an expansive Downland area can be seen. There is a very modest feel to these early homes. As modest is Parks’ photograph of one of the first timber bungalows that he

148 I discuss the construction of the Prime Meridian monument, which started with a wooden structure in 1934, and led to the erection of a permanent monument in 1936 in chapter 6.

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Figure 4.4: Parks, ca. 1921, The first six houses built on Seaview Ave (source: Troak, 2007, p.17).

worked on. Possibly photographed from the roof of another house, a wicker fence is clearly visible, but the land behind is still barren (see Fig.4.5).

Figure 4.5: New home, Parks, ca. 1922, courtesy Barry Parks.

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For another photograph, Parks positioned himself directly in the landscape, and photographed the owner of one of the first completed bungalows, Miss Smith, who is sat on her small wooden veranda, which she has adorned with ornamental plants (see Fig.4.6). A sign above her veranda reads Aftermath – a reference to the end of the First World War, which resonates with Volk’s imagery and the promise of peace. The frame does not reach to include the whole house (which is fully visible in the previous image), however, Parks left some room to the left which makes it possible to anchor the bungalow within a landscape. A water butt, workbench and outhouse come into view. Hill, too, frequently included owners sitting or standing next to their new homes; but the focus of his images primarily seems to have been to show the entirety of the bungalow, and to try to make the houses look more substantial.

Figure 4.6: Aftermath, Parks (source Troak, 2007, p.17).

Another photograph taken by Parks, at the same time, and again in close proximity to the ‘Birds Eye View’ image, but a bit further west from the pylon, reveals the unpaved South Coast Road, which became the central focus (see Fig.4.7). Showing workshops, and a charabanc, his photograph foregrounds the predominance of the main road and construction materials. It jars with the idealized image of treelined avenues and natural Downland, and becomes more reminiscent of a Wild West outback scene. The space that was in the process of becoming Peacehaven appears less organized, domesticated or delimited.

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Figure 4.7: South Coast Road, Parks (source: Troak, 2007, p.15).

Some ‘Activities’ sections focused on amenities, and showed the new cement-block making plant, its transport yard and the crop of the local harvest. These were important as they were meant to show improvements, and both Hill and Parks also took photographs of tradesmen. Many of their photographs show men at work, thus echoing Volk’s drawings, and therein convey a sense of progress – these correspond with editorials in early Peacehaven Post issues, which affirm that ‘nearly 1000 workmen are now employed on the Peacehaven Estate’ (Vol 1, No 10, June 1922, p.279). The photographs represent valuable visual references to the Estate’s first three years of construction, to the social, cultural and economic life of the emerging town. Due to Hill’s straight yet at times poetic documentary style and considerable photographic skills, they function at both a documentary and a romantic, pictorial level, engendering or tapping into the viewers’ longing for a new home after the war. Hill’s photographs were meant to illustrate how the town was expanding and becoming continuously more successful, whereas Parks’ optimistic photographs also encapsulated the idea that he, himself, was part of this vision and helped make its realization happen. Hill’s photographs were put to work in a host of columns and sections to feature the work of the Peacehaven Building and Supply Co. Ltd, set up by Neville in 1920 in addition to, and to complement, the already existing SCLRC, thus letting the Peacehaven Post’s local, national and international readership know about the arrival of electric lighting at Peacehaven (Vol 1, No 7, March 1922, p.189), and cement block and brick making (Vol 1, No 10, June 1922, p.282) (see Fig.4.8a). Hill’s photographs of concrete moulds, drying racks, mills and a large group of workmen, nicknamed the ‘Concrete Busy Bees’, would have given the distinct impression that work was moving quickly.

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Figures 4.8 a+b: Central image ‘The Concrete Busy Bees’, Vol 1, No 10, June 1922, p.282, Hill; ‘Engineering works and woodworking plant’ Vol 1, No 10, June 1922, p.249), Hill.

Subsequent issues featured the new timber yard and carpentry (Peacehaven Post Vol 1, No 2, July 1922, p.312), Peacehaven’s first power house with battery room (Peacehaven Post Vol II, No 14, October 1922), and the wood-working plant and engineering works, complete with wood-drilling machine, saw bench, power grinders, and an ‘eighteen feet vertical band saw’ (see Fig.4.8b). Hill also photographed shopkeepers and documented a ‘Temporary Shop’ selling builders’ supplies, where he photographed seven men, two workhorses and a dog outside the entrance (see Fig.4.9). They all face towards the photographer; the scene feels a little arranged, with the horses aligned to the left and right of the shop, which maximizes their presence. This view, like, for example, the ‘Birds Eye view’ image, are reminiscent of North American images of prairie settlers in remote outposts, thus underscoring and feeding into a pioneering and founding narrative. To the left of the entrance, one can notice a poster of the Peacehaven Post. The image has been captioned ‘lunch time at Peacehaven – our dumb helpers enjoy a well-earned respite’. Framed on either side by ornamental columns and four-leafed clovers, connoting good luck, this decorative design addition echoes more personalized inscriptions reminiscent of domestic family albums from the time.

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Figure 4.9: Temporary Shop, Peacehaven Post Vol 1, No 4, December 1921, p. 107, Hill.

This is a domesticated Wild West scene – the style of the text and focus on the two horses may have referenced the huge role horses played as helpers during WWI. Hill documented the administration on the Peacehaven Estate, and photographed a group of nine SCLRC office workers, sat at their typewriters in the ‘Correspondence Department’ of the Company’s offices (see Fig.4.10).

Figure 4.10: ‘A (Garden) city office company office & staff,’ Peacehaven Post, Vol II, No 24, August 1923, p.343, Hill.

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The staged picture conveys a busy scene, with piles of documents (presumably home contracts) and several typists sitting at large wooden tables. This scene is meant to infer competence and offers reassurance as the young and mainly female employees look trustworthy, and inspire confidence. The office itself is reasonably spacious with solid hardwood flooring – the scene looks busy and it would have been possible for readers to view this as further proof that the town’s growth was palpable and that the SCLRC was acting on its promise. Volk’s visual imagery intercrosses and comes into view in Hill’s and Parks photographs discussed so far. I now turn to a more specific interpretation of how individual home ownership and commerce materialized in actuality, which can be seen through the photographs both men took. In addition to recording and mapping the wider estate both also focused on building materials and the construction of individual homes.

Volk’s ‘A New Year’s resolution: Man with spade’ drawing refracted through Hill’s and Parks’ photographs From the end of 1921 onwards, Hill’s photographs of bungalows in varying stages of construction circulated in the Peacehaven Post. The photographs were fully embedded and acted as evidence that construction was in full swing, as proof that the building standards were high, and as enticement that more was yet to come. Two-storey houses, shops and gardens were pitched and underscored with photographs taken by Hill of a wide range of cultural, horticultural and civic events, such as the first Peacehaven flower show and an Easter display in a ‘Peacehaven Show House’ (Peacehaven Post, Vol 1, No 9, May 1922, p.249). Some of the key events and developments in the town’s genesis, many of its workmen and company staff, as well as new settlers were captured by Hill in this way. Many of the pioneer residents, homes and early landmarks were thereby recorded for posterity. As the ideal of home ownership became visibly palpable, Hill documented a wide range of bungalows, from more modest to grander designs. In the ‘Peacehaven Activities’ section, up to five photographs by Hill were regularly juxtaposed with short editorials as double spreads. Most of the published photographs show the exterior of new homes, although several interior views were also published.

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Figure 4.11: Peacehaven Activities’ The Florida Peacehaven Post, (Vol 1, No 1, pp. 18–19), Hill.

The first ‘Activities’ page showed photographs of two different bungalow types under construction, including the ‘Florida’, whose Greek and Roman inspired columns, harking back to ancient temple structures, are immediately noticeable (see Fig.4.11 & Fig.4.12). As discussed previously, British interwar town planning was hugely inspired by garden city ideals, which themselves often mimicked and celebrated antiquity. In the context of a creation mythology, which was clearly present in the early days of construction at Peacehaven, it is not surprising that the first actual photographs of homes on the estate to be published depicted houses adorned by this ornamental style. The photograph is well composed and evenly lit. The image in the top right-hand corner, which shows a row of four columns and a large pile of bricks strikes an uncanny resemblance to archival photographs of ruins on ancient sites, such as those of Pompeii. Surely this was unintentional – but the effect it potentially has on a present-day viewer is that it acts almost like a signpost signaling the subsequent demise of the town.

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Figure 4.12: Close up views Water Mains and Building, Peacehaven Post, (Vol 1, No 1, pp. 18–19), Hill.

At the time, it would have created a desired link to antiquity and historical connectedness, favoured by Parker and Unwin, and discussed in chapter 2. It also catered to post-World War I sentiments of longing and nostalgia for a lost past (see Lowenthal, 2015). Freemasons saw themselves as having a direct lineage to Greece and Rome, and Peacehaven’s original architects and builders also referenced antiquity by adding ornamental features, such as pylon pillars and pergola designs to convey a sense of tradition and connection with the past, a practice already popular in bungalow construction in North America at the time (King, 1984). Parks actually worked on the construction of the first Florida bungalow, and documented the home once it was near completion. In his take, six workmen can be seen standing outside the house in between the columns (see Fig.4.13).

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Figure 4.13: Parks photograph of Florida bungalow (2007, p.32 in Troak).

One holds a saw, and they all look towards Parks, whose photograph possibly articulates Volk’s vision better than Hill’s, which has a more commercial appeal by foregrounding the aesthetic features of the home, whereas Parks chose to foreground the workmen, with whom he would have identified. Right from its first issue, the magazine carried the monthly column ‘The Peacehaven Pedestrian’, which illustrated progress made on the Estate (see chapter 8). Like other magazine sections, it too included photographs taken by Hill – and frequently depicted adaptations of bungalows based on models advertised in the first – and from 1922 onward – the second Economic Homes booklets. Close scrutiny makes it possible to compare some of the house designs featured in the SCLRC’s 1920 and 1922 Economic Homes booklets, described in chapter 2, with houses that were actually built on the Estate, and to note modifications and features that were lost in translation. Although depicting the immediate present, the photographs were able to convey a vision of an imminent and more distant future of the emerging town. In many of them, the new owners can be seen standing or sitting on their new front porches and verandas, sometimes windows and front door are open – seemingly inviting the reader inside each home. Despite their relative starkness, they lured the viewer from the world they represented into a future world and managed

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to convey the efforts of residents at creating new, successful lives for themselves. Hill even captured a scene with residents, the Misses Jones, in the process of moving into their new home on Roderick Avenue in April 1923 (see Fig.4.14).

Figure 4.14: Peacehaven Post Vol 2, No 20, 1923, p.227 ‘The Briars’, Hill.

Due to the tight framing, the focus of the image entirely foregrounds the act of moving in, acting as a projective invitation to the Peacehaven Post’s readership that the dream of home ownership had been achieved. Hill’s professional skills made it possible for him to navigate a mixture of staged, semi-staged and more naturalistic representational styles. Hill’s photographs of the Estate were always tightly framed and cropped; and, panoramic views aside, most of his photographs did not include a background (and with this a geographical context). This made the central focus of the photographs altogether smaller, localized and domestic. By excluding the immediate surroundings that the new homes were located in, the images could function on a range of intended levels. Importantly, the technique had the effect of animating the individual houses depicted; the new residents, who had begun to inhabit them, brought these to life. As a professional photographer Hill would have been well-versed in understanding the visual appeal of

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posing settlers outside their homes, front door wide open, or families just outside their new front door, on a veranda or by a fully set table.

Figure 4.15: Mr. and Mrs. Cripps, Peacehaven Post, Vol 1, No 4, December 1921. p. 108, Hill.

Unlike Parks’ private photograph of Miss Smith outside ‘Aftermath’, Hill’s portrait of the Cripps family appeared in the December 1921 issue of the Peacehaven Post (see Fig.4.15).149 What initially appears to be a candid portrait of a family having afternoon tea on the lawn outside their house (complete with dog by Mr. Cripps’ feet and vases filled with flowers on the table and window sills), turns out to be a public show of the couple’s silver anniversary. Under the heading ‘A Silver Celebration’, an article accompanying the photograph lists all the presents the couple received, from silver teapot to briars pipe. Due to the valuable items on display, and the postures adopted by the family, the scene feels almost Edwardian in its conservatism. Although only a fragment of the bungalow is in view, the curtains, big bay windows, nice furniture, table cloths and well-dressed couple and their daughter emanate contentment, prosperity and conventional success.

149 See Appendix 2 for a brief biography. Arthur Cripps was the SCLRC’s general works manager.

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This ideal is further underscored by a short text explaining that ‘these little ceremonies are symbolic of the goodwill which Peacehaven instills into all who take refuge in her lovely lands’ (Vol 1, No 4, 1921, p.108). In the December 1921 ‘Activities’ section, ‘Progress in Peacehaven Proper’ (p.104), which includes a photograph of a busy Rosemary Tea Gardens, the interiors of several new homes are shown (see Fig.4.16). The rather grand interior of another Florida style bungalow is introduced.

Figure 4.16: ‘Progress in Peacehaven Proper’ Peacehaven Post, Vol 1, No 4, p.104–105, Hill.

Belonging to the Robson family (whose daughter Flora became a well-known Shakespearian actress), an aspirational interior reveals a salon with typewriter and a Billiard table. The family’s drawing room contains a piano, paintings, large mirror above fireplace, settee, rugs and carpets (see Fig.4.16 & Fig.4.17).150

150 See Appendix 2 for a brief biography of Flora Robson. A feature in the July 1922 issue described her early performance at the Rosemary Tea Gardens. In another play on words, the article substituted the term Lureland with ‘Stageland’ (Vol 1, No 11, p.303).

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Figure 4.17: Peacehaven Post, Vol 1, No 4, December 1921, p.104, close up of Robson’s drawing room, Hill.

There are also two large ornamental china plant pots and house plants. The Robsons’ drawing room reflects the belongings of a well-travelled family – the furniture, porcelain, rugs and chinoiserie, connote an organized, worldy, and carefully arranged central family room with strong colonial influences. The fact that Mr. Robson is ‘at present home from a voyage in distant seas’, would have reassured readers that the estate had received a vote of confidence by sophisticated new residents. In Volk’s iconic image of the young woman embodying Peacehaven, she had reached out to expatriates who were now responding to the invitation. The article introduced several future residents, including families, retired couples, veterans and individuals from all over Britain and further afield, and the homes they had commissioned. These included designs 021, 076, and 027 from the Economic Homes booklets. Some of these were shown with slight modifications and ‘improvements’ to the original models, sending the message that future buyers would be able to personalize these further, adding their own stamp. Combining working for the Peacehaven Post with taking on commissions by new residents, Hill’s published photographs pulled together lived experiences from both the private and public spheres. This signalled a shift in commissioning

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from mapping an imagined place in the state of becoming, to recording a lived-in place with the focus on individual homes and businesses. The house had become ‘an inhabited space’, and was given a central focus on the pages of the magazine (Bachelard, 1994, p. 47). This approach would have made it easier for the readership to project themselves into these homes, as an element of non-specificity was thus retained. This in turn helped to enact the vision of home ownership and functioned as a marketing device to appeal to new prospective buyers. This visual strategy also did some work to conceal the isolated physical landscape, which continued to prevail on the Estate for decades to come. The photograph below, of a bungalow with double garage, has been embossed with Hill’s signature suggesting it was taken as a private commission (see Fig.4.18). This is all the more likely as a motorcar had been conspicuously parked half way into the garage, and the photographic frame was tightly focused on the plot boundaries and wicker fencing.

Figure 4.18: Photograph shows ‘J.J. Hill Newhaven’ embossed in right hand corner. n.d., author’s collection.

In the photograph discussed next, Hill captured the finishing touches being put to Cairo House, which was to offer ‘teas & light’ – the word lunches not yet painted onto the shop front (see Fig.4.19). What makes this image particularly noteworthy is that it seems to be only partially posed, with one of the workmen

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caught moving around on the shop terrace, and Hill’s own reflection and that of an onlooker captured in the ground floor windowpane.

Figure 4.19: Peacehaven Post, Vol II No 20 1923, p.226, ‘Cairo Store built for Mr. Matheson nearing completion’, Hill.

Like many other photographs Hill took of bungalow shops and homes, this one does not have any background. The inference is that the representation is just about a new shop opening imminently on the estate, the exact location or adjacent scenery are irrelevant. Hill was also on hand with his camera when the Castle Restaurant, one of the earliest catering establishments, neared completion. Accompanied by the heading ‘Imposing business premises, built by the SCLRC in the South Coast Road’, he captured workmen up ladders painting, and others carrying items into the building (see Fig.4.20a). The suited man seen standing by the entrance door might have been its first proprietor. A motorcar comes into view to the right of the frame. A large wooden sign announces the restaurant’s opening in October 1922, complete with hot and cold luncheons, teas, and a garden roof, and offers self-contained and furnished apartments for rent. The grass verge adjacent to the new business is still unkempt, but the crenellations reference a castle. The architecture style of the Castle and adjoining

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Offa House was unusual for Peacehaven – it had a flat roof with a castellated plinth surround.151 An entry in the Peacehaven Post’s October 1922 issue announced the imminent opening of the Castle Restaurant, but at the time this would have been eclipsed by the grand opening of the nearby Hotel Peacehaven the same month.

(a)

(b)

Figures 4.20 a+b: Peacehaven Post, Vol II No 14 2 October 1922, p.48, Hill; Peacehaven Souvenir booklet, 1922, Hill.

For the souvenir booklet, Hill took a more formally arranged, frontal photograph of the Castle, which privileged its modernist architectural design and now shows a well-stocked establishment selling confectionary and delicacies open for business, with a neatly arranged front lawn, fencing and a few ornamental shrubs (see Fig.4.20b).

Volk’s ‘Birth’ of Peacehaven drawing seen through Hill’s and Parks’ photographs Volk’s motif of Peacehaven represented as a youthful woman was visually expressed by Hill in photographs of baby shows and competitions, in horticultural and harvest shows, and through the advent of the new Hotel Peacehaven, with its sunken

151 ‘Offa’ was probably a reference to King Offa, the eighth century Anglo-Saxon king. Offa House was in Dr. Gideon Marsh’s name; the Castle Restaurant was owned initially by the Marshes, and by 1927, the ‘Misses Saxtons’. For further information on the ‘Misses Saxtons’, see Peacehaven Directory, 6th edition, F.W. Smith, 1927. Dr. Marsh, who had been a physician and surgeon in Victoria, Canada, for two decades, featured as a resident of note in the Peacehaven Post in February 1923, Vol II, No 18, p.171.

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gardens and central fountain. Whereas Volk’s drawing of the man and spade celebrated individual home ownership, the ideal of a central hotel, championed by the town’s ‘founder’ Neville, suggested collectivity and signalled the development of community, as well as the town’s transformation into an aspirational visitor resort. An architectural drawing and detailed floor plan were shown for the first time in the Peacehaven Post’s October 1921 (Vol 1, No 2) issue. The hotel was frequently visualized by Volk during the construction phase, for example on the October 1922 cover and in the form of a large drawing presented as a double spread magazine feature (Vol 1, No 8, 1921, pp.216–217) (see Fig.4.21).

Figure 4.21: Hotel Peacehaven, Peacehaven Post, Vol 1, No 8, p.216–217 Volk.

The main differences noticeable are that in the original drawing and floor plan the western garden side of the hotel was shown, complete with public bar, lounge, writing room, dining room, bedrooms and large veranda, garden and fountain, whereas in Volk’s drawing the south easterly side of the hotel was featured, alongside two motorcars, and an access road. Neither evidences the close proximity to the cliff edge, nor the dell on the western side, nor do they provide any context of the landscape the hotel is about to be situated in. They do show a substantial, well-planned hotel, built around a central garden containing flowerbeds and a tea pavilion.

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In the February 1922 issue the hotel’s site was revealed on Phyllis Avenue ‘on an elevated plateau just off the main South Coast Road, commanding a farreaching view of the sea and the Downs’ (Vol 1, No 6, 1922, p.163). Subsequent issues documented the start of construction and the Italian gardens being laid out (Vol 1, No 8, April 1922, p.218). Parks photographed his fellow workmen after they had finished staking out the garden area and completing the tea pavilion (see Fig.4.22). He had been in charge of all the carpentry work for the pavilion, and also documented overall construction of the hotel and its new staff. These photographs have an insider appeal and convey the workmanship and dedication that went into the realization of this landmark, but by showing groups of construction workers they also counter Volk’s graphic image of the individual man with spade, who is portrayed as being self-reliant.

Figure 4.22: Sunken Gardens by Parks, 1922, courtesy Barry Parks.

Parks had a habit of keeping diligent records of his photographic subjects, noting the name of the first hotel waitress, Mrs. Olive Bishop, and the butler, Mr. Ives (see Fig.4.23). Although not publicly shown at the time, Parks’ photographs now make it possible to appreciate the individual efforts that went into the substantial hotel project.

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Figure 4.23: Hotel Dining Room by Parks, (in Troak 2007, p.21).

The hotel was the focus of much local and national advertising, for example the Brighton Season featured a full-page advertisement, urging readers that, while in Brighton not to fail to visit Peacehaven (Brighton Season, 1921–1922, p.19). There was also a full-page feature in the July 1922 issue of the journal Popular Gardening, including photographs of the tea pavilion, a bungalow under construction, and the Rosemary Tea Gardens respectively. A detailed description of the Hotel’s sunken gardens described this as a ‘characteristic seaside garden [. . .] made on the site of an old chalk pit’. The feature, which read more like a paid advertisement further described that roses and a fountain had been created near an ‘old world tearoom’ (Popular Gardening, 22 July 1922, p.iii) and went on to claim that the tea room and loggia had been built using Italian tiles and were being laid by an Italian workman. The widely advertised opening of the Hotel Peacehaven took place in October 1922 after a delay of several months and regular updates in the form of new drawings, floor plans and Hill’s photographs tracking building progress. The Peacehaven Post’s June 1922 issue went as far as imagining the hotel as a ‘Palace of Dreams but it has a foundation’ (Vol 1, No 10, June 1922, p.284). A further drawing of the hotel by Volk adorned the November 1922 cover, and Hill took a photograph of the special Pullman express train which had been put on to take invited

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dignitaries from London Victoria to Brighton (Vol II, No 3, Nov 1922, p.72). As part of the hotel opening, Neville engaged the famous Dutch pilot and aircraft manufacturer Anton Fokker to hold his first British glider demonstration flight in Peacehaven, on Downland near the hotel. This flight was extensively documented in the Peacehaven Post and also in local, national and even international press, ensuring that the opening of the hotel received maximum publicity.152 The opening included a gala day, fireworks, luncheon banquet, the band of the Royal Field Artillery, a baby show and beacon fires (Peacehaven Post Vol II, No 14, October 1922, p.39) and was attended by local and national dignitaries, who were all photographed by Hill. The hotel had a separate garage for motor cars and a lodge for drivers – their wealthier passengers could board at the hotel overnight. With its aspirational features the hotel epitomized the SLCRC’s vision for Peacehaven more than any other landmark building at the time, and it also succeeded in capturing the imagination of new residents, who wrote eulogies and attended the opening en masse. In the November issue the opening of the hotel was compared to the ‘official opening of the Garden City itself and happily so, with so many evidences on all hands of achievement and of promises fulfilled’ (Vol II, No 15, November 1922, p.76). Replicas of antiquarian statues such as Ligeia (known in Greek mythology as a siren) and more vernacular ones such as a statue of a boy fishing and a girl kneeling were placed in the sunken gardens (Vol II, No 15, November 1922, p.69). The hotel’s final completion solidified the idea that Peacehaven’s birth had now been fully achieved and Neville duly procured a marble ‘Statue of Peace’ in the shape of a female figure for the hotel’s lounge (see Fig.4.24a).

152 See, for example, ‘Fokker’s First Flight in England, gliding demonstration over South Downs’ 12 October 1922 in Flight magazine.

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Figures 4.24 a+b: Peace statue, Peacehaven Post Vol 1, No 6, February 1922, p.163; Peace, Peacehaven Post, Vol II, No 15, 1922, p.62, Volk.

Volk’s own version of the statue mirrored the actual marble statue, supposedly designed by a professor from the University of Florence (see Fig.4.24b). The design in turn prompted a series of Goss chinaware from about 1922 onward (see chapter 6). A dance hall, baptized ‘Lureland Hall’, opened opposite the hotel within a few months; the hotel featured on the cover of the Peacehaven Post again in August 1923. There were to be many more symbolic uses of the hotel and its grounds during the interwar period, for example in 1936, as part of the unveiling ceremony of the Meridian Monument (see chapter 6). The Hotel Peacehaven itself and in particular the editorials focused on its opening show how myths of origin and the idea of the birth of the town were tightly intermeshed and mobilized visually, both through Volk’s drawings and Hill’s photographs. Another hugely symbolic act, reported in the November 1922 issue, and recorded through photography, was the cutting of ‘the first sod’ by Dorothy Neville in a ceremony, which marked the laying of foundations for Peacehaven’s first church.

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Figure 4.25: Peacehaven Church News Peacehaven Post, Vol II, No 15, November 1922, p.78.

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The two accompanying photographs show Mrs. Neville with a large spade, surrounded by about two dozen residents and Peacehaven’s first minister, the Reverend Street (see Fig.4.25).153 These photographs visually echo Volk’s selfreliant builder motif, but their complex narrative could be seen to symbolize the foundations of Peacehaven’s religious community and the birth of the town enacted by the wife of Peacehaven’s ‘founder’, who, like the young woman in Volk’s iconic drawing, was symbolically marking the start of a new chapter in the town’s genesis. These photographs are similarly reminiscent of missionary albums aimed at depicting ‘progress’ (see Goodby, 2009) and signal an intercrossing between the private and the public spheres. Sitting between myth and actuality: Volk’s idealized graphic imagery adopted across commercial Peacehaven postcard series A substantial number of postcards and postcard booklets promoted the Peacehaven Estate in the early 1920s; these were produced by the SCLRC and made use of Hill’s photographs, but there were also a number of independent postcard publishers and photographers, including Avery in Brighton and Allen of Peacehaven, who created several experimental and unusual views, which he sold as ‘real photograph cards’.154 These postcards constitute hybrid viewpoints of the Estate, but they also have a lot in common with both Hill’s and Parks’ perspectives, (indeed, one of the postcard booklets discussed below features Hill’s own photographs). A comparison of just two souvenir booklets reveals some of the utopian ideals harking back to a garden city narrative and which were used in the marketing of the Estate. Several photographs that appeared as part of a set or series in commercial albums were also available as single, hand-tinted or hand-coloured postcards, on sale by Allen and increasingly in other shops selling photographic material in Peacehaven, including A.E. Parker’s Optima Store. There are a number of different postcard versions in particular of the Hotel Peacehaven, the promenade and cliffs, the beach with and without Bastion Steps, and shops along the South Coast Road. Much rarer are postcards of the Peacehaven theatre, built in 1923, and the Bastion Pool. A close reading of different postcard sets makes it possible to note variations of photographic technique and visual representation, such as a shift from painted depictions of the Estate – which predominantly showed Downland and cliff views, and new landmarks (such as the Bastion Steps which secured access

153 See chapter 6 and Appendix 2 for a brief biography of Street. 154 By 1922, Allen had opened a photographic studio, The Downs Store, in North Peacehaven and also ran a business inside Cairo House. He would sometimes sign his postcards Allens, P/Haven.

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to the beach) – to more hybrid postcards, which combined painterly techniques (e.g. hand-colouring, drawing) on top of actual photographs (some had been sepia-toned, with small or no borders, several were numbered). This swiftly led onto entirely unaltered, purely photographic postcard views. Some of these postcards have postmarks and look like they have been handled a lot and are fading, while others were never sent and still look pristine and may have sat forgotten at the back of a drawer for the past 90 years. Looking through a selection of picture postcards of Peacehaven from 1922 to 1924, there is a real sense of the Estate vision taking physical shape, with some of the key landmarks beginning to echo their portrayed version. There were at least four sets of promotional photographic postcards made during the first three years of construction, in addition to numerous single postcard views. I have postmarked copies of some of these, indicating that they too were used for correspondence purposes, and helping date their production. One set of four picture postcards promoted Harrison’s Cliff Park Estate – and mainly showed adjacent Downland. In the view below, simply captioned ‘The Downs from Cliff Park, Peacehaven’, the black and white photograph was hand-coloured in so heavily, and clouds added in, that it is more reminiscent of a painting (see Fig.4.26).

Figure 4.26: The Downs, from Cliff Park Estate Peacehaven postcard, ca. 1920/21, J.W. collection.

A now very rare concertina style souvenir postcard booklet included multiple photographic views taken by Hill of the Hotel Peacehaven, the Rosemary Tea

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Garden, Castle Restaurant and other landmarks.155 The word Peacehaven was embossed across the lower section of the cover, and the high production value of the individual photographs, printed onto thick acid free and archival quality paper, indicates that this booklet was meant to last and become a desirable souvenir item. Aside from the image captions there was no additional text. Although not dated, the ten black and white photographs would have been made over several weeks during the second half of 1922 as the Hotel Peacehaven is shown in various stages of completion, with the gardens eventually finished; the photograph of the Bastion Steps shows these already completed. A couple of these postcard views were reused in the first Peacehaven directory (1923), as well as in the Peacehaven Post’s second volume. For the photograph of the Hotel shown below, Hill adopted an almost identical vantage point to Volk’s painted postcard view (see Fig.4.27 and chapter 2). Still missing from Hill’s photograph (but already present in Volk’s) were the fountain, tea pavilion, flowers and scrubs. In another view of the Hotel, which would have been taken a few weeks later, a decorator could be seen on a ladder putting the finishing touches to a bay window of the hotel.

Figure 4.27: Souvenir booklet, 1922, Hill. J.W. collection. 155 I was given this rare booklet by Patricia Vale, whose parents ran The Castle during the 1930s, and who was born in Peacehaven in 1930. She has already been mentioned in the prologue. The booklet’s photographs can now safely be attributed to Hill. Although not credited to Hill in the booklet, several of these images also appeared during 1923 in the Peacehaven Post as well as the first edition of The Peacehaven Directory, Handbook and Illustrated Guide (e.g. the Rosemary Tea Gardens, brick makers and hotel photographs) where they were all credited to Hill.

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The superb sharpness and great image detail indicates that Hill would have taken the photographs with a large format camera. These images are mainly formal looking, wide-angle views, taking in the horizon and new landmarks. Also included was the view of new bungalows (see chapter 8, Figure 8.1), and a photograph of Peacehaven’s original brickyard, where a group of nine boys, men and work horse are shown making bricks (see Fig.4.28). Possibly taken from a ladder, Hill looked down at the workmen and included some of the surrounding view in this frame. The hand-coloured version of the postcard makes it easier to notice the distant Hotel Peacehaven in the top right corner.

Figure 4.28: Brick Works, 1922 hand coloured version (original b&w), Hill, courtesy Martin Delancourt.

For the photograph taken of the new Bastion Steps, cut into the chalk cliffs near the Hotel Peacehaven, Hill took an almost identical view to Volk’s drawing, but included more of the stony beach itself. In an editorial shortly after the construction of the steps, the Peacehaven Post had reported enthusiastically: Rambles are now possible along a stretch of superb coast, which is almost a virgin field for exploration, for few human feet have trod the base of these cliffs at this point. An afternoon and evening spent in exploration is to feel something of the thrill of Robinson Crusoe. (Vol II, No 14, October 1922, p.35)

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The reference to a Crusoe style exploratory walk along Peacehaven’s beach has strong echoes with the SCLRC’s foundation narrative and Volk’s motif signposting new beginnings. Hill’s wide-angle view captured an adjacent large cave, rock pools and man-made chalk marks left near the base of the steps, thus highlighting the potential for beach explorations (but not revealing that during high tide, the sea comes right up to the base of the cliffs). Parks had previously captured the construction of the Bastion Steps in two remarkable photographs. The first depicts two workmen in the centre of the image and makes visible how the chalk and stones had been carefully shaped and carved out of the cliff face before steps were laid (see Fig.4.29a).

(a)

(b)

Figures 4.29 a+b: Bastion Steps work, Parks, 1922, courtesy Barry Parks; Bastion Steps from above, Parks, 1922, courtesy Barry Parks.

Parks’ second photograph shows an evocative view taken from the top and makes visible a U-shaped cut into the edge of the cliffs; from this angle it looks like a vast hole and makes the scale of the enterprise more palpable (see Fig.4.29b). Hill’s Peacehaven leporello booklet also featured a photograph of Cavell House, ‘a bungalow department store’; its shopkeeper and customers were photographed posing by the shop entrance (see Fig.4.30). A poster advertising the Peacehaven Post is in the second windowpane, announcing plans for the ‘Hotel Luxurious’ and introducing the Powells’ song, ‘The Lureland Waltz’.

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Figure 4.30: Souvenir booklet, Cavell House, 1922, Hill, J.W. collection.

The overall mood evoked by the booklet was one of enterprise and aspiration, thus mirroring the optimism and future promise of all three of Volk’s images. For example, items for sale at Cavell House, and advertised in bold letters running along the top of the shop windows, included ‘Leather & Grindery’, ‘Ironmongery & Woodware’; ‘Books & Music’; and ‘Goss China Peacehaven Crest’.156

Souvenir of Peacehaven booklet by Avery Possibly also during 1922, professional photographer Henry Alfred Avery published a series of Peacehaven postcards in the form of an A5 souvenir album, with twelve sepia-toned photographic views of the emerging Estate (see Fig.4.31).157 With its soft-

156 The shop was named after Edith Cavell, but already changed names in 1923. 157 Avery’s placed an advertisement for its ‘well-appointed studios’ in the first Peacehaven Directory frontispiece (the directory was issued June 1923); this already lists six photography studio addresses in Brighton, Hove and Shoreham. For further details on Avery, whose business selling Sussex postcards became very successful, http://www.sussexpostcards.info/publish ers.php?PubID=11 (Accessed 1 January 2016).

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back brown cardboard cover and brown wool tread, Avery’s album is reminiscent of private photo albums of the period.

Figure 4.31: Photograph of SCLRC estate offices (future Rosemary Tea Gardens on the left) was used on the first page. Avery, 1922, J.W. collection.

Much care was taken in the presentation of each photograph as they were individually glued onto thin light brown paper on the card board pages and adorned by thin lines, doubled up to provide mini-surrounds. Presenting an unusual mixture of more formal photographs, such as a wide-angle view of the Hotel Peacehaven, and another of the Hotel’s tea rooms, combined with informal shots of female bathers on Peacehaven’s shore, and another of a dog on the beach, H.A. Avery’s approach here suggests the idea of Peacehaven as a leisure resort and holiday destination. The inclusion of a photograph of the head office of the SCLRC on the South Coast Road at the beginning of the album, and of the Peacehaven Estate office at Phyllis Avenue, was probably meant to act as an invitation to get viewers to consider buying into the idea of Peacehaven’s future. This makes it likely that the SCLRC had commissioned the Avery booklet. The photographs reveal the location’s natural beauty, and show visitors and residents enjoying a beach stroll. Captions describe ‘the downs’, ‘the shore’, ‘the beach’, ‘the rocks’, ‘the cave’ and ‘where to fish’, thus invoking visions of a natural

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paradise. The few businesses and houses dotted sparingly along the South Coast Road, however, defy the marketing discourse of a thriving, new town undergoing an economic boom. Looked at together, both booklets portrayed a scarcely populated landscape, although Avery’s sepia toned photographs included more natural, untouched locations, whereas Hill focused on commerce, shopkeepers and workmen. Other views circulating in the early 1920s included those by the aforementioned Allen. These consisted of a view of Friars Bay, the Bastion Steps, the motor park of the Hotel Peacehaven, and an early, artistic long-exposure of the Hotel Peacehaven taken at night from the balcony of Cairo House, where Allen’s business was based during 1922 (see Fig.4.32). In this postcard, the hotel evokes an air of expectation and near mythical quality due to Allen having captured the trailing lights of passing cars and the hotel itself lit in the evening.158

Figure 4.32: Hotel Peacehaven, Night, Allen, 1922, J.W. collection.

Further postcards from the early to mid-1920s reveal a Downland in the process of being taken over by homes and motorcars. In the postcard view below, Volk’s visualization of Peacehaven as a youthful woman has here been replaced by cars, parked as

158 This photograph was taken from the balcony of Cairo House. There are other, confirmed Allen photographs showing the hotel from almost the exact angle. For more information, see http://www.sussexpostcards.info/publishers.php?PubID=3 (Accessed 1 January 2016).

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near to the cliff edge as possible (see Fig.4.33); a second view shows new homes built on the promenade, within close proximity to the cliff edge (see Fig.4.34).

Figure 4.33: The Cliffs, Telscombe (Peacehaven) ca.1923, photographer unknown, J.W.collection.

Figure 4.34: The Promenade, Peacehaven, Postcard (ca.1923), photographer unknown, J.W. collection.

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At the same time, much of the Estate remained an anticipated and suggestive space to be held in one’s imagination, as this early postcard looking south at the Estate from the northern tip of Roderick Avenue, with evocative green hand colouring, makes visible again (see Fig.4.35). The exaggerated hand colouring could have been an attempt to invoke the ideal of Blake’s ‘green and pleasant land’ (1804) and certainly worked to emphasize the Estate’s Downland location. Unlike Volk’s enticing image of the twelve signposts all pointing towards a crescent shaped and prosperous town, this view of Roderick Avenue reveals it as a long, straight but unmade road, with only a few houses dotted around here and there, and with neither cars nor pedestrians in sight.

Figure 4.35: Top of Roderick Avenue, ‘Solocoll’ Series 9224, published by Sweetman & Son, Tunbridge Wells (c. 1921–23), J.W. collection.

Conclusion This chapter has explored the transformation of an imagined space into a populated space through photographs taken by Hill, Parks and others. The aura of Volk’s allegorical images trickled down into the actual physical construction space, recorded by Hill, Parks and also through picture postcards. Working with Volk’s signpost and young woman on cliff tops images, which represented the town’s future potential, I tracked the division of a cliff top landscape into parcelled sections and plots, with a

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central main road and, by drawing on Hill’s and Park’s photographs, and putting to work the Regards Croisés approach, showed how this space began to be inhabited. The foundation narratives and the visual motifs that accompanied them began to take hold in an actual space and had some influence on the early building period. The visual allegory of the man with spade dreaming of the construction of his own home is mirrored in the photographic depictions of building materials, workers and buildings as a way to concretise or make real the spade metaphor. This space, the emerging Peacehaven estate, was now being divided into exterior and interior spaces. The chapter explored the emergence of everyday life on the Estate (arrival of residents, shops) to personalized living (visualized in the Peacehaven Post through Hill’s photographs of exteriors as well as interiors of new bungalows and which were given a personal and more intimate viewpoint through Parks’ photographic perspective). The Hotel Peacehaven imagery, with sunken gardens, fountain and tea pavilion was imbricated with Volk’s graphic images and was put to work to give the Estate a central focus as an aspirational meeting place, epitomized by a marble Peace statue figure at its core. The themes of a new way of life and home ownership were also picked up in early picture postcards and souvenir booklets. This would have assisted in the development of a sense of community and reassurance, locally, that the marketing mythology was beginning to become intermeshed with actual developments. The photographs and postcards sought to offer visual proof that progress was being made. For Parks, they possibly had the added function of documenting his work and the development of a new stage in his own life that he would be able to revisit and share with his family and community at a later stage. But with the formation of a nascent Peacehaven identity and new residents and interest groups came different agendas and views on how the Estate ought to develop and grow, which the next chapter illustrates.

Chapter 5 ‘This Blessed Plot, this other Eden’: The Greater Peacehaven development refracted through local and national protests against speculative development from 1923 onward Introduction This chapter highlights how the Estate’s rapid expansion prompted resistance leading to the emergence of newly formed pressure groups such as the Society of Sussex Downsmen (1923) and the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE, 1926), which were in part formed out of opposition to the Peacehaven development. The town’s image was also negatively invoked by leading architects, town planners and preservationists including Patrick Abercrombie, Professor of Town Planning, and founder of the CPRE, and Clough WilliamsEllis, writer and architect of Portmeirion. From April 1923, the Estate further expanded when the SCLRC introduced a Greater Peacehaven vision. This began with an extension of the original Estate boundaries westwards from the pylons all the way to Rottingdean Heights, inclusive of sheep grazing area at Saltdean, and eastward towards the town of Newhaven, to include Peacehaven Heights, the new Valley Estate and River Estate (the latter quickly disappeared from subsequent Estate plans). This represented a complete departure from the originally promoted Estate ideal; the planned expansion was first announced as a double spread centrefold illustrated feature, accompanied by a hand-drawn map by Volk, which revealed an enlarged grid system and showed the new five-mile zone (Peacehaven Post, Vol 2, No 20, pp.224–225, see Fig. 5.1). Although it showed neither Harrison’s Estate, nor Pizzey’s new Blakeney Estate, this extensive expansion was to incorporate seven further estates. The northern boundary was to reach right across to the traditional village of Piddinghoe, covering a vast area of farmland. Volk’s drawing revealed how far into open Downland the original Estate had already pushed. Brighton’s close proximity was hinted at through a text box.

Note: Title of a 1938 documentary by the CPRE, which featured Peacehaven as an example of unplanned Downland development. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWXBMM1cPRU [Accessed 3 February 2018]. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110734027-006

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Figure 5.1: Greater Peacehaven, Peacehaven Post, Vol 2, No 20, April 1923, pp. 224–225.

The proposed Greater Peacehaven Estate was drawn with location-specific details. Visual descriptions included the words ‘steps to beach’ above the Bastion Steps. Volk also indicated the Hotel, main through road, Electric Light Station, planned Lake Park and Chatsworth Park, Golf Links to the east, the Waterworks in Telscombe Cliffs and The Lookout to the north. Dotted here and there along the grid system were houses, giving a sense of spaciousness. An aerial landing ground was indicated north west of Telscombe Village; the Southern railway reached from Lewes to Newhaven where Volk also signposted a busy ferry terminal. Rather than appearing remote, the map firmly located Peacehaven within Downland but in close proximity to train services and other towns. Looking back, one of the most contentious issues appears to have been that the SCLRC continued its expansion program, rather than consolidating the original Estate first. To overcome fears that the planned expansion would lead to the original Estate becoming overstretched and neglected, Neville sought support amongst established public figures. In the August 1923 issue of the Peacehaven Post, an article by British travel author and journalist, Sir John Fraser featured under the headline ‘A Hefty Youngster: Peacehaven’s Progress and Aspirations’ (1923, p.349). Fraser recalled a first visit to the Estate in the autumn of 1921, when he could only find ‘a scatter of red-roofed bungalows’. During a more recent visit he claimed to have found ‘several hundred houses and a population of close on 2,000’, (ibid., p.349) and waxed lyrically: Peacehaven is not a little, cramped township, but spreads over the Downs for several miles [. . .] as a piece of town planning, I have no hesitation in saying it is the finest thing we have in England, and if I were not afraid of using extravagant language I would say in the world. (ibid., p.363)

This exaggerated endorsement, as well as those by other writers, (most notably Lord Teynham, whose Peacehaven Estate business connections have already been mentioned in chapter 2) must have been paid commissions. Ironically, the planned expansion belt was set to irreversibly transform the rural landscape it

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had venerated in its foundation mythology. The development took place at the tail end of the disintegration of rural life in England, and the irony could not be lost that whilst celebrating the appeal of the rolling Downland, the expansion process would destroy much of it. Within just a few months, the SCLRCs approach to developing Greater Peacehaven led to rising negative public opposition, which found expression in local papers, editorials, and letters to the editor.

Local and National Resistance to the expansion of Peacehaven Estates and strategic SCLRC campaigns At this juncture it became apparent that many of the early settlers had bought into the early vision of a Garden City by the Sea, nestled in untainted Downland, and now wanted, and expected, this vision to materialize. Settlers created a Residents’ Association, which began lobbying for a better infrastructure, roads to be made up and improved local amenities such as direct access to water and electricity. These efforts are well documented, as residents expressed their frustration in editorials of the Peacehaven & South Coast Advertiser (1923–24). A series of public meetings were called in October and November 1923; however, these were not attended by representatives of the SCLRC. No longer able to control the town’s narrative entirely, the SCLRC’s management was challenged as local and national dissent grew. Residents debated the future shape of Peacehaven, questioned who the founding vision belonged to, and discussed their hopes for the Estate’s future. With a growing sense of community, and an emerging town identity, they debated how to improve local amenities. There was consensus about the real beauty of Peacehaven’s location, but dissatisfaction about noticeable lack of planning. Unfortunately, instead of being able to form one large association, there appear to have been three separate associations at one point, with differing agendas. Residents lobbied for public control over the Estate, and some went so far as to argue for a ‘People’s Parliament’; the extract below conveys well the growing sense of anger and frustration amongst some of the residents: Peacehaven is an embryo city, set on a wonderfully healthy and invigorating portion of our coast. Its natural advantages are extremely high. Look at it how you may, nobody can say too much of the setting – sea and downs make the surroundings perfect. We have many leagues of most glorious Downland in our rear, with the sea in front. But granting that, what then? We have a town created by man, and as in all things of man’s creation, it is capable of improvement, even in the amenities so far established. Man cannot create a perfect article or a perfect state. That must be grown. [. . .] What Peacehaven will become is for the future to say, but it will surely depend upon the conception of the residents now as to what sort of agitation is fostered, whether the city to be grows or decays. (Peacehaven & South Coast Advertiser 12 October 1923, p.5)

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At a subsequent meeting, the group made the compelling case to turn the Estate into an actual garden city, and argued this was still a viable possibility: Many mistakes have been made in the beginning of our city: selfishness has too often been uppermost in the minds of its early promoters, or founders, call them what you will. But nothing has occurred which cannot be righted. All that is wanted is the application of common sense. Nature has given us everything; but man’s greatest curse is himself. It is he who brings ruin and desolation where Nature provides a garden. [. . .] Only by each one of us giving the best of our nature and intelligence to the common good, can we hope to make of Peacehaven what Nature has, in its wonderful way, provided for us, a real Garden City by the Sea. (Peacehaven & South Coast Advertiser 19 October 1923 p.5)

These excerpts illustrate the clarity articulated at early residents’ meetings of the ever-growing chasm between the SCLRC’s promotion of Peacehaven, and how the town was shaping up in actuality. Dorothy Neville had placed herself strategically at the head of the Peacehaven Residents’ Association, which would have helped the Nevilles influence and control the public narrative. Indeed, a writer in the same 19 October 1923 newspaper issue commented that, ‘Peacehaven is not a town of ramshackle huts [. . .] it is a town built up of hundreds of expensive, well-built houses, some of the bungalow type, others in villa style’ (1923, p.6). Other powerful developers had arrived on the Estate, including the ambitious entrepreneur M. Blakeney Pizzey, along with estate agents and builders, each vying for influence. Alliances were formed through business connections and land speculation. On the one hand Neville’s scheme attracted people of independent spirit, on the other neither he nor many of the new arrivals were team players. Neville seems to have always been driven to maximize profits to the detriment of Peacehaven’s subsequent development and expense of residents’ needs or wishes. However, the SCLRC’s marketing programme had a long reach and enough financial backing to be able to ignore and dismiss the opposing voices and growing concerns raised by local residents. In 1923, a full-page advertisement promoting Peacehaven as a ‘Sussex Seaside Garden City of Amazing Growth’ appeared in The Wartime House magazine. It offered homes for a £50 cash advance, with the remaining balance of £350 to be paid as rent. The Peacehaven Post January 1923 cover by Volk was of a shepherd and flock drawn in modernist style. Despite the traditional theme evoked, the drawing represented a stylistic departure from the more conservative covers used before and after. Between June and November 1923, five watercolour paintings of untainted rural Downland by the traditional commercial British watercolour artist Cyril Ward, RCA were used as covers. These tapped into Volk’s 1921/22 ‘borders of Lureland’ series (see chapter 3), which had included rural scenes such as dewponds, farm buildings and open farmland. Of particular note are Ward’s ‘Peacehaven Golf Course’ and ‘Glimpses of Lureland I and II’ as these visualized

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the growing Estate set in an otherwise untouched natural landscape (see Fig. 5.2 & Fig. 5.3).

Figure 5.2: ‘Peacehaven Golf Course’, Vol III No 29, October 1923.

Figure 5.3: ‘Glimpses of Lureland II’ Vol II, No 23, July 1923, Peacehaven Post, Cyril Ward.

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This reverence for untainted Downland overlapped with the Greater Peacehaven project being rolled out. At this point, the company had to work harder to sustain its Edenic mythology, and in order to do so, mobilized traditional imagery that was even more pastoral than previously. Ward’s engagement is likely to have been a further attempt to persuade the public of the SCLRC’s credibility.159 In this way, the company tried to reassure its readership, as well as the Estate’s residents, that their vision was not changing in the long term. The explosion of housing and speculative development across the British countryside created much public upset and prompted the formation locally of The Society of Sussex Downsmen (SoSD) in 1923, co-founded by Kipling scholar Robert Thurston Hopkins, and nationally the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE) by 1925.160 Very little academic research exists on the early history of the SoSD, which, due to its mandate and early membership was a complex society, as its original aim was to ‘reconcile preservation and development’, somewhat of a contradiction in terms. The Society’s 1923 crest designed by Lilian Bately was an etching depicting an expansive agrarian countryside, with two oxen in the foreground, windmill to the left, sailing ship to the right, and a thistle centrally placed, connoting rurality, harmony, and a traditional life-style.161 Several of these motifs had already been invoked by Volk on the pages of the first volume of the Peacehaven Post, such as the ship to represent empire and pilgrims, confirming the broad representational reach of the ship iconography.

159 Although his signature is not visible (some paintings appear to have been cropped for the cover), the paintings used for the September, October and November covers bear Ward’s signature, and are stylistically very similar to the June and July covers. 160 I studied the SoSD archive folders BTNRP; BH2910768; BTNRP BH2910767 at The Keep, Brighton and the CPRE archive, which is largely based at Reading Museum of Rural England. 161 This was also made into decorative, wearable badges. Lilian Bately was the wife of Captain Irvine Bately; together with their Portslade neighbour Thurston Hopkins, they cofounded the Society. See The Downsman, Issue 199, Spring 2018 ‘Women & The Society: Lilian Bately’.

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Figure 5.4: SoSD crest, courtesy The Keep.

Considering the original mandate of the Society, the lack of any houses in this idealized view is surprising. Archival research of the Society’s minute books, annual reports, scrapbooks and early newsletters, held at The Keep, reveals that Charles and Dorothy Neville were initially members. Gordon Volk was the Society’s first secretary, and was listed as a vice-president for 1925, as was Peacehaven-based developer Pizzey; Dr. Habberton Lulham, author of Songs from the Downs and Dunes (1923), and an early contributor to the Peacehaven Post, which published his photographs of children dressed as elves or farm hands. Arthur Beckett also contributed texts on local Sussex traditions to the magazine from December 1923; he was also a founding member of the SoSD, as of course was Thurston Hopkins, the first president.162 The Society had 463 members by its first annual meeting in 1925; sub-committees included the so-called Downs Preservation Committee. The four advantages given for joining the Society were that it cared about Sussex, that members could take advantage of rambles offered (promoted as healthy exercise), assist in preservation of

162 Thurston Hopkins wrote a ‘pen portrait’ about the novelist Sheila Kaye-Smith for the March 1924 issue; Beckett’s ‘Song of the Sussex Downsmen’ was published in the same issue. Beckett was the well-known author of The Spirit of the Downs. From 1925, the Nevilles were no longer listed as SoSD members; by 1929, none of the members in the annual membership booklet had a Peacehaven address.

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footpaths, and finally partake in lectures and entertainment organized by the Society (Newsletter No.10, December 1925). It is worth noting that speculative developers such as the Nevilles and Pizzey would have readily joined the Society to improve their public image and minimize or downplay a growing critique that their building projects were going to impact negatively on preservation. Remarkably, a positive view of Peacehaven’s development came from Thurston Hopkins himself in 1924. Included in his book, The Kipling Country, this reads like a publicity endorsement and indicates that even Thurston Hopkins had bought into the Estate’s future promise. He must have felt reassured by the powerful marketing imagery, which implied that, rather than destroying the countryside, the founders’ intentions were benevolent, and that they shared the interests of the SoSD, which took seriously their mandate of protecting Downland. Indeed, 15 Sussex drawings by Volk (of local characters, villages, churches and an old fishing boat ‘engaged in bouldering’ at Peacehaven, 1924, p.151) were included in the book. Heaping praise on the Peacehaven project, Thurston Hopkins tapped into the ideals of health and enterprise: You will be astonished to find that, in that brief span of time, a town has sprung into existence, with a spacious hotel on the cliffs, shops and electric light, and indeed, all the amenities essential to modern life. This, be it known, is Peacehaven, the Garden City by the Sussex Sea, where lovers of Downland have built, and are building, their homes on the springy turf of the cliffs, on the commanding heights [. . .] To Peacehaven’s credit it may be said that the enterprise of its founders had done much to alleviate the pressing problem of housing, and the even more vexing question of unemployment, since it has, for almost three years, provided constant work for nearly one thousand persons.163 (1924, p.141–142)

By the end of 1923, a significant area of land had been turned into a sprawl of houses, with unmade roads and still no town centre to speak of. During the remainder of 1923, and throughout 1924 and 1925, maps for Greater Peacehaven were regularly deployed as double-spreads in the Peacehaven Post, accompanied by headings that pitched the venture as ‘The Ideal Resort: A Bird’s Eye View of Greater Peacehaven’. These pages included cut out coupons, inviting the public to ‘answer the inviting call of Downland and sea’ (October 1923, Vol II, No 26, p.iii), and to request a brochure, ‘telling the Full Story of Peacehaven’ (November 1923, Vol III, No 27, p.iii). It should not be surprising that the mythology of the emergence of a New Jerusalem, a new world and a new way of life in a new garden city, 80 feet

163 This last line almost quotes verbatim the 1924 town guide, which had stated that more than ‘One Thousand Persons’ found employment in Peacehaven (see chapter 6).

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above sea level on cliff tops, remained most palpable on the pages of the Peacehaven Post, and from January 1924, on the pages of its successor, the Downland Post. In addition to a name change the magazine also received some rebranding and expanded its use of photographs. The editorship had switched from George Powell to Gordon Volk by August 1923 and the magazine claimed that from March 1924 its circulation had doubled from 5,000 copies per month, to 10,000 (No 3 Vol 1, p.95). This coincided with the magazine beginning to position itself as ‘The Official Organ of the Society of Sussex Downsmen’ (Vol 1 No 3 March 1924, p.65).164 This move could have been seen as an effort to appeal to a wider readership, increasingly concerned with the preservation of the countryside. It may have been an attempt to take the sting out of the SCLRC development narrative, and to give the impression that the Greater Peacehaven project was also determined to preserve the countryside within and around its boundaries. In addition to making the foundation imagery work ever harder, the Downland Post’s public endorsers became more and more heavyweight. In the October 1924 issue, The Right Hon. T.P. O’Connor, introduced as the ‘father of the House of Commons’ (he had been a member of the House of Commons for nearly 50 years), and lifelong journalist, wrote an illustrated piece on his impressions of journeying through Peacehaven, in which he activated the terminology of the Estate being a ‘commonwealth’ of sorts: The ugly mirage of Peacehaven, which I had formed in my mind, began to fade away, and I soon, in a drive around the place, began to realize that I was in the presence of one of the most interesting settlements in England today. My abiding feeling was that I was witnessing that most fascinating of all sights to me – the growth of a new community. I have seen the sight, of course, many times in America, especially in the Far West, for in that new and abounding country life is always on the march. But Peacehaven is the first community I have seen from its tiny birth to its growing youth within the borders of England [. . .] and thus Peacehaven is, in a way, a co-operative commonwealth – it is self-helpful, self-contained, almost entirely self-sufficing. (Downland Post, Vol 1, No 10, 1924, pp. 293–295)

O’Connor’s endorsement underscored two key ideals that were made to circulate widely at the time: that Peacehaven’s development mirrored that of North

164 This was recounted by Gordon’s younger brother Conrad in a biography of their father, Magnus Volk: ‘[Gordon] was currently editing a small monthly journal called Downland Post, and this was adopted, at his suggestion, as the official organ of the newly formed Society of Sussex Downsmen. The result, of course, was that he was promptly elected to the committee, and became involved in all their activities. I see from a press notice of one of this society’s early meetings that Mother was also on the committee [. . .] We all loved the Downland countryside’. (1971, pp. 211–212)

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American counterparts; and that it was turning into a self-sufficient, co-operative community. This endorsement also chimed with the cheerful tone of the local Peacehaven and South Coast Record, which echoed the core themes of the Peacehaven Post, primarily focusing on the Estate’s health-giving properties.165 The first edition cover feature claimed that Peacehaven’s biggest offering was good health (see Fig. 5.5). The text was positioned next to a photograph of three healthy looking children on front steps leading up to a veranda.

Figure 5.5: South Coast Record ‘Peacehaven’s Greatest Offering’, February 1925, Troak-Poplett collection.

165 This replaced the Peacehaven and South Coast Advertiser in February 1925 and ran until 1929.

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The editor appealed to prospective holidaymakers and future residents alike, invoking fresh air ideals: Standing high and dry, up on the Cliffland, it offers the finest holiday advantages that can be obtained in summer to all those seeking a real bracing and building-up holiday, so beneficial and necessary to the dwellers of the towns. Whether for occasional visitors or invalids needing a bracing air and sunshine, for holiday-makers, or those seeking permanent residence in one of England’s best bits of ‘Country and Sea’ Peacehaven can be relied on to give great possibilities of attaining a full measure of that greatest of God’s gifts, good health. (February 1925, p.1)

Volk initially continued to promote the expansion project, however, his editorship ceased after only one year, in February 1925; and Peacehaven-based Frank Moore took over as editor in March.166 A big summer special was published in July 1925 to celebrate the fifth anniversary of Peacehaven Estate; this again recycled much of the earlier material produced for the Peacehaven Post during 1921. Another change occurred in October 1926, when the magazine’s name was changed to Downland, a Magazine of the Sussex Downs, under the continued editorship of Frank Moore. It also kept reusing Volk’s graphic images. It would have been difficult for Volk to reconcile the views of the Sussex Downsmen, whose main concern by that time had become to protect Downland, with the narrative of expansion. Luring prospective buyers onto the estate with regular photographic countryside features, the irony that the Estate’s expansion was going to destroy this very landscape cannot have been lost on him. By 1925, the persuasiveness of his marketing imagery, disseminated through the Peacehaven Post, had supported the ruin of the natural landscape Volk wished to protect. The shift from Peacehaven Post to Downland Post to Downland, A Magazine of the Sussex Downs was incompatible with the changes on the ground. As the town became an actuality and large chunks of Downland receded under houses and unmade roads, the title shift connoted the opposite. This inception period was a time of considerable growth, which saw the town develop in line with market forces. The SCLRC’s various marketing schemes worked, although the claim that Peacehaven’s population grew by nearly 4000 residents by the end of 1925 was untrue.167 In April 1925, the Greater Peacehaven project was promoted in a targeted letter campaign, which played on the national

166 Based at Eastfield, Bramber Avenue, Peacehaven, Moore was elected a Fellow to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland in 1926. 167 Official population figures for 1931 give only 2007 for Peacehaven itself (Hibbs, 1979 p.6). Although the Greater Peacehaven Estate, which by 1925 included the new estates of Saltdean and Rottingdean Heights would have had more residents.

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housing shortage, noting that it was slum-free. This read more like a town planning policy in its argument that ‘the grave lack of houses, which has forced rents to a figure unheard of in earlier times is affecting very seriously the physical and moral health of the nation.’ The letter appealed to readers by arguing that the Estate combined country and sea living in close proximity of London and claimed that existing residents had ‘won their freedom. You can do the same’.168

Protecting the countryside from development King tracks a ‘small but increasingly powerful campaign’, from 1925 onward, by the professional press, including the journal Garden Cities and Town Planning, and the British Establishment, against ‘the distressing sacrifice of rural beauty involved in the uncontrollable erection of bungalows and unsightly buildings’ (Observer, 30 May 1926, cited in King, 1984, p.177). Lowerson describes the ensuing political ‘battles for the countryside’ in great detail (1980) and shows how a host of campaigns, national and local government initiatives, pamphlets and town planners lobbied to protect England’s ‘disappearing heritage’ (1980, p.265). Mattless analyses how various campaigners and preservationists wished to ‘ally preservation and progress, tradition and modernity, city and country in order to define Englishness as orderly and modern’ (1998, p.14). Concerned with how the English landscape has been socially, politically and economically constructed, Mattless explores overlapping questions and tensions within cultural practices in relation to the English landscape. He shows that the language employed to condemn speculative developments in the English countryside, with words used such as ‘violation, disease, rash, disfigurement, feeds off a sense of the country as a body, specifically, female, requiring defence by chivalrous Saint Georgic preservationists’ (1998, p.42–43). The evocation of a female body to represent the English landscape, and in particular a natural landscape, was not lost on Neville and his marketing team either. It is an interesting situation that both Neville, the speculative developer, and the preservationists used similar visual imagery, but to different ends. Whereas preservationists would talk about the violation of a landscape, Neville’s marketing programme turned this into the promotion of an ‘Eden environment’ that could be found there.

168 Letter courtesy of Douglas d’Enno.

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Preservationists increasingly pushed back against any further development on Downland.169 A 1926 newsletter by SoSD contained the poem Bungalows, which deplored estate development on Downland.170 Bungalows! Cheap bungalows! All arranged in tidy rows, making the defenceless Downs look like heaps of ugly towns. Land in squares, sold by the plot, helps to spread the human blot, covering the tortured leas, like the rash of a disease. Where the gulls unchallenged swept, squat-housed alleys now have crept. (1926, SoSD)

The image of a ‘human blot’ spreading was the antithesis to Volk’s optimistic image of the new settler digging foundations, which it repudiated. Despite clear misgivings on the bungalow type, the Sheffield and Peak District Branch of the CPRE later published their own housing guide for Small Houses and Bungalows suitable for the Peak District, which included bungalow designs and floor plans not dissimilar to those promoted in the two SCLRC’s Economic Homes booklets (see Fig. 5.6). The main difference was the material, as stone, stone coloured bricks and stucco were suggested. This indicates both the understanding that more housing stock was needed, and an effort to influence construction choices.

169 Hislop’s 1928 guide carries an advertisement by the newly formed Peacehaven & District Builder’s Association, which already listed 10 ‘bona-fide builders’ on the Estate (1928, p.40). 170 This was signed by a ‘Mr. Martineau’, which would have probably been a made-up name and reference to James and Harriet Martineau, who wrote about the need for society to behave in reasoned and conscientious ways in the late 19th century. See http://martineausociety.co.uk.

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Figure 5.6: Small Houses and Bungalows CPRE, 1936, cover, courtesy Reading Museum archive.

The SoSD came together to rescue a large area of Downland between Beachy Head and Birling Gap from being developed into a cliff top estate. Development of several bungalows had already started; driven by the real possibility of a second Peacehaven at Crowlink on the Seven Sisters, the SoSD successfully mobilized to halt development and Eastbourne Town Council eventually bought the land in 1926.171 It is interesting that in September 1926 the cartoonist of The Eastbourne Herald deployed the image of a man with cement trowel who is depicted being kicked off the cliffs by Arthur Beckett, then president of the SoSD, while seven young girls, meant to represent the Seven Sisters, look on (see Fig. 5.7).172 The developer echoes Volk’s cartoon of man and spade, but is here used to highlight the dangers of Downland development, as opposed to the positivist view of construction.

171 500 acres of land at Seven Sisters were eventually purchased through public subscription by the National Trust in 1931. 172 Arthur Beckett’s name was inscribed by hand beneath the character in the Herald clipping.

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Figure 5.7: The Eastbourne Herald, September 1926, SoSD papers, courtesy The Keep.

The same cartoon was reprinted in October 1926 as the frontispiece of The Downsman newsletter, which had become the official organ of the SoSD, indicating the huge importance attributed to the successful campaign and cementing the preservationist course of the SoSD.

Peacehaven Estates repositions its focus It is possible that the sustained Crow Link campaign had also put renewed pressure on Neville and the SCLRC. In any case, it signalled a departure from any attempt to disguise the Greater Peacehaven expansion project as anything but that. In a somewhat astonishing twist, in April 1926, and over a two-day period, Neville made the decision to liquidate his company’s building materials (Downland Post, Vol III, 1926, p. IV).

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Figure 5.8: Auction Manual, April 1926, Troak-Poplett collection, Box 11.

An auction manual listing a vast amount of materials available to purchase has survived in the Troak-Poplett collection. The guide has retained smudge and dirt marks left by bidders and helps bring back into view the image of builders and workmen perusing the various construction materials on offer (see Fig. 5.8). The move certainly marked the departure of Neville’s primary focus on the original Peacehaven Estate, as the entire contents of Neville’s building branch at Peacehaven were auctioned off: About 90,000 feet of converted timber, mostly new [. . .] second hand doors, window frames and timber principles [. . .] about 17,000 bricks, including string course, moulded, fancy pattern, fire and building bricks. 15,000 roofing tiles and slates, 150 finials various patterns, 80 chimney pots, drain pipes [. . .] and contents of Paint Shop, Glass Store.173

173 Building Materials by order of The Peacehaven Building & Supply Company, Ltd, ‘who are relinquishing the Building Branch of the Business on Thursday & Friday, April 22 and April 23 1926 at Peacehaven’. Troak-Poplett collection. Box 11.

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A further 1350 lots were offered for auction. This illustrates the scale of the sale and gives an indication of the extent of future development that had previously been envisaged. Neville began to put his energies into the development of the Greater Peacehaven Estates; some of the new Peacehaven Estates Ltd. correspondence has survived, and it is particularly instructive to explore the letterhead used for correspondence by 1927, which included the Sussex coat of arms, a photograph of the Hotel Peacehaven and Estate Office, both on Phyllis Avenue, and a drawing of the Estate from a sea approach, with Bastion Steps and grid layout showing orderly rows of houses and avenues (see Fig. 5.9).

Figure 5.9: Peacehaven Estates Ltd. Letterhead, Troak-Poplett collection.

The caption ‘Peacehaven Estates. The Seaside Garden Cities of the South Coast between Brighton and Newhaven’, underneath the office insignia confirms Neville’s plan to extend the Estate across a much larger area of Downland and reveals his ongoing evocation of the garden city ideal. Whether an intended outcome or not, the Greater Peacehaven project marked the start of Neville’s decreased authority on the original Peacehaven Estate, as it led to increased competition and antagonism amongst local developers and residents and renewed contestation as to the Estate’s imagined future, and ultimately prompted, if not forced, his departure to nearby Rottingdean.

England and the Octopus: Neville personified as ‘Mr. Otherman’ Whereas Thurston Hopkins had still described Peacehaven Estate as an enterprising initiative in 1924, by 1928, Williams-Ellis could not have disagreed more.

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In his polemic England and the Octopus, the octopus was suburbia and his pet hate were bungalows. He referred to these as: England’s most disfiguring disease, having, from sporadic beginnings, now become our premier epidemic. So few areas are still immune that it is unnecessary to give instances, though Peacehaven may still be cited as the classic example of the ravages of this distress([1928] 1975, p. 141,142) ing and almost universal complaint.174

At Peacehaven and elsewhere he lambasted the lack of planning: Take Peacehaven, or Waterlooville or Bournemouth, or an up-to-date ordnance survey map of the same areas. It is difficult to believe that the houses have been deliberately placed just so by thinking social animals – an untutored and charitable Martian would surely deride the idea and suggest the more likely theory that the buildings had been caught by some tidy-minded wizard playing unauthorized blind-man’s buff in a bit of noman’s-land and had been punished for their skittishness by being petrified on the instant just wherever they happened to stand. ([1928] 1975, p.27)

Williams-Ellis accused speculators of exploiting the desire for a healthier life, and in a particularly polemic chapter ‘The Archfiend and the Archangel’, he created a greedy fictional character, a caricature of a speculative developer, who he described simply as ‘Mr. Otherman’ through a series of six short vignettes. The fifth vignette is so close to the Peacehaven Estate story, that I think it more than likely that Williams-Ellis based this vignette directly on Neville himself. By not mentioning Neville’s name directly Williams-Ellis was able to avoid a potential libel suit. It also afforded him the opportunity not to have to hold back on his vigorous criticism. Collapsing ‘a person of great activity’ (1928, p.60) into this one character, Williams-Ellis recounts the story of Peacehaven’s genesis. The section constitutes such a valuable historical discovery, not yet discussed in any research elsewhere, that the impassioned attack is reprinted in full here: Having so significantly failed in your role of Country Gentleman, and having taken your mean revenge on all that had supported your empty claim to that pretension, you bought a slice of Downland on the coast, where you built yourself an appropriate villa that hallooed its challenge in a strident Cockney voice over three miles of rolling downs, the sheer white cliffs and the defenseless sea. From this decoy house you looked upon your land and saw that it was good – good for exploitation – ‘Ripe for development’. So you formed a syndicate of like-minded persons and set up an imposing office in London, and advertised a scheme so handsomely in the Press that even some of the less suspect London ‘dailies’ felt bound to speak kindly of your enterprise. You did not scruple to tempt two or three qualified but struggling doctors to write extravagant eulogies of your subsoil, of your water (of which there was very little) and of your air, which was of the ordinary quality.

174 In Williams-Ellis’ 1937 Britain and the Beast, the beast has now become the bungalow. See Paul Barker, (2009, p.59) for a detailed discussion on this.

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There was a great deal of ozone and the dancing waves sparkling in the limpid sunlight, which was partly and sometimes true: nothing about drainage – which was wise, as there wasn’t any – little about roads, for a similar reason, little specific indeed about any public services or obligations, but a great deal of heady innuendo that the Garden of Eden was at hand. Your prospectus writer was honest to this extent; he gave you a cyclonic puff in exchange for his fee. Your artists and publicity agents were similarly conscientious. Also they were skillful, and managed to convey just what was wanted without recourse to downright lying or actionable misrepresentation, which was exactly what you wanted Little drawbacks and awkwardnesses were tactfully ignored or glossed over. The fact that the crumbling cliffs cut off access to the beach almost entirely, and were themselves a perpetual danger, was skillfully evaded. That the beach when reached consisted of a slimy ooze (the disquieting smell being, of course, the abnormally powerful ozone as advertised), was not thought of sufficient general interest to mention, any more than the fact that a dangerous current sweeps over a treacherous quicksand a cable’s length from the shore. The artist’s engaging pictures were prudently entitled ‘Seaville as it will be’, ‘The proposed shopping centre’, The games reservation – as planned’, ‘Sketch of the cliff gardens,’ and so forth. No, you couldn’t be caught on those. Nor were you ever caught; though you were severely frightened by the indignant clamour that presently arose from your unhappy dupes. Even to this day Seaville is a reproach and a byword for all that is short-sighted, wasteful, predatory and stupid in capitalistic speculation. So grasping and get-rich-quick were you and your associates that your over-stimulated goose began to pine and die after the first season’s egg-laying, and so little did you do about fulfilling your obligations as implied by your ‘propaganda’ that more than half the plots sold remain unbuilt upon to this day. You found five thousand acres of Downland pasture – the immemorial resort of peaceful wanderers from the adjacent towns: you left it a forlorn and straggling camp of slatternly shacks and gimcrack bungalows, unfinished roads and weather-beaten advertisements. You brought chaos out of order, you created Golgotha-on-Sea, you acted blasphemously, and the world and your fellows are the worse for your living. ([1928], 1975, pp. 64–66)

Much of Williams-Ellis’ criticism of the choice of location and advertisement hype generated was indeed justified, and although inflected with perhaps too much classist snobbery, he was an astute observer of Neville’s marketing ploys and ability to invoke the aspirations of his contemporaries in his favour. Peacehaven was a strange mixture of limited planning on paper, but with absolutely no matching infrastructural preparation. Neville was willing to sell plots anywhere on the Estate right from the start, instead of coordinated development, section by section. Neville’s ribbon development, with the main South Coast Road being set aside for shops only, led to a decentralization of shops and businesses along a vast stretch of road, and a fragmented Estate without a core, with homes, schools, churches and shops scattered here and there across the entire town area. This became increasingly visible as a problem during the first decade, when reviews of Peacehaven became more and more inflected with negative comments in travel guides. Reviewers and writers also began to blame Brighton Town Council when Brighton expanded its boundaries in 1927 to include nearby villages such as

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Ovingdean and Rottingdean within the town’s boundaries as it was already a leading seaside resort and needed to further increase its housing stock.

Promises for Peacehaven’s potential future affected by local government intervention In 1929 a Local Government Act was passed that eventually led to the abolition of small rural district councils, such as Newhaven Rural District Council and their absorption into larger councils. This resulted in the takeover of Telscombe Cliffs and Peacehaven by Chailey Rural District Council, which became more involved in shaping and controlling development. At that point, Peacehaven became an even more contested space as the Estate’s boundaries themselves also shifted. Peacehaven was right at the juncture between Chailey and Brighton’s boundaries; Greater Peacehaven Estates fell within both boundary changes. At this juncture, the large promotional marketing campaigns of the Peacehaven Estate had slowed down considerably, however in the 1929 Peacehaven Directory an advertisement still urged readers to buy a building site, as ‘Everybody ought to own a bit of England – by securing your bit now at PEACEHAVEN’ and offered the potential of a free gift house and land in the value of £1000 by entering the competition. This narrative relied on the town’s foundation ideal of home-ownership but was now more pragmatic and less lyrical. Peacehaven’s narrative had to be further repositioned as a result of the Brighton Planning Report 1932, which was part of the Town Planning Act of 1932. This initiated further development schemes on hitherto unbuilt land that were however more controlled. At the same time, local and national planning laws began to attempt to regulate and adjust future development. The repositioning of narratives regarding Peacehaven’s potential future, which had begun a decade earlier, continued throughout the 1930s, often with contradictory and conflicting opinions and evidence used to either discredit or support its development. A sober image of the Estate emerges from close scrutiny of the 1932 Brighton, Hove and District Joint Town Planning Advisory Committee Report on the Regional Planning Scheme. Condemning the ribbon development, the report’s authors urged the council to consider design flaws and improve the Estate’s infrastructure considerably. The report, which did not include photographs, stated that it took councillors 5 ½ years to compile all the information and area maps listed (1932, p.vi), and included guidance on Downland preservation and zoning (ibid., p.10), how to regulate development (ibid., p.19) and recommending systematic development of

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Peacehaven and surrounding Estates (ibid., p.22). It was damning about the development and presented a dystopian and more realistic view, offering a host of concrete examples to illustrate lack of planning: Between Brighton and Newhaven there is an area of about 650 acres which was tentatively laid out as a building estate prior to the war [. . .] entirely in a chessboard or ‘grid iron’ pattern without any diagonal roads, and there are about 650 houses scattered over the area of 650 acres. If a postman had to deliver one postal packet to each house he would have to walk about 25 3/4 miles. Walking at 3 miles per hour this would take him about 8 1/2 hours to deliver one post.

The authors highlighted the length of sewer pipes, gas mains and electricity cables required to service each household (19), and also asked for the removal of ‘advertisements’ along the main road (31), which were growing unpopular across the country, and had already become the subject of a separate CPRE campaign. Hardy and Ward show that whilst the SCLRC’s sales approach had ‘yielded immediate profits to the developer’ it deferred costs for amenities to the local authorities, who now had to deal with the consequences, including having to set up a costly drainage and sewer system ([1984] 2004, p.86). By 1934, photographs of Peacehaven were being used in the House of Lords to lobby against any further developments and the chairman of the National Trust, the Marquess of Zetland, argued passionately for the implementation of a South Downs Preservation Bill: I wish that any of your Lordships who may be interested in this aspect of the case would travel to that unsightly and unplanned conglomeration of houses which is known euphemistically as Peacehaven, which flaunts itself on the eyes of the traveller between Brighton and Newhaven. All I can say is that when, in my capacity of Chairman of the National Trust, I paid a visit of inspection to the downs, and the sight of Peacehaven fell upon my view, I was staggered by what I saw. There is no order, no properly-planned streets, so far as I could make out, no organised sanitation. There is a mere hotchpotch of buildings of every shape and every size, dumped down in utter confusion upon what still is a commanding, and what at one time was a beautiful, tract of the Sussex Downs. I can assure your Lordships that no nightmare could present the achievements of the jerry-builder in such ghastly guise as they have assumed in the crude and stark reality of Peacehaven. Protection against the reduplication of Peacehaven is one of the things we seek. (Hansard, 1 May, 1934, vol.91, p.910)

While the South Downs Preservation Bill was not approved, the 1935 Restriction of Ribbon Development Act aimed to establish a green belt around London and could also be applied to other towns and cities (Hardy & Ward, 2004). Hardy and Ward show that while Neville’s lack of foresight in planning an infrastructure and making provisions for essential amenities right from the start might have been bearable when Peacehaven’s population was still small, problems

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became acute as more residents arrived. The pressures this put on sewerage, water provision, drainage and unmade roads became more evident and could no longer be ignored. However, these issues remained unresolved until the end of the 1930s, when WWII broke out and put a temporary end to construction. The Ministry of Agriculture and the Land Army requisitioned all arable land in order to grow food for the war effort, and in Peacehaven much unused land was put to use by the army, as it already had once before during WWI.

‘Here beats the Heart of England’ As can be seen from the examples quoted above, the original Peacehaven Estate development, and the subsequent Greater Peacehaven project were perceived as an assault and strike at the core of the British countryside, carried out by speculative developers. The almost spiritual significance of this landscape can perhaps best be shown by reviving a black and white photograph, which was used as a double spread illustration in the 1935 Silver Jubilee book for King George V. Captioned, ‘Here beats the heart of England’, the photograph depicts sheep grazing on Downland (see Fig. 5.10).

Figure 5.10: The Silver Jubilee Book, 1935, p.465. J.W. collection.

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The spread represents an astute mobilization of the British countryside and in particular an iconic pastoral scene in a symbolic way. It was depicted as sacred and restorative, and described by an inserted text as, ‘the everlasting symbol of that peace and beauty which all mankind desires’ (1935, pp.464–465). In 1938 the CPRE made a short Pathé film, This Blessed Plot This Other Eden, which condemned speculative developments on Downland, claiming it had been made ‘in defence against its disfigurement’. The film’s narrator invoked an Eden, Paradise and Plot metaphor, but in an oppositional way, as Peacehaven and Telscombe Cliffs personify the antithesis of Eden. Although not mentioned directly, some of the on-location footage featured the Estate and focused on its westerly approach travelling along the South Coast Road (see Fig. 5.11).

Figure 5.11: Peacehaven, This Blessed Plot This Other Eden Demi Paradise 1938 CPRE British Pathé News.

Interestingly, this had also been the angle in which the Estate had been introduced in a much more positive light in the preface of Peacehaven’s first 1923 town guide (see next chapter). The film employed similar language to locally produced Peacehaven guidebooks, as it praised rural locations ‘offer[ing] their haven of peace to all’ and extolled the beauty when ‘sea and country meet’. The film’s narrator, however, opposed the countryside becoming ‘spoilt by spasmodic building’, and concluded

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that, by joining the CPRE, the public could choose to reverse this trend. Indeed, the feature may have influenced the Brighton Corporation to introduce a bill in 1939 to confer greater powers on the Peacehaven Estate to local government. Following WWII, Chailey Rural District Council officers tried to control Peacehaven’s development by setting aside prohibited development areas and deferred development areas based on pragmatic, phased considerations rather than speculative development and market demand.175

‘The Saddest Monument to the Great Peace that was ever built’ WWII did not stop the example of Peacehaven or the countryside being activated. Mattless (2016) shows that even during wartime, council planners and preservationists continued political battles over the countryside, partook in debates, made plans and devised new visions for the future. He offers the example of the February 1943 RIBA exhibition Rebuilding Britain, which was on show at the National Gallery. Sponsored by the building industry, the unnamed authors of the exhibition catalogue, whilst full of praise for Howard’s garden city concept, argued that Peacehaven was ugly, and ‘we ought to be ashamed of it’ (1943, p.48). Speculative developers and the Peacehaven Estate were described in loathing terms, ‘They thought it was ripe for improvement after the last war and called it Peacehaven. It must be the saddest monument to the Great Peace that was ever built’ (1943, p.48) (see Fig. 5.13).176 For the exhibition catalogue cover, a photograph of two soldiers obtained from the Ministry of Information, was overlaid with an aerial photographic view of Greater London (see Fig. 5.12). It is possible to compare this evocative catalogue cover from WWII with the two aforementioned images of soldiers surveying a landscape, which were used in the Great War. Whereas those soldiers had

175 See Hardy and Ward, 2004, p.88 and also Chailey Rural District Council’s Pre-planning Proposals, Plan No.4, 1945, now held at The Keep. This plan dates from 1945, but is based on an original 1928 Peacehaven Estate map. It was prepared by a planning consultant who suggested a zoning system that would retain large areas as open spaces, while holding back vast areas for deferred development. However, substantial sections were suggested for immediate development. The detailed planning proposal also included suggestions for further housing, shopping, new churches and parkway strips. A series of camping sites were included and a complex system was proposed to develop new roads and to close others. Sites for public purposes and roads for landscape treatment were also suggested. 176 In 1955, Hoskins would go as far as stating that, ‘Especially since the year 1914, every single change in the English landscape has either uglified it or destroyed its meaning, or both’ ([1955] 2005, p.252).

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been drawn facing the viewer, in the photograph of the two soldiers on the RIBA cover they have their backs turned away, as if taking stock of the work that lies ahead, which is underscored by the title itself, and thus acts as an invitation to the reader to join forces and identify with the soldiers.

Figure 5.12: Rebuilding Britain catalogue cover (1943). J.W. collection.

The catalogue’s text supports this analysis, as it emphasizes the citizen’s involvement in order to lobby local councils and authorities to consider future legacies and protect parts of the countryside, addressing the reader directly, ‘it is up to you’ (1943, p.66).

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Figure 5.13: Rebuilding Britain, p.48, (1943), J.W. collection.

A lithograph of the Sussex Downs made by British poster artist Frank Newbould for the War Office during WWI in 1942, resonates with the WWI image ‘Your County’s Call’, discussed in chapter 2, as well as ‘The Home I Want’. It also overlaps with Volk’s mythic signpost image, which situated Peacehaven in a Downland valley. In this idealized representation, a shepherd and flock, Elm

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trees and lush countryside are emblematic central symbols representing a traditional Sussex countryside (see Fig. 5.14).

Figure 5.14: Frank Newbould Lithograph for British War Office, Art IWM PST 14887 Lithograph 1942, © IWM.

The lighthouse near to Birling Gap, which had been the subject of the 1926 SoSD campaign discussed above, is visible in the distance. The shepherd walks towards a farmstead in the valley, which in actuality, is not there, as the poster combined imagined and real aspects of the local landscape, with the emotive caption, ‘Your Britain Fight for it now’ clearly indicating that the country is in great danger of being invaded.

Conclusion This chapter has tracked the Estate’s visual construction and deconstruction by examining archival sources relating to preservationist and planning concerns. Discourses and perspectives on how to improve the housing conditions of large parts of the British population, especially in the decade immediately succeeding WWI diverged significantly. A host of similar and opposing imagery was invoked by stakeholders who were ideologically opposed. This included the use

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of motifs by both developers and preservationsists alike, but to opposing ends: for example, the Downland shepherd or the pilgrims’ ship to connote preservation (as part of the crest of the SoSD) and enterprise. The soldier motif originally depicted protection of the countryside from foreign invasion, but post WWI it was evoked to domesticate that same landscape for residential use. On the one hand, Williams-Ellis used the image of octopus tentacles consuming the countryside and filling it with bungalows. By contrast, and for economic gain, Neville mobilized the image of a second Eden and devised the notion of Lureland, in order to claim that countryside and development were complementary and could be mutually sustained. My in-depth visual research and the comparison of images made by the SCLRC for marketing purposes with those developed by pressure groups in this chapter has highlighted that many of these images are hybrid. Applying Histoire Croisée methodology to investigate intercrossings of the archival material interrogated here, and its narrower focus on Regards Croisés, it has been possible to explore what could be referred to as the images’ third and ambivalent dimension: all of the images discussed in this chapter drew on existing visual tropes and clichés that are intermeshed with one another. Many of the images contain elements that are imbricated in cultural mythology and symbolism. They have malleable, discursive properties, that could be simultaneously mobilized by competing forces of speculative development as well as preservationist movements.

Chapter 6 Reading shifting perspectives of Peacehaven 1923–1939 across local guidebooks and other promotional material Introduction Previous chapters have discussed the Histoire Croisée approach to analyzing changes and continuity within the marketing of the town’s image, which switched from the ideal of a Garden City by the Sea, to the Estate being described as a growing health resort and ‘a sunny seaside resort’ in the mid-1920s. This chapter works with ideas of intercrossings and tracks shifting perspectives of Peacehaven through promotional guidebooks issued during the interwar period, which turned attention to external as well as internal audiences. The guidebooks sought on the one hand to reassure existing residents, while also attracting new ones; they encouraged second home ownership and appealed to prospective visitors. I open up cultural perspectives articulated through the guide books and explore continuities in marketing approaches; in order to do this, I recover parts of the town’s chronology covered in previous chapters. The ideals of enhanced health, the Estate as an Eden environment and the promise of happiness permeated across the pages of early guidebooks and also found echoes across multiple media forms such as souvenir items, promotional film, popular songs, poetry and monuments. These helped reinforce the themes’ cultural significance and their endurance, managing to capture the imagination of prospective buyers and visitors alike. Images of the Estate on guidebook covers during the interwar period depicted the local landscape as a suggestive space to be held in one’s imagination, frequently focusing on cliff top views and rolling Downland, even though the area was in the process of being filled in with homes, roads and businesses, occupied through speculative development. Despite this, the guidebook covers resolutely continued to convey a ‘virgin landscape’ ideal. Perhaps at the heart of this tension is the idea of modernity itself – on the one hand, developers, marketers and residents alike sought progress – but believed that they could retain some of the traditional character of the location, whilst also creating an electrified, motorized Estate.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110734027-007

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Tracking shifting perspectives of Peacehaven across guidebooks (1923–1939) A close reading of ten guidebooks issued during the interwar period and their covers helps trace similar and divergent visions: while each painted a forward looking and largely positive picture of life on the Estate the guidebooks fluctuated between a modernist ideal and a more vernacular, conservative one. These guides were made available through commercially driven initiatives by a range of stakeholders, with sometimes similar, but often divergent, business and marketing interests. Most guidebooks can be dated despite the fact that they tend to not have publication dates; this may have been a deliberate attempt to extend their shelf life and retain their topical appeal for residents and visitors alike. The brochures are A5 booklets with soft covers and each followed a similar structure. Most included a preface or introduction by a notable resident, for example a vicar, business person or councillor, by way of endorsement. All included ample drawings and photographs featuring key landmarks and town attractions. Some had town maps, listed local amenities, public transport and areas of interest nearby. While the Estate’s location was invariably listed as the main asset, all of the guidebooks sold the idea of Peacehaven’s future promise, including the perspective of a tourist gaze. The town was meant to operate as a residential space (for permanent homeowners), as well as a recreational space for second homeowners and short-term holidaymakers. This growing sense of a local identity and community, with developing societies and activities, was coupled with feeling connected to Britain, and to the Empire as a whole. Guide book narratives were shaped and reshaped by internal and external forces, such as the aftermath of the Great War, the building boom of the 1920s, the rise of the entertainment and leisure industries. This was followed by the depression of 1929, and a less confident, more uncertain period during the 1930s, marked by the rise of fascism in Germany, Italy and Austria, and a growing threat of war. Compared to other guide book covers from the same period, that similarly promoted seaside holidays, (for example a set of guidebooks on permanent display at the Museum of Branding and Advertisement in London), the Peacehaven covers contain comparable references to health, sunshine and sporting activities; they all share the promise of being able to provide ‘happy holidays’. But they also diverge, as for example they focus less on leisure activities than other guidebooks from popular British resorts, which placed a stronger emphasis on mass entertainment through the deployment of popular imagery (dancing, bumper cars, amusement parks, but also historical landmarks such as castles and country estates).

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By 1923 there was a palpable disparity between the pictorial language mobilized by the Peacehaven Post and the actual transformation of the Downland space into an urban one. At this time the gap between visual representations and local area development also widened, and contradictions became more apparent. To counter growing opposition to expansion on Downland, the guidebooks made use of strong pro-countryside imagery, ensuring this would circulate on a national scale and resonate widely. Local area directories were also published annually from 1923 onwards and give insights into the development of everyday life on the Estate (also see chapter 2). Their purpose was to provide detailed factual business and residential listings. Unlike the guides, which frequently included photographs and drawings and were tasked with enticing visitors and prospective buyers to visit the Estate, the directories included detailed, informative residents’ and business records. For short-term holidaymakers, invited to stay in boarding houses, or day-trippers to the beach and hotel, Peacehaven was meant to function as a sanctuary from the capital. Visitors were encouraged to embrace the nearby Downland and seaside, with a pioneering, outdoor spirit. But permanent settlers had bought into the vision of an emerging town and expected the growth of an infrastructure. Almost all the guides recycled and reused earlier publicity images and text, and images of the shepherd and flock reappeared and re-circulated as photographs and drawings until 1924. Across the various guide books issued during the 1920s and 1930s, some of the visual descriptions of the new Estate drew upon Volk’s imagery. Previous chapters explored how Volk’s professional drawings invoked visions of the new development, and how his work supported and was used to develop Peacehaven’s foundation mythology. To structure the discussion of the guidebook narratives, I reuse three of his drawings, in order to investigate the extent to which their mythological aura became palpable and shaped the guidebook imagery and narratives, and how these subsequently diverged from the original visual programme. These are first, the aforementioned illustration of the ‘Twelve “Posts” of Peacehaven’, promising home-life and prosperity; the town itself shown in a crescent form nestled in Downland. The key narratives borrowed for the guidebooks were the signpost promises of ‘home-life’, ‘recreation’ and ‘health’; second, the young woman representing the birth of the town, its future growth and prosperity and finally the motif of the man with spade, digging new foundations and effectively signalling the start of construction.

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The first two Peacehaven guides, 1923–1924 The first town directory and guide, published in 1923 and endorsed by Neville’s South Coast Land Resort Company, was modelled on existing town and area guides, and was produced by local entrepreneur and real estate agent, F.W. Smith (see Fig. 6.1).177

Figure 6.1: Cover of 1923 Peacehaven Directory, Troak-Poplett.

The hybrid publication boasts a discrete dark green cover with ‘Peacehaven Directory’ embossed in gold. Barely visible on the cover is a side view of white chalk cliffs. An area map showed Peacehaven centrally located on the English Channel and within close proximity to London and Eastbourne, and railway lines from Croydon to Brighton and Newhaven. In the guide’s preface the

177 Smith subsequently worked as an estate agent in Rottingdean. Farrant makes a compelling case for the use of town directories in historical research, specifically for the first half of the twentieth century, as they help ‘indicate the internal structures of communities’, reveal industries and the ‘spatial distribution of those activities’; see Sussex Directories 1784–1975. http:// www.sussexias.co.uk/directories.htm (Accessed 20 June, 2016).

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parson of Peacehaven’s first Anglican Church, Reverend George Street, praised its usefulness as a souvenir, claiming that the town’s ‘freedom from conventionality [. . .] away from the cramped and artificial life of the town’ was its biggest attraction.178 Street noted that Neville had granted permission for the inclusion in the guide, of sketches by Volk published previously in the Peacehaven Post.179 The town is introduced from the perspective of a motorist-approaching west along the South Coast Road, and a celebration of its ‘rapid development’. This is significant for the future narrative of Peacehaven. It reveals that in actuality, the Estate was going to be dependent on the motor car. The increasing popularity of cars in the early 1920s made the location more attractive for day-trippers or as a weekend destination and facilitated the move away from urban centres to the countryside. Peacehaven began to position itself as a ‘Mecca for motorists’ (despite all but the Estate’s main roads remaining unmade for another thirty years) and completely at odds with Volk’s original vision (see the image of the twelve signposts) where the approach to the town is on foot and no roads can be seen. Its representation as a New Jerusalem also shifted to that of an electrified town. Peacehaven’s growing residential base, made up of ‘enterprising pioneers’ from ‘all parts of the United Kingdom’ and ‘remote corners of the British Empire’ was praised as another asset in the guide’s introduction. The directory included with the guidebook revealed the estate’s internal structures and helps locate exactly how the urban topography developed on the Estate. The handbook organized the town’s new businesses, residents and amenities into pages that could be navigated by local and distant readers. A detailed street directory made it possible to locate early residents, their occupations and house names. The directory operated on several levels: as a business led commercial directory, with an index to advertisers and full-page advertisements. Harrison’s Friars Bay Estate was omitted from the guide. This exclusion is significant as it further helped to underscore Neville’s and the SCLRC’s rhetoric of a vision for the estate predicated on the idea of complete newness – with no antecedents and devoid of rival estate builders. Neville controlled the ideal of

178 Street had been vicar of nearby Piddinghoe before serving at the Church of the Ascension which opened in Peacehaven’s Bramber Road later in 1923 (see chapter 5 and Appendix 2). The ‘temporary’ Parish Church remained in situ for 43 years and was only replaced in 1954 by the present-day one (Gray, 2015). See Chapter 8 on a site-specific event I organized at the church in 2016. 179 E.g. p.17, exploring the beach, see the same photograph and part of the text in the 2 October 1922 issue of the Peacehaven Post, p.35. Some of the photographs in the guidebook had been taken by Hill and had already been included in Hill’s 1922 Peacehaven souvenir postcard booklet.

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the birth of his town and his role as its founding father, so that any references to other building initiatives on the estate’s doorstep had to be cut out of the official version. Like Hill’s photographs used in the magazine, the 1923 directory would have gone some way towards assuring readers of the apparent success of the Peacehaven project. A second ‘Official Guide’ of Newhaven and Peacehaven issued in 1923, was illustrated with photographs taken by aforementioned Peacehaven-based photographer Allen; on its cover was an unattributed photograph of a sailing boat. Across the pages, three of the key symbolic visions were articulated: private home ownership, homes for heroes and the development of a garden city inspired estate, close to Downland, where cooperation would flourish. Indeed, the guide describes Peacehaven as a ‘go ahead community’, and thus echoed all three of Volk’s visualisations. The guide contained a large number of advertisements, for example the Rosemary Tea Room advertised speciality milk for both ‘nursery & invalids’ use. Both of these were references to WWI (invalids and Remembrance Day) and the page title was, ‘There’s Rosemary – that’s for Remembrance’. This was a symbolic reference to the line by Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, but also to the annual Anzac Day, when sprigs of rosemary are worn to commemorate soldiers who lost their lives at Gallipoli.180 Now largely forgotten in cultural memory the original Rosemary Tea Room acts as an example of Peacehaven’s historical imagination.181 Indeed, a Peacehaven Post article had pondered on the Rosemary’s role in future generations: When, in some future generation, the history of Peacehaven comes to be written, ‘Rosemary’ will deserve an honoured place as the beginning of most things. At first, as the original estate office, it was practically all there was of Peacehaven, and then, converted into the first public tearooms and gardens by Mr. and Mrs. Thornton, it became the centre and formation-place of every social activity that exists to-day. Whist drives and dances, socials and lectures, societies and associations. (Vol II, No 7, March 1923, p.187)

On the page opposite the list of contents was a full-page advertisement by the South Coast Land & Resort Co. and a drawing by Volk, in which Peacehaven was introduced as, ‘The Wonder City of the South Coast in the heart of Lureland

180 https://www.awm.gov.au/commemoration/customs/rosemary/ (Accessed 21 January 2017). On Anzac Day, rosemary, which grows wild on the Gallipoli peninsula, is used in commemorative ceremonies. 181 A small blue plaque, barely visible on the side of a 1970s row of terraced houses on the South Coast Road, reminds passers-by that the young Flora Robson, who lived on nearby Southdown Avenue, gave one of her first performances at the Rosemary in 1922 and marks the site, demolished in the 1960s.

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on the Downs and by the Sea’ (1923, p.28). It received further praise as ‘the new garden city by the Sussex Sea’ (ibid.).182 The 1924 guide extolled Peacehaven’s health-giving properties, and invited readers to come to ‘Peacehaven, on the glorious South Downs facing the Open Sea. Come to the Sunny South Coast for HEALTH and HAPPINESS’ (see Fig.6.2a).

Figures 6.2 a+b: 1924 Peacehaven guide cover, Troak-Poplett collection; Live in the Sun at Welwyn Garden City, courtesy Hertfordshire Community Archive Network.

On the cover was a photograph of the Peace Statue (commissioned for the Hotel Lounge as part of the inauguration and which connoted Peacehaven’s inception, see chapter 4). The guide reused some of Volk’s existing illustrations including

182 The guide was published by Vickery Kyrle and Co Ltd, a commercial London-based publisher, who also produced commercial guides for e.g. Bridgnorth (1924), Wells (1920s) Blyth (1920s). Vickery Kyrle also published a guide on growing roses, which could explain why the Newhaven/Peacehaven guide contained botanical information. Unfortunately, only a photocopy of it survives in the Troak-Poplett collection.

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the motif of the shepherd embodied by Neville as the town’s founder. On the title page, in capital letters, was the caption ‘The Health Resort of Amazing Growth’, with ‘freehold land and freehold homes’. This narrative of course references an ongoing national concern about the merits of light and fresh air to improve the health of a nation blighted by smog and pollution, especially in urban industrial areas and the capital. In 1922 T.S. Eliot had deplored London’s present condition as an ‘unreal city/under the brown fog at a winter dawn’ (The Wasteland, line 61). Philanthropists and charitable organizations had been lobbying for public outdoor spaces for recreational purposes since the 1880s, with organizations like The Fresh Air Fund taking thousands of working class children on trips to the country and seaside. Worpole (2000) describes the efforts of social reformers and town planners to improve access to fresh air and sunlight through increasing outdoor space. It is interesting to compare the guidebooks emphasis on the health-giving qualities of sunshine as this was also one of the main marketing strategies deployed at Welwyn Garden City from 1920 onward, including the use of a female figure. An advertisement suggested ‘Live in the sun at Welwyn’ (see Figure 6.2b). The Peacehaven guidebook was organized around twenty ‘potent points’ – beginning with its air and followed by ‘extensive sunshine’, scenery, soil, produce, gardens and flowers, cliffs and caves, parks and sports facilities and business opportunities. This can be compared to a reimagined Garden of Eden, with the only requirement that membership comes through buying into the scheme. Predictably, the guide concluded with information on how to get in touch with Peacehaven Estates Company.

Perpetuating the town’s mythology Miniature figurines, promotional films and vernacular songs perpetuated the town’s mythology and targeted visitors, thus supporting the marketing work of the guide books. Mass produced, glazed porcelain decorations were hugely popular in Britain during the first decades of the twentieth century and, drawing inspiration from Volk’s tropes, cheap, portable Peacehaven crest miniatures, modelled on the Peace Statue, were sold in local shops from mid 1922 onward. These souvenirs could act as material reminders of a weekend spent at Peacehaven or help reassure local residents that their new town was becoming a success. Set against a plain yellow backdrop, the Peace figure was depicted standing upright on top of a globe, as if floating on waves and holding a branch of laurels.

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Figure 6.3: Miniature chinaware showing Peace statue, base inscription ‘lamp shade found at Salamis, ancient Cyprian pottery’, photograph J.W.

Initially produced in Goss and Shelley’s factory, these were later also made by the firm Arcadian.183 The same image of the Peacehaven crest was used on chinaware shaped as an urn, elephant, camel, a jar, lamp shade, pot and ewer, amongst other forms (see Fig. 6.3).184 Mobilizing the image of an open sea, these objects connoted freedom; the differently shaped wares referenced Empire connections. The Estate succeeded in attracting visitors and residents, and during 1925, at least two films were made on location at Peacehaven’s Hotel, the Pavilion Theatre, the beach at Saltdean and Peacehaven and Rottingdean to promote Greater Peacehaven. Down by the Sea featured the actress Hilda Bayley, of 1922 Cocaine fame, playing the role of a prospective settler.185 She can be seen driving up to the Hotel 183 On Goss and souvenir china see Pine (2005). 184 It also appeared on silver napkin rings. For the elephant item, see Troak, (2004, p.88). Individual production dates are unknown; however, Goss ceased production in 1939. 185 Down by the Sea. The Peacehaven District is known as the Land of Sunshine and Health. 1925; 35mm Pathé Frères Cinema Ltd.; arranged and directed by Harry B. Parkinson & Frank Miller, with actress Hilda Bayley. London-based H.E. Hayward Productions also produced a film on location in Peacehaven during August 1925, made by Harcourt Templeman and filmed at the Hotel Peacehaven; this appears to have been lost. See Peacehaven and Newhaven Gazette, ‘Film making in Peacehaven’, 21 August 1925, p.10. Templeman’s film starred Moore Marriot, Adeline Hayden Coffin and Dick Tubb, actor and music hall star, who had a Peacehaven

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Peacehaven, inspecting the new tennis courts and sunken gardens, saluting viewers and looking at new mock Tudor houses at Rottingdean. Throughout the sevenminute feature, she is frequently seen raising her arms and waving – she embodied Volk’s imagined version of Peacehaven’s youthful and promising future. Her invitation was underscored by on screen text captions including ‘Miss Bayley is calling – calling you to this Garden City by the Sea – where the very air breathes health and joy of living’ (see Fig. 6.4 a&b).

Figures 6.4 a+b: Down by the Sea Peacehaven beach and Saltdean beach, 1925; courtesy BFI Centre for Digital Scholarship, London (VADS).

Another scene shows the actress pointing out to sea laughing – here, it could be said that she mirrors one of the cover images of the Peacehaven Post (see chapter 3). In this scene, three female bathers are sat atop cliffs close to her and, in the background, a café and steps leading down to the beach can be seen (see Fig. 6.4a). The film does not reveal that this scene was shot at nearby Saltdean Estate, where the beach itself was bigger and its approach was more accessible, rather than at Peacehaven. Songs composed in the mid 1920s as part of national competitions frequently helped underscore and spread the value of private home ownership and helped perpetuate the upbeat foundation narrative. The practice of Individual song writing in popular culture was common at the start of the twentieth century, in particular the composition of songs celebrating home-ownership, with the bungalow as ideal home, which Anthony King illustrates in some detail, citing, for example, a 1911 celebration to the ‘Bungal-Ode’ (1984, p.137). Emulating this cultural tradition,

holiday home between 1923 and the late 1940s, called llahcisuM; ‘music hall’ in reverse (see Appendix 2).

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the SCLRC ran poetry and song competitions.186 These found resonance on a national scale and were picked up by individuals elsewhere in the country and help demonstrate that the marketing mythology not only endured but also had started to travel, resulting in imaginative responses further afield. Two such examples are songs written in 1925 by Cyril Borrowdale, and 1926 by Winifred Gilpin, with music composed by James Ford.187 Borrowdale’s song, dedicated to his mother, was printed on a postcard, which included a headshot of him, and was intended as a tribute to the lost soldiers of the Great War (see Fig. 6.5).

Figure 6.5: Borrowdale’s song sheet in postcard form, courtesy British Library.

Gilpin’s song completely embraced the value of home ownership, so clearly conveyed by Volk. Published by Empire Music, Gilpin’s song is written from the

186 As previously mentioned, the Powell brothers had already composed two Peacehaven songs in 1921. A third song, ‘Meridian Way’ was written for the unveiling of the Meridian Monument in 1936. 187 These songsheets are in the music collection at the British Library. Ford and Gilpin’s Peacehaven circa 1926. 005125346. British Library Music VOC/1926/JAMES Music Collection VOC/1926/JAMES UIN: BLL01005125346. Songs listed on the back of the sheet under ‘The Empire’s best songs’ included: Don’t tell the world your troubles, Gordon; Going Home, Orme; Canada is Calling.

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perspective of someone returning to Britain after time abroad who simply longs for a bungalow ‘just for two’ in Peacehaven: I have stay’d far a-way from home-land and towns/but in fancy I still see the old Sussex downs/some sing of Kentucky the old folk at home/ but take me to Peacehaven and no more I’ll roam. Refrain: Peacehaven, Peacehaven, I long for you/dreaming of you all day through/ I can picture a bungalow just made for two/Peacehaven, Peacehaven, I’m longing for you. [. . .] So steer now my barge into Peacehaven Bay/ beside water so blue where children play./ With the girl of my fancy I’ll play Darby and Joan/ on the South Coast of England in our little home.

These lyrics, which so strongly tapped into traditional Englishness values, conservatism and the idea of peace in the ‘home-land’ set out to appeal to veterans and returnees from the Empire. There do not appear to have been any local guidebooks published during 1925, 1926 or 1927, but the Downland Post (renamed, by 1927 just Downland) continued to shape Peacehaven’s image as a health-giving resort. A reasonably positive account of Peacehaven was given in Ward, Lock & Co’s 1927 Eastbourne, Pevensey and Seaford guide’ which echoed Thurston Hopkins’ assessment from 1924, (referenced in chapter 2 and 5): The site has undoubtedly many recommendations to those who seek at once a seaside climate and a Downland home [. . .] However one may begrudge the former solitude of these wind-swept downs, one cannot withhold admiration for the enterprise, which has so rapidly created a new township. (1927, p.24)

This extract makes visible some of the contradictory views about the Downland future. Tapping into a range of views in circulation by 1927, awe at the scale of the development enterprise was expressed and the merits of home ownership emphasized whilst at the same time the writer lamented the loss of the area’s hitherto untainted natural aspects.

Invoking the perspective of the rambler, the ‘jewel in the rough’ metaphor and golfing in order to market Peacehaven in the late 1920s and early 1930s In 1927, the Peacehaven Shopkeepers’ Association invoked the perspective of a Downland rambler when they engaged W.P. Hislop, who had already written several guides on walking, to compile a Peacehaven Descriptive Guide. Rambles and Excursions in the District. Hislop compiled a series of walks in and around the Peacehaven area, arguing that the Estate’s ‘chief asset’ was the surrounding Downland. This

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guide repositioned the vision for the Estate yet again and sought to protect the downs as it appeared anti-automobile (it suggested walking and taking buses rather than driving). A key lobbying point of both the SoSD and the CPRE at that moment was that cars ought not to be allowed to drive on bridleways and open Downland and possibly the guide’s narrative was tailored to respond to this in order to attempt to generate a more benevolent impression of the Estate again. It also reaffirmed the image of a walker’s perspective which had been the subject of Volk’s signpost image, as he had introduced the Estate from the viewpoint of a rambler.

Figures 6.6 a+b: 1927/28 Guide cover, Troak-Poplett collection; 1928 Guide book cover TroakPoplett collection.

The cover photograph depicts the Bastion Steps and white cliffs at high tide from a bird’s eye perspective (see Fig. 6.6a). The eye gravitates towards the cliff top and a single house; the photograph entices the viewer to imagine what is not shown to the right and only hints at an unfolding landscape waiting to be explored on foot, that is ripe with possibility. Acting as an invitation to enter the emerging space, the choice of cover image reimagines Volk’s key image of the twelve signposts, and indeed twelve rambles are suggested in the guide itself.

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This guide would have appealed to those local residents who had bought into the early vision of a reimagined Eden, with Peacehaven a green Estate with parkland and at the centre of beautiful countryside. The guide can be seen to represent growing internal tensions, with Neville’s company pushing ahead with expansion, while Hislop’s guide articulated another possible future for the town that was closer to the early marketing vision. A further guide issued during 1928 by the so-called Peacehaven Publicity Committee (which published a further three guides in 1931, 1934 and 1935), headed by Arthur Harrison, used some of the same motifs, such as the idea of a place ‘unspoilt by the hand of man’ that was a ‘Jewel in the rough’ (see Fig. 6.6b). But it appears to have carried a more commercial agenda, suggesting for the first time that Peacehaven could be ‘an all year-round resort’. The second main emphasis was put on Peacehaven’s ‘amusements’ facilities, enjoyed through the comfort of the Hotel Peacehaven. Arguing that ‘it cannot be said that Peacehaven is ever dull’ the guide recommended cultural, recreational and musical facilities. To support this dual aspect, the help of world-renowned singer Gracie Fields was enlisted. In the foreword, Harrison invokes the town’s health image and concurs that ‘Peacehaven is so different [. . .] [and is] Indeed a city of health and happiness’. To give substance to this point, a photograph depicting a small group of children playing on the beach near the steps was published facing the foreword. It took three years for another Peacehaven town guide to be published in 1931 by the Peacehaven Publicity Committee (see Fig. 6.10). The choice of the word ‘official’ in the guide’s title may have been chosen to instil confidence in the reader that they would receive factual and reliable information. Referencing previous covers’ views, a clifftop drawing with Downland, blue sea and sky was chosen. These cliffs are however not location specific, inferring that they are representative of the South Coast and indeed the country as a whole. The drawing and reduced colour palette with shadows and light inferred, is reminiscent of commercial art work by professional artists Charles Pears and Guy Kortright, who produced commissions for the Empire Marketing Board and British Rail during the 1920s and 1930s. The 1931 guide introduces Peacehaven as a place of ‘extreme healthiness’, with ‘pure crystalline air’, thus reconnecting with earlier guide narratives that had maximized its health discourse. The introduction foregrounded its natural characteristics and represents a near repeat of the original 1916 Anzac brochure promotion, which had invoked the ‘jaded city worker [to whom] Peacehaven is a veritable garden of rest’.

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Figures 6.7 a+b: Cover of 1931 cover Troak-Poplett collection; Cover of Peacehaven Golf Guide, 1933 Troak-Poplett collection.

The ongoing reinvention of what the space stood for, coupled with a reliance on classical myths and biblical creation stories were symbolic gestures that helped re-Edenize the imagination of prospective residents and visitors. The foundation pylons provided a symbolic fence and passageway and the Estate was infused with a range of evocative motifs, such as the sunken garden, statues and fountain that had been created outside the Hotel Peacehaven. Discussing the use of metaphorically charged sites, Battistini explains that ‘the garden represents a sacred spot, a place reserved for the initiated, separate from everyday reality. As such it is a protected space, surrounded by [. . .] a symbolic fence’ (2005, p.252), the fountain was meant to represent ‘a symbol of life, youth, and love’ (2005, p.258). Connecting the Estate with religious motifs such as a central garden, fountain, gate pillars and the globe helped place it centre-stage. In order to counter the negative portrayal of Peacehaven in the 1932 Brighton Planning report (see chapter 5), and ignoring Brighton Council’s damning assessment, property developers and marketers fought back, determined to

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readjust Peacehaven’s image yet again. Chiefly addressed to visitors and potential new residents, a Peacehaven Golf Guide and ‘official handbook’ compiled during 1933 positioned itself as a ‘descriptive souvenir’ (see Fig. 6.7b). The landscape depicted on the cover with a club house and tall trees, created using a red, white and silver palette and art deco inspired aesthetics bears no resemblance to Peacehaven. Published by The New Centurion Publishing and Publicity Company Ltd, this guide would have appealed to business people and aspirational new residents, giving reassurance that the Estate’s future would be secure.

A new kind of visitor: The International Friendship League Veteran George Noel Ede might have been inspired by some of the initial foundation imagery when, in 1931, he founded the International Friendship League (I.F.L), in North Peacehaven.188 The I.F.L’s objective was to ‘promote a spirit of friendliness and mutual toleration of each other’s ideas and ideals amongst the peoples of the world, in an endeavour to secure a permanent condition of peaceful co-operation in international affairs’ (Friendship News, 1935, p.24). The initial logo of the I.F.L. was a peace dove carrying an olive branch and its annual summer centre attracted a new kind of visitor to Peacehaven: young people from Germany, Belgium, France and Holland (see Fig. 6.8).

Figure 6.8: I.F.L logo on a pin,1930s, collection J.W.

According to the League’s newsletter, Friendship News, visits began with thirty German students from Berlin in 1931 and had increased to ‘over 1000 in 1936ʹ

188 Ede had arrived on the Estate in 1920 via the Telscombe Training Centre so as to recover from wartime injuries sustained in France. Following his discharge in 1921, he purchased a two acre plot on Gold Lane in North Peacehaven and set up a smallholding. His brother was James Chuter Ede, a well-known Labour politician. Also see Appendix 2.

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(Autumn 1935, p.150). The league also involved the local community in social activities.

Figure 6.9: Cover of Friendship News, summer issue, 1938, collection J.W.

From 1938 onwards, the covers of the I.F.L.’s quarterly newsletter, Friendship News carried complex, composite and traditionalist imagery (see Fig. 6.9). Unlike Volk’s female figure, which connoted Peacehaven’s birth, the League’s messenger was represented as a male figure, adorned with a laurel wreath and trumpet, wearing a Romanesque toga. He is positioned above two views of the globe, with the one on the left showing North and South America, the one on the right Africa, Europe, Russia, Asia and Australia. The globes are connected by a third circle depicting a peace dove, and the words ‘International Friendship League’. A 1938 feature article, entitled ‘The Spirit of Peacehaven’ by author, Ronald Quick, looked back at the foundation of the I.F.L. A large uncaptioned photograph placed above the article itself does not represent Peacehaven, but this is not explained by Quick; nor did the editors seem to have minded if readers had thought that the photograph depicted the Estate, as it connoted promise. The four female walkers in the foreground of the image have their backs turned away from the camera; they are seated on top of a hill, contemplating a verdant valley below. The picture’s composition depicts a sublime landscape: there is a large lake in the not too far distance. The young women are part of the natural environment but experience it as spectacle.

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By comparison with a real postcard view of the I.F.L. camp, the local landscape around the site was much more desolate, especially given that there was a large pit nearby (see Fig. 6.10).189

Figure 6.10: Postcard view, International Camp, Gold Lane, courtesy Martin Delancourt.

The mythology that was created around its genesis by the I.F.L in this and later articles wished to give a planned, deliberate impression, and also invoked its privileged location in the Sussex countryside: At Peacehaven, high up on the South Downs, within a short distance of the English Channel, stands a tumbledown bungalow, which has been uninhabited for several years. But although it is no longer peopled by mortals, ghosts of a happy past foregather within its walls. [. . .] Here in the Sussex countryside, within the sound of a sea which unites us with countries beyond our shores, was enacted that early experiment of international friendship which inspired our founder, Noel Ede, to spread his message of ‘Peace through Friendship’ beyond the bounds of Peacehaven, along the South Coast, to London, to Wales, to the North, to France, to Germany, to the whole of Europe, until today our international organization extends to a dozen countries, and is still spreading even as this article is being written. (Friendship News 1938, Quick, p.2)

189 In 1938, the I.F.L. buildings would have still been intact, rather than in a tumble-down state. Indeed several of these cabins have survived to the present and are tucked away, covered by overgrowth.

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There are noted similarities in tone between this editorial and the Peacehaven guidebook narratives. Always looking ahead, and stating an implicit confidence in the future, Quick’s editorial historicizes and mythologizes the foundation of the I.F.L which had only taken place seven years earlier. The nostalgic and romantic image of a ‘tumbledown bungalow high up on the South Downs’ serves to give a sense of historicity and attempts to put a very recent past into a greater distance. The League used some of the same imagery as several of the guidebooks, such as placing its headquarters at Peacehaven at the centre of the world on maps published in the newsletter. Drawing on key words including optimism, cooperation and community (also articulated in Volk’s key imagery of the twelve signposts), the I.F.L.’s programme nevertheless diverged as it had an openly stated political agenda that promoted world peace and positioned itself as an inclusive international organization, with no real estate interests whatsoever; therefore it would have probably aligned itself with preservationist narratives of the countryside rather than those of developers.190

The image of ‘Peacehaven and the World’ becomes embodied in The Prime Meridian Obelisk and is used in guidebooks during the 1930s The Peacehaven Publicity Committee had worked hard to create images that could persuade and develop an aura for Peacehaven. They were helped enormously in 1932, when a naval veteran and local resident, Commander Davenport, discovered that Peacehaven was on the prime meridian line. Uncovering the town’s strategic location helped to perpetuate the creation mythology further – not only was the Estate now connected scientifically in relation to the Meridian, it was also in a good position to argue that it was a central axis with the cosmos itself. Vadim Oswald (2015) discusses the decision made, in 1884, to make the British Greenwich Meridian in London the ‘zero meridian’, which resulted in new world maps placing London at the centre of the world, rather than Jerusalem (as had been practice in the middle ages, 2015, p.176). Oswald further argues that this acknowledged Britain’s role as strong imperial force and also placed it at the centre of financial exchange. This shift in power dynamics was articulated in an imperial federation world map drawn by illustrator Walter Crane, that showed the extent of the British Empire by 1886 and Britannia

190 Its wartime stance is noteworthy, as the League is a pacifist organization; it moved its headquarters to London in 1942, where it opened a new centre that was named ‘Peacehaven’, (the building still exists in 2021, but is now a private residence).

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seated on a globe of the world underneath the words ‘Freedom’, ‘Fraternity’ and ‘Federation’. He brought a sense of optimism to the representations of all the map’s protagonists.191 Some of Crane’s visual motifs are similar to those used by Volk some thirty years later. For example, there is a man leaning on his spade in the right hand corner of Crane’s map, presumably inferring the development of new colonies, which echoes Volk’s own use of the image of the man with spade and highlights the importance of this motif in popular culture. To reflect the town’s Meridian position, a globe was placed on the guide cover for the 1934 guide (see Fig .6.11a). This was supposed to emphasize Peacehaven’s connectedness to other parts of the empire and further highlighted its desired central location. Factual information had been updated for this guide, but the committee recycled much of the previously used text alongside some new illustrations (such as the image of a rising sun on the title page and placed above ‘PEACEHAVEN’).

Figures 6.11 a+b: Peacehaven guide cover, 1934 Troak-Poplett collection; Temporary Monument, Hill, reproduced in Peacehaven guidebook, 1934, p.23. Troak-Poplett collection.

191 Crane was a member of the British Arts and Crafts movement and a socialist, who believed that art and Utopia could be brought together (Oswald 2015, p.169).

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Hill’s photograph of the simple, temporary Meridian structure, with its five-pointed star, was reused again in this guide, alongside an announcement that an obelisk was going to be erected with funds gathered through public subscription (see Fig. 6.11b).192 Local County Councillor Agnes Hall, whose photograph (taken by Hill) appeared on the frontispiece of the 1934 and 1935 guides, endorsed the initiative.193 The 1935 guide again included photographs by Hill and several new illustrations by an unnamed artist. This time the cover used a drawing showing unspoilt white cliffs and Downland, rendered through a bolder colour palette with a yellow sky, green cliff top, white cliffs, a blue sea and strong red lines (see Fig. 6.12a). This cover has a very graphic quality and brings to mind the SoSD Crow Link campaign and associated cartoon discussed earlier, as the view resembles the iconic and highly emotive Seven Sisters; presumably this was to signal that the town took care of its Downland location.

Figures 6.12 a+b: Peacehaven guide cover 1935 Troak-Poplett collection; 1935 guide frontispiece photo by Hill, Troak-Poplett collection.

192 Also used by freemasons, the pentagon historically has been used to connote power, and in the Old Testament invokes cosmic connections. The star is also a reference to Soviet Russia, although this would have highly likely been nonintentional. 193 It appears that Miss Agnes Hall was involved with all three councils, the County Council, District Council, Peacehaven Parish Council. She played a significant role in promotion during the 1930s and wrote texts for two Come to Sussex guides (1931 and 1934). She was a prominent figure at the unveiling of the Meridian Obelisk in August 1936 and is again mentioned in a lead role at the local 1937 coronation celebration.

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The view would have been representative of the area of the Estate prior to any building work and can be seen as yet another attempt to take control by re-Edenizing and repositioning the Estate’s narrative according to a more traditional ideal of an untainted Downland view. In the introduction Peacehaven’s sandy beach is praised, despite there only being boulders and stones, and a photograph by Hill, showing large numbers of bathers on the beach at low tide, was used opposite the title page (see Fig. 6.12b). The author repeats some of the earlier motifs such as invoking a garden metaphor and lack of a ‘smoke problem’ on the Estate and claims there are now 4000 residents and that this ‘rapid growth’ has been due to ‘bracing air, low rainfall and high sunshine record’ (1935, p.6).194 He asserts that Peacehaven is the most attractive health resort in Sussex: For those who weary of the conventional sights and amusements of the average seaside watering place. Sixteen years ago, Peacehaven did not exist. To-day, with nearly a thousand houses and a hundred shops, it bids fair with sympathetic treatment from its greater neighbours, to take its proper place in the front rank of Southern Seaside resorts. (ibid., p.5)

The guide expresses hope that all Admiralty Charts will record the permanent structure ‘as an additional guide to the mariner’ (ibid., p.24), which showed how important it was to put Peacehaven firmly on a global map. The inauguration of the Meridian Monument, designed by RIBA associate Richard W.H. Jones, took place with maximum publicity in August 1936.195 A limited edition of individually numbered Souvenir programme brochures had been printed and the inauguration had been publicized in the local and national press, including The Times. On the cover of the brochure is a logo of a globe surrounded by a star and PEACEHAVEN, in bold letters (see Fig. 6.13a). A drawing of the recently deceased King George V. was inserted as a frontispiece; a memorial caption gave praise to him (1910–1936) as the ‘best, the greatest and the most beloved’, and explained that the Prime Meridian Obelisk had been named King George V Memorial and Prime Meridian Obelisk in memory of the British Sovereign, in addition to mark Peacehaven’s geographic position. King George’s son Edward VIII, had only just become King in January, and would abdicate in December 1936, dividing public opinion.196 The programme also included a perspective drawing of the Monument by its architect (see Fig. 6.13b).

194 This claim was exaggerated; see Hibbs, 1979 and chapter 2. 195 Jones went on to design the Grade II listed Saltdean Lido and Grand Ocean Hotel in 1937. 196 His brother, George VI became King instead.

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Figures 6.13 a+b: Souvenir Guide cover and pages 4 & 5 with Meridian perspective drawing 1936. Courtesy M. Parks.

Several press and publicity photographs exist of the opening ceremony. In one photograph the obelisk is still wrapped in a Union Jack flag; the so-called Meridian Queen, a young Daphne Poplett in regalia with a crown-like tiara and star-shaped sceptre stands in front of the monument adorned with a beaded dress and long overcoat, that is shaped so that four pieces of fabric radiate out. Four young girls hold on to her, together they emulate the shape of a maypole. The use of the young girl in the ceremonial birth of the obelisk, and with this a reaffirmation of the birth of the town itself reactivated Volk’s earlier use of the image of a young woman to represent Peacehaven’s future. Daphne’s regalia echoes Britannia herself.

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Figures 6.14 a+b: Meridian Monument Inauguration, photographer unknown, courtesy Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove.

This carefully orchestrated event gave the Estate a new opportunity to counter some of the negative public perception. A bronze plaque engraved with the names of all 28 capitals of the British Empire was incorporated at the centre of the obelisk, along with a drinking fountain, representing the idea that this was a world fountain, showing Peacehaven’s connection to the world, but also its central placement. It was iconic and emblematic, and supported the making of the myth that, between sea and Downland, a new way of life had begun. A copper globe placed on top of the obelisk cemented the idea of connectedness and harmony with the cosmos. The globe motif had already been used as part of the pictorial programme of the Peacehaven Post (see chapter 3) and also featured prominently on the original 1925 Peacehaven Lodge banner where it was combined with motifs including the iconic white cliffs, British flag, temple columns (which in turn resonate with the Peacehaven pylons), symbol of the peace dove and olive branches, all meant to highlight this Lodge’s connectedness to a world community of masons (there are of course echoes with the aforementioned I.F.L, which activated some of the same imagery, i.e. the peace dove, the globe, olive branches) (see Fig. 6.15).

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Figure 6.15: Masonic Lodge Banner 1925 recreated from original in 2005, Jerome Hall, photograph 2016, JW.

The memorial event included two new songs by the Powell brothers and the programme mentions a performance by schoolchildren of their ‘Meridian Way’. The packed day included speeches at the obelisk by Lord Teynham and a procession to the Hotel Peacehaven grounds.197 The evening concluded with a fete in the sunken gardens of the Hotel, and residents were asked to sing along ‘Pack up your troubles in your old Kit-bag’. Following the inauguration, various postcards of the new Obelisk were published, and day-trippers flocked to see it. Coming close to mimicking a pilgrimage site, visitors drove right up the monument and grouped around it in deckchairs supplied by Peacehaven Estates with their picnic baskets and blankets (see Fig. 6.16).

197 Teas were served at Lureland Dance Hall and there was a baby show, competitions, folk dancing and races. The deeply conservative, royalist, imperial and nationalist nature of the event can best be seen through the range of songs that had been included; ‘The dear little shamrock’, ‘Land of my fathers’, ‘Home Sweet Home’, ‘Auld Lang Syne’.

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Figure 6.16: Postcard 1930s (hand coloured), The Promenade looking East, J.W. collection.

These gestures helped enact a sense of community and several of the used postcards I sourced included messages such as ‘the weather is perfectly glorious’ and ‘we are having a lovely time at Peacehaven’. Other, more formal views of the obelisk circulated on a wide scale, and visitors who sent greetings from Peacehaven back to friends and family frequently chose this postcard view, and it became a site for ceremonies and visits (see Fig. 6.17).

Figure 6.17: 1936 The Meridian postcard Wardell’s, J.W. collection.

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Figure 6.18: The Promenade and Bastion, Wardell’s (ca. 1936–1938), J.W. collection.

The next postcard view makes visible the relative proximity of the obelisk to the Bastion Steps and sea pool and thus combines some of the Estate’s key aspirations: the green pastures of Downland, access to the beach, homes along the promenade and the monument connecting the town to the vast reaches of empire (see Fig. 6.18). There is a sense here that the natural wilderness has been tamed into an orderly residential place. Volk’s illustration of Peacehaven embodied by a young woman has now been replaced by the obelisk structure, by people in deckchairs, and clifftop homes.

1937 Official Peacehaven guide and Sussex guide health and leisure focus Reinvigorated by the success of the Meridian Monument launch, a new town guide was commissioned during 1937, which also celebrated the new obelisk as a new visitors’ attraction and retold a health and leisure narrative.

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Figure 6.19: 1937 Peacehaven guide cover, Troak-Poplett collection.

Published under the auspices of the Peacehaven Parish Council, and compiled by an advertising contractor based in London, the guide’s stylized green and white chequerboard cover diverged completely from previous covers (see Fig. 6.19). Instead of referencing local scenery, six non-location specific drawings depict leisure activities, emulating a general feeling of well-being, thus mirroring the visual rhetoric of other national resort guides in their focus on fun-filled entertainment, which were popular during the interwar years. The annual Come to Sussex County Guide, presented itself as ‘The Official Organ of the Come to Sussex Organization’. In 1934, Peacehaven was included for the first time, but only with one page and a single local scene of bungalows on Peacehaven’s Promenade adjacent to the cliffs. The text was credited to Peacehaven councillor, Miss Agnes Hall who had contributed to earlier Peacehaven guides. The guide focused on the town’s alleged health-giving properties, and included a reference to its earlier ‘homes for heroes’ marketing rhetoric: The unusual altitude of Peacehaven results in the air being bracing, fresh and pure, and the number of residents now living in the town, who first came as invalids, but who are now hale and well, testifies to the tonic properties of the climate. The freshness of air

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and the high average of hours of sunshine give Peacehaven her reputation of being extremely healthy. (1934, p.117)

The reference to ‘invalids’ would have harked back to memories of the aforementioned veterans’ rehabilitation camp that had been established in Telscombe Cliffs between 1919–1921. In the 1937 edition the Peacehaven section was increased to four pages, one of which ran a stock image depicting an older girl riding a horse and a younger girl holding the harness (the picture credits went to Messrs. Kodak Ltd, indicating this was a company stock image). The guide used only one Peacehaven view (a similar clifftop photograph), one of nearby Telscombe Village and one of Piddinghoe. It makes mention of the Meridian Memorial and praises the Meridian line, making it sound as if the choice of the town’s location could have been deliberate (1937, p.225–227). The guide was part funded by the Automobile Association, which provided detailed maps for drivers and supplied a motoring article.

Conclusion It was not until 1948 that a new Peacehaven guide was launched by a new Publicity Committee, this time aligning the tone of the narrative with that of post-war planned development initiatives. Visually, there is a striking resonance between the 1948 and the 1923 guide covers, as each depicted an untainted clifftop view (see Fig. 6.20). The ideology of the 1948 guide also favoured an unbuilt view, leaving space for imagination and projection. This would have likely represented a renewed attempt to reposition the town’s narrative and infer a fresh start, with the caption, ‘official guide’, wishing to instill confidence in its readership.

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Figure 6.20: 1923 guide cover (see 6.2) & 1948 guide cover, Troak-Poplett collection.

The iconic image of the young woman on top of the cliffs features in neither guide. All the photographs and maps in the 1948 guide are from the pre-war era, and even the photograph selected as frontispiece, of an empty untamed beach, is reminiscent of a photograph used in the 1924 guide; but unlike the earlier image, it depicts an empty, unspoilt beach, devoid of any people. A narrative turn of the 1948 guide is that it presents Peacehaven as a planned development, in order to align the town’s genesis with national endeavours. The introduction infers that the location along the prime meridian had been fully intentional and offers an alluring hybrid of motifs and myths that had been previously been mobilized in earlier guidebooks. This short quotation from the introduction of the guide both updates and also perpetuates the foundation mythology: The planned development of new towns is one of the chief features of the building programmed for these post-war years. People are anxious to get away from overcrowded areas, polluted by smoke laden air and restless with drone of traffic. This yearning for spaciousness, for pure, healthy air, and quietude is, however, no new desire born of the war; even before the first world war of 1914–1918 there was this urge to build an ideal home, to ‘colonize’ a new district, and yet to remain within the Motherland. Out of this desire Peacehaven was conceived and born. (1948, p.1)

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This quotation is representative of the changeability of the Peacehaven foundation mythology during the interwar period and in the immediate post-war era. As earlier chapters have already delineated, images were invoked and readjusted – depending on specific needs. Visualizations are tailored to particular moments in time and even the core is mutable. The 1948 text reaffirms some of Volk’s 1921 visualizations, such as images of ‘what is not seen at Peacehaven’ – smoke, pollution, overcrowding. The narrative picks up on Volk’s original pictorial programme and promise of health, and home ownership within the borders of the homeland itself. It further draws on the imagination and its as yet unfilled promise by describing the town as ‘no desire born of the war’ but the produce of an urge for ideal homes ‘within the Motherland’. This chapter has tracked shifting perspectives of Peacehaven during the interwar period, and has shown that, throughout, it remained a site of debate and disagreement. This was most palpable in the imagery and language mobilized to name the town’s assets, location and features. Visualisations of its future were part of an ongoing process, and were tailored to, and adapted by, narratives inflected by wider political, social and economic conditions. Its representation as a New Jerusalem shifted to that of an electrified town, and from 1923 onwards to the idea of a series of new, interconnected estates that together formed a Greater Peacehaven, rather than a single, contained ‘haven’. The name itself which resonated with the idea of a sanctuary, offered some comfort to WWI veterans and their families, while, at the same time, it incensed preservationists. It is possible to argue that Peacehaven, and its residents, got caught in the crossfire between conservationists, developers, architects and town planners. The Estate had become such an easy target, evoking strong negative responses. The Peacehaven guidebooks did not have the same reach, nor could they overcome the inherent contradiction of on the one hand celebrating the Downland location whilst on the other partaking in its encroachment through construction. The gap between the visual, metaphorical language and the reality on the ground continued to widen throughout the interwar period, and contradictions became increasingly apparent. The imagery deployed had to continuously become more forceful and imaginative in order to hold together the Estate’s image, predicated on a Garden City ideal, and to contain the anger of preservationists seeking to protect the Downs in their natural state. The lore of the town’s unsightliness was embedding itself in popular cultural memory. Neither songs, souvenirs, postcards or the guidebooks reviewed in this book, nor the inauguration ceremony of the Meridian Monument which was steeped in symbolism, or design features such as more upmarket homes or the existence of the Hotel Peacehaven

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and Lureland Hall could correct this widely held perception. However, the estate was experienced quite differently by many of the residents, who had made the place their home, and the following chapters move on to consider local views, reflecting back from the position of the present.

Chapter 7 Peacehaven as memory-space: Intergenerational conversations with long-time residents Introduction This chapter draws on conversations with 13 Peacehaven residents and descendants of original settlers that took place between 2014 and 2016. Over three sessions each, and through the vehicle of photo-elicitation and photo-interviews, respondents shared stories of growing up in Peacehaven, and recounted family anecdotes passed down by parents and/or grandparents. Most of the interviewees were born between 1924 and 1938, with two born at the end of the 1940s and one in 1950. They represent the end of the first and up to the third generation of settlers and some have direct childhood memories of the 1920s, whilst others would recount communicative memories their parents or grandparents had shared with them. Through guided conversations, we tried to rekindle their families’ dreams and expectations, acknowledging different proximities and temporalities to the inception phase. The respondents know things that neither the study of archives nor place can reveal – they do not necessarily know more, but differently, in embodied, subjective ways that generate new insights. This chapter highlights the vital role of communicative and collective memory and the imagination to the retelling of personal narratives. It puts forth a strong argument for greater attention to be given to the role of the imagination in contemporary memory studies research and for the inclusion of photo interviews in archival research projects that explore the formation of particular places, so that more complex and nuanced local perspectives can be gathered. The interview material I obtained through my correspondents was analyzed through a narrative framework that paid close attention to interconnected spatial, temporal and memory perspectives and explored what and how stories were told.198 This was informed by Gaston Bachelard’s philosophical considerations (1992) and the aforementioned studies by Bailleul – who seeks to understand the meaning residents give to familiar urban spaces (see chapter 1). I paid attention to descriptions used for particular places and locations. At Peacehaven, this included references of ‘civilizing’ a hitherto largely uninhabited landscape, building foundations, cultivating and transforming wind-swept Downland

198 All interviews were tracked, annotated and recurring themes drawn out. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110734027-008

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into a lived-in place. This involved narratives that contained the demarcation of boundaries, setting up of fencing and home-making. In conversation, the house, or home, was understandably always perceived as a site that offered security and shelter, and domestic comforts such as cooking facilities, hot and cold water, a bathroom and outhouse, a fireplace. The spatial narrative of inside and outside, proximity and distance, also contained domestic and farm animals such as goats, pigs and chickens, and of course family and neighbours, a growing infrastructure of schools, shops, pubs, traffic, which were understood in relation to local and national proximities, framed by the far-reaching Empire. The First and Second World Wars were discussed as an external menace, representing real danger to the ideal of homeliness. In order to gain a detailed temporal and spatial perspective, interviews further explored how respondents had experienced the town over the course of their lifetime, and what they knew about its genesis. In the main, interviews followed a chronological order and were further divided into three specified time periods. Most respondents shared cultural memories about the town’s inception stage, communicative memories of the interwar years and also recalled personal experiences during wartime and the immediate postwar era. Identifying some of the key changes the interviewees had witnessed across time, each conversation concluded with reflections on contemporary Peacehaven. Revisiting some of the SCLRC’s original marketing promises, I asked interviewees which of these, if any, they felt had been realized. Where appropriate, the interview material was refracted through Volk’s three idealized images already used as a structuring device in previous chapters. Respondents articulated the genesis of the Estate through narratives of building and construction, epitomized by Volk’s man with spade imagery. Tales of hardship and resilience during WWII, and a gradual resurgence of optimism and prosperity punctuated their narrative during the immediate postwar years.

Interview methodology I have known the Martins since childhood and met the other respondents between 2011 and 2013. Les Hunter introduced me to John Harrison and I met John Copper through the local folk club he runs. I got to know Margaret Palmer, Reuben Lanham, Margaret Parks, Les Hunter and Jill Hazel through the reminiscence work with the Peacehaven Pioneer group. I contacted the Williams with the help of the South East Film & Video Archive and met Peter Seed at a local council meeting. All but one of our conversations took place in the interviewees’ homes, usually over a cup of tea and some biscuits while sitting in the kitchen

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or lounge, surrounded by well-established and cared for gardens, with flowers, greenhouses, fruit trees and lawns. Several of the participants moved out of Peacehaven to the edges of nearby towns such as Newhaven and Seaford in the 1980s and early 1990s because they did not like the changes to Peacehaven’s infrastructure and wanted to be closer to the countryside again. My goal when arranging interviews was to take time to listen to stories in more depth than would have otherwise been possible; and to ensure respondents felt valued as co-researchers. Conversations foregrounded local knowledge and validated personal experiences.199 These meetings took place in an environment based on trust and with the knowledge that respondents could edit and adjust their transcripts at any point in the research process, and could opt to remain anonymous if they wished.200 Having a personal, biographical relationship to Peacehaven made it possible to learn from each other in an environment of receptivity and mutual curiosity.201 Some respondents talked about difficulties in accessing memories, but all were articulate about the mental efforts this required. Les Hunter put it this way: ‘I can’t remember any of the people but it would come back to me if I think on it more’, and Rita Williams felt that she would ‘need to dig deeper’ to be able to recall certain dates and events. Peter Seed commented: ‘I feel that a photo in a family album can reinforce an early memory but eventually can also dominate and even supersede it’. Minor inaccuracies about specific dates would frequently be noticed and corrected during our third session, and usually the past became more present again during this process. The conversations, supported by photoelicitation, tapped into communicative memories, frequently revealing an emotional attachment to place. Vernacular photographs (primarily drawn from family archives) were used as aide-memoires to facilitate processes of recollection and influenced how and which stories were told. Penny Tinkler provides the example of an oral history project by Alistair Thomson where photographs were enlarged on a laptop, ‘offering a fresh perspective on the familiar’ (2013, p.178). This process

199 The structure was based on a briefing session, during which I explained the format of the interview; this was followed by a second recorded interview session. In a third debrief meeting we would go through the transcript which I had already posted back to each interviewee, note and make corrections, adjust or cut content and add commentary based on each individual interviewee’s suggestions. 200 It is worth nothing that none of the interviewees chose that option and all wanted to be credited with their full names, which hopefully is a reflection on how empowered they felt. 201 As noted in the book’s introduction, this self-reflective approach is also an imperative called for by Histoire Croisée methodology and its third category of analysis, which I have been attentive to.

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of shared, collective viewing made easier by zooming in closely into an image has been very productive in my own work with the Peacehaven Pioneer group and also during the one-to-one interviews that form the basis of this chapter. A slow, attentive search through separate photographs on a computer or touch screen, resulted in details, signs, objects being picked up, that we would have otherwise overlooked or that would have simply remained invisible to the human eye if we had only the original small photographic print. Marianne Hirsch and Susan Meiselas recently discussed how photographs and archival objects, in conjunction with texts and oral history interviews, contribute to reflexive analysis. Meiselas put it succinctly when she observed that ‘family albums lead you to stories’ (2014).202 I was of course mindful of the case made by oral historians Alexander Freund & Alistair Thomson that the use of photographs within oral history research has to be approached with the same care and rigour as words, as ‘images need stories to create meaning’ (2012, p.5). The communicative memories of respondents are shaped, to a large extent, by selective stories that have been passed on through family or the place of work or other networks, personal recollections, local media and history books, postcards, newspaper clippings and, of course, family albums. The interviews all have a narrative quality – what was communicated was based on processes of reconstruction and this in turn is of course dependent upon the ability to recall. Memory is malleable and slippery, affected by the passing of time and life experiences. Photographs can sometimes affirm that a moment did happen; Barthes referred to this as ‘That-has-been’ ([1980] 2000, p.79): something captured and sealed through the photograph (ibid.). Much has been written on the mnemonic power of individual photographs, photographic collections and in particular the family album. For example, archivist and academic Martha Langford discusses the compelling relationship and potential of visuality and orality within family albums, describing how they help memory retrieval and recall, ‘as the images are seen and heard in a rolling present’ (Langford, 2001, p.20). Langford’s research (2001, 2007) is concerned with the mental processes we engage in when seeking to access the past and she explores the intersection between memory and the imagination. She describes ‘the showing and telling of an album [as] a performance’ (2001, p.5). In the introduction, I have commented that a key function of the mnemonic imagination resides in its ability to reconstruct experience through the interaction between

202 Meiselas, personal communication, 29 November, 2014, Birkbeck College, London.

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memory and the imagination. Keightley and Pickering have described their points of investment and engagement thus: It is imagination which permits memory to be constructed and reconstructed in the present; and more than this, through its synthetic representational capacity, it is imagination which allows the past to persist actively in the present’. (2012, p.63)

In the interviews, I capitalized on this productive tension and the ability of the mnemonic imagination to reimagine oneself at different moments in time from the position of the present. As I have already noted earlier, many narratives shared through conversation were based on the respondents’ mediated experience. Crucially, Keightley and Pickering also relate the productive function of the mnemonic imagination to ‘mediated or inherited secondhand experience’ (2015, p.13). They perceive of the mnemonic imagination as ‘the active means by which we grasp these relations and allow them to inform each other, so enriching our understanding of broader processes of change and broader patterns of continuity’ (2015, p.13). Understanding the productive role of the mnemonic imagination in retelling personal and mediated narratives has wide reaching consequences for oral history approaches and can support meaningful exchanges that are supported by aide-memoires such as photographs, as I show next. Interviewing with photographs has been a highly productive way of exploring the transformation of Peacehaven over time, as this technique ‘has also been used to expose and explore people’s feelings and thoughts about change’ (Tinkler, 2013, p.179). Photographs, postcards, rare video-footage, letters and maps, frequently aided the process of recollecting, and influenced which stories were shared, and how. Sometimes the photographs had been ordered chronologically, at other times around a specific event or to illustrate a point. Most of the respondents added further images halfway through our conversations, or during follow up sessions, in order to clarify a particular meaning, or to move onto a related topic. The focus of Deborah Chambers’ research on how private and public spaces have been articulated in family albums paid close attention to the ways ‘in which family photograph albums represent ideas about spatial identity and belonging’ (2009, p.96). This offered a useful precedent as some of the vernacular photographs taken in the 1920s and 1930s in Peacehaven show new family homes close to open countryside or cliff tops. These spaces were claimed and framed by amateur photographers; the photographs served as a springboard for narratives about the town’s sitedness, setting up boundaries and making a home. I sought to understand how stories were framed around specific photographs and

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what kinds of memories these reactivated, and also reflected on the role of nostalgia and how notions of time and place were shared through images.

Temporal and spatial reflections As respondents were asked to comment on the initial vision for Peacehaven, they shared what had brought their ancestors to the area, and how hard life would have been in the early years. Several interviewees related that their parents, parents-in-law or grandparents had moved to Peacehaven in search of better health and new opportunities. Quite a few came to set up smallholdings in order to live more self-sufficient lives. Recollections gravitated around Peacehaven in relation to respondents’ own lives, as well as family life, home and garden, work, leisure, the emergence of clubs, communities and social life, and eventually leading to the demise of the town’s pioneer spirit in the postwar years. Commonalities included a generally shared belief that although life was physically harder in the early years, there was more personal freedom and enjoyment. Paying attention to generative words (Freire, [1970] 1993, p.69) such as ‘back of beyond’ and ‘Indian country’, which correlate to the idea of near boundless space, I gained a more informed, insider’s perspective into a commonplace practice of naming particular parts of the geographically delineated and bounded estate, and the mnemonic properties of place, described in more detail in chapter 1. References to the ‘Wild West’ intermingle with stories of walking along unmade roads, and the town’s speedy development in the postwar years. Lowenthal (2015) alludes to the fleeting fragility of an imagined past which was perceived to have been better. He explains that the image of the archetypical Western was invoked and saturated ‘from the start with nostalgia for an older, rougher, simpler society’ (2015, p.34). There were threshold points within most narratives, such as wartime (which, for Margaret Parks, meant evacuation) and ongoing experiences of loss: of relatives, but also of familiar places and perhaps most poignantly, a perceived loss of community. Most respondents concurred that whatever vision there had been for Peacehaven originally, this was spoilt by overdevelopment. Sentiments of regret were often prompted by photographs of historical landmarks that have since been demolished. Two interconnected narratives, one of longing and physical loss, one of revival and preservation, governed most of the interviews. Narratives of nostalgia, based on recollections of how things are perceived to have been in the past and what has been lost over time, resonated throughout. Svetlana Boym argues that nostalgia is ‘at the very core of the modern condition (2002, p.xvi) and describes its reflective properties as ‘a longing for [. . .] the time of our childhood, the

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slower rhythms of our dreams’ (2001, p.12). But this longing also extends towards a bygone Peacehaven, as many of the town’s original, feature buildings are now gone. Before the Estate was able to mature and establish a core, and prior to its residents having the time to really comprehend its historicity and value, the very landmarks and features created to define it (the Hotel Peacehaven, Rosemary Tea Garden, original Bells Club) had already been pulled down. In chapter 1 of this book and via the examples offered by Jeanette Bastian (2009, 2014) I have already highlighted the potentially detrimental consequences to a communities’ identity formation when a local and familiar landscape becomes unstable or too much of its architecture is lost or destroyed. The disappearance of defining landmarks and even childhood homes has indeed led to a sense of sadness, disconnection and deep-seated nostalgia in at least some of my respondents. Keightley and Pickering argue that ‘nostalgia is dependent on a sense of temporal dislocation’ (2012, p.113). In their work on the function of the mnemonic imagination in processes of reconstruction and experience, they have conceptualized: Nostalgia as a composite framing of loss, lack and longing. This synthesis is possible via the action of the mnemonic imagination as it grasps together these multiple temporal orientations to what has been, what is no longer, and the longitudinal movement between these two moments. (Keightley and Pickering, 2012, pp.117–118)

They argue that there is real potential that feelings of nostalgia and longing can be transformed into a productive force that in turn can develop into a creative and productive engagement with the past. This has indeed been the case in this study, where emotional narratives of loss have frequently been matched by considerable individual efforts to chronicle and preserve Peacehaven’s past, thus reviving a sense of respondent’s own past as this interconnects with the town. It has been difficult for the town’s residents to develop historical sensibilities due to the brevity of the residential phase. In the absence of neither official preservation efforts nor any detailed official town history or systematic record keeping, some local residents adopted informal roles as town chroniclers. Reuben Lanham developed a significant interest and knowledge of the area’s geology and pre-history; Margaret Palmer preserved original artifacts; Haydn Williams deposited some of his father’s amateur films with the South East Film & Video Archive, as he realized their historical value and wanted to ensure their preservation. Some of the town’s residents have documented the physical changes in Peacehaven’s townscape, as collectors (i.e. Poplett, Troak), and as informal town photographers and visual archivists (Frank Parks, 1920s-1970s, see chapter 4; Guy Hetherington, 1983–86, Richard Oakeley 1980s, see chapter 8). Indeed, this might explain the continued success of the Peacehaven Pioneer group, and the participants’ enthusiasm to continue monthly meetings, organized around local history themes.

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In conversations with Peter Seed, who volunteers for the Ramblers Association, we grappled with the question of ‘which Peacehaven’ to talk about. Seed believes that there are three possible Peacehavens that could be considered. One needs to be clear whether we are describing the original Estate, ‘between the pylons’, the present day, larger Parish of Peacehaven or, possibly even the idea of the expanded ‘Greater Peacehaven’ (see chapter 5). Below I connect recurring respondent themes in relation to a narrative framework based on spatial, temporal and visually mediated memories. Drawing on Volk’s motifs and suggestive words including home-life, recreation, prosperity from his signpost cartoon, I investigate respondents’ references to digging and construction, demarcations and home-making, inside/outside, community, the development of an infrastructure, risks and opportunities.

Relating the area’s pastoral history Earlier chapters have charted Peacehaven’s beginnings as a hesitant, unmanaged sprawl that meandered across Downland, fields and a chalk landscape covered in gorse, hedgerows and a thin layer of grass. Several respondents shared family anecdotes of pre-Peacehaven that were passed on to them. These narrate the transformation of open spaces into an estate, with a basic grid structure and a few houses, roads and shops dotted around. John Copper, John Harrison and Reuben Lanham recall accounts of open Downland, interspersed by a handful of farms inland, sheep farming and wilder, gorse-covered cliffs and open sea. John Copper’s grandfather Brasser Copper, and great-uncle had worked as foremen for Rottingdean Farm, which used 3000 acres of land until 1915 for sheep grazing. He remembers hearing about his grandfather’s response when some of the Farm’s land was sold for development in 1915: They used to have some of their sheep on land of what is now Peacehaven and the land was owned by the Abergavenney family but they let them use the land, sheep crop is a natural fertilizer, sheep business is lucrative, this is very important sheep country here. When it got sold, my grandfather said ‘and they pinched all our best sheep land’.

John Copper relates his grandfather’s response to witnessing the start of construction in the area. Brasser Copper felt uneasy and was sad that this area of Downland would all soon be covered in ‘houses, houses, houses, it left me right prostrate with dismal [sic]’. He was worried about losing favoured valleys to development. Similarly, Reuben Lanham, a retired geography teacher, recounts Peacehaven having been built on open farmland:

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There were hardly any buildings in Peacehaven. If you go back to 1900 apart from four old coastguard cottages in Telscombe and the odd farm cottage, there was nothing here. At the East end of Peacehaven where you have got these two pylons on either side of the road there was a tollgate and an old cottage there, where the gatekeeper lived. But that of course was before my time.

Over several decades, Lanham has explored Peacehaven’s geology and prehistory, and was able to offer a temporal perspective of the landscape. He explained that the town is based on a bed of chalk, ‘some 1000 feet thick, which was deposited on the seabed over a period of 40 million years’. He also offered a perspective of the chalk cliffs from the undercliff path, describing how a visitor would be able to see ‘about 120 feet chalk exposed’ overlaid by not more than two feet of soil and sand.

Staking up of the land ready for construction Echoing Volk’s evocation of a settler with spade, John Copper, whose mother at one point had dated Neville’s son, Roderick, recalls that in 1915 Neville ‘had the land surveyed, and roads and plots marked out’ and asserts affirmatively that ‘without him I don’t think it would have ever been what it is now’. Although in popular memory Neville is usually cited as the founder of the Estate, in chapter 2 I described Harrison’s development to the east of Peacehaven, which pre-dated Neville’s by five years. John Harrison inherited many archival documents from his grandfather, Arthur; these reveal an original intention to develop the ‘Friars Bay Smallholders’ Cooperative Colony’, which was to comprise of country houses, convalescence homes and smallholdings.203 The original name chosen resonates with anecdotes shared by respondents, which describe the area’s perceived roughness and potential. But the landscape had already been domesticated, as grandson John Harrison explains, by a large hedgerow that used to divide the land in East Peacehaven into a section east of the hedgerow having belonged to the Earl of Sheffield and land to the west to the Earl of Chichester. Margaret Parks remembers playing hide and seek in this long row of bushes as a child in the late 1920s, when it still went all the way to Piddinghoe. Only after Neville moved into the area did Arthur Harrison divide his estate into plots and name the roads after places in Yorkshire he had connections to, such as Roundhay and Ashington.

203 As I explained in some detail in chapter 2, he bought the land from Harper-Bond, who had in turn purchased it from Mabel Strey Attenborough, who had inherited it from her father, the Earl of Sheffield.

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Post WW1 construction In Volk’s signpost cartoon, which aimed to encourage commercial interest, Peacehaven is encapsulated by rays of sunlight. This was meant to particularly appeal to veterans and their families, as two of the signposts promised that peace was awaiting new settlers. Many respondents recounted that their fathers and grandfathers had been veterans. Margaret Parks’ father had fought at Gallipoli and was also stationed in Egypt, as had her future father-in-law, Frank Parks, invalided in 1916 due to a serious injury. Displayed on her kitchen wall were drawings her father had made in North Africa, and an old photograph from the Great War of her father in uniform, which she shared proudly (see Fig. 7.1).

Figure 7.1: Mr. Wilds, WWI portrait, courtesy Margaret Parks.

Haydn Williams’ father had been a fighter pilot and Margaret Palmer showed me a photograph of her mother in overall and beret, next to three other women, taken while they were working in the local ammunition factory in Newhaven. Her father was with the Royal Navy throughout the war. Their families were not

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alone in being drawn to Peacehaven’s rural setting, indeed, many returning servicemen ‘retreated to the English countryside, hoping that by recovering a sense of belonging rooted in nature and place they might dignify their damaged lives’ (McFarlane, 2012, p.21). On the one hand, settlers wanted an electrified, organized and modern estate; on the other they longed for a timeless rural idyll. Dreams of a better, safe future following catastrophic losses during the Great War were set against the backdrop of a romanticized vision of elemental nature, or perhaps in McFarlane’s words, ‘that it had all been worth something’ (2012, p.21). Reflecting on their ancestors’ early years in Peacehaven, respondents recall day to day living as having been physically demanding. Les Hunter recounts the arrival of his maternal grandfather, Linney on the Estate. There is a family anecdote that it was the beauty of the Downland location, which he had discovered by accident, that compelled Linney to rent a flat so that he could build a house on the Estate: My granddad, he had quite a bit of money in the early days. He used to take his men down from Sutton to Hastings, as he loved Hastings [. . .] I don’t know if they had a drink too many but they had left it late and they got the wrong road and ended up in Eastbourne [. . .] they said they’d go to Brighton and they ended up coming through. But when they got to Peacehaven, it was so late, so they pulled down on the cliffs and parked and they stayed the night and thought it was so lovely; that’s when he come down and rented a [. . .] holiday flat.

After purchasing land from Arthur Harrison, Linney built his first Peacehaven home, Restawhile. Les Hunter’s remarkable family archive includes photographs of the construction of Restawhile, from digging out footings to bungalow completion.

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Figures 7.2 a+b: Restawhile construction I, ca. 1925, courtesy L. Hunter; Restawhile construction II, L. Hunter.

These photographs echo Volk’s drawing of the man and spade. In the photograph on the left, Linney is in the back row; he is second to right; dressed in white shirt, waistcoat, sleeves rolled up, and sporting a hat (see Fig.7.2a). Sitting on the ground, and with a spade to one side, is a young workman in white shirt. Next to him, in dungarees and beret, more workmen, each offering an enthusiastic smile to the person who took the photograph. Les Hunter explains that standing in a neat row beside his grandfather are Linney’s mother, uncle, grandmother and neighbours from Sutton. The group have claimed ownership of the land; Linney has marked this plot as his future home. These protagonists are enacting Volk’s visualization, but with real spades, in real time and with great energy. In the photograph on the right, Linney and a workman are next to another pile of earth; they have dug out a deep hole and are contemplating a large number of unearthed flint stones (see Fig.7.2b). A large fork lies to one side. Some fencing is visible to the right, indicating where this plot ends. In the next image, the wooden framework, roof and structure of the bungalow being built was recorded, and five workmen, including Linney, on the right, paused to have this moment captured. Downland is visible in the background, and no other homes are in sight (see Fig.7.3).

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Figure 7.3: Restawhile construction III, ca. 1925, courtesy Les Hunter.

Home-Life: Conquering the wilderness One of Volk’s Peacehaven twelve signpost assurances was the promise of homelife and freedom. This prospect is palpable in Linney’s photographs of his house once completed. He recorded the new home from different angles, including front and rear views (see Fig.7.4 a&b).

Figures 7.4 a+b: ‘The Front’, ca. 1925, courtesy Les Hunter; ‘The Rear’, ca.1925, courtesy Les Hunter.

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A further wide-angle shot establishes the home’s location in open fields (see Fig.7.5). The bungalow is displayed like a prize trophy, and with its veranda and outback atmosphere, it could have been situated within other parts of empire such as India, Canada, Australia or New Zealand.204

Figure 7.5: Restawhile completed ca. 1925, courtesy Les Hunter.

The final photograph reveals just how rural the Estate still was in the early 1920s. There is a strong sense that domesticity is beginning to tame the wilderness and the side garage in particular underscores the feeling that this landscape is being conquered. There are no roads in sight, making the house look very remote. Visible in the near distance is the aforementioned hedgerow.

204 Its’ Indian Imperial origins are discussed in chapter 2. Les Hunter has seen correspondence between his grandfather and Mr. Harrison, who owned the first water company, asking to be able to pay for water on a quarterly basis to save stamp money.

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Reuben Lanham discusses the unplanned nature of development, which came with much freedom in the early years but also at a cost: The fact there were not many restrictions; there were some building regulations, but people could do more or less what they wanted. They came here precisely because it was more free and easy than it would have been, I’d say on the outskirts of Brighton. Of course the downside of it was that Neville, the developer, allowed people to buy plots and build more or less all over the place, so there was no centre to Peacehaven and therefore it was not economical for the council to install local amenities such as street lighting or main drainage and that’s the trouble. Your nearest neighbour might have been a quarter of a mile away.

In a short text, ‘Peacehaven Growing Up’, Reuben Lanham explored the town’s genesis with astute insight, and points to unresolved tensions over which ideal, the rural (sought out by some of the early settlers) or the urban (purported by Neville and estate builders), would win out: Peacehaven was born seven years before me . . . it was the only place I knew till I reached maturity, so I could not compare it with other places of abode as my elders might – whether in rural or urban England. It was neither.

Margaret Parks’ father-in-law, Frank Parks, documented the construction of early Peacehaven through photography (see chapter 4). She describes his early years on the Estate: When they started building here, most of the time he would cycle out from Brighton and eventually he got a transporter on wheels, and came over here, he lived in Gold Lane for a while, and then he bought a plot on Tor Road, I think it was about 200 feet and built this bungalow for himself [. . .] that was before I was born.

As Parks had passed through Valencia on his way back to England following demobilisation, he named his bungalow after this Spanish city. His son, William (Margaret’s future husband) was born in Peacehaven in 1921. Margaret’s own family moved to the Estate in 1925, and she recalls that a house could be bought for just £250.

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Figure 7.6: William Parks with mother and Arthur Marriot, ca.1923, photograph by F. Parks, courtesy Bill Parks.

In this photograph from the early 1920s, William is in the foreground (see Fig.7.6). He inspects the bed of plants, while his mother, framed by the doorway, receives a delivery from the local milkman, Arthur James Marriot, who was Margaret Palmer’s father. A large milk container barrel sits on the path. A front window is wide open, curtain blowing in the wind on this bright day, connoting fresh air. In the distance to the left is an unmade road, a few houses here and there, and much open space. The photograph is suggestive of Volk’s ideal of a contented home-life, and signals the arrival of civilization and orderliness, represented by the fencing and garage. Like Margaret Parks’ father-in-law, Margaret Palmer’s future parents-in-law had also arrived on the Estate early on; both initially lived on Gold Lane, too: John’s mother was Ivy Ellis, and they were pioneers. His father was Frederick Palmer and they came to Peacehaven around 1921, and for a short time, lived in Gold Lane until they bought a bungalow in Edith Avenue. His father was a builder and a very keen mason. His mother was a schoolteacher, she taught at the Old Tin School, Mrs. Ivy Palmer.

Margaret Palmer describes how physically demanding the early days on the Estate would have been for its residents:

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The real pioneers were such hard working people. It was very hard. I mean, when Jim was a boy and they lived in Edith Avenue they didn’t have electricity there. I still have the oil lamp that he used to do his homework by as a boy.

Margaret Parks also recounts not having had any electricity at home as a child and marvels that she could not imagine a house nowadays without. Her parents, the Wilds, moved down from South Norwood because their eldest daughter contracted polio and doctors recommended sea bathing: It was at the time when there was a lot of publicity about Peacehaven. She was two when she got polio. She had a short leg and had to have a hard boot . . . and the doctors said bring your daughter to Peacehaven, we came down for that reason, and I think she did well in the end.

The whole extended family, including paternal grandparents, uncle and aunt arrived in 1925 to buy the two-storey Mayfield House, on the corner of Mayfield Avenue and the South Coast Road, and Peter Pan, a one-story bungalow immediately next to it (see Fig.7.7). The postcard reveals their proximity to the main through road, dominated by telegraph poles. Houses can be seen reaching into the distance, interspersed with empty plots, fencing, and mounds of earth, signalling future construction. A charabanc heads east, but noticeably this is the only vehicle in sight. Although depicting family homes, this image also locates an outside world, an emerging town and neighbourhood with a developing commercial infrastructure. Out of view is the large plot of land the family owned just to the south of the South Coast Road.

Figure 7.7: South Coast Road, ca.1925, courtesy Margaret Parks.

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Margaret Parks describes the animals her family kept in the family garden: They had a quarter of an acre of land, poultry farm, ducks; they had a pond, and chickens and turkeys. My mother had aviaries, and they had a glass frontage and they had all these foreign birds and so people used to use that way to go down to the promenade to look at all those wonderful birds.

Les Hunter recalls his own maternal grandmother speaking about a nearby smallholding that contained an orchard as ‘the plantation’.

Figure 7.8: Parks family, ca. 1924, courtesy Margaret Parks.

In this photograph taken in 1924 by Margaret Parks’ father of her mother and sister she is only a baby in the pram (see Fig.7.8). There is a smallholding with three modest houses behind them, bounded by a long wicker fence, separating fields and open countryside. The family is dressed in their Sunday best, on their way to the Evangelical Church. Although facing inland away from the sea, this photograph resonates with Volk’s depiction of the young woman who symbolizes the town’s future, and has an upbeat, pioneering flavour. Despite the inconveniences of the early years due to a lack of amenities, many of the interviewees recall a sense of possibility, which had appealed to the previous

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generation. Lanham’s maternal grandfather, Mr. Hellier, with whom he grew up, purchased two acres of land at the top of Roderick Avenue near Firle Road, to set up a smallholding where he would keep chickens and rabbits in 1925. In the postcard view of Two Acres, the family’s chalet bungalow can be seen on the left, but the main part of the plot, where the garden was situated, is out of view (see Fig.7.9).205 In the distance was a water tower, and opposite the road the Annexe store, a local bakery.

Figure 7.9: Two acres, ca. 1925, courtesy Reuben Lanham.

Lanham describes the family’s efforts to keep the house warm and dry: My grandfather had bought the ground a few years before, for £135, two acres of land, which seems unbelievable these days, in terms of prices. That’s where I grew up from three months on. Although it was two acres we didn’t use it all – about half an acre was cultivated with fruit trees. In the house, we basically had an open fire with a back boiler, an oven by the side of it, a sort of trivet where you put a kettle on, that’s the means of basically warming the living room and cooking, but heating the other rooms, there were a few oil stoves we used. Of course a lot of people relied on oil stoves in those days. There was one bug bear – the pipes were not very well insulated on the north side of the house so that was a fault in the design, so they often froze up in the winter.

205 At one point, he unsuccessfully suggested his grandfather should change the name of their house, as there were now several houses on the estate that contained the word acres in their name, ‘there was a First Acres, another called Half Acres, so people were getting confused, as there were no numbers to the houses’.

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One of Reuben Lanham’s first memories is being put to bed by candlelight, and watching the shadows this would cast on the wall.206 Lanham gave me a plan of his childhood home, which he had drawn from memory previously, and pointed to the location for the scullery, a built in tub that the fire could be lit underneath for boiling water to wash clothes or even cook the Christmas puddings (see Fig.7.10).

Figure 7.10: Sketch plan, courtesy Reuben Lanham.

Lanham reflected on how his first memories ‘are of the house you are living in. And your world increases, as you grow a bit older’. The photograph on the left below shows Reuben and his grandmother by the open gate of ‘Two Acres’, as if welcoming a visitor into their garden, and resembles the promotional photographs Hill had taken for the Peacehaven Post previously (see Fig.7.11a). In the second close-up photograph, an only slightly older Reuben was photographed in the garden, with the house in the background revealing a veranda and greenhouse (see Fig.7.11b).

206 The house had no electricity until 1936, at which point it was connected to the National Grid.

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Figures 7.11 a+b: Reuben Lanham and grandmother Mrs. Hellier, ca.1928, courtesy Reuben Lanham; Reuben circa 2 years old, courtesy Reuben Lanham.

Reuben Lanham shared a series of photographs taken in the garden, in each of which he has grown a little older: as little boy with tricycle; on his grandmother’s lap in a garden chair; next to his grandfather and a group of saplings, taller in subsequent photographs. These family snapshots resonate with Volk’s signpost promises of happiness, health, satisfaction and contentment. Reuben recalls that his early awareness of Peacehaven was bounded by the house, garden and gate and a contented home-life. His cognizance of the outside world developed after his fifth birthday: It wasn’t really until I reached the age of five when I met much of the outside world. At first I was accompanied by my mother or grandfather, I wouldn’t have been allowed to walk on my own. And we could just cut diagonally across the fields.

Margaret Palmer’s father Arthur Marriot moved down to the Estate from Welwyn Garden City in the 1920s to live with his uncle and aunt Alf and Lizzie Atkins at Kirby Farm, where they were in service for Mr. McCombe, a wealthy Scot for whom they had already worked in South Africa. Next door to them was The Warren, a stately home owned in 1921 by Captain Mackay, who had also been in colonial service in South Africa. Arthur ran the milk rounds on the Estate and

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met his future wife, Cissie, when he delivered milk to the Rosemary Tea Garden, where Cissie worked. Margaret Palmer shared a photograph of her father talking to his aunt while remaining seated on his bike (see Fig.7.12).

Figure 7.12: Arthur Marriot with aunt Lizzie Atkins, ca. 1923, courtesy Margaret Palmer.

In the distance the roofs of several bungalows can be seen, separated by some fencing, connoting that the plot perimeters are now being more clearly delineated and ownership consolidated. Their attire is urban and modern; the surrounding landscape rural and the off-road path that Marriot’s bike sits on as yet unmade. This photograph captures a hybrid landscape, neither town, nor rural, but a landscape in transition. At Kirby Farm, to the eastern fringes of the Estate in Telscombe Cliffs, there was no electricity, and Margaret Palmer recalls her aunt looking across Peacehaven, ‘all lit up at night because there was electricity, and she would say: It’s fairyland over there’. By the 1930s, the Atkins bought their own house on Telscombe Road in North Peacehaven. They named it Coombelands after their former employer. Margaret Palmer would visit them there, and recalls that they still had no electricity or gas then: They got up when it was light and went to bed when it got dark. The house had oil lamps, very basic. But the garden was a picture. They had a gardener and a greenhouse, they grew

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asparagus and grapes and [. . .] were self-supporting up there and people used to stop as they walked by and look at the garden because it was so beautiful, several acres. But people bought the reservoir and they bought the old house and I think it’s been pulled down and there is a big new house up there.

Haydn Williams recalls stories about his grandmother, Mrs. Wethered, who had arrived in Peacehaven by 1923. She had initially bought her house, baptized Dulce Domum, Sweet Home, on Edith Avenue as a second home. She became a member of the aforementioned Society of Sussex Downsmen and was acquainted with local dignitaries including the Powells and Volk. For her daughter Nancy’s wedding in 1924, she entertained guests at the Hotel Peacehaven. The wedding was covered in the Downland Post’s May 1924 issue, under the title ‘Downsmen’s Wedding at picturesque Piddinghoe’. Initially the growing family lived with Mrs. Wethered, and by 1933, when Haydn Williams was born, had moved to a bungalow next to Lureland Hall on Phyllis Avenue. The photograph below from the late 1920s of Haydn’s older sisters Betty and Nancy, posing in the family garden in identical, knitted dresses and holding hands, shows them at the age when they would have started walking to their grandmother’s place by themselves, as this was deemed safe (see Fig. 7.13a). Rita Williams adds that ‘they used to run along the cliff top to Edith Avenue, and your mother used to send the dog with messages’. The image projects a sense of freedom and contentment, connoting that this family has made a good choice to settle on the new Estate.

Figures 7.13 a+b: Betty and Nancy, ca. 1929, courtesy Haydn Williams; Mrs. Wethered and Haydn outside Dulce Domum ca.1936, courtesy Haydn Williams.

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Haydn Williams’ photograph of him and his grandmother outside ‘Dulce Domum’ shares an affinity with Reuben Lanham’s childhood photographs, as well as Hill’s portraits of new settlers and their homes made for the Peacehaven Post (see Fig.7.13b). Here the hedgerow is already established; the front door stands wide open, as if to invite viewers in. The house, veranda and its residents look at ease, and epitomize the ideals of home ownership and prosperity. Margaret Palmer echoed this sentiment, when she describes how her parents were married in October 1925: My mother must have met him just after the war and they lived in Friar’s Avenue in a house called Wallflowers, from where they moved to the Cornford Dairy along the South Coast Road, which they managed, and lived in the flat above, where I was born in 1937. In the Coronation year, they won an award for the window display.

Not all of the residents during the 1920s and 1930s were homeowners. Indeed, Reuben Lanham recalls that many people who had houses built on the Estate would let them out: There were a lot of poor families, people I went to school with, living in these sort of rented houses, yes. [They came] from all over.207

John Harrison’s grandfather was still involved in sales of the Cliff Park Estate situated at Friars Bay, but John and his siblings grew up in a bungalow on Seaview Avenue with their father Alwyn. John Harrison recalls that his parents rented it from another builder’s family, the Wagstaffs, who had previously used it as their sales office. Called Bronte, the house was one of the first wooden bungalows built in 1920, and John remembers sleeping on the veranda in the summer and listening to the sea waves below. As his wife Ann, who is from Newhaven, now puts it, ‘they were brought up with the sea at one end of the road and rolling farmland at the other. Sadly much of it is now built on’.

Childhood, school and play Most interviewees concur that growing up in Peacehaven in the late 1920s, 1930s and 1940s was a happy time, although the war was experienced as a dangerous intrusion, as it severely threatened their sense of secureness. Despite having received strict parenting, several of the interviewees recall great levels of personal freedom, when they were allowed to play outside, explore the beach

207 Quite a few respondents had parents who came from Yorkshire (Haydn Williams, Les Hunter, Margaret Palmer, John Harrison), and also from the London area (both Martins, Margaret Parks).

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and go flower and berry picking. Peacehaven schools still had a disciplinarian approach. Several respondents went to Peacehaven’s first council school at the east end of the Estate, and Lanham recalls walking the mile across the Estate to school, referred to as the Tin School locally, as it consisted of a pair of corrugated iron huts. Cutting across open Downland he recalls that: In really bad weather it was possible to catch a bus from the Annex down to the Barclays bank at the bottom of the South Coast Road, which would have gone to Brighton. And then get off and get another bus to Searle Avenue where the fireplace shop is, and just walk up to the school. It was too far away to go home for a midday meal. I had to stay there and it was a long day. I was deposited at the school about a quarter to 9 and didn’t leave the school till about 4.

There were 28 pupils in his class, although the average class size was 40–50, and classes were mixed. There was no electric light and only outside earth closets, and the district nurse would visit regularly. Asked about the atmosphere at the school Lanham recalls the Headmaster, who had been in the Rifles Regiment during the First World War and also in colonial service in India: ‘Mr. Blackman was keen on the Empire; he flew the flag on Empire Day. You knew more about India then’. He kept a flagstaff in one corner of the playground, and ran a tight ship: Mr. Blackman had a sort of disciplinarian attitude, which maybe was necessary in the rough days of the school. He was responsible for getting a canteen going to provide hot meals for the children who would have otherwise missed out. You took reading, writing, mental arithmetic, nature studies, recitation and general knowledge, handwork.

Rather than being organized by age, the classes had standards, which meant that older children who were still unable to read might have found themselves in the infant class, and younger children with greater knowledge would have been in a higher grade. Lanham’s favourite subject was geography, and although he would have liked to learn about local Sussex history he explains this was never studied in class: It was the Pennines, and the cotton industries and the woollen industries; it is what the teacher knew. We seemed to go over and over again the same things – never learned about world geography or space geography.

Haydn Williams’ older sisters, who were friends with Margaret Parks, went to a convent school on Edith Avenue. Parks herself attended Sunday School at the Free Church, Peacehaven’s first church, which was run by the Church Missionary Society and also recalls her school years at Peacehaven College, a private school where subjects included history, German and French. She remembers learning to play cricket and to speak ‘proper’ in elocution lessons taught by a Miss Molly Ball, where the children repeated sentences such as ‘it is my duty to call on the Duke on Tuesday’ or ‘grazing in the green, green grass’. Parks’

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comments reflect her family expectations and the aspirations they, and other parents, had for their children. These two photographs from the late 1920s illustrate the family’s ambition to give their children a safe environment to grow up in.

Figures 7.14 a+b: The three Wilds siblings ca. 1928, courtesy M. Parks; Margaret and her sister, courtesy Margaret Parks.

The first shows Parks with her sister and brother, in their school uniforms, leaning against their father’s car, a typical bungalow in the background (see Fig.7.14a). In the second snapshot, the sisters sit on a bench in their Peacehaven College outfits, a doll and teddy bear on their laps (see Fig.7.14b). Nature has become a backdrop for unfolding family lives; these scenes depict a landscape that has turned into a domestic environment. Peacehaven College put on plays in support of Barnado’s Home for destitute children, and Parks recalls performing in Sankey’s Hall on Edith Avenue alongside her siblings. Her family had succeeded in making the move to Peacehaven work for them, and had attained some prosperity. Many of the respondents shared stories of recreational play. Palmer recalls playing paper chase together with their gym master: We spent all the morning tearing up paper and then you have two people running with the paper and you keep on throwing it to make a trail and then, I think you had a twentyminute start and then the rest of the school came to try and catch you [. . .] and you’d run back to school – but would they allow you these days?

Parks learned to swim in the Bastion Pool in the late 1920s, and believed that ‘the weather was better then and we went down from our Easter holidays until we started back in September’. It is of course possible that a longing and homesickness for one’s lost youth is at play here, as the British weather has always been variable. Lanham describes how, in summer, families picnicked on the

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Promenade, or ‘descended the hundred steps to where a rocky and pebbly beach provided some interest, and a rough and ready bathing pool was kept topped up by the incoming tides’. Interviewees’ perspectives on the success of the pool diverged. Les Hunter remembers older people struggled to get back up the Bastion Steps, although he did not appreciate at the time how tiring this would have been. He recalls that the pool always leaked: ‘Until the tide filled up it lasted probably two hours or so; you could swim off the beach when the tide was in.’ Haydn Williams has more positive childhood memories of the pool, recounting that it got filled with ‘fresh sea water clean at every tide’ and remembering time spent at the pool with his family. Respondents remember the funfair coming to The Dell, and going to birthday parties and garden parties in the summer. Parks recalls exploring Peacehaven with her friend, doll and pram, and remembers a little golf course, benches and the cinema on The Dell. She used to go to the cinema twice a week with her family, and the same film would run Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays and then be changed for the weekend. Palmer belonged to the Brownies, and describes a sense of independence coupled with a complete unawareness of the potentially fatal danger of playing near the cliff edge with her friend, Jean: I just used to wander around Peacehaven. It was safe. I’d walk across to my friend Jean’s house on Gladys Avenue and play there, or she’d come to my house and we used to go and just play with the children in the area. I can remember getting told off by my mother because a neighbour caught Jean and I sitting on the edge of the cliffs, dangling our legs over and looking down. And she went rushing back and she told my mother. [. . .] And I couldn’t understand but I was forbidden to do it [again]. There was no fence, but as a child I had no fear and Jean and I were both ’what was all the fuss about’?

She recalls that they would be out all day playing hopscotch with other children, and would only come home when they were hungry, and picking wild flowers in the nearby Bluebell Woods, ‘We had our freedom to wander. We made camps out in the bushes and played. It was just lovely. We were very free’.

Prosperity: Cultural and business life in the 1920s and 1930s Lanham has several aerial photographs of Peacehaven, which he carefully overlaid with acetates, marking them with significant buildings and locations and mapping particular town features.

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Figure 7.15: Peacehaven 1925, courtesy Reuben Lanham.

These views from circa 1925, but wrongly dated 1922, make visible how the grid system, with its unmade roads and the promenade to the south reaches within a short distance to the cliff edge (see Fig.7.15). In the distance to the north, the Downland is still untouched. The domestication of a landscape that had up until that time been entirely rural appears unstoppable, and the Bastion Steps in the bottom left of the frame now facilitate access to the beach itself. Parks shared a very rare postcard of Optima Stores with me; the caption introduced it as ‘The First Garden-City shop in Peacehaven’ (see Fig.7.16). As it was near her home on Mayfield Avenue, she remembers visits to the shop with her family.

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Figure 7.16: Early Postcard view of Optima Stores by Frank Parks, 1921, courtesy Margaret Parks.

Harrison recalled that his grandfather set up the first lending library during the early 1920s; the Downs’ Library was also on the South Coast Road near Optima Stores and doubled up as a shop and Estate Agents, run with Florence, his second wife. Palmer explains that a lot of theatrical people moved to Peacehaven during the late 1920s and early 1930s. She thinks that the main reason was the affordability of houses and the easy access to Peacehaven from Brighton by bus or taxi. Francis Williams, Haydn Williams’ father, ran a taxi service on Phyllis Avenue in the late 1920s. The next photograph shows the large signage on a garage roof promoting, ‘TAXIS, Landaulette cars for hire, day and night service’ (see Fig.7.17). Williams is the man in the driver seat with the little dog. Next to him are four residents, dressed in the urban fashion of the day, with chic hats and coats. Behind the car, and only just visible on the right, is the Cairo Store on the South Coast Road.

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Figure 7.17: Francis Williams’ landaulette ca. 1923, courtesy Haydn Williams.

Haydn Williams remembers the garage, and that his father’s imposing car was often parked outside the Hotel Peacehaven, and he would regularly pick up Gracie Fields from Brighton Station late, ‘She would come down on the last train from London, and he would go to the station for 12 to pick her up’. His father was also a keen photographer and amateur film maker and, during the 1930s, made several home movies that featured his family around their own garden and in the sunken gardens of the Hotel Peacehaven. He filmed the 1935 Silver Jubilee Procession in The Dell near the theatre.208 In close proximity to the taxi business were Kenya House and the Central Club, two premises that were purchased by Copper’s maternal grandfather in 1929, in order to set up a social club.209 In addition to Gracie Fields, Parks recalls the Yorkshire poet Sir William Watson living in Peacehaven in 1930, when she

208 I used some of Williams’ footage in a short film I made especially for a site–specific commemoration event, see chapter 8. 209 John’s father Bob became the licensee in 1946 and the club subsequently became a popular folk venue.

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was six. She could look into his large garden from her home on Mayfield Avenue and would sometimes spot him. She was twelve when the Meridian Monument was unveiled, but could not attend the ceremony herself due to illness; her older sister went and obtained an autograph from Admiral Beamish and reported back about a problem with the new water fountain, which would not work: It had a bowl down there and you pressed down the bowl and water came out from inside for you to drink, but [laughs] it wouldn’t work. But then suddenly it did. I am not sure if it was an official or if it was Daphne Poplett, the Meridian Queen, whoever it was got the squirt.

Parks’ parents used to take the whole family to pick mushrooms during early morning foraging trips. They also opened a bird food shop in the early 1930s, and on Saturdays, she and her siblings had to do rounds and take orders. Remembering her lengthy rounds, she shares stories of some of the residents she got to know: I never thought about this carrying all these packets by candlelight, we had to go from all round this area to the top of Telscombe Cliffs Way, there was a Mrs Strachan [who] had saluki dogs and horses in the field opposite – we did know everybody at one time, and got to know most of the houses, it seemed that almost everybody who was around was a customer; some people came back from being missionaries and they called their place over on Dorothy Avenue Lulonga – must have been somewhere they had been in Africa.210

In her late teens, Parks started going to Lureland Hall on Phyllis Avenue, where she met her husband, William. ‘It was really the hall for the Hotel Peacehaven but is still used now for the Bells Club’. Hunter’s grandfather became a Peacehaven ‘garden artist’ and made furniture for the Rosemary Tea Rooms as well as for other wellto-do customers. In this photograph the grandfather is standing next to some of his homemade furniture, to the right the Tin School comes into view (see Fig.7.18). The shop was located on the South Coast Road and sold bird feeders and furnishings. This photograph reveals the scale of the business and workshop at the back. These objects speak of a longing to decorate gardens with ornaments, of surplus money available to spend on features outside of the home and enact a kind of tribute to the original garden city ideal, which had informally relocated into residents’ private gardens. The way Linney stands proudly on the lawn of his business, hands in pockets, feet apart, indicates that he has now made this place his own. A tall mushroom shaped birdbath to the right appears to have been built using cement and flint stones; rurality has become transformed into a man-made, decorative representation of nature.

210 The Lulonga Company, named after the Lulonga river in the Congo Free State (now DRC) was a large rubber producer.

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Figure 7.18: Linney and garden shop, tin school visible far right-hand corner, ca. 1927, courtesy Les Hunter.

Palmer remembers the Cornford Dairy in Telscombe Cliffs, where her father worked seven days a week: They worked very hard in those days. Mrs. Cornford used to make the ice cream – the best ice cream you’d ever tasted and she would never tell anybody what and how she did it. It used to be our Sunday treat; he always used to bring us a tub of ice cream home, because we didn’t have deep freezers to keep it in those days.

Her mother would herself have liked to return to work after her daughter’s birth, but Palmer explains that, according to the mores of the time, ‘if your wife went to work that was degrading’. She remembers a host of independently run shops, such as several butchers and two bakers and greengrocers. There were many clubs, such as The Bowling Club and Mansfield’s Hardware Stores, Tea Rooms, the Castle Hotel, ‘well known for good food’ and a sweet shop. Hunter lived next to Ernie Facks, who was Peacehaven’s dustman and was also responsible for cleaning the cesspits and drainage, initially with horse and cart and later by lorry, ‘He used to go round and also do the rubbish collection; the pit was just as you come into Peacehaven, down towards the cliffs on the left hand side.’

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Lanham remembers pressing his face against the window of an asbestos-clad building to watch copies of the Peacehaven Gazette, run by Felix Powell, being ejected from the machine in 1934. By 1942, when Les Hunter played in the building as a child, it had become derelict. Hunter recalls his maternal grandfather putting letters on the back of the South Coast bus to make the final posting in Brighton. The Southdown 12A passed once or twice an hour between nine and two, and less frequently in the afternoon and evening. There were no bus stops for the first two decades and ‘you’d just put your hand out like this and the bus would stop anywhere, as kids we used to do that, later on they had bus stops’. Palmer recalls the community spirit on the bus: You see, you used to get on the bus, go to Newhaven or into Brighton, that was a great treat. You virtually knew everyone on the bus. You knew all the families, you knew everybody. I suppose it lost the friendship, really because it has so many people. Of course we have got plenty of outsiders come.

Rurality retained during the 1930s and 1940s References to rurality and the Estate’s prior use as sheep grazing land continued to appear in the accounts of several interviewees. In the late 1930s, the Palmers moved from a flat above the original Cornford Dairy to a new bungalow on Southdown Avenue, which the family loved and considered a great improvement. However, it did not meet with the approval of her father’s mother, who on her annual visits from Welwyn Garden City, would complain that it was ‘like living in a rabbit hutch’. She remembers her mother Cissie welcoming itinerant travellers into their home in the early 1940s: There used to be old tramps that used to go round and visit you. There was a lady whose name was Rosy that used to wander about, and a couple of men that used to just wander about. And my mother used to always expect them to come at a certain time and always made sure that she had something for them. They would call round and ask for some boiling water to make some tea – they were genuine people, you used to wait for them to come and then you used to worry that they were getting old and you didn’t see them one year and you’d think ‘oh what’s happened to them’.

Into the early 1940s, when Les Hunter was a young boy, ‘all through Peacehaven was gorse, in between houses, big acres, as kids we used to go birds nesting’ and he would also play near the old tollhouse and remembers seeing the original well nearby, although he was warned to stay away from it as it was considered very dangerous. He recalls his maternal grandmother inviting the local shepherd from Piddinghoe in for a cup of tea.

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Figure 7.19: Piddinghoe shepherd ca. 1926, courtesy Les Hunter.

Les Hunter shared a photograph of the shepherd with his flock, which was taken from within the garden of his grandparents, with fencing demarcating where private ownership met the countryside (see Fig.7.19).

War disturbed peace Pre-war narratives of life at Peacehaven, with memories of freedom, independence and community were understandably punctured by WWII. The interviewees born during the 1920s and 1930s vividly recall the war years as a defining threshold. The war transformed people’s lives everywhere and respondents’ experiences and memories of those difficult six years are still very strong and vivid. For example, Hunter, when describing changes to life on the Estate, specifically stated that ‘I am going into the war now’. Peacehaven became part of the frontline coastal defence with many troops stationed in the vicinity along with radar observation towers and gun emplacements along the cliff edge. War-related themes include the arrival of Canadian soldiers stationed on Gold Lane, occasional bombings nearby and on a few occasions in Peacehaven itself, as the Estate lay close to the flight path for German bombers destined for London and experiencing evacuation from Peacehaven. Everyone wished for peace and an end to war. Parks and her sister and brother were sent to Dorset by her parents for the duration of the war; her parents followed. They returned to Peacehaven twice

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a year, and her older sister eventually supported the war effort, working at the Grand Ocean Hotel in Saltdean during the early 1940s, when the hotel had turned into a college for fire officers. Reuben Lanham recalls that when the air raid bombing went on, the whole family ‘moved down from the upstairs and stayed downstairs for increased safety’. Les Hunter remembers that the beach was covered in barbed wire and mines were laid; the Bastion Pool was out of bounds. Parks remembers an ammunition boat getting blown up just outside Newhaven, which led to cracked walls in all the houses on Seaview Avenue, and also recounts the presence of Canadian soldiers and free Poles in Peacehaven, who she would see at a pub called the Silver Lady near Lureland Hall. As a boy during the war Hunter would glean animal feed and recycle paper: We used to help the war effort and get paper and fill our trolleys with paper and take that to Sankeys Hall and Lureland Hall. They would give you cake or something. And we used to go over to the Bluebell Woods and get acorns for the pigs sometimes.

During and after the war, Les Hunter kept pigeons in the shed at the back of his grandfather’s garden business along the South Coast Road, which by that point his grandfather had started to wind down. One of the respondents, Jill Hazel, who was born in Peacehaven in 1943, is the daughter of a stationed French Canadian soldier. Her grandmother had moved to Peacehaven in the early 1920s from New Malden and had baptized her new home on Piddinghoe Avenue Mon Repos (see Fig.7.20).

Figure 7.20: Mon Repos ca. 1925, courtesy Jill Hazel.

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In this photograph from about 1925, her grandmother can be seen resting in a deckchair outside her modest home; the outhouse is to the left, and there is some fencing to either side, demarcating the meadow that has not yet become a garden. Jill Hazel reflected on her photographs ‘of the old bungalow in a field, nothing there at all. The bungalow looks so primitive. Now quite different.’ Remarkably, Jill’s brother, Ivor Jerome (Joey), who was ten years older, made a drawing of the bungalow during wartime, which shows the house from a similar angle a little further away (see Fig. 7.21a). Despite its modest size, the wild flowers, tall grasses and red roof give a welcoming impression, and make visible the affection Joey had for his first home. During the war, the family billeted soldiers, including some from France. In 2004, former soldier and wartime cartographer Maurice Chauvet published a picture book in which he recalled his joy of returning to Mon Repos, where he was billeted between 1943 and 1944 after each raid (see Fig.7.21b).211

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Figures 7.21 a+b: Drawing by Joey Rickerby ca. 1943, courtesy Jill Hazel; Drawing by Maurice Chauvet, courtesy Jill Hazel.

His drawing of the bungalow reveals a sideway view, depicting the sea and boats to one side; Joey on the bicycle to the left is coming to welcome ‘the hero of the day’. Jill Hazel’s family moved to Canada in 1945, but returned to Peacehaven in 1953 where she, her brother and mother settled into a purposebuilt bungalow on Piddinghoe Avenue.

211 Chauvet (1918–2010) was a member of the BFMC (Marines Batallion Commando) who on 6 June 1944 took part in the D-day landing, see Chauvet (2004).

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Peace and home-life in the immediate post-war years Rationing and a shortage of housing everywhere, including at Peacehaven, dominated the immediate post-war years. Development on the Estate had been dormant, and was slow to pick up again after the war due to a shortage of materials. Reuben Lanham recalls how difficult it was to build immediately after the war. When his grandfather died in 1946, the house he and his mother had lived in since 1927 had to be sold so the money could be divided among his grandfather’s three children. Reuben and his mother spent the first few months on the grounds in a caravan, while his uncle moved into the house in order to sell it: When the house got sold someone allowed us to park on his or her spare plot for a nominal amount, and then, when we got permission to build we moved the caravan to here at the back while [our house] was built.212

The double plot with 50 feet frontage had belonged to a Miss Bennett from Shoreham, for whom Reuben Lanham’s maternal aunt had worked as a housekeeper. An affluent woman, she had bought it in the early 1920s for £150 pounds, ‘when Peacehaven was being promoted as this grand new garden city by the sea she thought: oh nice I would like to live in Peacehaven’. The plot sat empty for more than two decades, when Miss Bennett sold it to Reuben Lanham’s mother and sister. For the first decade after the war, the Estate’s infrastructure changed very little.213 In 1945, at the age of twelve, Les Hunter delivered paraffin rounds across the Estate all the way to Piddinghoe, and recalls residents in North Peacehaven, along Valley Road and the Lookout, who had smallholdings, ‘there were a lot of goats, most of them kept goats’. Aside from the radio, the interviewees recalled limited home comforts. Margaret Palmer recounts that her family was one

212 It was a show caravan they had spotted in Telscombe Cliffs. Construction was completed in 1952 and Reuben Lanham and his mother named their house Bethany, based on a bible story. However, it being 1952, he explains that the Queen had just succeeded to the throne, and this was their play on words ‘Beth, we have tea’! Reuben would live in the house for 65 years, without making any substantial changes to it, and retaining most original features, until his death in January 2017. 213 As mentioned previously, in 1945, Chailey Rural District Council introduced a zoning system which sought to develop the disjointed Estate more systematically and suggested improvements to the South Coast Road and sewerage (Hardy & Ward, 2004, p.88). The 1947 Town and Country Planning Act made it possible to follow through on these priorities, although it would take another decade before they could be implemented in Peacehaven as the local council was overwhelmed by the scale of issues that the SCLRC’s lack of planning had engendered – particularly due to the number of unclaimed plots and unmade roads.

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of the first to have a television in Peacehaven. In common with hundreds of thousands of British people, they bought their first TV to watch the coronation: I think we had the television for the queen’s coronation, and I remember we had a day off school and all the ladies in the road came to watch this. It was like looking through a snowstorm, it was black and white and you could hardly see what it was. They were trying to see what her dress looked like, you know.

Many people were on the move in search of peaceful, healthier and quieter lives in the postwar years, and, in 1953, London saw an exodus of people following the Great Smog of 1952, in which nearly 4000 residents had died, and which had been experienced by Peter Seed when he was a little boy. Indeed, he recalled that one of his earliest memories, not influenced by a contemporary photograph, is of a London smog, when aged 3 or 4, he was in a pushchair. When Jill Hazel moved back to Peacehaven as a ten-year old, she looked for the nursery where her family used to get asparagus, flowers and fruit, but found it had been turned into a car park. But the flavour of a Wild West environment was still palpable to new arrivals. When Olive and Colin Martin moved down from Sutton in the spring of 1953, they were able to experience a part of the Estate that had not changed since its pioneer days. They bought a bungalow up on the Peacehaven Heights; an area between Peacehaven and Newhaven that was never developed on the scale which had originally been anticipated. The area is still reminiscent of what Peacehaven would have looked like in its first decades and with its unmade roads, mud tracks and houses interspersed here and there remains virtually unchanged today. The Martins lived in a chalet bungalow, Sunnyside, on Outlook Avenue, next door to a pig farm owned by the Dunnings. Martin had bought the house, as his brother Talbot already owned a place on the same road. Olive Martin recalled that ‘the road was not made up, and life was quiet up there. We had been newly married and had no furniture’. It was snowing, and they had not brought any food with them. ‘Luckily, Mrs. Jones’ shop was at the bend on the road to Newhaven, and they sold paraffin for oil stoves’. Views from their new home were beautiful and they were able to see across to Worthing, ‘Every window you looked out you got a view, Lewes from the back. You could see right over the golf links from the landing’. But it was hard to get out and about, as roads were muddy and the couple had no central heating: We had very hard winters up there. It was also so difficult with the washing. It was always so windy and it used to blow off the lines. We had the oldest gas stove you have ever seen. There was a boiler in the kitchen and an open fire in the lounge.

The roads in other parts of Peacehaven had also not improved much yet. In the early 1950s, the only tarmacked roads were Roderick Avenue and the South

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Coast Road, Lanham explained. Sunview Avenue, where he lived, was also still not made up: It was just like the rest of the roads in Peacehaven; it was just muddy tracks in winter. I remember soon after we came here, getting off the bus in the evening, and falling flat on my face in a puddle, it was awful. When a house was being reroofed, I went to get barrel load after barrel load of broken tiles and filled up the holes.

Haydn Williams returned to live in Peacehaven with his new wife, Rita, in 1958, after time away in Australia and also Brighton. He recalls that not that much had changed; life was still very basic: It was a little bit like the real old days, wasn’t it, like way out west or something: you used to get all these verandas outside shops and unmade roads, it was more like going out to America or the west [laughs]. And the doctor, who was next to us, used to have a jeep to get around, a four-wheel drive jeep because the roads were so bad.

Nostalgia and change: Disappearances, discontinuities and continuities This final section explores recollections that mediate changes witnessed over time, prompted by the question of what changes to the infrastructure respondents had noticed, and what continuities and discontinuities they can recall. Key points that were raised included the making up of most avenues and roads in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the arrival of main sewers, housing construction expanding in North and East Peacehaven, which frequently went hand in hand with the demolition of pioneer houses and original landmarks. Lanham witnessed the widening of the South Coast Road and the addition of pavements. He had childhood memories of it being more of ‘a grassy or gravely track and just the main carriageway. Only about 1960 were house numbers introduced when they made the roads up’. He recalled that on the Estate’s edges, especially around Valley Road, there were still some railway carriages that served as dwellings, but as land and garden ‘grabbing’ continued, many green areas were built on and open fields were lost to development. Hunter believes that into the 1950s, the town ‘was still a pioneering place. I think it went mad in the 60s when they built everywhere’. Compulsory land purchases and the construction of a mixture of private and social housing on the Annex Estate in North Peacehaven and beyond, and the opening of more schools led to the arrival of new residents, who were sometimes perceived to not hold the same values of community, resilience and self-reliance. All interviewees concurred that one of the most precious aspects lost was that of a community and pioneer spirit. The Williams believe that, ‘when they built all those houses and things at the back of the Meridian [and] we got a

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completely different group of people. The community went. It was split.’ Margaret Parks and Margaret Palmer concurred that they no longer recognize large parts of Peacehaven, as these have changed drastically. Spurred on by an earlier conversation we had, the Williams went on a drive to Phyllis Avenue, to look for the bungalow that Haydn was born in: At that time Haydn’s place was the last along the cliff top – we went there the other day and there were many bungalows. We had a little look there and we didn’t recognize it; there is a building there that has been modified, right next to the Anchor garage.

One of Hunter’s childhood homes, Wallflower, has been pulled down. Parks’ school, Peacehaven College, which later became Motley’s School of Dancing was also pulled down, as was the original Free Church building, which she attended for Sunday School. Palmer’s first kindergarten school at the corner of Mayfield Avenue, ‘where the flats are now’, was also pulled down a few years ago. She also described how her deceased husband, Jim, had demolished his own parents’ original bungalow on Edith Avenue in the 1980s, ‘he pulled it down, built a pair of bungalows on the site; it’s disgraceful’. Parks recounted that unlike her grandmother’s house, Peter Pan, Mayfield House still stands today, ‘they knocked down Peter Pan, it is now the car showrooms’. The story of houses having been pulled down over the past thirty years is a leitmotif that runs through many of the interviewees’ recollections and is the cause of real sadness. Margaret Palmer imagined with some trepidation what would happen if her parents could travel in time to the present to experience all the changes that have taken place across time: Our parents, even I at times, if you took me to the back and just put me somewhere, I wouldn’t know where I was. Our parents, if they came back, they wouldn’t know the place now. They wouldn’t recognize it at all. Because I mean the roads weren’t made up. They were gradually made up so that was good. But when they opened the land up at the back for building, it completely changed it, took away all the empty spaces, the green areas, now there are no empty spaces. There were building plots all over the place. Land was so cheap. It was lovely, so many green spaces. But now it is just all built on. It’s not Peacehaven anymore.

Narratives are inflected by the advancing age of the respondents, who grapple with the lack of control they have in being able to shape the town’s commercial agenda. Implicit in everyone’s analysis is the town’s perceived decline as well as the loss of an originally anticipated future based on a town with open spaces, smallholdings and detached homes with verandas, which at least partially, had reflected garden city principles. Thirty years on, respondents still feel bereft at the loss of the Hotel Peacehaven, and do not want more of the town to disappear. Most respondents see the destruction of the hotel in 1987 as the moment

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when ‘their Peacehaven’ died. In previous chapters I discussed the hotel’s promotion as a ‘palace of dreams’ and tracked how it became central to the Estate’s image. This was the place to hold family functions and bring guests for a Sunday roast; the function rooms, saloon bar, lounge and dining area provided social spaces where a sense of community and connection could develop and be reaffirmed.214 The hotel had such a strong foundation mythology invented for it during the early years of the Estate, which had been maintained for decades. The experience of losing the hotel would have been perceived on a symbolic and actual level, and continues to feed a sense of nostalgia among older residents who have lived memories of it.

Conclusion John Harrison and the Williams reflected on the need to remember and record stories from the early years and worry that in the future people will be forgotten and the past becomes erased. Harrison pondered that, ‘so many things gone on, but they are erased, you never know about it, unless you have got something like this’ [his grandfather’s documents]. Peacehaven’s history is deeply interwoven with the respondents’ own lives: the joys and tragedies experienced by their grandparents, parents, partners, children and grandchildren, friends, neighbours and colleagues. Photographs and objects relating to Peacehaven’s history which some respondents had kept for safe-keeping, enabled sharing stories relating to the town’s cultural legacies. Our work with personal, local and national timelines helped gain more clarity in how Peacehaven’s story intersects, overlaps and connects with wider narratives, rather than being an isolated case. The narratives of longing for bygone times when respondents were younger, which came up in most of our conversations, are understandable, as is a shared perception that the quality of life in the past was frequently perceived to have been better than the present. Respondents are very concerned that speculative developers have demolished too many landmarks that could have been saved; there is consensus that some of the surviving buildings ought to be saved and turned into community

214 Peacehaven Pioneer group member Barbara Martin was married at the Hotel in 1972, fifty years after the hotel opened. She recalls that her father had insisted the wedding needed to take place there as it was ‘the best place to hold a wedding’. Martin was recently given the only surviving fragment of the original 1922 stained glass saloon door, sporting the letters HP, by Brenda Troak.

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assets, including a museum. Looking back at Volk’s three marketing images, it is instructive that several had praised a perceived sense of community of the early decades. Certainly, the ideal of home life, private ownership and rugged individualism prevails. These are all qualities that were emphasized in particular by the Williams’ describing ‘real Peacehaveners’ as independent and self-sufficient. There was some consensus in respondents’ historical imagination that Peacehaven had been an adventure-filled place during the inception years and stories narrating difficulties with lack of infrastructure for example, were frequently reframed as having been beguiling, or at the very least perceived as something that had made respondents and their families stronger and had facilitated the creation of a community spirit. The character of these narratives (both visual and spoken) share some elements with settler and missionary narratives (Godby, 2009). Frequent references to wilderness, freedom, pioneers, construction (of churches, shops, houses, schools), fencing and staking (palpable in some of the discourses as well as in images shared) mirror the language, for example, of the American West, which asserts the imperial trope of ‘areas of free land’ that were taken on by breaking into the ‘frontier’ in order to create new settlements (Klein, 1997, p.14). As noted earlier, many of the narratives were inflected with nostalgia for the landmarks already lost and for the general instability of Peacehaven’s original pioneering traces, which endangers the survival of the town’s history of memory for future generations. As the interviewees meandered between past and present, there was a definitive sense that the quality of life on the Estate was better in the first half of the 20th century and narratives are tinged with a sense of longing. Mindful of the understandable tendency to be sentimental about the past, the stories shared by respondents cannot, of course, replace the process of critical, archival research. Rather, they offer insights and opportunities to understand how personal and anecdotal experiences are mediated across time and how these are remembered on an individual basis shaped by private experiences, disappointments and successes. At the same time, these narratives contain residues of some of the early marketing ideals which had promoted Peacehaven in similar ways and using comparable imagery to that mobilized to market new developments across the Empire and Dominions, such as in Canada and Australia. It is important to note that most of the thirteen respondents have developed an increased sense of pride that their memories were worthy of being recorded, and reflected on how their own trajectories interlink with the town’s development. This enhanced their confidence and resulted in some autoethnographic

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writing and poetry; several interviewees have also become actively involved in lobbying for the retention of early buildings and architectural landmarks. Peter Seed now sits on the Peacehaven and Telscombe Neighbourhood Development Plan Steering Group (PTNDP) formed in 2017 and together, we are determined to build on and use our connections and networks to try to influence the way Peacehaven’s past is thought about and how its future is shaped.

Chapter 8 Evoking Lureland: Site-marking and site-writing the pioneer bungalows of Peacehaven Introduction Previous chapters have acknowledged the locatedness and mobility of memory and its fragmentation into multiple traces. This chapter highlights the relationship between Regards Croisés as these interact and develop through the vehicle of the mnemonic imagination. In particular, I explore how the artistic process can facilitate the generation of new insights and knowledge about place and propose to read the town of Peacehaven itself as archive. This puts to work a practice-based and creative research approach that has informed my artistic practice for the last two decades.215 There is a long precedent of artists working with archival material and responding to specific locations. Nicky Bird, for example, is an artist whose key concern is the investigation of humans’ relationship to the past, and the values we give to it. She has made site-specific work with communities mainly in the North East of England, who have personal connections to particular archival materials. This includes her series ‘Travelling the archive’ (2016), where she worked with projections and banners. Photographers Mark Power and Amelia Shepherd have each explored particular aspects of Peacehaven’s history through documentary photography. Power created images meant to reflect a blurred vision of a shell-shocked veteran based in Peacehaven after the Great War (‘Peacehaven, Homes fit for Heroes’, 2013); Amelia Shepherd made portraits of contemporary residents in their own homes and combined these with archival objects they had lent her (‘Peacehaven in three parts’, Brighton Photo Fringe, 2013); Suzi Hopkins wrote the play ‘Peacehaven on Special Offer’, devised as an inclusive outdoor performance for The Dell (2010), which helped to activate the imaginative engagement of the audience with the town’s history. Hopkins played early promotional songs

215 See, for example, my exhibitions Retracing Heinrich Barth, Brunei Gallery, 2008; and Carlton Hill: the Children of Brighton’s Displaced Community, Jubilee Library, 2015, photographic exhibitions which were based on working with archival material. I recently wrote about the mobilization of the Carlton Hill photographic archive, for which I also created a site-specific art event, in Winckler, Chambon, Monford, 2017). See also Winckler, (2015) for a practice-based essay on the site-specific interventions discussed in this chapter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110734027-009

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(i.e. Come to Peacehaven) and shared a fictionalized account of one family’s arrival on the Estate in the early 1920s. As already stated, the Estate underwent dramatic changes right across the 20th century. A postcard view, taken by the photographer Hill in 1922, shows how the open gorse Downland was slowly beginning to be filled in by one and two-storey chalet bungalows (see Fig.8.1). The unmade road in the centre of the photograph is Victoria Avenue; of the fourteen bungalows visible here, many have since been demolished.

Figure 8.1: Peacehaven Bungalows postcard from 1922 Souvenir booklet, Hill, collection J.W.

Importantly, some of the landmarks that were part of the town’s initial vision are still visible, if only just, such as the double-fronted bungalow on Victoria Avenue, built in 1921, which can also be seen in the top left-hand part of Hill’s postcard.

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Figure 8.2: An original Pioneer bungalow on Victoria Avenue, 2015 photograph J.W.

In order to record surviving landmarks, I utilized two distinct photographic strategies that explore the intersections of place, memory and archive, vital in sustaining communities and, as Bastian argues, in sustaining ‘a sense of ourselves’ (2014, p.46). Using photography in a forensic, detective mode I have created a photographic record of early architectural Peacehaven landmarks, threatened by demolition.216 I show how I mapped traces of the town’s original vision and started to record these through documentary photographs. This visual approach explores the town as a multi-layered topos that still contains some of the pioneer bungalows that were built there in the early 1920s (see Fig.8.2). Traces that are, in some cases, only just still visible, or are concealed under accretions of subsequent modifications, are sought out, documented and recorded photographically to create a visual record for the future. This way of mapping traces through documentary photography was complemented by a second visual approach that took the shape of several commemorative, site-specific events. Lost landmarks were temporarily conjured through the projection of historical photographs onto bare chalk cliffs below the iconic

216 Since I started to systematically make photographs of original buildings in 2013, over thirty have been pulled down.

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Meridian Monument. This process reactivated these images for a contemporary audience and resulted in new, layered images emerging. The projections were in turn photographed to create new and permanent visual traces, again frozen in time; an approach I return to later in this chapter.

Reactivating archival estate agent photographs of pioneer bungalows from the 1950s The initial starting point for each of the chosen interventions was two-fold: In the Troak-Poplett collection I made a valuable discovery that sparked this aspect of the research. In addition to the Economic Homes booklets, which included photographs of model bungalows (see chapter 2), there was a small, A4 folder with plastic inserts that contained just over twenty small, black and white images of original Peacehaven bungalows (see Fig.8.3 a&b). These had all been taken in the 1950s by local estate agent Wagstaff at the point when these houses were up for sale.217

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Figures 8.3 a+b: Photograph 1 of 1930s house for sale through Wagstaff, 1950s, Troak-Poplett collection; Photograph 2 of 1930s house for sale through Wagstaff, 1950s, Troak-Poplett collection.

Wagstaff’s remarkable photographs depict a variety of residential bungalow types, built in the 1920s and early 1930s and which were modelled on designs from the Economic Homes booklets. Due to their stark neutrality and composition the two types of photographs resemble each other. Their new owners gave them evocative

217 As mentioned in the prologue, Wagstaff sold a new bungalow to my late great-aunt in 1968.

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names such as Samarkand, Meridian View, Seaford Lodge, Dene Hollow and Molnook; the signs visible in the photographs (also see chapter 2). There is a stark contrast between the initial optimism conveyed in the individual naming of the homes and the subsequent disregard of their cultural value, as most of them were demolished less than forty or fifty years after their construction, to make way for higher density redevelopment. As the land became more valuable than the bungalows that stood upon it, developers began subdividing plots and demolishing many of the original pioneer homes. There has been a steady transition from detached bungalows on double plots to more condensed semi-detached houses, blocks of flats and terraces, which has led to a significant densification within residential neighbourhoods, the loss of many gardens, trees and the generous spaces around and in between individual houses.

Reactivating Volk’s 1921–23 ‘Peacehaven Pedestrian’ column nearly 100 years onward through the practice of site-marking The practice-based methodology that this chapter records was further inspired by a monthly column called ‘Peacehaven Pedestrian’, which appeared in the Peacehaven Post (see chapter 3). The ‘pedestrian’ embodied the role of Estate flaneur and was pictured as a cartoon character drawn by Volk (see Fig.8.4).218 Like a modern day psychogeographer, this pedestrian walked across the new Estate, inspected construction sites and introduced new residents. The column frequently included photographs taken by Hill, of homes under construction that were based on designs from Economic Homes. Hill’s photographs articulated the vision of an imminent but also a more distant future. The pedestrian’s accounts of a growing Estate stand in contrast to Hill’s photographs, which captured only the odd, slightly forlorn looking bungalow dotted here and there across Downland. Despite their relative starkness, Hill’s images lure viewers from the real world they depict into a future world. Re-examining Volk’s Peacehaven Pedestrian column in the present makes it possible to re-experience the progress of construction and encounter some early residents through his eyes. The first article set the stage for the column’s confident tone, and immersed readers in the physicality of the Estate:

218 At The Keep, I found Volk’s obituary from January 1962. This revealed that between 1924 and 1955 Volk had worked for the West Sussex Gazette, where he wrote a regular column entitled ‘Brighton Searchlight’ under the name of Passant Regardant – or observant passer-by (see Appendix 2).

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Figure 8.4: Peacehaven Post, Vol 1, No 1 1921, p.22, Volk.

My pipe, my pouch, my stick and a box of matches [. . .] off we go. From the Estate Office, straight up Piddinghoe Avenue, in a few minutes I bear to the left, and reaching the uprising ground pass within hailing distance of Mr Sankey, busy about his extensive poultry farm, where at present he lives in an Army hut, whilst his permanent bungalow is being built. ‘Good morning Mr Sankey; how does the bungalow grow?’ ‘Oh, she’s getting quite a big girl now’, replies he with a chuckle. Crossing Telscombe Road I descend the little valley and step briskly up to the panoramic pinnacle known as the ‘Look-out,’ where a bracing breeze and a view of amazing splendour are Heaven’s free gifts to the seeker. (Vol 1, No 1, 1921, p.22)

Mr. Sankey’s bungalow, on Cripps Avenue also disappeared when development of North Peacehaven’s Annex area pressed ahead in the late 1970s and remaining smallholdings had to be relinquished under compulsory purchase orders. Nearly one hundred years after Volk’s perceiver set out to track the development of new homes, I returned to its columns and took from them the idea of perambulations through the avenues and roads of Peacehaven, reflecting specific places in the present, using the technique of site-marking and site-writing, as

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developed by Jane Rendell (2010, 2011).219 Rendell is motivated to understand the residues of particular buildings that are now lost in more complex ways. Her starting point was the chance discovery, in an abandoned cottage in the countryside, of a set of architectural photographs of modernist buildings, which had been taken shortly after the buildings’ completion. Rendell tracked these buildings across London, marking their original locations and noting that several had already been demolished, while others were in various stages of dereliction. In her site-writing practice, Rendell explored the emotive properties of these photographs in a self-reflective way and sought, where possible to find contextual information on the buildings’ inception and subsequent demise. She noticed that the found photographs, which she called evocations, were inscribed with the dual sense of newness and impending loss (Rendell, 2010). These practices of site-writing and site-marking through photography are new forms of ‘flanerie’. I contend that archival research on place is another form of flanerie, where the archivist/researcher becomes a memory-flaneur, navigating through documents, retracing their cultural origins. For Peacehaven, I adopted this dual role of flaneur in a playful way and on a much smaller scale, yet retaining the idea of attentive focus and immersion, and began to look for any original houses featured in Volk’s pedestrian/perceiver columns. Going on regular walks and meanderings through the town, crisscrossing and repeating routes, I sought out, tracked and compared houses and landmarks against original street plans, houses featured in the Economic Homes booklets, original blueprints and Wagstaff’s 1950s photographs. I would notice that, every few weeks, another house built during the early development phase had disappeared. It has been difficult to keep up with the speed of demolition. I site-marked houses by making contemporary documentary photographs of them to act as fixed markers, where and when I came across them, or site-wrote their absence where they had already been demolished and replaced. My own site-marking took the form of two distinct approaches. This initially involves mapping and visually recording what still remains and next, to write about loss and absence. In a second form of site-marking I temporarily made visible what has already been lost. In order to locate some of the original pioneer bungalows I drew on an original blueprint map of the estate from circa 1922, mentioned briefly in chapter 2, on which new and planned homes were marked up with red dots (see Fig.8.5). The map below reveals just how scattered across the entire estate the homes were. Also featured are landmarks such as

219 Janet Rendell discussed this technique during an Architecture Series talk I attended at the University of Brighton on 3 February 2015; see also Rendell (2010).

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tennis courts and a large public garden, centrally located north of the Promenade and a proposed pier at the end of Gladys Avenue, which never materialized. The Hotel Peacehaven is marked just to the edge of the map towards the left-hand bottom corner.

Figure 8.5: Detail of blueprint, ca. 1921. (for full print, see Figure 2.31, chapter 2) courtesy Troak-Poplett.

Archival preparation for walks included looking through early town directories, beginning with the 1923 town guide, which listed residents and businesses according to where they were located; e.g. Jevington boarding house, the Misses Saffery and Holloway, at Phyllis Avenue and Arundel Road. This is how I found this modest, one-bedroom bungalow, based on the Economic Homes Design No. 001 which survived road widening at Sutton Avenue in the 1970s, and still stands, virtually unmodified (see Fig.8.6).

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Figure 8.6: Pioneer home, based on model No 001, Sutton Avenue, 2014, photograph J.W.

Through doing this documentary work, I discovered that there had been earlier attempts to record landmarks at risk, for example, Guy Hetherington, a local resident, gave me access to a photo album that included images of houses about to be demolished between 1986 and 1989, including the Hotel Peacehaven and a bungalow on Phyllis Avenue based on model 001, which had been home to a Mrs Jenner until her death in 1986 (see Fig.8.7).220

220 Richard Oakeley, who runs Louvains organic nursery, also photographed pioneer bungalows in North Peacehaven during the 1980s, when the Annex area where he lives was developed. He drew floor plans and carefully recorded their locations in order to create a visual record before they would be demolished. His parents successfully fought off a compulsory purchase order, which secured the survival of the nursery (personal communication, 1 October 2018).

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Figure 8.7: Mrs Jenner’s bungalow, Phyllis Avenue, 1986, courtesy Guy Hetherington.

On my regular, systematic walks across town from 2013 onwards, I came across several houses that appeared to have been preserved in a sort of time capsule for decades, sometimes behind tall hedges or sat in an overgrown garden, or just up an unmade path. Here I introduce just four houses that have since been demolished, or that have been modified beyond recognition. In 2014, I saw an early 1930s house up for sale on Right Move, sat in a two acre clearing of mature woods; the design could have been inspired and adapted by No.24 in Economic Homes. I had never spotted this before, and it was only by looking at Google maps that I was able to establish where it was, entirely buried amongst the 1980s and 1990s developments of North Peacehaven and tucked away at the top of a narrow path off Stanley Road, just wide enough for a small car. It is now boxed in by other houses that have obliterated any sea views; for decades, its former owner let the trees grow all around it, resulting in its transformation from a substantial house standing out for miles in an elevated position, to a cottage lost in the woods. Sat on an original double plot, the scale of the double fronted bungalow, with two large bay windows, and the majestic garden indicated affluent former residents (see Fig.8.8).

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Figure 8.8: ‘Millard house’ Stanley Road, Heathy Brow area, 2015, photograph J.W.

I made an appointment through the estate agent to view the house. Once inside, I noticed that all of the original features (doors, windows, high ceilings, furniture) had been preserved. There were paintings everywhere, stacked against each other and hanging on every wall, including in the bathroom, kitchen and hallway, where I spotted original art works by Jean Cocteau and Leonard Rosoman. In the living room I saw a small memorial note to the former owner, Joan Millard, who had passed away in 2012. Subsequently I was able to establish that Joan Millard had lived at the house with her son and husband, the landscape painter and former principal of the Regent Street School of Art, Patrick Ferguson Millard, from the early 1950s onward. This helped explain the presence of the paintings. Only just still standing in 2017 was WATABREEZE, built in 1923; it has since been demolished and eight new houses have been built on the site. The doublefronted bungalow, an adaptation of Design 007, sat on a large plot at Roderick Avenue and Telscombe Road and had been boarded up awaiting demolition when I first site-marked it in 2015 (see Fig.8.9).

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Figure 8.9: WATABREEZE, built 1923, Telscombe Cliffs Way, 2015, J.W.

Returning in 2017 to make more photographs, I stood inside the plot making photographs and gathering film footage, where previously, a cluster of established trees had stood (see Fig.8.10).

Figure 8.10: Back view of WATABREEZE, 2017, photograph J.W.

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Figures 8.11 a+b: Sideview of WATABREEZE, 2017, J.W; Garage view WATABREEZE, J.W.

Leaning against the entrance to the house was an old hockey stick (see Fig.8.11a). Inside the garage I found a rusty bike left leaning against the wall (see Fig.8.11b). Walking further around the neighbourhood, I noticed that the original WATABREEZE sign is now adorning a 1980s house just around the corner (see Fig.8.12). I spoke to the owner, who told me that siblings from London had lived in WATABREEZE for decades, initially keeping it as a second home. Following the death of her brother, the sister had lived there on her own until a few years previously.

Figure 8.12: WATABREEZE sign reused on nearby house, photograph J.W.2017.

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Only a few minutes’ walk west on Telscombe Cliffs Way, I made some photographs of Downside Cottage, based on Design No 002, which had belonged to a member of the Wagstaff family, George Wagstaff, who passed away in 2014. Only just still standing in 2016, but since demolished and replaced by two new houses, I took photographs through the windows and also in the large back garden (see Fig.8.13 a&b).

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Figures 8.13 a+b: Downside Cottage lounge, 2016, J.W; Downside Cottage back 2016, photograph J.W.

Sat on a double plot and with a substantial original barn in its back garden, Downside Cottage had been a modest, two-bedroom bungalow without central heating, but with a large domestic coal bunker, it was situated next to Bob Copper’s original bungalow, which had been pulled down in the late 1990s. Also lost forever is Mr David Aubrey Atkinson’s home on Phyllis Avenue. I had come to call this the ‘Tree and Ivy House’. I have since learned that Mr Atkinson, who had worked as a headmaster of a Catholic school in London, was a historian and an expert on Sussex clay pipes. A freestanding, chalet bungalow, it was set on a double plot, and was completely covered in ivy, making it impossible to ascertain any architectural design features. The substantial garden was home to badgers and four large trees formed a canopy.

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Figure 8.14: ‘Treehouse’ – Mr Atkinson’s house, Phyllis Ave, 2013, photograph J.W.

Before its demolition in late 2013, I had photographed it several times (see Fig. 8.14). Planning permission for the construction of four semi-detached homes was given quickly, and all but one of the trees and the whole garden area disappeared as part of the new development (see Fig.8.15).

Figure 8.15: Treehouse cleared, 2014, photograph J.W.

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Figure 8.16: New semi-detached houses on the same plot, 2014, J.W.

Site-specific events: Activating memory and evoking what has become forever lost I now have my own collection of Peacehaven bungalow images and these have started to mirror Wagstaff’s as well as those taken by Hill and Parks, as so many of them have since been lost. Indeed, these different sets of photographs of original homes taken at different moments in history (the early 1920s, the 1950s, and from 2013 to the present) resonate with the aforementioned photographs of modernist houses which Rendell (2011) had discovered. Researching the fate of the buildings depicted in her found images, she realized that ‘due to [the photographs’] deteriorating material states, [the houses and photographs] all point towards their own disintegration – or endings, yet the buildings contained within the photographs are shown at the beginning of their lives’.221 Rendell pondered what it means to ‘turn back now and examine these ruins’ (ibid).

221 Rendell, 2011, n.p. http://www.janerendell.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/residues. pdf (Accessed 5 June 2016).

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Finding Wagstaff’s photographs of bungalows that are now lost in the TroakPoplett collection had also provoked a strong emotional response in me. Contrasted with the optimism of the Peacehaven Post’s pedestrian character, who had welcomed the homes’ construction, Wagstaff’s photographs mainly depicted humble one or two-bedroom houses, that are nowadays neglected, out of fashion and frequently derided. Because of the ongoing demolition of original homes in Peacehaven, these black and white photographs became the starting point for several contemporary site-specific interventions that activated memory and aimed to evoke Peacehaven’s pioneer vision. Responding to a creative impulse to reanimate the photographs, I decided to project digital images made from the archival photographs onto the cliffs at Peacehaven’s most symbolic spot and strategic geographical location: at the point where the Meridian line crosses the channel coast. I wanted to project the photographs directly onto the chalk cliffs, which had been a key feature in interwar marketing campaigns and had acted as a visual enticement to lure people to settle on the Estate. In May 2015, I started a series of tests, to work out how to best project archival photographs from the seashore, just below the Meridian Monument in order to merge these with the cliffs (see Fig.8.17).

Figure 8.17: Evoking Lureland 1, ‘Dene Hollow’ on the cliffs, 2015, J.W.

Using a digital slide projector and laptop perched onto a concrete sea defence, images were projected from a distance of 20 metres from the chalk face close to

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where the original Bastion Steps leading into a tidal sea swimming pool (both now gone) had been carved into the cliffs in 1921 as part of Peacehaven’s original development. Making use of the texture of the cliffs, which are in a continuous process of erosion, I wanted to create new multi-layered images merging the rough surface of chalk and Wagstaff’s photographs. This immersive experience made it possible to work with breaks and flint nodules along the cliff edges – which led to a fracturing of some of the projected images, which I documented. Dating back 65 million years to the Cretaceous period, the cliffs, with their rugged edges, crevices and interspersed by regular bands of flint nodules, acted as a backdrop and container (see Fig.8.18).

Figure 8.18: Evoking Lureland 2, 2015 J.W.

A temporary space was created in which the viewer was able to re-imagine lost structures. The images left fleeting traces on the chalk cliffs, and juxtaposed different temporalities, which were activated by the digital projector and disappeared again once the light cut out. Taken out of their normal context of circulation and viewing (e.g. in an estate office during the 1950s, or at Peacehaven library now) the projected archival photographs evoked the early history of Peacehaven and at the same time acted as a reminder of an earlier pre-development, pre-Bastion Steps era. One of the other features on this stretch of the Peacehaven shoreline are the

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giant ammonite fossils, which at low tide, and dependent on the drifting shingle, become visible. The repositioning of Wagstaff’s promotional 1950s photographs and their projection onto the cliffs transformed their original meaning; instead, these images now evoke feelings of nostalgia and curtailed future aspiration. I pondered what accidental viewers, looking at the images from either the beach itself, the undercliff promenade, the car park near the monument, or from nearby coasters and fishing vessels a few miles off the shore, might see and would make of the projections that had suddenly appeared on the cliffs. The projector light illuminated a passing jogger and spilled over the cliff top to merge with street lights and vehicle headlights, reflecting back off low clouds. The tangible effects of the projection merged with other light sources, the images embedding themselves into this temporary landscape. In turn, I encapsulated the projected images of Peacehaven’s past by making contemporary digital images of the actual projections. As night fell, and it got increasingly darker, the projected images stood out more and appeared almost solid against the cliffs, as the next figure illustrates (see Fig.8.19).

Figure 8.19: Evoking Lureland 3, 2015, J.W.

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Inclusive community celebration events during 2016–2017 on the undercliff path near the Meridian Monument Inspired by these trials, I put in a proposal to the Peacehaven Town Council to organize a site-specific event in April 2016 that would coincide with the centenary of the first advertising campaign that had promoted the proposed Estate. This alerted Peacehaven Council to the significance of the date and galvanized them into putting together a programme of which this event became a substantial feature. It further prompted the Council to create special centenary badges, depicting the Meridian Monument and cliff top view (see chapter 9). Promoted in the April 2016 Peacehaven Town Council Newsletter under the heading ‘Our story on the cliffs’, and with an image caption of ‘History projected’, the short feature announced the event as ‘a big occasion in the Peacehaven 100 centenary celebrations’ (see Fig.8.20).

Figure 8.20: Peacehaven Town Newsletter, 2016.

Together with sound designer, Ian Hockaday, we made a twenty-minute long projection piece that included archival imagery and a soundscape, which became a central feature of the event. The reason for devising a longer piece was that this made it possible to conjure up memories of residents and include other commercial, vernacular, amateur and professional images along with Wagstaff’s photographs in order to create a bricolage of perspectives for the audience and encourage imaginative associations. I also included sixty archival photographs taken by Parks and Hill, graphic images by Volk and some of the guide book and Peacehaven Post covers. The piece included ambient coastal

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sounds, archival Peacehaven film footage, taped oral history testimonies of the late Malcolm Troak and the late Margaret Parks (see chapter 7) recalling their respective childhoods, and songs with local associations.222 Members of the Peacehaven Pioneers community group joined us in the combined celebration of the centenary of the birth of the Estate, and the 80th anniversary of the Greenwich Meridian Monument. The outdoor event lasted just over an hour and the projection piece was looped twice to allow for the changing light to vary the impression caused by the dusk falling, which led to the cliffs being more visible during the first round, and the images themselves during the second. A professional AV technician, Nick Turnbull from Indigo Splash, provided a powerful professional projector and outdoor sound system. Although it was a very cold evening, the sky was bright and we experienced a beautiful sunset, followed by a full moon rising (see Fig.8.21).

Figure 8.21: Projection event, April 2016, photograph courtesy Richard Clayton.

222 I am grateful to Haydn Williams for sharing his father’s 1930s Peacehaven film footage and to Julius Grit for sharing his 2008 recording of Troak. The music, which included the songs ‘Now is the Hour’ and ‘A Song in Your Heart’ by Gracie Fields, ‘Pack up your troubles’ by the Powells, Vaughan Williams’ ‘Lark Ascending’, ‘Stony Broke in No Man’s Land’ by Frank Miller and the traditional ‘Sussex by the Sea’ song by William Ward-Higgs, was chosen for is local associations and potential to connect with the audience.

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Engaging the community through visual storytelling Artist and writer Suzanne Lacy devised a framework that is rooted in social and artistic engagements with communities and is based on her relational practice which nurtures collaborative meaning making and has the potential of adding value to the community’s knowledge base (Lacy 1996). Taking inspiration from Lacy’s work, this and the subsequent public events also sought to explore the potential of the art process as a civic act embedded within communities. I was interested in increasing audience engagement and exploring local responses to this immersive experience. Sarah Mills (2013), whose research approach I have already referred to in chapter 1, describes the process of participatory historical geography as a way of individuals and communities coming together to co-produce knowledge about place. I saw the site-specific events as invitations for audiences to partake in my own engagement with the Troak-Poplett collection. I was motivated to share and further develop knowledge in order to get younger generations and schools excited about Peacehaven’s history while, at the same time, providing a valuable reminiscence experience for older residents, that would help restore a sense of civic pride. I also sought to bring photographs and archival footage to a site near to where they had originally been made, but which itself was evocative and had its own geological history. Finally, I wanted to devise an event that, in addition to being an educational and original experience would succeed in livening up the underused Peacehaven undercliff path and clifftop promenade. Reflecting on the evening from an artistic perspective, the process of embedding archival images within a contemporary, yet itself eroding, fragile chalk landscape for a moment felt quite moving. The resulting photographs, taken using a very high film speed setting, acted as spaces for memory projection. The grainy texture of the photographs began to echo the rugged cliff surface. Whilst representing what has been lost, the photographs also sought to reinterpret the archival images in a new context. A space emerged within which lost landmarks of Peacehaven were made visible in the present. In excess of a hundred residents and visitors attended, including the mayor and deputy mayor of Hannover-Isernhagen, that Peacehaven is twinned with, and the deputy mayor of Whithernsea, the town on the North East end of the Greenwich Meridian Trail, as well as the Sheriff of Sussex, the Mayor of Peacehaven and its town clerk. The event was documented by many residents, visitors and friends, and I later discovered that images had been uploaded by spectators on various social media Facebook groups, including Peacehaven Gossip and Babs Clark’s Peacehaven Interest Group, and had been liked, commented on and shared by others (see Fig.8.22).

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Figure 8.22: Audience photograph, courtesy of Dora Carpenter Latiri, 2016.

Social media responses included liking the fact that the event had ‘put Peacehaven on the map, and the cliffs!’. One Facebook respondent noted their regret at not having known about the event, ‘gutted as my family goes right back 80 years in Peacehaven, my Nan is 95 yrs and her family was one of the first here’. An older resident who attended the event commented that the experience had felt like a ‘gift to the community’; another resident, and collector of local memorabilia, Mike Coleman, thanked us ‘for putting Peacehaven on the map’. A Lewes council employee commented that he will never look at Peacehaven in the same way again. Other comments included people enjoying the beauty of the faint and rugged appearance of the images during the first projection, and the darker images, transformed into solid shapes, with the cliffs receding into darkness, during the second projection. Audience participants also noted that they found the experience ‘moving and evocative’, especially since the experience of the images changed when getting close to the cliffs themselves (see Fig.8.23 & Fig.8.24).

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Figure 8.23: Projection – archival image courtesy John Angel, April 2016, J.W.

Figure 8.24: Projection – -archival photograph courtesy Haydn Williams, April 2016, J.W.

The Mayors appreciated seeing their towns’ logos projected side by side onto the cliffs and featured these in their respective newsletters and residents contacted the town clerk, noting that the experience had felt unique and like a ‘truly historical event’.

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Another resident wrote in to say she attends many Brighton Festival events and ‘honestly think your wonderful event was on a par to many visual art outdoor events I’ve seen over the years’. We were surprised and delighted by the wide range of positive audience responses. They showed a general appreciation of the creative processes drawn upon as part of the site-specific intervention.

Additional specific events at The Church of the Ascension and at The Evangelical Church during 2016–2017 More events took place inside local churches, where we placed large screens in front of the altar. The indoor projection events had been especially set up for residents with mobility issues, as some had been unable to make their way to the undercliff path. The first indoor event, held two weeks after the cliff projections, took place inside the town’s longest established church, the Church of the Ascension.223 When setting up we experimented with projections directly onto the wall – so that the images took up the whole space (see Fig.8.25). A host of visual motifs within the church and the sanctuary of the church building echoed and resonated with the projection piece material. There were handmade quilts and drawings on the walls made by parishioners who had worked with references to local landmarks such as the Meridian Monument and cliffs. There was still a bit of sunlight initially, which underscored the nostalgic appeal and original optimism conveyed by some of the archival photographs (see Fig.8.26).

223 See chapter 4. Although the original 1922 church was demolished and rebuilt in 1954, there are several sculptures and ornaments that have survived; the font was designed by the Ditchling Guild. In 2017, the church started selling off its original wooden pews on eBay, seemingly unconcerned by their cultural value.

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Figure 8.25: Church of the Ascension, site-specific event 2, Wagstaff image, May 2016 J.W.

Figure 8.26: Church of the Ascension, site-specific event 2, Gift House, May 2016, J.W.

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This screening was attended predominantly by older residents and a microphone was made available to the audience afterwards to recount their own stories. There was consensus amongst everyone that the demolition of the Hotel Peacehaven in 1987 had been a huge mistake. Several residents shared stories of remembering Peacehaven when there were more open fields and horses, when the Estate still had a more frontier atmosphere. There was agreement that it was valuable to explore both the cultural and social history of the town in creative ways. I was invited again in February 2017 by Peacehaven Council to share the projection piece at Peacehaven’s Evangelical Free Church, now to coincide with the centenary of the Estate’s name change, in 1917, to Peacehaven; more than 100 residents attended.224 Following speeches by the church elder, Mayor, and vicar, I spoke to highlight the three centenary dates of the town: 1916, 1917, and 1920. Each centenary event marked one of these milestones. We also initiated the idea to propagate seedlings to be sold to raise money for the Meridian Centre based Memory café, which meets once a week and offers a space for isolated residents with dementia to come together socially. Peacehaven residents are encouraged to plant rosemary seedlings in their front gardens as a visible sign of remembrance, linking to the town’s past (see Fig.8.27). We hope that the rosemary will grow for years to come so future generations will have these well-established shrubs to enjoy and remind them of the town’s WWI connection.225 At the church buffet that followed the talks, residents shared stories, inviting me to visit them and make photographs of buildings and locations they felt were of historical or cultural significance. This is how I came to visit long-term resident, Alec Philps on his large plot in North Peacehaven, where Canadian soldiers were stationed during WWII. The remaining traces corroborate stories of their stay in an army camp there.

224 The original church building was opened in 1922 but demolished in 2002. The modern church has retained some original furniture and has a substantial church archive. Before becoming a church, the building had been an accommodation hut for soldiers during WWI at nearby Seaford. My talk at the church prompted elder Jeff Collingworth to invite me back so he could share archival documents relating to the church’s early history, including the Evangelical Church Sunday school minute book, with a first entry from 1 January 1923 by then secretary Mary Wagstaff of the local Wagstaff family, on international bible readings and charitable work, as well as deeds, maps and correspondence, all stored in an original 1920s church safe. 225 The first rosemary plant was presented to the church elder Jeff Collingworth.

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Figure 8.27: April 2016 outdoor event showing projected postcard image by Volk, depicting the Rosemary Estate Office Volk, SCLRC postcard series, 1922. Photograph courtesy Dora Carpenter-Latiri, 2016.

Collective expressions of the mnemonic imagination Martha Langford shows that the creative activation of archival photographs can enable a process of ‘bringing visions of the past into the present’ by ‘expressing and activating [memories] in the process of making’ (2007, p.3). Projecting the film containing archival moving and still images onto the cliffs was particularly poignant as this way of working made it possible to acknowledge and combine different temporalities and to further reflect on the inherent spatiality and mutability of memory and place. Time is always layered, like the chalk face itself. Making connections between the geological time of the cliff face, flint and chalk landscape, and the historical time of the archival footage and photographs was powerful. The projections were performed as an encounter between the location,

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the material and the audience, accompanied by recordings of recounted memories and songs. The projections created a new presence and visual impact: the resulting colours of the projections revealed a non-specific time akin to the space where imagination and remembrance reside. The original archival images underwent a series of aesthetic transformations which most notably included their substantial enlargement. Moreover, I had dislodged them from various archival collections, folders and album pages and digitized them so that I could put them into a new visual relationship with the chalk cliffs. They were now shown in a public and collectively experienced space and experienced by large audiences. The imagination and its aesthetic manifestations stood in contrast to the original forms and historical functions of these images and the archival film footage: the projected image replaced the original photograph, images were experienced on a scale they had never been seen before, the black and white material took on the muted and subdued colours of the cliffs. The images’ content, which included Peacehaven landmarks, houses, people, now appeared projected onto a new backdrop, the cliffs, as opposed to being projected back onto the sites where the photographs had been originally made. Through the action of the mnemonic imagination, which functions as – and creates – a space between past and present, a space for remembrance emerged in front of us all. The audience had the freedom to imagine and evoke meanings and to move between them. Based on audience feedback, outlined earlier, these events were experienced as a performance, or a mise en scéne, and highlighted the importance and productive role of memory and imagination in accessing a past which has disappeared. The process of projecting archival photographs and film footage onto the surface of white cliffs at Peacehaven fostered critical engagement between past and present and invited contemporary residents to reimagine the lives of earlier inhabitants. This is made possible, as Keightley and Pickering explain, ‘through a productive engagement with the creative action of the mnemonic imagination’ (p.197). This ‘transforms the past into a resource for the ongoing relational constitution of ourselves as remembered and remembering subjects’. (p.197) Through these interventions the Troak-Poplett collection lives on and has become reanimated again as I contribute to the renewed circulation of the images. These events also support Graham Sullivan’s (2005) assertion that the artistic process is a valid form of generating knowledge. Sullivan explores how artistic and reflective art processes can act as a way of engaging with the work of reinterpretation and reconstitution of archival source materials. This may involve inscription, selection, editorial processes and communicating (or sharing) materials in new ways that transform the original object into something mediated by the

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artist. Through my own arts-based interventions, archival images were both drawn upon and activated as ‘visual sources of knowledge’ (Sullivan 2005, p.158). I sought to create new visual encounters that could help challenge previously held views of the past (Sullivan 2005, p.150). These events led to an exchange of cultural and historical knowledge through dialogue and fostered a deeper appreciation of the complex and rich early town narrative. Sullivan gives strong evidence on the transformative potential of practice-based research and argues that sharing artistic processes within communities fosters communication and collective interpretation. The local outdoor event, but equally the indoor events which followed, evidenced this, as each facilitated the emergence of new connections through intergenerational conversations and helped reimagine Peacehaven’s beginnings while equally highlighting what has already been lost. These events helped contribute to the development of a broader local knowledge base and the strengthening of shared collective memories. In addition to contributing to how Peacehaven is thought about in collective memory, each of the three events resulted in further information, such as new dates, event details and names being shared and added to an ever-growing community archive. Kathy Carbone highlights that artists working with archival records in public art settings always engage in processes that include drawing from, reusing, recontextualizing and adding to the meanings of the chosen archival records. Significantly, Carbone notes that, in doing so, the artists also contribute to ‘pluralizing the archive’ (2015, p.75). I identify with this goal, as each of the sitespecific art events which I organized, not only helped stimulate the memory and imagination of an attending public but importantly also enabled viewers to gain a deeper insight into Peacehaven’s history of memory and its Lureland origins by broadening their awareness of the existence and scale of archival material available for future interrogation and exploration. Clearly, this would have to be one of the outcomes of the Histoire Croisée methodology, which also seeks to add further meanings and embraces complexity. These commemorative events, where instances of the past were performed for a local audience, can be described as collective instants or expressions of the mnemonic imagination. Through imaginative artistic investment and the techniques of site-marking, site-writing and large-scale projections, Peacehaven’s multi-layered past and intercrossings were temporarily reanimated and made visible. This new knowledge went some way to contribute to an enhanced historical consciousness of audiences. As Keightley and Pickering note, ‘in actively concerted recollection [. . .] memory acts in productive tension with processes of imagining in bringing certain memories into meaningful presence within the present’ (2012, p.51). I hope that my creative contribution, through these interventions,

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in affecting an attending public, will have helped to integrate the past in the present in more meaningful ways.

Conclusion There are, of course, limitations to the practice-based approaches I utilized, as neither the documentation of original landmarks nor the public-facing events by themselves have the power to influence future town planning, nor do they secure the preservation of early buildings. Moreover, the approach raises a set of productive tensions, including the question of whether it will be possible to sustain an ongoing commitment to Peacehaven’s heritage preservation, given the prevailing commercial development forces at stake in the town and a constant need for new housing in the South East. While my commitment to engage with local communities has constantly opened new doors and opportunities, it has also involved making ethical and political decisions, and the careful management of expectations of local residents, the town council, and even the CPRE. Together with the Peacehaven Pioneer group I have sought to create a local Heritage Trail and to turn one of the original public houses, The Dewdrop, into a community asset. I was asked to join the newly formed Peacehaven and Telscombe Neighbourhood Development Plan Steering Group (PTNDP) and be a part of the Heritage, Environment and Design committee, for which I have devised an inventory of buildings that ought to be listed. This new surge in interest to salvage any surviving landmarks was only retriggered as part of the site-specific commemorations to emphasise the town’s history, which generated wider awareness and debates (see chapter 9). In isolation, my research can of course not change the precariousness of the town’s cultural heritage. However, it can contribute to a more historically situated understanding of Peacehaven. As part of this process, I sought to give residents a greater sense of a cohesive and common purpose in building community, which includes taking a deeper interest in the town’s past and caring for its future. This has been one of the primary purposes of setting up sitespecific art interventions. I wanted to share and give back some of the knowledge I gained and help reframe the way we think about Peacehaven’s complex history.

Chapter 9 Visions of Lureland survive as allegory Introduction Fabricating Lureland has tracked the inception and construction of Peacehaven during the interwar period. By locating and investigating early marketing visions, and exploring their visual themes, this book has highlighted that these frequently drew on pre-existing motifs and symbols. This final chapter tracks the itinerant journeys of some of the images that have travelled through time and into the present and reflects on different spatial constructions of the town through text and image-based rhetoric. I have chosen to focus on a number of historical perspectives predominately from the late 1960s into the 1970s, as this timeframe in particular marked a period of uncertainty that saw a major demographic transition, as many of the original pioneers reached retirement age and large numbers of new residents, including pensioners like my great-aunt, as well as young families, moved to Peacehaven. New waves of building activities that began to eat into hitherto undeveloped spaces across the Estate and especially in the area north of Arundel Road around Sutton Avenue, prompted intense symbolic and political battles to salvage the town’s damaged image and to rescue some of its founding features from demolition. These efforts continued into the 1980s, but were relatively unsuccessful, as the chapter shows in brief later. Elements of the original foundation mythology are still present in contemporary debates on how to improve the town’s image and infrastructure and the final part of this chapter shows that visions of Lureland continue to endure as allegory in the form of official and vernacular artefacts, rituals and perhaps most importantly, in the mnemonic imagination of some of the town’s residents and official representatives.

Looking at Peacehaven: John Betjeman and Tony Ray-Jones Two external perspectives from 1969 and 1970 respectively, can be seen to represent the predominant, opposing viewpoints on private sector housing that were in circulation in the national media at the time. They further illustrate that different opinions on Peacehaven have endured and these also continue to have corresponding imagery. In the first episode of the television series Bird’s Eye View, ‘The Englishman’s Home’ (1969), the eminent poet laureate Sir John Betjeman (1906–1984) gave a relatively positive appraisal of Peacehaven, celebrating https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110734027-010

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the independence that came with home ownership. In contrast, the leading journal Architectural Review adopted a different position, deploring the ‘thoughtless’ mass-design of housing produced by the private sector in its Manplan series (Manplan 8, AR Vol 147 No 883, September 1970, p.142). For number eight of this special series, photojournalist Tony Ray-Jones – already renowned for his committed social documentary work and interest in English cultural traditions – was commissioned to make all the photographs. Ray-Jones’ photographs of Peacehaven will be contrasted with Betjeman’s view further below. Originally transmitted on BBC 2 on 5 April 1969, ‘The Englishman’s Home’ was produced by Edward Mirzoeff; the script was written and narrated by Betjeman. Filmed entirely from a helicopter, the documentary focused on castles and large country houses, before switching to the socially minded visions of Clough-Ellis’ development at Portmeirion and the Lever Family’s Port Sunlight Workers’ Estate. In the documentary, Betjeman referenced the negative effects of industrialisation, but was also critical of recent high-rise and large-scale public-sector developments. Forty minutes into the travelogue, Peacehaven comes into view as it is approached by helicopter from the sea (see Fig.9.1).

Figure 9.1: Peacehaven view, screenshot from the BBC documentary, The Englishman’s Home, 1969.

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This has the visual effect of foregrounding its unusual clifftop location, and the cameraman skilfully panned across the whole townscape, ensuring a focus on the Meridian Monument first, before moving onto the interlocking grid system of roads and avenues lined with one-storey single bungalows. The footage reveals the continued existence, in 1969, of large open spaces and big gardens, with Downland forming a picturesque backdrop (see Fig.9.2).

Figure 9.2: Peacehaven view, screenshot from the BBC documentary The Englishman’s Home, 1969.

Betjeman’s account, presented in his distinctive deep and authoritative voice, punctuated by a jazz-inspired composition by Sir John Dankworth (1927–2010), created to accompany the film, praised the area’s fresh air and relative freedom that he associated with living there: New Anzac on Sea, just after the First World War. Eventually they called it Peacehaven. A garden suburb on the Sussex Coast. We were told to laugh at it in days gone by as a dreadful example of urban sprawl, of bungaloid and all that sort of thing. But there you could still call your home your own, plant your garden with the plants you chose. The Downland air is laced with a scent of sea. Your house detached. Others mayn’t like it but it is what you like. (40:43min.)

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It is worth speculating just who Betjeman wished to address in this polemic. Was the ‘we’ targeted at the television audience, town planners and architects, the Elite, and the ‘you’ at local Peacehaven residents and the common man and woman? Betjeman’s sense of temporality is equally interesting, as he refers to ‘days gone by’, but clearly the town’s image was still being mobilized and used as an example of how not to build, as the next example used here underscores. Betjeman’s perspective, citing a range of circulating and opposing public views, is contrasted with Ray-Jones’ photographs made for the aforementioned special issue on housing from the Manplan series (Architectural Review, Manplan 8 Vol 147 No 883, 1970, pp. 134–200). This publication ran across eight issues between September 1969 and September 1970, and was described by the series’ special editor, Tim Rock, as a humanist manifesto hoping to influence the next decade’s architecture (Carullo, 2018). The first issue dealt with the disillusionment of late 1960s architecture and town planning practices in Britain; it was followed by issues on religion, transport, health and welfare, industry, education and housing (Elwall, 2011). A renowned guest photographer was invited for each issue in order to create gritty experimental photographs using 35 mm cameras and wide angle and telephoto lenses that could provide visual critiques. Thought-provoking texts, presented on innovatively laid out pages, accompanied stark, black and white photographs, which had been printed in dark tones and gave an altogether sombre impression of Britain’s architectural practices. Ray-Jones was invited to make photographs for Manplan 8, and tasked to document the new high-rise estates in Leeds, Manchester and London (for example the Pepys Estate); he also travelled to the Sussex Coast to make photographs of Peacehaven.226 A total of 167 original prints made for Manplan 8 and bearing Ray-Jones’ stamp are in the RIBA archives.227 Of these, several have handwritten captions on the back and six are captioned as having been taken in Peacehaven (see Fig.9.3).228

226 Directing editors of the Architectural Review, which was owned by Hubert de Cronin Hastings, included Nikolaus Pevsner, who compiled a scathing precis on Peacehaven (see chapter 1). Sadly Ray-Jones died in March 1972, aged only 31; his Peacehaven Manplan photographs remain little known. 227 There are several print versions of some of the same images but no negatives. 228 Imaging services manager Jonathan Makepeace and I speculated that this is Ray-Jones’ own handwriting.

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Figure 9.3: Back of Tony Ray-Jones photograph, courtesy RIBA archives.

When going through the prints, I noticed that only two of the photographs are actually of Peacehaven; the other four are of nearby Saltdean and had been incorrectly labelled by Ray-Jones. When Manplan 8 was eventually published, only one of the photographs taken at Saltdean was included.229 Presented as a full bleed double spread, it was used to accompany a critique of speculative development (see Fig.9.4). The headline caption was as scathing of private development, as it was of public sector initiatives (1970, pp. 141–142). It was part of a longer text, which continued from the previous page, and that featured a photograph of the Dagenham Becontree Estate. The writer commented: The callous indifference to human individuality of these lugubrious blocks was no less forcibly stated in the thirties by the cruel, depersonalized, endless repetitious anonymity of Dagenham Becontree Estate – monuments to unthinking paternalism. Equally thoughtless has been the private sector’s capacity for lazy mass design posing as ‘popular’ choice – no less paternalistic in its arrogance of what people want.

229 The other five photographs made in Peacehaven and Saltdean have never been published.

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Figure 9.4: Manplan April 1970, Issue 8, Ray-Jones, courtesy RIBA archives.

Taken from the eastern edge of Saltdean and looking westward, Ray-Jones’ photograph makes all the houses appear compressed, none of the gardens can be made out, and even the connecting roads are not visible. As this photograph was taken from a vantage point and with a long lens looking directly across the valley and towards the North West, the overall effect is quite devastating. The photograph’s graininess and dark printing add to this negative impression. Although not mentioned directly, the fact that Ray-Jones had labelled the back of this photograph as having been taken in Peacehaven indicates how prevalent the town’s image was; how much it had come to stand in as an example of poor estate planning. The issue concluded that the main architectural challenge was to anticipate the housing that was needed in the future, and that it was in particular ‘in the field of low density that experimentation and success is most lacking’ (1970, p.199). The only two Peacehaven photographs contained in the RIBA archival vintage photographs portfolio box were also taken from an Eastern approach and a slightly raised vantage point (see Fig.9.5 a&b). The use of a 35 mm camera and long lens gives the same effect as Ray-Jones’ published photograph of Saltdean. All the houses are compressed and the Estate looks claustrophobic.

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Figures 9.5 a+b: Peacehaven view 1, Ray-Jones, 1970, courtesy RIBA archives; Peacehaven view 2, Ray-Jones, 1970, courtesy RIBA archives.

When viewed next to each other, these two grainy photographs begin to offer a panoramic view able to show a variety of different housing styles and buildings dating to the 1930s and into the late 1960s. The photograph on the left includes an H-Shape bungalow in the foreground. Ray-Jones captured an elderly lady in white coat opening her garage door; the photographer was surveying the townscape from the edges. Just visible in the photograph on the right is the large concrete square building of the Peacehaven Masonic Lodge. In the foreground an empty plot where building was about to begin can be clearly seen. Ray-Jones also captured a white caravan and boat parked in the driveway of a small 1930s bungalow. Neither the sea, clifftop view or Downland are visible, aside from a tiny bit of cliff to the far-right top corner of the photograph on the left. Indeed, the Downs appear to have been completely covered with houses. RayJones’ sober angles and viewpoints have the effect of compressing and condensing perspectives, making everything appear pushed together and into each other.

Local media and resident perspectives Both the aerial footage recorded for Betjeman’s documentary, looking at Peacehaven from above and connoting space and possibility, as well as Ray-Jones’ photographs, which, due to the effect of the telephoto lens, compress and condense perspectives and make the houses look claustrophobic, represent outsider perspectives and were taken from a substantial physical distance. Neither actually engaged with the town itself, the residents, everyday life and vernacular, lived experience. It is interesting that none of the residents I interviewed referred to either the documentary or Ray-Jones’ photographs and told me they had never seen these before. These perspectives are at odds with those that

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circulated amongst residents, such as, for example, this private photograph below taken during a Peacehaven Carnival procession in the late 1960s, of residents on horseback (see Fig.9.6). Of course, this also repeats a longstanding trope as it taps into the Wild West mythology which began to circulate in marketing imagery during the 1920s but was also adopted in the narratives of residents as chapter 7 indicated (i.e. in references to ‘Indian Country’ and ‘outback’).

Figure 9.6: Carnival, Courtesy Welch and Sons, Wasp Printers, Peacehaven.

In order to contrast national media representations with lived and local perspectives, which have been a central tenet in this book, the next section draws on a number of examples from local newspapers and guidebooks that emerged in the late 1960s and 1970s. This move to the local helps track the continuation of damaging outsider perspectives and these are contrasted with lived experiences. At local media level, narratives continued to draw on past imagery, rhetoric and even architectural landmarks, but for different ends. For example, in a feature article published in the Brighton and Hove Gazette in 1969, accompanied by a stark black and white photograph of a small section of one of the obelisks with a worn Peacehaven signboard, the writer made a point of saying this was not a picture from the ‘pioneering days’ and cited a suggestion that the two pairs of ‘concrete obelisks’ on the South Coast Road had ‘outstayed their welcome’ (1969, p.32). Another article, published in Brighton’s Evening Argus, had cited a local resident recalling county councillors having referred to roads in North Peacehaven as ‘the front-line trenches of World War I’ due to the amount of mud found (28 January 1966, p.19). The resident went on to call Firle Road, where she had lived for five years ‘a real battle ground’ due to mud and overflowing cesspits. Although the

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unmade roads had previously been the subject of some complaint during the interwar period and were frequently mentioned as part of conversations I had with older residents, they were at the same time remembered with some affection and laughter, inflected with a narrative of adventure and associated with a pioneering settler spirit of getting on with it. Features that had previously been praised, such as the obelisks, seen as gateways to a garden city estate, as well as the location’s rural character, were now described as having outstayed their welcome or a hindrance to progress. Leading up to compulsory purchases of smallholdings in North Peacehaven was a series of articles and discussions, culminating in the 1972 Peacehaven North Action Plan. An article in the Evening Argus described vast parts of open Downland as the ‘wasted wilderness to the North’ and argued that this constituted an ‘ideal development area’ (Evening Argus, 31 August 1973, p.25). Although debates acknowledged that not all residents wished to see change, the prevailing narrative was that of much needed progress and the argument that Peacehaven had to ‘catch up with modern times’ (ibid., p.25).230 Peacehaven’s public image continued to be the focus of discussion in an article published in the Brighton and Hove Gazette (BaHG), which purported to offer an objective ‘Profile of Peacehaven’ based on the views of local residents and the reporter, John Eccles, walking across ‘the streets of Peacehaven’ (see Fig.9.7). The double page spread included quotes and portraits of residents, such as the Youth Centre’s caretaker, who had moved there from Notting Hill and felt it was ‘paradise’ by comparison (BaHG, 30 June 1978, p.20). His comment echoes interwar marketing narratives which usually portrayed Peacehaven as a place that offered salvation from a smoke-filled London. A large photograph of the clifftop promenade and Meridian Monument and a smaller construction image highlighting the location of the emerging Meridian shopping centre, accompanied the feature. Although Eccles noted the near completion of this new town centre, his main feature article rehashed several of the stereotypes that had already circulated shortly after the Estate’s inception. This included Eccles making dismissive and derogatory comparisons to ‘Jamaican shanty town[s]’, when describing the look of the South Coast Road: They call it bungalow city [. . .] the planners’ nightmare [. . .] the ugliest place in England. But are people being fair to Peacehaven? The clifftop is crumbling in, heavy traffic rumbles through a High Street reminiscent of a Jamaican shanty town, side roads wander past rows of faded bungalows and turn into dirt tracks. Yes, people are fair to Peacehaven,

230 The same article mentioned the planned listing, by the Department of the Environment of a flint-built shepherd’s hut in North Peacehaven’s Heathy Brow area in conjunction with large scale development of the area. To date, this remains the only listed landmark in Peacehaven.

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it is a garden town that has become overgrown with weeds. But for all that, it is home to 12,000 people. And they can’t all be trying to get away. (BaHG, 30 June, 1978, p.20–21)

Eccles had also activated the garden city narrative, but his appraisal of a town overgrown with weeds was devastating. One of the most interesting features of the article was a hand drawn cartoon signed PEET which showed a suited man with glasses and holding a copy of the Gazette carrying the headline ‘Peacehaven Council to Borrow £100,000ʹ while looking up at a signpost pointing towards Peacehaven; only that the letters ‘Peace’ have been crossed out and replaced by ‘Lease’ (see Fig.9.8). A signpost reprise, this cartoon inadvertently reactivated the much earlier marketing cartoon image from 1921 by Gordon Volk, which had featured twelve signposts pointing towards a prosperous Peacehaven celebrating freehold ownership. Half a century later, PEET’s cartoon and the dreaded word Lease, which was placed opposite a letter to the editor commenting on the District Council’s rejection to lend Peacehaven £100,000 to pay for amenities such as sport and other leisure facilities, would have felt like a terrible mockery to residents old enough to remember the Peacehaven Post and the Estate’s original marketing programme.

Figure 9.7: Brighton and Hove Gazette, 30 June 1978, p.20–21. Collection J.W.

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Figure 9.8: Detail, Brighton and Hove Gazette, 30 June 1978, p.20, collection J.W.

Paul Thompsett, a letter writer, expressed his view that Lewes District Council was only taking council tax money from local residents but never providing any town improvements. He argued that he was only too aware that ‘Peacehaven has had a bad image to defend itself against’ and expressed worry that if no one was going to speak up for the ‘new Peacehaven, that so many people have spoken of for so long’ whatever happens will simply be ‘a bigger version of the old town’ (p.20). Throughout the decade, there were further local attempts, usually by residents and Peacehaven councillors themselves, to try to correct the town’s negative public image. A Peacehaven town guide published by East Sussex County Council in 1979 to celebrate the recent opening of the Meridian Centre, speculated what the town’s future would hold. Adopting an optimistic tone, the writer argued that a positive outcome of more building on the Estate could be the provision of shelter ‘for trees and shrubs’ which were being planted as part of a new landscape scheme for the new town centre and North Peacehaven. He concluded optimistically, ‘Perhaps, Charles Neville’s description will come to be – ‘The Garden City by the Sea’, (1979, n.p.). It is interesting to note that many of the narratives discussed throughout contain different temporalities, and that the production of space and its associated

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imagery shifts and mutates depending on the perspectives and interests of the stakeholders and commentators. Due to the malleability of the town’s perceived image, and a disconnect between its early vision and later appearance, each of the opinions expressed, for or against the town, could not help but tap into a rich visual and rhetorical vocabulary of key words and images. These verbal battles were accompanied by political ones. Most prominently and almost forgotten in the communicative memory of older residents, as well as in the cultural memory of the town itself, is the battle to save the Hotel Peacehaven from impending demolition during 1987. It is now little known that the hotel, and the colony of badgers living in the by then completely overgrown sunken gardens, became the central focus of a campaign by the newly formed Peacehaven Greenspace Association, whose inaugural meeting was attended by more than 85 people (Meridian Post, May/June 1987, p.1, see Fig.9.9).231 The editor of the Meridian Post expressed his amazement at the level of activism, including sit-ins and demonstrations, when planning permission was granted to pull down the Hotel. He marvelled at the response of local people which he felt had been both dramatic and surprising, and put to shame an old epithet of ‘apathy on sea’. Accompanied by a photograph of protesters holding up banners, the prescient author described the Hotel as ‘the most important historical building in Peacehaven’.232 As earlier chapters have already mentioned, the battle to save the Hotel and overgrown gardens was subsequently lost. Its disappearance seems to have cemented fast paced change and from that moment onward none of the original houses, landmarks, wildlife or remaining green spaces were safe from development.

231 The Meridian Post launched in Feb 1981 and ran up to six issues per year until its final issue in 1988. 232 An Argus Archive feature compiled by Bill Gardner in 2013 featured a photograph of the hotel just prior to its demolition. The photograph shows part of the hotel with the banner, ‘Save the Hotel and Wildlife’ stretching part of one side of the building (see Argus, 16 June, 2013).

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Figure 9.9: Meridian Post Vol 7, No 1, 1987.

Commemorations of the past within the fabric of the town and significance of the Meridian Monument As physical features dating to the interwar period disappeared from the townscape, so did some of the original visual metaphors that had been mobilized during the town’s inception. The surviving imagery of the town’s development across the last century is now as varied and fragmented as the town itself. Some of the dreams and desires unearthed in archival collections live on; some evocative imagery continues to circulate. Echoes to the town’s early years can be found in present-day naming practices of civic spaces, for example the Peacehaven Town Council named a meeting room after Charles Neville, others are named after Flora Robson and Gracie Fields. During the 1990s, the council named a new road in the Annex extension Bricky after the first Brick Works; there is also an Anzac and a Tollgate Close. Since 2014 Peacehaven has a new WWI memorial on parkland next to the Meridian Centre, where annual commemorations to remember the fallen Sussex soldiers take place and the past is evoked in an attempt to create new allegiances and communities based on shared interests. There are civic enactments of rituals, such as the lighting of the Sussex Beacon by Peacehaven’s Meridian Monument, which continues to be the town’s main focal point and signature landmark. The Monument replaced the Hotel Peacehaven

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on postcards and local town guide covers from at least 1964 onwards and until the 1980s, as it was better able to encapsulate the ideal of Peacehaven’s connectedness to major cities across the former Empire, thus acting to reinforce the town’s importance.233 As the town has always lacked a central area and clear public focal point, the Monument has acted as its stand-in for more than eighty years. Two postcards from the early 1960s used views of the iconic white cliffs, beach and Bastion Steps, and the Meridian Monument, all photographed on a sunny summer’s day, to promote the town. Each of the images included sets of well-dressed couples, with men in ties and shirt, and women in colourful bright dresses (see Fig.9.10 a&b).

Figures 9.10 a+b: Peacehaven Postcard, early 1960s, collection J.W; Peacehaven Postcard, early 1960s, collection J.W.

Upon close scrutiny, it becomes apparent that the image used for the bottom right of the first postcard has actually been cropped to conceal the three couples posing on the groyne at the bottom of the Bastion Steps, and who are the subject of a second postcard reproduced next to it. Both postcards project an idyllic vision of the Estate, with fashionable couples taking in the sublime views. These images bring back to mind earlier ones of the Meridian Monument inauguration and descriptions, in the Peacehaven Post, of a Robinson Crusoe style environment on the beach itself. As well as being the subject of local guidebook covers and postcards, the image of the Meridian Monument attained national circulation when it featured on a special issue centenary envelope in

233 During the 1990s guide covers returned to clifftop views with photographs taken from the beach and showing off the lower cliff walk. Only one cover image included a photograph of an original pylon on the main road. The Millennium cover featured leisure activities and the Meridian Monument photographed during the lighting of the Beacon, thus suggesting continuity and a hopeful future.

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1984 to mark 100 years of Greenwich Mean Time. The stamp itself showed the whole line as it crosses through Britain. The combined imagery of stamp, text, drawing and postmark made for a powerful symbolic statement of Peacehaven’s importance.

Symbolic landmarks and emblems that continue to be activated in the present The next section illuminates just how much stylized imagery of the Meridian Monument has endured into the present and continues to feature in Peacehaven’s official and vernacular fabric of everyday life in many different forms. For example, a crest which displays the Meridian Monument, was placed on all three surviving obelisks in 1977 to mark Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee. This displays the monument in the foreground, topped with a world globe, and shows the signature white cliffs, Channel and rolling green Downland. This symbolic gesture fused together two of the foundation landmarks, the white stone obelisks or pillars, and the Meridian Monument and further highlights the globe on top of the obelisks themselves, which were painted gold in 2016 by the then Mayor of Peacehaven, Robbie Robinson, as part of the centenary celebrations (see Fig.9.11).234

Figure 9.11: Photograph of one of three surviving town obelisks near SCR and Lincoln Avenue with Meridian emblem, J.W.

234 The winning design was created by Tideway’s School pupil Tara Bathe, and was cast by Le Forte in Newhaven (Chapman, 2006, p.119). The stylized design and Peacehaven scroll underneath the image are reminiscent of 1920s marketing material.

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Figure 9.12: Peacehaven & Telscombe Football Club badge, J.W.

Figure 9.13: Peacehaven Town Council Logo 2018, courtesy Peacehaven Town Council.

Most visibly, the image of white cliffs, open Downland, sea and Meridian Monument continue to live on the Peacehaven & Telscombe Football Club logo as well as the supporters’ club logo (see Fig.9.12). This appears to have been adopted at the same time as the Town Council Logo and is almost the same, with the main exception that the town logo has used a modernised relief version since the 1980s after originally adopting a logo in 1974 with the formation of Peacehaven Town Council (see Fig.9.13).

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Figure 9.14: Mayor wearing chain and patterned tie (detail) 2018, courtesy Peacehaven Town Council.

The town Mayor wears the original design as part of their regalia and even the green and black tie is patterned with the logo imprint (see Fig.9.14). The chain has the Meridian Monument embossed in twenty linking segments. A version of the town emblem was reproduced (representing sky, sea, Downland, cliffs and Monument) to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the town’s inception in 2016 and signals a return to the earlier icon created in 1977 (see Fig.9.15a). Importantly, this has retained the idea of Peacehaven set centrally. It is uncannily, and probably inadvertently, very similar to the original Peacehaven Post logo, adopted for the very first issue in 1921 (see Fig.9.15b) and to the first guidebook, issued in 1923 (see chapter 6).

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Figure 9.15 a+b: Peacehaven Town Council Centenary Badge, 2016; Peacehaven Post logo September 1921 – December 1923.

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Most importantly though is the fact that none of these representations have included any houses. These mythic views instead portray a naturalistic view of the area prior to its development. The view is reminiscent of Volk’s imagery of Peacehaven epitomized as a young woman, which had represented the birth of the town; the Monument and fountain have replaced her. Images of the Meridian Monument, cliffs, sea and Downland also continue to figure on vernacular objects that are embedded within the town’s everyday life, such as locally produced honey jars (Figure 9.16a), a children’s replica inside the local library (Figure 9.16b), a handmade patchwork banner which adorns the Church of the Ascension and painted gift cards by local artists. Peacehaven Heights Primary School and Nursery also adopted a similar logo showing white cliffs and green Downland when it opened in 2001.

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Figures 9.16 a+b: Sussex Honey Jar, photograph J.W; Monument replica in children’s area, Peacehaven Library, 2018, photograph J.W.

A colour postcard currently on sale at the Peacehaven Town Council’s visitor centre adopts the same vantage point of the Peacehaven Town Logo, but this photograph does show some of the houses located along the Promenade. There is an undeniable contradiction that despite the town’s early narrative having been constructed around it becoming a haven for home ownership, none of the public facing official town logos include any houses. It is possible to speculate that

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decades of bad press, resulting in the town being perceived negatively, have influenced the communicative memories of Peacehaven’s residents and council officials. This might have in turn had the unconscious effect of the continued evocation of a virgin landscape, largely devoid of any representations of the town itself. It is possible to speculate that with the loss of the Hotel Peacehaven, none of the other surviving buildings stood out sufficiently to provide a focus. The suppression of reality and historical facts, and the omission of references to the built Estate itself, indicates that people very possibly recognize that there are infrastructure problems. There is a general awareness within Peacehaven’s communicative memory that the town has suffered from decades of largely unplanned development and unsystematic land speculation. It is understandable that local institutions, clubs and the Town Council do not want to advertise or display this on commemorative and official emblems and have instead adopted the eternal symbols of creation: water, sky, earth, reflected in the colour choices. There is a complex interlinking of the endurance of various competing forces, in which mythology, the subconscious, repression, glorification and promotion compete and are at odds with each other. There is neither overt sentimentality, nor are there any preservation orders in place. One can only speculate how this might be affecting residents’ sense of identification with place (a point already raised in chapter 7). A key problem now is that most residents are either unaware of or uninterested in the Estate’s original garden city marketing ideals. On the contrary, whereas gardens were a valued asset during the interwar period, increasingly, front gardens now have been concreted over to make way for car parking, even back gardens are being removed as fashions change and a simpler style of gardens are favoured. There are however several substantial green spaces across the town; and the Peacehaven Horticultural Society puts on themed, monthly floral displays at the Meridian Centre. During visits to private gardens opened up to the public as part of charity fundraising events in support of local hospices, I explored some of the landscaped gardens, mainly in North Peacehaven, which have survived large-scale development, such as the acre long garden of a couple living in a 1920s bungalow, Shepherd’s Cottage. Longterm residents Babs and Cyril Schultz resisted compulsory purchase and now their well-established garden, filled with ornaments, two fountains and statues refracts and exceeds the ideal and aspirations of the Hotel Peacehaven Sunken Gardens (see Fig. 9.17). The space they have created is as close to making Peacehaven look like a real garden city as can be and resonates with Betjeman’s 1969 claim that at least residents here could ‘plant your garden with the plants you chose’.

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Figure 9.17: Shepherds Cottage, Open Garden in aid of St. Wilfried’s Hospice 2016, J.W.

Another location that has held on to garden city ideals is Louvain’s Organic Nursery, founded in 1969 in North Peacehaven. Here organic vegetables and compost, fruit trees, shrubs and plants are sold by owner Richard Oakley, in what feels and looks like a surviving remnant of an original smallholding (see Fig.9.18). Originally situated on a two-acre plot the site now also accommodates two new eco houses.

Figure 9.18: Louvain’s Nursery, 2016, J.W.

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There is still land for sale at Peacehaven, including original undeveloped plots. Home ownership, and a plot near sea and Downland, continues to be highly desirable (see Fig.9.19).

Figure 9.19: Wagstaff Estate Agent Window, 2015, J.W.

Scanning the pages of the Peacehaven Gossip social media Facebook page, the interwar tensions regarding the present and future of the town are still palpable today, with commentators referencing views that remind them of ‘paradise’ and others claiming developers had ‘lied’ about the anticipated qualities of the Estate. For example, in 2017, a Peacehaven Gossip contributor posted a photograph taken from the undercliff promenade of an evocative Peacehaven sunset with the caption, ‘Paradise revisited [. . .] Peacehaven at its best today’. In contrast, in February 2018 a contributor replied to a post of ‘What Will be seen in Peacehaven’ – one of Volk’s graphic images originally made for the Peacehaven Post in 1921 – with the comment ‘They lied’. This followed a reply by another contributor, who suggested that, ‘maybe someone should do an illustration of what IS seen in Peacehaven’. A truly optimistic and positive post came from a new resident, who used the Peacehaven Gossip Facebook page to post a photograph of Peacehaven and the cliffs, taken from the air with a Phantom 4 drone (thus mirroring Betjeman’s aerial views of Peacehaven from 1969 as well as the 1925 black and white aerial photographs, reproduced in chapters 2 & 7 (see Fig.9.20)). This was accompanied by the announcement ‘Beautiful Peacehaven soon to be our home’, which received close to 150 likes within less than a day and highlights that to some new residents, Peacehaven continues to appeal.

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Figure 9.20: Peacehaven Gossip Facebook Page, May 2018, screenshot J.W.

As previous chapters have shown, Peacehaven’s image has been complex from the start; and continues to be contested. Views expressed never seem to be indifferent; people either have affection for the town, or they strongly dislike it, depending on background and point of view. As Reuben Lanham had commented, Peacehaven is, and always has been, a hybrid space. For many veterans, former city dwellers and people resettling from various parts of the Empire, the new Estate represented a place where they could find a certain amount of autonomy, home ownership and space. The SCLRC’s building project provided housing, but of course this also made money for Neville and other speculative builders. The land itself, which had been valuable only in terms of providing grazing for sheep, has become a real commodity, especially given the ongoing housing crises and lack of starter homes in the South East of England. Sentimentality long left this process and any remnants of a more idealist, Utopian outlook were replaced by commercial and pragmatic ones. But, as Mary Delorme, writes, ‘those who chose to live there used hard-earned money to do so. Their decision and their admirable effort deserve respect’ (1987, 88). In Peacehaven, housing continues to remain comparatively affordable, and so allows for plurality of opportunity for the realisation of home ownership. After being in our family for 45 years, I left Martha’s

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bungalow in Phyllis Avenue in 2014 to move just a short distance across Telscombe Tye to another part of Neville’s Greater Peacehaven Estate in East Saltdean. This slightly elevated location allows more light and views out to sea and across the valley to Peacehaven and the rolling Downland stretching all the way to Beachy Head.

Future outlook Following a national trend, the newer housing in Peacehaven has seen a return to a scale of development whereby an increased number of units seem to be squeezed into diminishing footprints. The Housing Act of 1935 and subsequent legislative efforts sought to regulate minimum room sizes and mitigate against overcrowding. However, it has been noted by the Local Authority Building Control (LABC) amongst others, who have tracked the size of the average UK property, that the improvements to more generous room sizing, in particular in the 1960s and 1970s, began to reverse in the 1980s. This shift continues, leaving Britain with some of the smallest average square footage housing compared to the rest of Europe.235 Contrasted with models of economic homes promoted by the SCLRC (see chapter 2), a new development of sixteen semi-detached and terraced homes along the South Coast Road, which replaces a single bungalow that had stood on large grounds, appears crowded in comparison (see Fig.9.21).

Figure 9.21: Rightmove screenshot, March 2018, J.W.

235 See https://www.labc.co.uk/news/what-average-house-size-uk (last accessed 18 April, 2021).

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The idealized marketing imagery from 2018 also conveniently omits the traffic jams that build up daily on the main road that the site is next to, and which are now the subject of local community group meetings where air pollution is cited as a major health hazard. Along the South Coast Road, other private developers are replacing single storey bungalows with taller buildings containing flats; and the image below, taken in 2019, typifies this kind of development (see Fig.9.22).

Figure 9.22: South Coast Road near Sutton Avenue, 2019, J.W.

At the time of completing this book (in 2021), large-scale construction of new estates is underway in North East Peacehaven, where houses are being built on land previously used for agricultural purposes. The lack of a proper infrastructure and ongoing cliff erosion, that endangers existing houses near to the cliff edge and puts a blight on them, are other pressing issues in need of urgent attention. Many of these shortcomings are the result of unconsidered impositions on the landscape, which were influenced by financial factors, instead of taking into account the distinct chalk and Downland landscape. Any future planning will need to combine environmental, social and economic objectives. During a Peacehaven community talk on Flood and Coastal Risk Management in 2017, Tim Bartlett of Lewes District Council described the considerable burden ‘to the future’ if nothing is done in the next twenty years to prevent further coastal erosion.

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A recent town initiative has seen the creation of the aforementioned Peacehaven and Telscombe Neighbourhood Development Plan (PTNP) to develop a new thirty-year vision. This includes the consideration of remaining cultural heritage assets, ecological concerns, and the potential development of areas of the town that could be designated and saved as ‘bungalow districts’. Other parts of the town may have to be made available for higher density development, and for the redevelopment of a new town centre. The opposition to further expansion of Peacehaven to meet housing targets continues to echo discussions that took place in the interwar period. The garden city narrative is once again being evoked in national debates as a potential solution to the ongoing housing shortage, while the practice of actual garden grabbing continues, disguised in marketing language as ‘development opportunity’. The genuine need for more housing obviously has to be addressed, but there is a perception within Peacehaven that other locations within the County also ought to be sharing this responsibility, especially given the pressure on local facilities, transport and infrastructure as previously outlined. An opportunity to reflect on infrastructure questions and Peacehaven’s future prospects arose numerous times during the writing of this book. For example, I was invited to give an interview for a programme on Utopian interwar housing projects in Britain, called ‘Living the Dream’ made for the German national radio broadcaster Deutschlandfunk. I met journalist Ruth Rach on location for a tour of the Meridian Monument and undercliff promenade.236 In North Peacehaven, I showed Rach an area of unmade roads and smallholdings that has survived and most closely still resembles what the Estate would have looked like into the 1950s. We discussed the inherent tensions of most Utopian dreams: frequently attempts to actualize a vision end up destroying the dream itself. Rach and I discussed that the main appeal of Peacehaven has always been its coastline and Downland location; this has also been its contradiction: in the process of building the town, much of the landscape evoked as a selling point has been destroyed. We discussed the oddity of attempting to create a garden city by the sea eighty metres above the sea, but we agreed that the endeavour to sell a new way of life, although highly impractical, was deeply symbolic and succeeded by awakening people’s desires and longing. For a BBC South news feature on Peacehaven’s centenary I spoke to reporter Nathalie Graham on location next to the Meridian Monument about Peacehaven’s inadvertent role in the formation of the CPRE.237 This particular approach to 236 Gesichter Europas. Träume leben: Utopische Wohnprojekte in Grossbritannien, 2016 [radio] Deutschlandfunk. 26 November 2016. KW 47 11:00 producer Ruth Rach. 237 BBC South 20 October 2016 [news feature] BBC South, with Natalie Graham, Peacehaven Centenary news feature.

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memory and place is of course an established practice and there are guided walking tours through altered landscapes that re-enact or seek to preserve memories of the past.238 In addition to presenting at conferences, I also gave a talk on the SCLRC’s visual programme at the invitation of David Johnstone, Sussex director of the CPRE.239 This was attended by a large and diverse audience that included local historians Douglas d’Enno, Geoffrey Mead and Peacehaven Pioneer member Peter Seed, who all agreed to help answer questions. We discussed the potential of long term stewardship and how to preserve Peacehaven’s remaining green spaces, create more environmentally friendly housing, and most importantly ensure that greater care is taken to address ecological issues, for example through the introduction of communal car pods that could reduce the amount of traffic along the South Coast Road. This is very topical, as there are ongoing discussions on how the surrounding Downland can be saved and spared an access road that would run right through the South Downs National Park from Peacehaven to Lewes. The need for more housing in the South East continues to be at odds with the desire to preserve the countryside for future generations. With each public event or radio or television appearance I have been offered a platform to connect with new audiences whose image of Peacehaven frequently adjusts from a mainly negative to a more nuanced one. An important question to consider will be what lessons for future town construction can be gleaned from Peacehaven’s development. This is a topical question, particularly in light of the fact that town planning discourses have begun to re-embrace garden city ideas and principles (e.g. for Bicester near Oxford). Although the garden city ideal disappeared from debates on Peacehaven’s future in the post-war years, it is once again evoked in national debates and presented as a potential solution to the ongoing housing crisis. The opposition to further expansion of Peacehaven to meet housing targets continues to echo discussions which took place in the interwar years. The recent resurgence of interest in garden city ideals demonstrates the concept’s ongoing appeal.240 A radio programme with art historian Dan Cruickshank considered whether and how Howard’s ideals could be rebirthed.241 Katie Locke, advocate at the TCPLA for garden cities discussed a system of governance where people have a stake in where they live.

238 See, for example http://www.districtsix.co.za (Accessed 27 December 2017) and in particular the interactive exhibition, ‘No matter where we are, we are here’. The Toronto Ward Museum also hosts walking and talking tours of the city’s first and now demolished migrant neighbourhood. http://www.wardmuseum.ca/dishinguptoronto/ (Accessed 27 December 2017). 239 See,‘Fabricating Lureland: Shifting Perspectives of Peacehaven in the interwar years’ presentation, Shoreham Wordfest October 2017. 240 See, for example Ross & Cabanne’s Manifesto on garden cities for the 21st century (2014). 241 ‘Green cities: From bricks to mortars’ 17 October, 2016, BBC Radio 4.

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Locke notes that garden city principles are more relevant than ever – at a time when councils are struggling to pay for communal amenities. Acknowledging that needs are different today, the prominence of allotments and the return to smallholdings and organic farming signals the ongoing longing for self-sufficiency. The Community Land Trust endeavours to weave garden city principles into the urban fabric and seeks to create affordable and sustainable homes. I had an opportunity to correspond with Dennis Hardy, co-author with Colin Ward, of the aforementioned Arcadia for All (1984). Reflecting on whether a place like Peacehaven, despite mistakes made in its initial planning, could be rescued, I asked him for his thoughts on Peacehaven’s future development. Invited to comment on the Meridian Centre, completed in 1978 to give the town a central core, and which after only four decades is already considered to have failed, Hardy replied: It would have been hard, if not impossible, to have grafted on a heart long after the body was born. Colin and I rather expected that the heyday was already past and the pioneering spirit waning if not extinguished by then [1974, when the authors carried out their research]. Peacehaven was reviled from the start and was either misunderstood or opposed by the authorities. The residents loved it, of course, but there was never any guarantee that their successors would feel the same about it. (personal communication, 20 October, 2018)

Describing Peacehaven’s development as a ‘period piece’, Hardy’s reply confirms that the timeframe covered in this book was indeed the most important one. Hardy further noted that he and Ward had felt that: This kind of development belonged to the early twentieth century (mainly he interwar period) when people wanted to escape the smoke and grime of the city and when there were loopholes in the regulations. Soldiers who survived the trenches had no desire to go back to the living conditions they left behind in 1914. (personal communication, 20 October 2018)

Hardy concurred with me that perhaps one of the best outcomes for contemporary Peacehaven, given the pressures exerted on it to set aside remaining areas of land for further housing development, would be to look for ‘new models of self-help’ and for the council to be prepared to encourage at least some of this land for ‘self-build and community development’ usage (ibid, 2018). This would signal a return to one of the genuinely positive, original aims of the Estate, which was to create affordable homes. The instability of the town’s historical fabric and its precarious future are now mirrored by a new vulnerability faced by the Troak-Poplett collection. Its future at Peacehaven Library has recently been questioned as there are plans

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afoot to move the whole library to much smaller premises in 2022 due to financial pressures, as well as the pending demolition and reconfiguration of the whole Meridian Centre complex.242 At the start of 2021, two different proposals for the overhaul of the Meridian Centre retail area were published. One proposal was put together by HDD, the developers who have purchased the site; a second proposal was devised by the PTNDP. Consultations with local residents supported the implementation of a central high street concept, which had been absent from the early blueprint visions of the town. Both proposals suggest the demolition of the existing Meridian Centre; however the PTNDP envisages the retention of established trees and community areas, as well as the creation of new squares. The developer’s plan includes more sheltered housing, a care home, private town houses, flats and a new shopping area. It would be of value to any discussions on Peacehaven’s future development to explore and incorporate Richard Sennett’s (2018) work on how to revitalise problematic urban spaces and make them more malleable, open and communityfocused. His research highlights asymmetries between built environments and the needs of resident communities. Sennett is clear that aesthetics and beautification need not be the primary concerns. Rather, he is motivated by the desire to find new urban systems that are participatory, inviting and where public spaces can be co-produced and used for different activities throughout the day.243 However, Sennett’s proposition seems somewhat at odds with Peacehaven, where communal spaces appear to be less of a concern for the majority of the local population, although there is a very popular new public park, community orchard and public allotments. Mindy Thompson Fullilove’s work explores how urban spaces in need of restoration can be made more coherent again; how they can be harmonized and humanized (2020). She also considers how local communities can be engaged in visioning activities to develop new lines of connection. Her research investigating the ‘urban tissue’ and infrastructure issues in towns and cities worldwide could offer inspiration and ideas to think about some of Peacehaven’s infrastructure problems.

242 The late Brenda Troak, who donated the collection to Peacehaven Library in 2011, had wanted it to stay locally to ensure maximum accessibility by the town’s population. Now the collection is set to go to The Keep – a state of the art archive space between Brighton and Lewes, that is equipped to ensure its long-term preservation. 243 Based on my notes from Richard Sennett’s talk ‘Der Kampf um die Stadt’, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Democracy Lecture, 8.11.2018.

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Conclusion Reflecting on the different visual and spatial constructions of Peacehaven over the last century, and on how these were produced, framed and commemorated over time and space in various guises and forms across blueprints, original Estate maps, through to Volk’s graphic images for the Peacehaven Post, Hill’s professional photographs and Sims’ imaginary ideal of Lureland, mutating ideals and agendas emerged. Peacehaven’s image was cultivated through the Powells’ songs and across postcard views, guidebooks, town maps, Estate agent photographs, and vernacular and official archival imagery that each gave a semblance of stability and permanence. Changing visions and versions of place were tangible in some of the photographs found in residents’ family albums, as well as through Frank Parks’ documentary images and souvenir items such as the Goss chinaware. That the town’s contemporary logo is based on a construction taken from a past in which the coastline was untainted and devoid of residential and commercial development confirms that how a place is represented visually is still informed by imaginative desire. It is true that along the Sussex Coast, imagery of clifftops, seascapes and seagulls prevail on town signs (Chapman, 2006, p.7). But of course, images of the sea, white cliffs and green countryside have also encapsulated ideals of ‘Old England’, and the ‘homeland’ itself since at least the beginning of Britain’s imperial era (Williams, 1975, Lowenthal 2015). The evocation of these nationalist, pastoral symbols can be witnessed at Peacehaven in an exemplary way and taps into charged ideals and nostalgia for a past that is remembered with great sentimentality. This book has highlighted just how deeply images of white cliffs, as well as Downland, are linked to national identity. I have discussed how images of the South Downs were mobilized in both World Wars, with Downland having been depicted as being almost sacred and worth fighting and sacrificing for. In a more recent development, similar imagery of white cliffs was used by the Brexit campaign and Conservative press as a tool to promote nationalism and independence.244 This gives further weight to just how charged and prevalent this imagery continues to be in British cultural memory.245

244 See Daily Express Cover, 29 March 2018. The original photographer of this image, Justin Foulkes, subsequently objected to its use and publicized that it was digitally manipulated to make the cliffs look whiter. In his original photograph the cliffs were greener. (see The London Economic, 29 March 2018). 245 In 2021, Peacehaven itself is represented by a Labour MP, and Peacehaven Town Council Wards include two labour and two conservative leaders.

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Many of the promotional marketing images and narratives of the interwar period projected Peacehaven into a prosperous future, while also reflecting on how its genesis would be remembered. This photograph of mobile homes for sale on Peacehaven’s clifftop can perhaps stand in as a reminder of the original core Lureland vision (see Fig. 9.23). It captures, on the edge of England, a sense of longing for space, air, independence; a dream of a new life, full of possibility.

Figure 9.23: Motorhome Sale on The Dell, Peacehaven 2016, photograph J.W.

Hidden from view is the town itself, which is filled with skips, scaffolding and other signs of ongoing change and construction. Just below the horizon, the cross-channel ferry from Dieppe to Newhaven can be made out, reflecting the setting sun as it sails towards the harbour. What is palpable in this photograph and what the camper vans and ferry evoke, is the ideal of freedom. In Hill’s photographs of new homes on the Estate, published in the early 1920s, the front door was often wide open as if to invite prospective buyers inside; a similar invitation is offered by the open doors to these mobile homes. This book has foregrounded some of the complex histories, viewpoints and temporalities that can be explored through an engagement with archival material

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relating to Peacehaven’s inception. This has not been an exercise in nostalgia, but a way of broadening and extending Peacehaven’s narrative and its history of memory and the imagination. There is continuity as evocations of Lureland live on in the symbolic, distilled imagery that persists and circulates as allegory and interlinks with public and private associations of longing. The layered interdisciplinary approach adopted in this book combined in-depth archival research with oral histories and site-specific art interventions. It offers an innovative and transferable model for future place-based research seeking to contextualize and reactivate historical source material. This study has built on the concept of the mnemonic imagination, primarily as it relates to communicative and aesthetic experience. Crucially, I have suggested its inclusion within Histoire Croisée as a further category of analysis: it invites the consideration of intercrossings between memory and the imagination within communicative as well as cultural memory. As Keightley and Pickering (2012) have justly argued, memory and the imagination both help us to better understand the past, to explore the present and, through the productive role of the mnemonic imagination, to make plans for the future. This leads me to a guardedly optimistic conclusion. It was opportunities that original settlers had sought and hoped to find when they bought into the mythology of the Lureland vision. Perhaps over time, and through the vehicle of the town’s evolving Neighbourhood Plan, the Heritage, Environment and Design Committee, and the mobilization of residents, Peacehaven’s infrastructure can be revitalized and offer new perspectives for its growing contemporary population.

Primary archival material and archival sources Peacehaven magazines The Peacehaven Post Vol 1 Sept 1921–August 1922, edited by George Powell, SCLRC, 4, Vernon Place, London: William Cate Limited The Peacehaven Post Vol 2 Sept 1922–August 1923, edited by George Powell, SCLRC, 4, Vernon Place, London: William Cate Limited The Peacehaven Post Vol 3 September 1923–Dec 1923, edited by Gordon Volk, SCLRC, 4, Vernon Place, London: William Cate Limited The Downland Post Vol 1 Jan 1924–December 1924, SCLRC, edited by Gordon Volk 4, Vernon Place, London: William Cate Limited The Downland Post Vol 2 January 1925–December 1925, edited, from March 1925, by Frank Moore, SCLRC, 4, Vernon Place, London: William Cate Limited Downland: A Magazine of the Sussex Downs, Vol I 1926–1927, pp. 1–222, published by Frank Moore Eastfield Bramber Avenue Peacehaven Sussex, printed by King & Jarrett 67 Holland St Blackfriars SE1 Downland: A Magazine of the Sussex Downs Vol II 1927–1928, pp. 223–460 published by Frank Moore Eastfield Bramber Avenue Peacehaven Sussex, printed by Wright & Hoggard Minster Press Beverley The Downland Review: a monthly newspaper concerning the affairs of Saltdean, Telscombe Cliffs, Peacehaven and Rottingdean 1959–1960 Vol. 1, Nos 1–9, The Saltdean Estates Company

Newspapers The Peacehaven Post and Gazette 1930–1947 published by George Powell Peacehaven, Newhaven and South Coast Gazette 1924–1929 Peacehaven and South Coast Advertiser 1923–1924 The Peacehaven & South Coast Record 1925 Peacehaven Printing Works LTD, Glynn Road, Peacehaven Peacehaven and Newhaven Gazette 1925–1929

SCLRC promotional material South Coast Land Resort Co. 1920. Economic Homes No 1 Containing Seventy-Five Designs of Bungalow Type Houses SCLRC, 4 Vernon Place, London South Coast Land Resort Co. Economic Homes No 2 Containing Designs of Shop-Bungalows, Two-storied Houses and Garden Designs, 1922, SCLRC, 4 Vernon Place, London South Coast Land Resort Co. 1926 Peacehaven building materials auction manual

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110734027-011

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Primary archival material and archival sources

South Coast Land Resort Co. Brochure 1916, From the City to the Sea, 188 Gray’s Inn Road, London W.C., Troak-Poplett collection South Coast Land Resort Co ca. 1919 Peacehaven by the Sea, 4 Vernon Place, London

Estate maps South Coast Land Resort Co Blueprints (3) for buildings in Peacehaven 1923–1924 South Coast Land Resort Co Blueprint block and plot plans: various plans of Peacehaven Estate; Blakeney Heights Estate; Peacehaven Annexe Estate Ordnance Survey Maps 1954, 1958

Peacehaven guidebooks in chronological order (Troak-Poplett collection, Box 11) The Central Agency, 1923. The Peacehaven Handbook and Illustrated Guide with Directory, Smith F.W. Steyning Avenue, Peacehaven Newhaven and Peacehaven Guide 1923. London: Vickery Kyrle & Co Ltd South Coast Land Resort Co 1924. Peacehaven on the glorious South Downs facing the Open Sea The Central Agency, 1924. The Peacehaven Handbook and Illustrated Guide with Directory, Smith F.W., Steyning Avenue, Peacehaven Peacehaven Shopkeepers’ Association 1927. Peacehaven Guide Printed and published for the Peacehaven Shopkeeper's association by AE Mitchell Peacehaven Press Peacehaven Publicity Committee 1928. Peacehaven Alexander Ousley Ltd The Central Agency, 1930. The Peacehaven Handbook and Illustrated Guide with Directory, Smith F.W. Peacehaven Publicity Committee 1931. Peacehaven London: Ed. J. Burrow & Co Ltd, Publishers Cheltenham and 43, 45. 47 Kingsway, WC2 The New Centurion Publishing & Publicity Co. 1933. Peacehaven Golf Guide Official Handbook, Derby & Cheltenham The Central Agency, 1923. The Peacehaven Handbook and Illustrated Guide with Directory, Smith F.W., Steyning Avenue, Peacehaven Peacehaven Publicity Committee 1934. Peacehaven London: The Homeland Association Ltd, 37–38 Maiden Lane Covent Garden, WC2 Peacehaven Publicity Committee 1935. Peacehaven London: The Homeland Association Ltd, Wellington House, Wellington Street, WC2 Peacehaven Parish Council 1937. The Official Peacehaven Guide London: Malcolm Page Publicity Committee 1948. Peacehaven The Official Guide Cheltenham & London: Ed. J. Burrow & Co Ltd, Publishers

Primary archival material and archival sources

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Ephemera Wagstaff photographs. 1950s. Estate Agent. Royd House. Broadway Peacehaven, Troak-Poplett collection SCLRC Souvenir Programme 1936. King George Memorial

Peacehaven Estate advertisements in 1920s broadsheets and magazines The Wartime House 1923 & 1925. SCLRC Advertisement for Peacehaven Daily Mail July 1921 ‘Peacehaven, The Garden City by the Sea’ Popular Gardening 1922, Peacehaven: The Garden City by the Sea, p.iii.

Films Down by the Sea, 1925 [film]. Directed by Pathé Frères, UK. Available at: https://player.bfi.org. uk/free/film/watch-down-by-the-sea-1925-online [Accessed 12 April 2018] Bird’s Eye’s View: the Englishman’s home, 1969 [film]. Written and narrated by Sir John Betjeman, BBC production, UK. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/ p013ypx0/birds-eye-view-the-englishmans-home [Accessed 12 March 2018] This blessed Plot, This Other Eden, 1938, [film] CPRE, UK. Available at: https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=PWXBMM1cPRU [Accessed 3 February 2018]. Down the Meridian Line, 1996 [TV documentary] narrated by Alan Titchmarsh, Meridian Television, UK.

Collections The Society of Sussex Downsmen: Archive at The Keep, East Sussex County Council Tony Ray-Jones material, RIBA International Friendship League material at The British Library Campaign for the Protection of Rural England archive at Reading Museum of Rural Life Peacehaven by the Sea 1919 promotional guide, 4, Vernon Place, London at Newhaven Museum SCLRC minutes and correspondence, The National Archives, Kew

358

Secondary research material: Books, journal articles, webpages

Secondary research material: Books, journal articles, webpages Abercrombie, Patrick 1933. Town and Country Planning Oxford: Oxford University Press Abercrombie, Patrick 1926. The Preservation of Rural England London: Hodder and Stoughton Ltd Arscott, David 2008. A Tour Along the Sussex Coast Snake River Press Assmann, Aleida 2013. Das neue Unbehagen an der Erinnerungskultur. Munich: C.H.Beck Assmann, Aleida & Frevert Uwe (eds.) 1999. ‘Zwischen Geschichte und Gedächtnis’ in Geschichtsvergessenheit. Geschichtsversessenheit. Vom Umgang mit deutschen Vergangenheiten DVA Stuttgart Assmann, Aleida 2011. Cultural Memory and Western Civilization: Functions, Media, Archives Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars. Assmann, Aleida 1999. Erinnerungsräume. Formen und Wandlungen des Kulturellen Gedächtnisses. Munich: C.H.Beck Assmann, Aleida 2006. Der lange Schatten der Vergangenheit. Erinnerungskultur und Geschichtspolitik. Munich: C.H.Beck Assmann, Jan 2000 [1997.] Das kulturelle Gedächtnis Munich: Beck Auslander, Leora 2005. ‘Beyond Words’ American Historical Review, 110/4 October 2005 pp. 101–104 Bachelard, Gaston 1994 [1958]. The Poetics of Space Boston: Beacon Press Bal, M.; Crewe, J.; Spitzer, L. (eds.) 1999. Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present Dartmouth College Bailleul, Hélène 2010. Aborder le rapport à l’espace de vie dans sa dynamique : les représentations spatiales des habitants à l’épreuve des projets urbains’. Tours. Regards croisées sur les méthodes d'analyse urbaine : du quantitatif au qualitatif’, Séminaire, Calenda. Available at http://calenda.org/201371 Accessed 26 December 2015 Bailleul, Hélène, 2006. [conference paper] Comment les espaces en projet sont-ils habités par les individus. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Helene_Bailleul/publication/ 240476184-Espaces-habites-Espaces-Anticipes-Qualification-de-lespace.pdf [Accessed 10 May 2018] Bailleul, Hélène, 2004. Patrimoine et nouvelles identités urbaines, vers un processus de patrimonialisation gouverné localement Mémoire de DEA, laboratoire VST, CESA, Université François Rabelais, Tours Bakhtin, Mikhael 1981. ‘Forms of Time and Chronotype in the Novel’ in The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. Michael Holquist, Austin: University of Texas Press Barker, Paul 2009. The Freedoms of Suburbia London: Frances Lincoln Barker, Paul 1999 ‘This bungalow heaven, echoing with empire and Gracie Fields’, New Statesman 15 January 1999. [Accessed 14 October 2013] Barthes, Roland 1977. ‘The Rhetoric of the Image’ Image, Music, Text New York: Hill and Wang Barthes, R. [1980] 2000. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. New York: Hill and Wang Bastian, Jeannette A. & Alexander, Ben 2009. Community Archives: the Shaping of Memory Facet Publishing Bastian, Jeanette 2014. ‘Records, Memory and Space: Locating Archives in the Landscape’ Public History Review Vol 21 (2014), pp. 45–69 Bate, David 2007. The Archaeology of Photography: Rereading Michel Foucault and The Archaeology of Knowledge. After Image 35 No 3, Nov/Dec 2007, pp.3–7

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Barrett, T. 2006 (4thed). Criticizing Photographs: An Introduction to understanding images. New York: McGraw-Hill Battistini, Mathilde 2005. Symbols and Allegories in Art The J.Paul Getty Museum Guide to Imagery series, Los Angeles Beach, Rex (1926). The Miracle of Coral Gables, Currier & Harford, New York de Bear, Ashley & Archibald 1926. The Comic History of the Co-optimists. Sterne. Bell, Colin & Rose 1972 [1969] City Fathers. The Early History of Town Planning in Britain Middlesex: Pelican Bell, C.R. 1975 A History of East Sussex County Council Chichester: Phillimore & Co Becker, Udo 2005 [1992]. The Continuum Encyclopedia of Symbols, New York: Continuum Beckett, Arthur 1924 Fourth Edition [1909] The Spirit of the Downs London: Methuen & Co Ltd Bell, Anne Olivier 1982 [1980]. The diary of Virginia Woolf Vol III 1925–1930 Middlesex: Penguin Books Benjamin, Walter 1991 [1940]. Gesammelte Schriften 1–3 V.5.1 Edited by R. Tiedemann and H. Schweppenhäuser. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Benjamin, Walter 1972 [1940]. ‘A short history of Photography’ reproduced in Screen 1972, p.7 Benjamin, Walter 1999 [1970]. Illuminations, London: Pimlico Benjamin, Walter 1982. Das Passagenwerk, Gesammelte Schriften V.5.1 Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Bentley, Ian & Davis, Ian & Oliver, Paul 1994 [1981] Dunroamin: the Suburban Semi and its Enemies, London: Pimlico Random House Bernard, Stanley & Payne, Tony 2000. Peacehaven A Chronology Peacehaven: Paths Publications Bernhard, Stanley 2007. Before the Bungalows: How Peacehaven & Telscombe Cliffs came into existence Peacehaven Paths Publications Bernard, Stanley 2009. Peacehaven & Telscombe through Time Chalford: Amberley Publishing Bernhard, Stanley 2017. ‘Charlie Neville: A Man of Mystery’ Sussex Family Historian Vol 22, No 8, Dec 2017, p. 356–361 Bernhard, Stanley 2018. ‘Charlie Neville; A Man of Mystery’ Sussex Family Historian Vol 23, No 1, March 2018, p. 3–6 Bernard, Stanley 2018 A True History of the Two Nearly New Towns of Peacehaven and Telscombe, Country Books Black, Alistair 2016 [2014]. ‘An Information Management Tool for Dismantling Barriers. Early Multinational Corporations: The Staff Magazine in Britain Before World War I’ in Rayward Boyd, W. (ed) Information Beyond Borders: International Cultural and Intellectual Exchange in the Belle Epoque Vermont: Ashgate Bourdieu, Pierre & Boltanski, Castel, Chamboredon, Lagneau, Schnapper 1981[1965]. Eine illegitime Kunst. Die sozialen Gebrauchsweisen der Photographie. Frankfurt: Europäische Verlagsanstalt Booth, Charles 1903. Life and Labour of the People in London, New York: Macmillan Boym, Svetlana (2001 1st edition). The Future of Nostalgia. Basic Books, New York Boym, Svetlana (2002 2nd edition). The Future of Nostalgia. Basic Books, New York Brandon, Peter 1999. The South Downs, Chichester: Phillimore Brandon, Peter 2010 The Discovery of Sussex, 2010. Chichester: Phillimore Brewer, Ebenezer & Room, Adrian (Eds.) 2001. Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. Millenium edition. London: Cassell & Co Brinson, Charmian 2002. ‘Facing the Facts: Relations with the ‘Heimat’ in Greenville A. & Malet M. Changing Countries, London: Libris, pp.184–216

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Burgin, Victor 2001 [1977]. ‘Looking at Photographs’ in Alvarado, M; Buscombe E. and Collins R Representation and Photography Palgrave Burke, Gerald 1976. Townscapes Middlesex: Pelican Burt, R. A. 1986. British Battleships of World War One. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press Cadava, Eduardo & Nouzeilles, Gabriela 2013. The Itinerant Languages of Photography Princenton University, Yale University Press Carbone, Kathy 2015. ‘Artists in the Archive: An Exploratory Study of the Artist-in-Residence Program at the City of Portland Archives & Records Center’ Archivaria 79 The Journal of the Association of Canadian Archivists (Spring 2015), pp. 27–52 Calvino, Italo 2013 [1984]. Collection of Sand: Essays Penguin Modern Classics Carullo, Valeria 2018. Tony Ray-Jones and the Manplan Housing Survey The Journal of Architecture, Vol 23, No 1, pp. 168–183 Caves, Roger (ed) 2005. Encyclopedia of the City Oxon: Routledge Certeau, de Michel 1885. ‘L’espace de l’archive ou la perversion du temps’. L’Archive Traverses/36 Paris Chalfen, Richard 1987. Snapshot Versions of Life. Bowling Green State University Press Chambers, Deborah 2009. ‘Family as Place: Family Photograph Albums and the Domestication of Public and Private Space’ in Schwartz, Joan & Ryan James Picturing Place. Photography and the geographical imagination. London: I.B. Tauris Chambon, Adrienne, Irving Allan, Epstein Laura (eds), 1999. Reading Foucault for Social Work. New York: Columbia University Press Chapman, Bridget 2006. The Village Signs of Sussex Seaford: S.B. Publications Chatterton, Frederick (ed) 1932 3rd ed. Small houses and bungalows London: Country Life Chatterton, Frederick 1923. English Architecture at a Glance London: The Architectural Press Chatterton, Frederick 1926. Houses, Cottages and Bungalows: a selection of Representative Examples London: The Architectural Press Chauvet, Maurice 2004. It’s a long way to Normandy. Paris: Jean Picollec Chevalier Jean & Gheerbrant Alain 1982 [1969]. Dictionaire des Symboles Paris: Robert Laffont Claeys, Gregory 2011. Searching for Utopia: the history of an Idea. New York: Thames & Hudson Clare, G.E. and Ross, W. 1909. Ideal Homes for the People Chelmsford: Clark & Co Curry Timothy & Clarke Alfred 1977. Introducing Visual Sociology Kendall/Hunt Coleman, Simon & Elsner, John 1995. Pilgrimage London: British Museum Press Colberg, Jake, 2012. [online article] ‘Stabbing Westward: An analysis of John Gast’s American Progress’. Available at https://2012english120.wordpress.com/2012/11/30/ stabbing-westward-an-analysis-of-john-gasts-american-progress/ [Accessed 2 April 2018] Collier, J. 1967. Visual Anthropology: Photography as Research Method. University of New Mexico Colquhoun, Alice & Edward 2013. Hollywood by Sea. A pictorial chronicle of Bungalow Town Shoreham-by-Sea, Shoreham (self-published) Comay, Rebecca 2002. Lost in the Archives. Toronto: Alphabet City Connerton, Paul 1989. How Societies Remember Cambridge University Press Constantine, Stephen 1986. Buy & Build: The Advertising Posters of the Empire Marketing Board London: Public Record Office Coser, Lewis A. 1992. On Collective Memory University of Chicago Press Coverley Merlin 2010. Psychogeography, Harpenden: Pocket Essentials

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Appendix 1 Brief Peacehaven timeline overview 1880s Shepherd’s Cot built in the Heathy Brow area (now North Peacehaven); received listed building status in 1974 and remains town’s only listed building 1898 Telscombe Cliffs Estate founded by the Cavendish Land Company 1910 Arthur Harrison buys nearly 40 acres of land from Harper-Bond at Friars Bay 1911 Friars Bay Smallholding Cooperative Colony (later renamed and marketed as Cliff Park Estate) founded by Arthur Harrison. Four houses, workshops and stables built there between 1911–1914 22 Dec 1915 Cavendish Land Co LTD conveyed to CWN land in the Parish of Piddinghoe north & south of main road (415 acres). Cavendish had previously acquired this land from the Marquis of Abergavenny 28 Jan 1916 CWN pays £3,200 to Cavendish Land Co. Ltd. for land in the Parish of Piddinghoe north & south of the SCR Jan 1916: Advertising campaigns in major national papers run as a naming competition 1916 New Anzac on Sea founded (based on competition), four pylons built along South Coast Road and marketing booklets launched; Peacehaven Estate Office erected on South Coast Road (later the Rosemary Tea Gardens) 1917 South Coast Land Resort Company incorporated 1917 Name changed to Peacehaven: the garden city by the sea in February 1917–1919 Sussex War Agricultural Committee farmed land as part of war effort 1919 SCLRC relaunches marketing material 1920 Building work begins on Peacehaven Estate, first houses erected on Seaview Avenue and Optima Stores becomes first ‘garden city shop’; both photographed by Frank Parks, launch of first Economic Homes booklet 1921 First Estate Office becomes Rosemary Tea Gardens (building demolished in the 1960s) 1921 Launch of Peacehaven Post magazine in September 1921 with photographs by Hill, graphic images by Volk, features by Sims and Powells – ran September 1921 – December 1923 1921 Information and plan for proposed Peacehaven Bungalow Hotel given in October (Peacehaven Post, Vol 1, No 2, p.47) 1921 ‘First 100.000 bricks being made at the new Western brickyard, Eastern yard has 25,000 bricks at present in the kilns’ (Peacehaven Post, Vol 1, No 2, p.47) 1921 ‘Over sixty houses now under construction by the company’ (Peacehaven Post, Vol 1, No 2, p.47) 1921 Creation of Bastion Steps begins in October (Peacehaven Post, Vol 1, No 2, p.47) 1921 Peacehaven postcard souvenir set launched (illustrations by Volk) 1921 Flora Robson moves to Peacehaven with her parents and siblings 1921 The Nevilles move into their new home, Tinkerbell on Peacehaven’s Promenade 1921 Peacehaven Electric Light and Power Company 1921 Felix and George Powell moved to Peacehaven; ‘Come to Peacehaven’ song published in Peacehaven Post (Vol 1, No 1) 1922 Hotel Peacehaven opened 10 October 1922 First brick bungalows built (using tin and asbestos) 1922 Peacehaven Water Company set up https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110734027-012

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1922 Philharmonic and Dramatic Society founded (directors: Powell brothers) 1922 The Castle restaurant opened in November 1922 Second Estate Office built across from first office on South Coast Road 1922 299 houses constructed, Brighton, Hove & District Regional Planning Scheme Report Table IV (1932, p.68) 1923 270 houses constructed Brighton, Hove & District Regional Planning Scheme Report Table IV, (1932, p.68) 1923 Lureland Dancehall opens on Phyllis Avenue 1923 Greater Peacehaven project introduced by SCLRC with extension of boundaries westwards to include the new Estates of Saltdean and Rottingdean Heights, and eastward towards Newhaven to include Friars Bay Estate 1923 First directory and illustrated Peacehaven town guide published by F.W. Smith, which listed Peacehaven Tradesmen’s Association, two doctors, a trained nurse, four butchers, two dairy farms, a chemist and a pharmacist at Peacehaven, three private tennis clubs, five restaurants, nine tearooms, three estate agents 1923 Peacehaven Football Club and Peacehaven Residents Association founded 1923 Kia-ora (be well in Maori) built on South Coast Road; Dew Drop chalet bungalow built on Steyning Avenue; Pavilion theatre and cinema completed on South Coast Road 1923 Peacehaven Women’s Institute founded 1923 Society of Sussex Downsmen founded by Robert Thurston Hopkins & Captain Bately. Gordon Volk, Charles and Dorothy Neville, Pizzey listed as early members 1923 22 builders worked on the Estate 1923 Local conflicts publicly debated (Peacehaven and South Coast Advertiser, ‘Public Interest, Public control’ Agitation see 12 October, 1923) 1924 Downland Post replaces Peacehaven Post in January 1924 1924 A third SCLRC office opens on Phyllis Avenue at corner with SCR (June 1924, Downland Post, p. 187) 1924 Gracie Fields has large manor house on Telscombe Cliffs Way built for her parents 1924 Flora Robson performs at the Rosemary Tea Gardens together with the Powells 1924 Road widening at Peacehaven: county council accepts Company’s request to widen South Coast Road (Downland Post, 1 June, 1924, p.182) 1924 Friars Bay Estate further developed by builder Wally Powell (not related to Powell brothers) after Powell bought land off Harrison 1925 Tin school built (first public school in Peacehaven) 1925 Down by the Sea promotional film with Hilda Bayley 1925 First Peacehaven councillor elected to Newhaven Rural District Council 1926 SCLRC sells off its Peacehaven Estate building materials in April; the Nevilles moved to 40, Dean Court Road in Rottingdean around this time 1926 Formation of the Campaign to Protect Rural England 1926 Sussex County Magazine started by author Arthur Beckett in Dec 1926 (Downland having replaced Downland Post in October 1926; Beckett wrote The Spirit of the Downs, Impressions and Reminiscences of the Sussex Downs 1930, Sussex at War & Poems of Peace 1916) 1927 Gracie Fields buys second house in Peacehaven 1929 By the middle of 1929 the large promotional marketing campaigns had slowed down considerably and other developers and agents had moved into the town 1929 Extension of Marine Parade eastwards – this produced the motor road on top of the cliffs to Rottingdean and eventually to Saltdean and Peacehaven

Appendix 1 Brief Peacehaven timeline overview

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1931 The International Friendship League (IFL) founded in North Peacehaven by Noel Ede, who had arrived on the Estate as an injured war veteran in 1920 to recover in a Rehabilitation Camp 1932 Astronomer and local resident, Commander Davenport, discovered that the town straddles the Meridian Line 1934 Work on the undercliff promenade from Brighton Marina to Saltdean began 1934 Temporary Meridian Monument structure built 1934 Chailey District Council takes over Peacehaven from Newhaven Rural District Council 1936 Permanent Prime Meridian Obelisk/King George V Memorial/Meridian Monument constructed 1936 Gracie Fields founded the Variety Artists Benevolent Fund Orphanage at Peacehaven 1936 Telscombe Cliffs school opened 1938 Graham Greene used Peacehaven for his dénouement in one of the final scenes of his novel Brighton Rock 1938 Tin school closes 1939–1945 WWII Free plots used to grow food; land army girls in Peacehaven; rationing cards. The onset of WWII put a temporary end to growth; all of the empty plots and many of the gardens were again requisitioned by the Ministry of Agriculture; Canadian soldiers stationed in North Peacehaven; at least 23 Peacehaven men die in active service 1946 The New Town Act, planning policies and new government regulations changed development patterns 1948 SCLRC dissolved 1950s Construction of council housing, construction picks up in the mid 1950s Late 1950s – early 1960s Roads made up, many avenues leading onto SCR closed 1960 Charles Neville died in Rottingdean 1960s & 1970s Building waves across Peacehaven 1976 Under cliff walk built along Peacehaven lower promenade 1972 Peacehaven North Action Plan: local Council embarked on the compulsory purchase of gardens, houses and remaining smallholdings, primarily in the Annex and Heathy Brow areas, in order to build more housing, much of the town’s ‘pioneer’ character vanished, introduction of closes 1978 Meridian Centre opened to give Estate ‘a heart’; new housing estates built in the Annex area 1980s Heathy Brow development, further compulsory purchases in North Peacehaven 1987 Demolition of Hotel Peacehaven 1990s Demolition of original homes continued; construction of higher density housing and flats across Peacehaven 2000 Millennium celebrations 2012 War memorial established in Meridian Park 2015 Centenary Park & Café opened 2016 Site specific events to commemorate founding of Estate 2017 Centenary badge (100 years since name change to Peacehaven)

Appendix 2 Brief biographies of SCLRC staff, Peacehaven Post editorial contributors, early publicists and notable residents K. Aubrey Allen

Early postcard view, ca. 1922, Friars Bay, Peacehaven & Bastion Steps by Allen. Also known as Allens P/HAVEN, this was Peacehaven’s earliest known photographic business. Aubrey Allen opened a photographic studio, The Downs Store, in North Peacehaven and also set up a business inside Cairo House, right on the corner of Cairo Avenue and the South Coast Road. He took photographs of the Hotel Peacehaven from the balcony of Cairo House. Allen turned many of his photographs into postcards, which he sold as real picture postcards. He worked in Peacehaven until at least the mid 1920s, after which there is no further information. For more on Allen, see http://www.sussexpostcards.info/publishers.php?PubID=3 (Accessed 1 January 2016).

Alfred Cripps

Peacehaven Post, Volume 1, No 10, June 1922, p.279, photograph by Hill.

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Alfred Cripps started working for Neville’s SCLRC very early on. He arrived on Peacehaven Estate on 25 May 1917 to help define the roads of the Estate, prior to any building work. He briefly cultivated the land for the East Sussex War Agricultural Committee and also worked for the Army Ordnance Department in Newhaven (see Peacehaven Post, Vol 1, No, p.279). He became the general works manager of the Peacehaven Estates and Works, supervisor of Road and Water Works (Peacehaven Post, p.108, Vol 1, No 4, December 1921). From 1921 onward, he lived with his daughter Winnie and wife at Millefleurs (see chapter 4 for a photograph, by Hill, shortly after their silver wedding). After the war Cripps helped resurvey the Estate and oversaw the arrival of the first consignment of building material. He supervised the creation of the brickworks, concrete making plant, waterworks, nurseries, Bastion Steps, and became a land agent for the Company. The Peacehaven Post claimed that Cripps ‘sold the first Peacehaven bungalow’. Cripps ran the Peacehaven Nurseries during the 1920s. The wife of his grandson, Margaret Tully, told me that he sold produce from his nurseries at Brighton Market (personal communication). In 1925 Cripps’ daughter Winnie married Jack Tully at Piddinghoe Church with a reception at Hotel Peacehaven; this formed the occasion of an illustrated feature article in the Downland Post.

Noel Ede (1885–1960)

Portrait of Noel Ede, photographer unknown; circa 1950s. J.W. collection. Ede was first featured in one of the ‘Peacehaven Pedestrian’ columns of the Peacehaven Post in November 1921 (Vol 1, No 3, p.75): ‘For fifteen years he held a position as surveyor under the London County Council [. . .] The war diverted him, as it did countless others, to another sphere of activities, and after four years in France, terminating in a spell in hospital, he was sent to the Telscombe Training Centre, where he was enabled to pursue his lifelong hobby of gardening’. He stayed on and purchased Acres 288 and 289 in North Peacehaven to set up a smallholding consisting of two wooden bungalows. He founded the I.F.L. in 1931. It appears that he left Peacehaven either before or after WWII and returned to London where he set up a new IFL centre called Peacehaven in 1950. He died in Surrey in 1960.

George Kay Green

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Gracie Fields (1898–1979)

Signed portrait, Gracie Fields, circa 1940s, & endorsement in 1927 Peacehaven Guide. Originally from Rochdale in Lancashire, Fields was an early endorser of Peacehaven. She first bought a house on The Promenade, then brought her parents and sister to Peacehaven in 1925 and bought a large house for them. She also set up a so-called orphanage, The Gracie Fields Home and Orphanage, in Peacehaven during the 1930s. This provided care and accommodation for the children of travelling artists and those in financial need. With eight children to start, this was able to house up to twenty-five children. With Vera Lynn she frequently performed for the children. She has written about her fondness for Peacehaven in Sing as we go (1960), her autobiography. She perceived her two homes there as enhancing her class status, as it also had tennis courts, which her mother had built. ‘I lived for the week-ends I could get down to Peacehaven. This was the fun of ‘going “oop”’ (1960, p.63). Her family stayed in Peacehaven and she continued to visit throughout her long career. She bequeathed her house, The Haven to become a care home in the mid 1970s.

George Kay Green

Green, Peacehaven Post, Vol 1, No 11, July 1922, p.309, photograph by Hill.

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Green was the supervising architect to the SCLRC from February 1921. He was featured in the Peacehaven Post’s July 1922 issue. This notes that Green originated from Edinburgh and had studied architecture at Edinburgh University and later at the Royal School of Art. He was a practicing architect from 1897 onward. A war veteran, he worked on commissions for Selfridges (see Vol 1, No 11, p.309), before joining Neville’s company, with whom he was involved until at least the late 1920s. He was ‘architect of the week’ in 2017 https://www.themodernhouse. com/journal/architect-of-the-week-george-kay-green/; his most famous Art Deco style building is Sloane Square Mansions.

Arthur Harrison

Harrison and his second wife, Florence, outside his Estate Agent’s, Shop and Downs Library business, late 1920s, courtesy John and Ann Harrison.

Harrison came from Leeds, Yorkshire in 1911 with his family (3 children, Winifred, Alwyn and Eric and his first wife, Lavinia) and founded the Friars Bay Estate Smallholders Colony (see chapter 2 & 7). His grandson, John Harrison recounts that his grandfather first came to look at the land in 1910 and proceeded to purchase it in 1911. He had been offered 23 acres of land, plus another 14 acres; later, he was offered a further another 100 acres, but declined. After Neville bought land and divided this into plots, Harrison decided to do the same. His initial plan had been to create a mixture of country houses, convalescence homes and smallholdings. By the outbreak of WWI at least 5 houses had been built and over time, there would be at least a further 15 homes on Harrison’s estate. Harrison ran his office out of a cabin during some of the early construction, and initially commuted on his bicycle from Brighton to Peacehaven. In Brighton he initially ran two newsagent shops. Lavinia died in 1913. The streets on the estate were named after places in Yorkshire that he had a connection to: Roundhay, Ashington (he had lived on Roundhay Ave in Leeds). John Harrison explained that his grandfather never sold any of his land to Neville. He set up a lending library, The Downs Library, an Estate Agent’s and shop and ran this into the late 1930s.

Charles William Neville (1880–1960)

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Joseph James Hill (1891–1961)

Postcard of J.J. Hill’s shop at 27 High Street, Newhaven, n.d. Advertisement in Peacehaven Directory, p. 29.

Born in and a life-long resident of Brighton, the 1911 census gives Hill’s employment as working as a ‘photographic enlarger’ at a local studio. Hill was first listed as a photographer in Newhaven in 1918 where he was still listed in 1939. He had two studios, first at 30 Meeching Road, and then, from 1924 at 27 High Street (see above photograph). He was a prolific and professional photographer, and aside from taking photographs of early construction, new homes and interiors, notable residents and SCLRC staff, he also offered a portrait service. Hill’s photographic archive does not appear to have survived apart from the work published in the Peacehaven Post and a postcard booklet, despite the fact that he ran a professional studio in Newhaven for two decades. Despite my having liaised with the Newhaven Historical Society and local residents, no other records have resurfaced.

Charles William Neville (1880–1960)

Charles Neville, Peacehaven Post, Vol II, No 15, November 1922, p.71.

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Born into the Ussher family, Charles’ father changed the family name to Neville in the 1870s. Neville’s family moved to Canada during the 1880s; it now seems likely that Neville had a first marriage there and a son, Lionel, who died very young, in 1918 during WWI in action in France (see Bernhard, 2017, p.361) With his second wife, Dorothy, who he met around 1913, he had three sons: Roderick, Richard and Roland. Neville was a very prolific entrepreneur and speculative developer and a controversial figure (see chapters 1 & 2), with early business interests in Canada, then Papua New Guinea and subsequently Britain. He was well-connected and his business ventures included the South Coast Land Resort Company (founded in 1916 and incorporated in 1917) the Peacehaven Estates Company (incorporated in 1923), the Saltdean Estate Company. He set up the SCLRC in-house magazines Peacehaven Post Magazine 1921–1923, Downland Post 1924–1926 and Downland: A Journal of Sussex (1926–1928). Latterly he launched the Downland Review between 1958–1959. Also see d’Enno (1987) and Bernard (2017; 2018) for more detailed accounts of his earlier business interests and personal life.

Dorothy Neville, nee Rochard (1891–1973)

Dorothy Neville, Peacehaven Post, Vol II, No 13, September 1922, p.11. Dorothy, who was born in Steyning, was Neville’s second wife, although they did not get married until 1932 (see Bernard, 2018). Dorothy became the President, during 1921–1922, of the Horticultural and Poultry Society and in 1923 of the main Residents Society. She also became company director on several occasions and is listed as director for Saltdean Estates in the 1950s. The couple moved from their Tinkerbell home on Peacehaven’s Promenade to Rottingdean in the late 1920s and continued to live at 40, Dean Court Road until Charles’ death in 1960. Dorothy died in Spain in 1973.

Stanley Paul

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Frank Hoadley Parks (1896–1992)

Frank Parks circa 1914, courtesy Margaret Parks.

Brighton-born Frank Parks was Margaret Parks’ father in law (see chapter 7 and Appendix 3 on Margaret Parks’ life; Margaret married Parks’ son William). Parks’ vernacular photographs of the emerging Peacehaven Estate, new shops, Bastion Steps construction, workmen and new Pioneer homes are discussed in chapter 4. He had fought with the Machine Gun Corps and had done duty in Egypt. Parks arrived on the new Peacehaven Estate in 1920 as a trained carpenter and moved to a Peacehaven bungalow, Valencia, that he had built on Tor Road with his wife Daisy and son William (b.1920) in September 1922. He was involved in the construction of the first houses on Seaview Avenue in 1920, the Hotel Peacehaven and tea pavilion. He also did maintenance work for George Noel Ede and the International Friendship League during the 1930s. He lost half of his large garden in the 1970s when North Peacehaven was developed and continued to photograph new developments into old age (see Troak, 2007, for a detailed account of Frank Parks’ life).

Stanley Paul Stanley Paul was a London-based publisher and founder, in 1906, of the publishing company by the same name, which he directed until 1927. He owned a second home in Peacehaven, ‘Windy Gap’ from at least 1923, when the Peacehaven Post ran a feature and Joseph James Hill took a photograph of his home. Paul directed the company until 1927 and Stanley Paul & Co went on to publish several of Gordon Volk’s novels in the 1930s and 1940s.

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Peacehaven Post, Vol II, No.21. p.253, photograph by Hill.

Frank R. Pegler, P.A.S.I

Peacehaven Post, August 1922, Vol 1, No 12, p.340, photograph by Hill. A feature article in the Peacehaven Post, where all information on Pegler is from, stated that he was associated with the SCLRC since its inception. Pegler, a war veteran, was the company surveyor and a professional member of the Surveyor’s Institution. He was in charge of the laying out of the Bastion Steps and was also the general surveyor of all the land and plots.

M. Blakeney Pizzey Esq. (1880–1946)

381

M. Blakeney Pizzey Esq. (1880–1946)

Peacehaven Post, Vol I, No 10, July 1922, p.320 photograph by Hill and Pizzey’s first residence on the Esplanade, photograph by Hill.

Pizzey arrived on the Estate in June 1921; most information on him comes from features published in the Peacehaven Post. He was initially an influential resident and developer. His first house, Blakeney, allegedly cost £500 to build (a large sum at the time) and was extended into a £6000 ‘residence’. He was one of the first residents to have a telephone and electric light. He was the first President of the Peacehaven Literary, Scientific and Debating Society and the Peacehaven Cricket Club. Pictures of his two imposing houses, including interior photographs, featured in the Peacehaven Post (see Vol 1, No 5, 1922, p.135 and Vol.1, No 10, 1922, p.320). Pizzey became the first president of the ‘Peacehaven Literary, Scientific and Debating Society’ and also attempted, unsuccessfully, to set up his own Estate on the southeast boundary of the Peacehaven Estate in 1923. The Blakeney Heights Estate was adjacent to Harrison’s Friar’s Bay Estate; it was to run on the south side of The Highway and the South Coast Road. Although four large blocks and a total of 46 plots were carved out on a blueprint map, less than ten houses were actually built at the time. Pizzey was also featured in the Peacehaven Post November 1923, p.431 issue, ‘Mr. M. Blakeney Pizzey and ‘this Lureland’; for more on Pizzey see also Peacehaven Post December 1923, p.479. Personal circumstances forced him to leave Peacehaven in the late 1920s.

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George Powell – aka George Asaf (1880–1951) and Felix Powell (1878–1942)

The Harlequinaders ca.1910s, courtesy Aubrey Powell. Felix Powell, ca. 1930s, courtesy Aubrey Powell.

Felix Powell had a classical music training and was a child prodigy. He was organist and musical director of St. Asaph Cathedral by the age of 12 (personal communication with Aubrey Powell, Felix’ grandson). But the Powell brothers pursued a music hall career, and toured with their wives, Mabel and Leila as the Harlequinaders, enjoying considerable success before WWI. During wartime, Felix Powell toured the trenches with his band ‘The White Knights’, a concert party of the Cavalry Division, whilst George, a pacifist, stayed in Britain. Neville later claimed that the brothers had followed his invitation to settle in Peacehaven, where Felix Powell also advertised piano, singing and violin lessons in the advertising columns of the Peacehaven Post during 1922. In 1921, George and Felix Powell composed several songs for the Peacehaven Post, ‘Come to Peacehaven’ and ‘The Lureland Waltz’; G. Powell was its first editor. After the brothers both left the magazine in 1923, they worked in real estate and Felix became an insurance agent. But both continued to work as musical directors at the Pavilion theatre, which opened in 1923. Felix and Mabel lived at Sea Mount on Hoddern Avenue, just south of Arundel Road with their son Harley (b.1916). It is well known that Felix Powell committed suicide in Lureland Hall in 1942, aged 63, whilst working for the Peacehaven Home Guard. There was speculation at the time that his musical career had come to a halt and that he had never been able to follow on from the earlier success of Pack up your troubles, which had sustained him and his family financially. Since he also had debts from a failed musical venture it was suggested that he felt a failure. George Powell moved to Hove shortly after this and died of ill health in 1951 (Personal correspondence with Aubrey Powell, grandson of Felix Powell).

George Fred Rodhouse

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Flora Robson (1902–1984)

Flora Robson, late 1920s, collection J.W. Born in South Shields, Durham, Flora Robson’s parents moved to Peacehaven in 1921 with their seven children. Her father was a marine surveyor, and the new family home, Florida, was featured in the Peacehaven Post, December 1921 issue, p.104. The bungalow was on Southdown Avenue and photographs were included in the magazine. Flora attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1921 and became a well-known Shakespearian Actress. Flora gave one of her first performances at the Rosemary Tea Gardens, and this was featured in the Peacehaven Post, Vol 1, No 12, p.351. She was part of the Ben Greet’s Players and recited ‘The Highwayman’ with ‘intense effect’ on 12 July 1922 as part of a concert there, which also included performances by the Powells. A small blue plaque, barely visible on the side of a 1970s row of terraced houses on the South Coast Road, reminds passers-by of Flora Robson’s local performance. The family left Peacehaven and moved to Welwyn Garden City in the late 1920s.

George Fred Rodhouse

Picture in Peacehaven Post, Vol II, No 24, August 1923, p.347.

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Rodhouse was the Foreman of the Peacehaven Building Company for three years. He came to Peacehaven in 1921 from Braunston, Rugby, and wrote the beekeeping section in the Peacehaven Post under the pseudonym B. Lore. He was a trained carpenter and decorator. When his house was built, he uncovered middle Stone Age flints on Arundel Road and a Saxon burial ground on Friars Avenue; remnants of which are now at the British Museum. Rodhouse looked after the SCLRC nursery (he was a Fellow of the Royal Horticultural Society) and also ran a painter decorator business and some of his personal archive has been preserved in the Troak-Poplett collection.

Wallace Sangster

Peacehaven Post, Vol 1, No 9 May 1922, p.237, photograph by Hill. Sangster was Peacehaven’s so-called ‘Resident Agent’, and in 1921–22 he became a Member of the Newhaven Board of Guardians (Peacehaven Post, April 1922, p.208). A feature in the Peacehaven Post’s May 1922 issue offered some biographical information and included a photograph of Sangster. The feature stated that he came to Peacehaven in the spring of 1921 and had become the Vice-President of the Cricket Club and Vice-President of the Tennis Club. He had served in the military and reached the rank of Sergeant Major. Sangster features in the 1925 film, Down by the Sea.

George R. Sims (1847–1922)

385

George R. Sims (1847–1922)

Portrait of G.R. Sims, J.W. collection. In a 1959 editorial printed in his short-lived journal Downland Review, Neville stated that George R. Sims had written the introduction for the first volume of the Peacehaven Post. Following a close reading of the Peacehaven Post magazine, which includes a tribute to Sims by George Powell, I noticed that Neville had, in fact, simply reused Powell’s eulogy, without giving credit (see Vol 2, No 14, October 1922, p. 35). The Peacehaven Post was an outstanding success from the start and the leading articles for the first year of publication were written by the famous ‘Dagonet’ of the Referee.247 Dagonet was the nom-de-plume of George R. Sims, a writer of world renown, and it was he who christened Peacehaven ‘Lureland’ and wrote eulogistic articles on Peacehaven, which was then in the making. George R. Sims was in some sense a Godfather of The Peacehaven Post in which he took a very great and very kindly interest. He wrote the leading articles in The Peacehaven Post from the first number in September 1921 until June 1922 when failing health compelled him to reduce his literary activities. He was an ardent lover of the Sussex South Downs. His contributions [. . .] included articles entitled ‘A Land of Romance’, ‘Sisters by the Sea’, ‘Birth of a Town’, ‘Peacehaven Christmas’, ‘The World and Peacehaven’, ‘The Magic of Downland’. (September 1959 Downland Review, No 4, Vol 1, September 1959, p.19) Neither Powell in his original eulogy, nor Neville in his plagiarized version mentioned that Sims had been an extremely prolific journalist, playwright and the author of books such as Horrible London (1889), How the Poor Live (1883) and Dagonet Ballads (1879). Nor do they state that Sims had written satire and published on social reform. By 1921, Sims had apparently lost much of his financial fortunes through gambling. This may go some way to explain why he took on the Peacehaven Post’s commission as feature writer despite his advanced age. Powell’s eulogy claimed that Sims’ loss would be particularly felt ‘in Peacehaven, where

247 Sims was known as Dagonet in the Sunday Referee, which was a national British broadsheet newspaper.

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Mr. Sims delighted to come and watch with keen interest and surprise the marvelous growth of the City’ (Vol 2, No 14, 1922, p.35). Subsequently Sims was completely erased from Peacehaven’s historical consciousness. Powell had erroneously allocated Sims a key place of honour in the town’s future: When Peacehaven becomes the great and famous resort, which she is destined to be, the name of George R. Sims will be emblazoned in an honoured place as one of the first believers in, and indeed one of the sponsors of the city of his beloved LURELAND. To him we owe a debt that can only be paid in grateful and affectionate memory. (ibid).

Reverend George W. Street

Rev. Street and Mrs. Street, Peacehaven Post, Vol III, No 26 October 1923, p.409. Street was the first Vicar of the Church of the Ascension, which opened on 9 October 1922 (also see Peacehaven Post, Vol II, p.134). He also wrote the foreword to Peacehaven’s first 1923 town guide and was a notable figure in Peacehaven’s cultural life in the first part of the 1920s. Before the church opened, Street had already worked as Vicar in nearby Piddinghoe, and had held ‘open-air, cliff-top evensong’ during the summer of 1922 at Joslyn’s pit in North Peacehaven (see Pat Moorman’s account in Church of the Ascension’s 2015 anniversary publication compiled by Jill Gray).

The Right Hon. Lord Teynham [Henry Roper-Curzon, 18h Baron Teynham]

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The Right Hon. Lord Teynham [Henry Roper-Curzon, 18th Baron Teynham] 1867–1936

Peacehaven Post, Vol II No 15 Nov 1922, p.74, photograph Hill (Teynham is the third man standing from the left, the first is Neville).

Member of the House of Lords; educated at Eton and Royal Military College, Sandhurst. Teynham was co-director, with Neville and C.T. Gold Esq. from 1922 of the Peacehaven Electric Light & Power Company Ltd (see Peacehaven Post, May 1922, p.245). He was featured in the magazine as an endorser in the early 1920s. He was also co-director of the first Peacehaven Water Company & the Peacehaven Estates Ltd. Teynham presided over a 1925 Saltdean prize house competition launched at a London hotel and documented in great detail in a Downland Post feature. Two 1920s’ Art Deco apartment buildings on the South Coast Road in Saltdean were named Teynham and Curzon House respectively.

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Robert Thurston Hopkins (1884–1958)

West Sussex Gazette, 22 February 1973, photograph, 1930 – R. Thurston Hopkins third from left, Source: Scrapbook Society of Sussex Downsmen, courtesy The Keep.

Thurston Hopkins lived near Volk in Portslade and they became friends. He published books on the Sussex countryside, biographies on Oscar Wilde and Rudyard Kipling, and was the author, in 1921, of Kipling’s Sussex and in 1924, of The Kipling Country. He used some of Volk’s illustrations of the Sussex countryside in at least two of his books. Volk referred to his working relationship with Thurston Hopkins and explained that several of his drawings had been ‘used to illuminate the pages of a book on Sussex by an eminent author’ (Peacehaven Post,‘Peacehaven Postings’, Vol 1, p.151). Kipling’s Sussex had already been reviewed in the Christmas edition of the Peacehaven Post (Vol 1, No 4, p.112). The men became involved in the Society of Sussex Downsmen which Thurston Hopkins had co-founded. There is a detailed feature in Downland Post, (Jan 1924, p.3) on the objectives of the Society written by Thurston Hopkins at Volk’s invitation. Thurston also thanked Volk in the preface to his 1924 book for the use of further Sussex drawings (1924, p.vii), and referred to him both as the editor of Downland Post and a friend (ibid, p.152) and referred to Peacehaven favourably in the book. In 1928, Thurston Hopkins published a travel book, The Lure of Sussex a Record of Indolent Travel, which included a foreword by publisher, Cecil Palmer, who described ‘one aspect of the lure of Sussex’ being that ‘Sussex gets you, instantly and eternally’ (xvii 1928). Palmer cited other writers including Kipling, Belloc, Beckett and D.B. Wyndham Lewis who had also praised Sussex ([1928] 1931 Second Edition). Thurston Hopkins would have been familiar with the Lureland metaphor through his association with Volk.

Gordon Volk (1885–1962) Journalist, writer, novelist

389

Dick Tubb (1886–1963)

1922 Dick Tubb Publicity Photo, Source: J.W. collection.

Tubb was an actor, music hall entertainer and composer, who endorsed Peacehaven early on in 1925, when he bought a holiday home there which eventually became his permanent residence. Best known for his roles in The Old Curiosity Shop (1934) and Follow Your Star (1938). He died at his home in Peacehaven on the Promenade in December 1963.

Gordon Volk (1885–1962) Journalist, writer, novelist

Photograph p.340, Peacehaven Post, Vol 1, No 1, p.340 Volk on Carnival Float (close up).

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Volk was instrumental in visualizing Peacehaven’s promise through commissioned cartoons. He produced all the graphic images, wrote feature articles and in 1924 briefly became the magazine’s editor. By the time he joined the Peacehaven Post editorial team to launch the magazine, he had already worked as a reporter and cartoonist for over a decade, first at the Brighton Herald from 1901, and between 1910 and 1914 at the Cape Town Cape Argus. A WWI volunteer, he had also taken part in the infamous Gallipoli Campaign (see Volk, C. 1971, p.191). Volk was the second youngest son of Brighton based inventor, Magnus Volk. Gordon’s younger brother Conrad wrote a biography on their father, Magnus Volk of Brighton, which offers useful insights into Gordon’s time at the magazine: [Gordon] was currently editing a small monthly journal called The Downland Post, and this was adopted, at his suggestion, as the official organ of the newly formed ‘Society of Sussex Downsmen’. The result, of course, was that he was promptly elected to the committee, and became involved in all their activities. I see from a press notice of one of this society’s early meetings that Mother was also on the committee [. . .] We all loved the Downland countryside and visited our favourite spots as often as we could. In my case opportunities were few, as I was now away from home most of the time, in Birmingham or London; but Gordon was much luckier’. (1971, p.211–212) Following Volk’s departure from the Downland Post by the end of 1924, he went on to write short stories and at least 22 crime fiction and adventure novels between 1925–1950, including several set in the local area, such as In Brighton Waters (1925), and The Maid of Sussex: A Romance (1940), and also created the illustrations for his book covers. Interestingly, his books frequently featured Brighton, Rottingdean, Newhaven and Seaford, but never mentioned Peacehaven; he seems to have disconnected from the Peacehaven project. In 1945, Hutchinson issued In Brighton Waters as a ‘Free Victory Gift’ edition. Over a million paperbacks (including those by other authors) were offered to the armed forces as so-called Victory gifts (see http://www.service seditions.com/checklists.htm#635707148, accessed 18 October, 2015). His work was published by Skeffington but also Stanley Paul – who interestingly had himself taken up a second residence in Peacehaven in 1924, at an earlier suggestion by George Sims (see Downland Post, 1 October 1925, p. 285). Volk also wrote a regular column called ‘Brighton Searchlight’ for the West Sussex Gazette under the pseudonym of Passant Regardant between 1924 and 1955 (see Volk’s obituary from January 1962, West Sussex Gazette, The Keep). He worked for the Gazette for 32 years as their Brighton correspondent.

Cyril Ward (1863–1935) Contributed at least five watercolour paintings of Peacehaven and Downland views to the Peacehaven Post during 1923, which were used as magazine covers. Ward was a traditional and commercial British artist and member of the Royal Cambrian Academy of Art in Wales. He painted commercial views of Wales, the Lake District and Sussex.

Appendix 3 Biographies of interviewees Most of the recorded interviews and conversations took place in the interviewees’ own homes. Because I ran briefing sessions, the interviewees had each prepared either a folder, or had set aside archival material in advance of the recorded conversation. Each meeting was followed up by a debrief session, when we would go through full transcripts and make corrections, additions and then sign off. Colin & Olive Martin, Rita & Haydn Williams, and John & Ann Harrison were interviewed as couples.

John Copper (b. 1949)

John Copper at Peacehaven Library, 6 November 2015, JW & Bob Copper at Central Club circa 1970s, courtesy John Copper. The main recording with John Copper took place at Peacehaven Library on 6 November 2015 after I invited him to speak at one of our Peacehaven Pioneer meetings. We met again at the Central Club to share and go over the transcript. The Copper family have been in Sussex for centuries and used to work in farming. John ‘Brasser’ Copper (1845–1924), John’s great grandfather worked at Rottingdean Farm as a foreman and oversaw sheep grazing in the area between Brighton and Newhaven. John’s father Bob (1915–2014), married Joan from Peacehaven, and, in 1946, took on a social club, the Central Club, previously owned by Joan’s parents, and turned it into a folk venue. John continues to run the Central Club and performs regular folk concerts with his sister and brother-in-law, Jill and Jon Dudley, and extended family. Many of these songs are traditional farming songs, which generations of the Copper family recorded. The Coppers now all live in Peacehaven.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110734027-014

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John Harrison (b. 1938) and Ann Harrison

Ann and John Harrison, courtesy the Harrisons. The main recorded interview with John and Ann Harrison took place at their home in Peacehaven Heights on 29 November 2015; I visited with Peter Seed and after being introduced by Les Hunter. John inherited many documents relating to his grandfather Arthur Harrison, who originally had set up the Friars Bay Smallholders Cooperative Colony, which was subsequently called Cliff Park Estate (see Appendix 2 and chapter 2). Arthur and his first wife Lavinia had two sons: Eric and Arthur Junior (John’s father); Eric played the flute in an orchestra. John’s father was born in 1903 and grew up in Lavinia Cottage; he left for Australia in 1922 at the age of 19 to work in gold-mining but returned in 1924 following the death of his mother. He returned to Australia but finally settled in Peacehaven where he later had a small building firm called Harrison Penfold. John and his siblings lived in an original bungalow with veranda called ‘Bronte’. Ann suggested that, ‘you could mention that John has lived here all his life, and is now in his 80th year, and his older sister still lives in Peacehaven. They were brought up with the sea at one end of the road and rolling farmland at the other. Sadly, much of it is now built on with yet more to come. I moved here from Newhaven when we married in June 1965 and raised our 3 children. Our first home was a bungalow built by John on a family plot in Cissbury Avenue’ (email correspondence with Ann Harrison, 2 May 2018).

Jill Hazel (b. 1943)

Jill Hazel at Pioneer workshop in 2015, courtesy Zala Jamnit.

Les Hunter (b. 1934)

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The main interview took place on 23 May 2017 at Peacehaven Library. Born in Peacehaven, Jill Hazel is the daughter of a Canadian soldier who was stationed there. Her maternal grandmother, Augusta Bradstock, had moved to Peacehaven around 1925 from New Malden and had baptized her new home on Piddinghoe Avenue Mon Repos (My Resting Place). Jill’s mother and Jill’s brother, Ivor Jerome Rickerby (Joey), lived there when Jill was born in 1943. Joey made a drawing of the bungalow during wartime. ‘During the war Maurice Chauvet the famous French cartographer and commando was billeted with us on and off between his daring exploits’, explained Jill. In 1945, Jill, her brother and mother ‘sailed off to Canada to return in 1953 on the Biat with the RCMP who did their musical ride at the Coronation’. Back in Peacehaven, the family lived in a purpose built ‘Alman’ bungalow on Piddinghoe Avenue. Jill went to Lewes Grammar school and then back to Canada for a holiday at Tilden Lake but stayed and worked near Hudson Bay. She eventually returned to Peacehaven and now lives in nearby Newhaven.

Les Hunter (b. 1934)

Les Hunter in his garden, July 2014, JW. The main recorded interview with Les Hunter took place at his and his wife Moira’s home in South Heighton on 10 July 2014. Les was born in 1934 at Rye Croft in Cissbury Avenue, Peacehaven; as a child he lived in a bungalow called Wallflower on the former Cliff Park Estate. His grandfather was an early settler, his father had been in the colonial army in India. Les’ parents met in Peacehaven and were married in Piddinghoe church in 1933. Les was in the army between 1952 and 1954, when he moved in again with his mother, who by then lived in a bungalow next to Lureland Hall on Phyllis Avenue. After an apprenticeship in marine engines he worked with general motors engines and then car sales. He also began to drive lorries with Peacehaven based Ted Penfold for the Bill Holt’s Peacehaven-based firm. He described that they would collect fruit from the docks in Newhaven, which was still a very busy port. He then worked for local firm Funnels and used to go abroad driving across Europe in his lorry. Les lived in Peacehaven until 1974 when he and his Scottish wife Moira moved to nearby South Heighton with their two sons, where he looks after a big garden filled with fruit trees. Rye Croft was eventually demolished to make way for denser development.

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Appendix 3 Biographies of interviewees

Reuben Lanham (1927–2017)

Reuben Lanham in his house & by his front door, 2014, JW. The main recorded interview took place on 26 June 2014 at Reuben Lanham’s bungalow in Sunview Avenue. Born in Brighton in 1927, Reuben lived in Peacehaven all his life aside from a couple of years during which he studied at a teacher training college in Southampton on a bursary. He grew up with his mother and grandparents on Roderick Avenue. Over two visits, Reuben showed me a transparent map with overlays and his school certificates. Reuben was a pupil at the Peacehaven Tin School. He has written several short, unpublished texts about growing up in Peacehaven. His bungalow on Sunview Avenue was designed and built during 1952 and was completed in 1953 when he and his mother moved in. There was a big rose bush outside the house and a well-kept garden. Reuben made a timeline and allowed me to take copies of some of his early family photographs. He was a science lecturer at Lewes College. Reuben passed away in January 2017 in his 90th year and a planning application to demolish his bungalow and build four semi-detached houses was accepted in April 2018.

Colin Martin (b. 1929) and Olive Martin (b. 1934)

Olive Martin & Colin Martin, 2015, JW.

Margaret Palmer (b. 1937)

395

The main recorded interview with Colin and Olive Martin took place in their Peacehaven home on 9 December 2015. Olive’s father was a musical director and conductor with the Carl Rosa Opera Company. She met Colin and his brother Talbot when they both came to take music lessons with her father. Olive trained as a florist at the Savoy in London and remembers arranging orchids and gardenias which had been shipped from abroad. The couple moved to Peacehaven Heights in 1953 from Sutton and, with their three children, to Phyllis Avenue in 1969. Colin worked as a grinder for Parker Pen and knew Malcolm Troak, who was a manager at Parker Pen. Colin is a keen gardener and maintains a wide range of sweet peas each year. In their conservatory, he grows a variety of plants from seed each spring.

Margaret Palmer (b. 1937)

Margaret Palmer in her conservatory, recording our conversation JW & Margaret with her mother by the Cornford Diary shop in 1939 courtesy MP. The main recorded interview with Margaret Palmer took place at her bungalow on Mayfield Avenue on 20 October 2014. We sat in Margaret’s sun-drenched lounge which overlooks a big garden, whilst her cat Monty slept nearby. Her husband, Jim Palmer, as well as her own family, were original settlers, having moved to Peacehaven in the early 1920s. Margaret was born in 1937; her father had moved to the Estate around 1920/21; her mother was from Newhaven and her parents lived above Cornford Diary until they moved into a new bungalow in 1939. Her father worked as Peacehaven’s local milk man. Margaret showed me many objects such as a standing clock in the living room that had belonged to her husband’s family; it had a painted ship as part of the clockwork. She has also kept an original oil lamp that her husband used in order to be able to read and write in the evenings. After thirty years of living in Saltdean and running an Off Licence in Brighton, Margaret ‘returned home’ twenty years ago. She is very involved in local charities, the Rotary Club and has been the treasurer of the Peacehaven Pioneer group since 2015.

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Appendix 3 Biographies of interviewees

Margaret Parks (1924–2015)

Margaret Parks at home, 24 June 2014, JW. The main recorded conversation with Margaret Parks took place at her house in Peacehaven on 24 June 2014. Margaret (nee Wilds) moved to Peacehaven with her parents, brother and sister, in 1925. Her sister used to play with Haydn Williams’ older sisters Nancy and Betty (see below). When I spoke with Margaret at her house on Downlands Avenue she had lived in Peacehaven for 89 years. She lived in a house with, in her own words, a ‘big sycamore tree and green door’ in the front garden. Previously she had lived in Mayfield Avenue. She had lots of roses and indoor plants. Inside her house were many photographs, watercolour paintings, old furniture and a lot of memorabilia and childhood photographs. Margaret had prepared a trolley full of documents, photographs and school certificates. She had put up a photo of her father especially as it was the 100th anniversary of the start of WW1 and her father had fought at Gallipoli. He also painted scenes in Egypt, Cairo, and most of the water colour paintings in Margaret’s living room were his. Her father had owned a car in the 1920s and bought several properties in Peacehaven; he also had a shop in Brighton. Her future father in law, Frank Parks, took some of the very first photographs of Peacehaven houses, and was a keen amateur photographer (see chapter 4). Sadly, Margaret passed away in 2015 aged 90.

Peter Seed (b. 1950)

Peter Seed at Peacehaven Library, 6 November 2015 JW.

Haydn Williams (b. 1933, d.2019) and Rita Williams (b. 1937)

397

We recorded our conversation on 6 November 2015 at Peacehaven library. Peter Seed moved to Peacehaven in 2004 but had first visited in 1960 at the age of 10; he belongs to many local societies, including the Ramblers Association. Peter’s father was in the military; Peter was born in Aldershot, Hants, moved to London then Singapore and at the age of 7 to Eastbourne, where he lived until the age of twenty-nine. He came to Peacehaven for the first time aged 10 with his family to visit local resident Ernest Hepworth, who ran a nursery of cacti, succulents and mesembryanthemums. As a young man, Peter and his family used to drive through Peacehaven, ‘I might have been going somewhere else and just passed through Peacehaven without giving it a second glance really’. He and his wife Lorraine moved to Peacehaven in 2004 and Peter now volunteers for the Ramblers Association and the Tye Commons Committee. He is also a regular member of the Peacehaven Pioneer group. On his many walks, Peter investigates rights of way and is involved in the Peacehaven and Telscombe Neighbourhood Development Plan Steering Group (PTNDP).

Haydn Williams (b. 1933, d.2019) and Rita Williams (b. 1937)

Haydn and Rita Williams, courtesy the Williams & Haydn Williams in the lounge, 2014 JW. The main recorded conversation with Haydn and Rita Williams took place on 4 June 2014 in their home in Seaford where they moved to 25 years ago. Haydn’s maternal grandmother lived in Dulce Domum and had tennis courts right behind her house. Haydn and Rita shared photographs from the 1920s of Haydn’s father’s landaulette chauffeur business in Peacehaven and a 1922 essay from the Peacehaven and Newhaven Gazette written by his father, and a 1924 Downland Post article featuring Haydn’s father’s wedding, attended by representatives of the Society of Sussex Downsmen (which included Gordon Volk and the Powells). Haydn’s father was a WW1 veteran (and fighter pilot), who became an inventor, building Marconi wireless radios, setting up a photography business, and making amateur films of local events in the 1930s, including filming the coronation celebration at Hotel Peacehaven. Haydn was born on Phyllis Avenue in 1933, directly opposite the hotel. In 1948 Haydn and his mother emigrated to Australia but returned less than three years later and moved to Brighton. Haydn’s father had by then settled in Saltdean. Rita was born in Brighton and grew up in a terraced house in the Hanover area. Rita and Haydn were married in 1956 and set up an electronics business in

398

Appendix 3 Biographies of interviewees

Peacehaven which they ran for thirty years from 1958 onward when they retired and moved to Seaford. The Williams used to be involved in the Peacehaven Carnival and Haydn shared rare archival film footage. The Haydn’s family bungalow was on the main South Coast Road. They witnessed many of the changes the town underwent and discussed these in a long interview which also focused extensively on the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Sadly, Haydn Williams passed away in 2019.

Index Abercrombie, Patrick 189 Allen, K. Aubrey 152, 178, 185 America 92, 105, 123, 142, 163, 233 – American Frontier 15 – American Frontier Towns 15 Anderson, Benedict 108 The Annex (Peacehaven) 9, 94, 137, 287, 335 Anzac 60, 61, 63–70, 72, 85, 94, 222, 230, 325, 335 – Anzac Estate (Murumbeena) 70 – Anzac-on-Sea 60, 62–69, 94 Arcadia 18, 96, 125, 150 – Arcadia for All 26, 30, 54, 349 – Arcadia Stores (Peacehaven) 96 Archive 11, 13, 22, 38, 40–43, 47, 50, 150, 194, 250, 255, 259, 292, 294, 318, 321, 334, 350 – archival memory 39, 40, 47 – archival research 11, 13, 17, 32, 50, 135, 195, 249, 290, 298, 353 – archival traces 13, 35, 40 Arts and Crafts Movement 54, 236 Arundel Road 9, 63, 95–97, 299, 323 Assmann, Aleida 13, 34, 37–40 Assmann, Jan 13, 37, 39, 40 Attenborough, Mabel Strey 56, 257 Auslander, Leora 46 Australia 69–71, 79, 92, 102, 105, 106, 143, 233, 262, 287, 290 – Australian outback 15 Avery, Henry Alfred 183 Bachelard, Gaston 47, 49, 169 Bailleul, Hélène 32, 249 Bakhtin, Mikhail 45 Barthes, Roland 43, 252 – Punctum 43 – Studium 44 Bartlett, Tim 346 Bastian, Jeanette 34, 47, 48, 255, 294 Bastion Steps (Peacehaven) 99, 151, 153, 178, 180–182, 185, 190, 205, 229, 243, 275, 276, 309, 336 – Bastion pool 178, 274, 283 https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110734027-015

Bately, Lilian 194 Battistini, Mathilde 231 Bayley, Hilda 225, 226 Beach, Rex 113 Beachy Head 202, 345 Becker, Udo 124, 141 Beckett, Arthur 51, 195, 202 Bell, Colin 76 The Bells Club (Peacehaven) 255, 279 Benjamin, Walter 41, 42, 49 Bentley, Ian 92 Bernard, Stanley 14, 25, 56, 64, 70 Betjeman, John 31, 323–326, 329, 341, 343 Bexhill 121 – Bexhill War Memorial 121 Bicester 348 Bird, Nicky 292 Black, Alistair 108 Blakeney Heights Estate 189 Blake, William 112, 115 Bloomsbury Group 15 Borrowdale, Cyril 227 Bourdieu, Pierre 46 Bournville 53 Boym, Svetlana 254 Brady, Patricia 9 Brighton 2, 6, 12, 14, 20, 23, 28, 51, 54, 55, 58, 61, 82, 84, 87, 95, 99, 104, 107, 116, 139, 140, 149, 152, 174, 175, 178, 183, 189, 194, 205, 207–209, 212, 220, 231, 277, 278, 281, 287, 292, 296, 316, 330, 331, 350 – Brighton and Hove Gazette 330, 331 – Brighton Corporation 212 – The Brighton Herald 107 – Brighton Planning Report 1932 208, 231 – Brighton Season Magazine 87 Brighton Carnival 139, 140 Brighton Rock (Graham Greene) 16 Brinson, Charmian 36, 72 Britannia 121, 235, 239 British Canadian Bond Corporation 14 British Library 25, 227 British Weekly 138, 141

400

Index

Brooker, Michelle 21 Bungalow 1–4, 6, 9–11, 17, 20, 24, 25, 47, 59, 65, 75, 80, 81, 85, 87–89, 91–93, 103, 105, 116, 136, 139, 141, 150–152, 154, 155, 157, 161–164, 166–167, 169, 170, 174, 181, 182, 188, 190, 192, 200–202, 206, 207, 216, 226, 228, 235, 244, 259, 260, 262, 263, 265, 267, 270–272, 274, 281, 284, 286, 288, 292–302, 305, 307, 308, 325, 329, 341, 344–347 – Bungalow design 65, 92, 93, 105, 201 Cairo Avenue (Peacehaven) 72 – Cairo Stores 96, 105 Calvino, Italo 62 The Campaign for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE) 16, 104, 189, 194, 201, 209, 211, 212, 229, 322, 347, 348 Canada 14, 66, 79, 105, 141, 171, 227, 262, 284, 290 Capel Avenue (Peacehaven) 96 Carbone, Kathy 321 The Castle Restaurant and Hotel (Peacehaven) 6, 170, 171, 180 Cavell, Edith 72, 183 – Cavell Avenue (Peacehaven) 72 – Cavell House (Peacehaven) 182, 183 – Edith Avenue (Peacehaven) 72, 264, 265, 271, 273, 274, 288 Cavendish Land Company Limited (Ltd) 56 Chailey Rural District Council 208, 212, 285 Chambers, Deborah 253 Chambon, Adrienne 41 Chauvet, Maurice 284 Chevalier, Jean 111, 125 Chisholm, Peter 120 The Church of the Ascension (Peacehaven) 221, 316, 340 Claeys, Gregory 54, 115 Clare, George 79 Cliff Park Estate (Peacehaven) 58, 95, 179, 272 Colberg, Jake 122 Collective memory. See Memory Collingworth, Jeff 318

Colonialism 53 Communicative memory 39, 44, 48, 49, 334, 341 Connerton, Paul 44, 45, 47, 139 Copper, Bob 305 – The Coppers 391 Copper, Brasser 256 Copper, John 250, 256, 257 Cooper, William 91 Coral Gables Estate (Florida) 113, 162, 163, 167 Cornwall Avenue (Peacehaven) 72 Coronation Court, Saskatoon 14 Coser, Lewis 38 Coué de la Châtaigneraie, Emile 134 Crane, Walter 235–236 Cripps, Alfred 128 Cross, Henri Edmund 100 Crowlink (Campaign) 202 Cruickshank, Dan 348 Crusoe, Robinson 181, 336 Cultural memory. See Memory Dagenham Becontree Estate 327 Daily Mirror 86 Dankworth, Sir John 325 Davis, Ian 92 Dean, Frank 78, 79, 82 Debord, Guy 47 De Certeau, Michel 40 The Dell (Peacehaven) 172, 275, 278, 292 Delorme, Mary 344 DeLyser, Dydia 29 Dennis, Richard 87 D’Enno, Douglas 14, 25, 200, 348, 378 Derrida, Jacques 42 Deutsche Gartenstadt-Gesellschaft 76 The Dewdrop (Peacehaven) 322 Down by the Sea (film) 225 Downland 6, 14, 16, 17, 19, 22, 23, 28, 29, 31, 51, 56, 60, 64, 68, 69, 75, 83, 99, 106, 107, 110, 112, 117, 119, 125, 126, 137, 149, 152, 155, 157, 175, 178, 179, 185, 187, 189–192, 194, 196, 197, 199, 201–203, 205–208, 210, 211, 214, 216, 217, 219, 222, 228–230, 237, 238, 240,

Index

243, 247, 249, 256, 259, 260, 271, 273, 276, 293, 296, 325, 329, 331, 337–340, 343, 345–348, 351 The Downland Post 29, 106, 197, 228, 271 The Downland Review 68 Downs Library 376 – The Downsman 194, 203 Dunfermline 54 Earl of Chichester 257 Earl of Sheffield 57, 257 The Eastbourne Herald 202 Eastbourne Public Library 21 East Sussex County Council 19, 21, 26, 56, 69, 333 – East Sussex County Council Library Services Eccles, John 331, 332 Economic Homes booklets 22, 51, 86, 91, 93, 105, 137, 164, 168, 201, 295, 298 Ede, George Noel 232 Ede, James Chuter 232 Eden 12, 100, 109, 111–114, 125, 132, 147, 148, 189–217, 224, 230 – Eden environment 12, 112, 148, 200, 217 – Garden of Eden 111, 207, 224 – Second Eden 109, 111–113, 132, 147, 216 Edwards, Elizabeth 34, 42, 43, 46, 108 Eliade, Mircea 111, 113, 139 Elliot, T. S. 224 Emmison, Michael 41, 47, 117 Empire 6–11, 29, 53, 61, 72, 87, 92, 104, 105, 107, 119, 142, 145, 149, 194, 218, 221, 225, 227, 228, 230, 235, 236, 240, 243, 250, 262, 273, 290, 336, 344 – British Empire 8, 53, 87, 104, 119, 221, 235, 240 – Empire Day 237 – Empire Marketing Board 142, 230 England and the Octopus 16, 138, 205, 206 English Landscape 18, 123, 200, 212 Englishness 18, 124, 200, 228 Ephesus 65 Erll, Astrid 36 Estate (Peacehaven) 1, 27, 28, 58, 63, 72, 75, 80, 94–96, 102, 104, 105, 158, 160, 178, 184, 188, 190–213, 224, 241, 344

401

– Estate Blueprints 12 – Estate Maps 26, 111, 351 – Estate Office 84, 102, 109, 184, 205, 309 Esty, Jed 73 The Evangelical Church (Peacehaven) 266, 316, 318 The Evening Argus 20, 331 Farnell, Sargeant Major W. 10 Farrant, John H. 220 Feldman, David 53, 54 Festubert, France 64, 72 Fields, Gracie 15, 230, 278, 312, 335 Fokker, Anton 175 Ford, James 227 Foucault, Michel 41 Foundation Mythology 13, 26, 31, 127, 147–149, 191, 219, 246, 247, 289, 323 Fraser, Sir John 190 Freire, Paulo 29, 254 Fresh Air Movement 15 Freund, Alexander 41, 252 Friars Avenue (Peacehaven) 72 Friars Bay Estate Smallholders Colony 58 – Friars Bay Estate 65, 221 Friends of Downland’s Court 19 Friendship News 232, 233 Fullilove, Mindy Thompson 350 Galinou, Mireille 79 Gallipoli 60, 69, 102, 107, 222, 258 – Gallipoli Campaign 69, 107 Garden city 12, 15, 17, 26, 27, 29, 31, 51, 54, 73–77, 79, 80, 82, 84, 87, 90, 98, 105, 107, 109, 117, 136, 138, 149, 162, 175, 178, 191, 192, 196, 205, 212, 217, 222–224, 226, 247, 269, 276, 279, 281, 285, 288, 331–333, 341, 342, 347–349 – Garden Cities and Town Planning Journal 200 – Garden City Association 54, 77 – Garden city by-the-sea 75, 84, 87, 98, 107, 191, 192, 196, 217, 226, 285, 333, 347 – Garden city ideal 12, 15, 17, 26, 31, 73, 84, 117, 149, 162, 205, 247, 279, 342, 348 – Garden city narrative 15, 178, 332, 347 Gardner, Saundra 46

402

Index

Gast, John 122, 123 Gaunt, Walter 78 Gedächtnisgeschichte 13, 14, 24, 36 Gheerbrant, Alain 111, 125 Gillian, Rose 53, 98 Gilpin, Winifred 227 Gladys Avenue (Peacehaven) 299 Godby, Michael 290 Gold Lane (Peacehaven) 232, 264, 282 Gombrich, Ernst 110 Gracie Fields Home and Orphanage (Peacehaven) 375 Great Depression 53 Great War 12, 18, 72, 73, 75, 122, 142, 145, 212, 218, 227, 258, 259, 292. See also World War I (WWI) Greenberg, Amy 122 Greene, Graham 16 Green, George Kay 128 Greenwich Meridian Line 30 Grid System 55, 56, 63, 76, 85, 95, 96, 125, 189, 190, 276, 325 Halbwachs, Maurice 13, 37–39, 44, 45, 47, 48 Hall, Agnes 237, 244 Hamann, Christoph 43, 44 Hampstead Garden Suburb 77, 79 Hardy, Dennis 15, 17, 26, 30, 53, 54, 73, 76, 77, 79, 80, 84, 128, 209, 212, 349 The Harlequinaders 382 Harris, Roland B. 19, 20 Harrison, Arthur 56, 230, 257, 259 Harrison, John 25, 57, 58, 250, 256, 257, 272, 289 Harvey, David 47, 48 Hazel, Jill 25, 250, 283, 284, 286 Heathy Brow 55, 331 Hecker, Hugo 2 Hecker, Martha 85 Hetherington, Guy 255, 300 Hill, Joseph James 27, 149–188 Hirsch, Marianne 252 Hislop, W. P. 228 Histoire croisée 13, 31–36, 41, 42, 50, 51, 216, 217, 251, 321, 353 – methodology 31, 33–35, 216, 251, 321

Historic Character Assessment Report (Peacehaven) 19 H. M. S. Barham 144 Hockaday, Ian 311 Hoddern Avenue (Peacehaven) 1 Hoddern Farm 55 – Lower Hoddern Farm 55 – Upper Hoddern Farm 55 Holmes, Randolph, Bezzant 8 Homes for Heroes 12, 15, 26, 54, 126, 127, 222, 244 Hopkins, Suzi 292 Hoskins, W. G. 18, 212 Hotel Peacehaven 5, 10, 16, 28, 85, 97, 103, 111, 150, 154, 171, 174, 176, 178, 179, 181, 184, 185, 188, 205, 219, 225, 230, 231, 241, 247, 255, 271, 278, 279, 288, 299, 300, 318, 334, 335, 341 – Sunken Gardens 6, 10, 174, 175, 188, 226, 241, 278, 334, 341 Hove 104, 183, 208, 330, 331 Howard, Ebenezer 54, 76–78, 84, 115 Howe, Kathleen Stewart 43 Hunter, Les 25, 250, 251, 259, 260, 262, 266, 272, 275, 280–283, 285, 287 Hygeia (Greek and Roman goddess) 132 Ideal Homes 79, 86, 91, 247 India 6–8, 92, 143, 262, 273 International Friendship League 76, 232, 233 Interwar period 3, 11, 12, 15, 17, 18, 29, 30, 53, 54, 92, 113, 120, 176, 217, 218, 247, 323, 331, 335, 341, 347, 349, 352 Isis (Egyptian Goddess) 122 Isle of Man 120, 143 Janus (Roman god) 131, 132 Johnson, Christopher D. 110 Johnston, David 348 The Keep 25, 55, 60, 66, 67, 69, 72, 73, 75, 84, 194, 195, 212, 296, 350 Keightley, Emma 35, 37, 42, 253, 255, 320, 321, 323 Keymer Avenue (Peacehaven) 72 Kia Ora (Peacehaven) 96 King, Anthony 15, 92, 93, 163, 200, 226

Index

King George 210, 238 – King George V Memorial 238 (see also Meridian Monument) Kipling, Rudyard 61 Kirby Farm (Peacehaven) 269, 270 Klein, Kervin Lee 290 Kortright, Guy 230 Lacy, Suzanne 313 Langford, Martha 44, 252, 319 Lanham, Reuben 17, 25, 250, 255–257, 263, 267–269, 272–275, 281, 283, 285, 287, 344 Lawrence Park Estates (Toronto) 80 Lawrence, T. E. 116 Lefebvre, Henri 48 Leigh, Conrad 140 Letchworth Garden City 79, 82, 105, 117 Lewes 6, 82, 95, 97, 100, 190, 286, 314, 333, 346, 348, 350 Lewis, Philippa 73, 93 Liege (Liège, Belgium) 64, 71 Ligeia (Greek Siren) 175 Lincoln Avenue (Peacehaven) 95 Lippard, Lucy 45 Little, Herbert 6 Lloyd George, David 73 Local Authority Building Control 345 Locke, Katie 348 London Standard 66 Loos (Belgium) 64, 65, 72 Lord Beaverbrook 66 Louvain 64, 71, 300, 342 – Louvain Nursery 342 Lowe, David 126 Lowenthal, David 18, 89, 163, 254, 351 Lowerson, John 53, 200 Lulham, Habberton 195 Lureland 12–50, 85, 97, 107, 110, 125, 147, 151, 167, 176, 182, 192, 216, 222, 241, 248, 271, 279, 283, 292–353 – Lureland Dance Hall 85, 151, 241 Mabey, Richard 73, 74 Mackay, Captain 12, 143, 269 Mais, S. P. B. 16, 101 Malines Avenue (Peacehaven) 2, 72

403

Manplan 324, 326, 327 Marianne La Semeuse 122 Marne (Belgium) 64, 72 Marriot, James Arthur 264 Martin, Barbara 289 Martin, Colin 286 Martin, Olive 286 Masonic Lodge (Peacehaven) 329 Mathur, Saloni 98 Mattless, David 16, 18, 200, 212 Mayfield Avenue (Peacehaven) 265, 276, 279, 288 The Mayflower 142 McFarlane, Robert 47, 73, 259 Mead, Geoffrey 25, 348 Meiselas, Susan 252 Memory 11–50, 61, 72, 102, 148, 222, 238, 247, 249–290, 292, 294, 298, 307–309, 313, 318–321, 334, 341, 347, 351, 353 – collective memory 13, 14, 24, 35, 37–39, 44, 48, 49, 249, 321 – cultural memory 25, 31, 35, 36, 38–40, 49, 148, 222, 247, 334, 351, 353 – personal memory 37, 39 – transnational memory 36, 39 Mendelson, Jordana 98 Meridian Monument (Peacehaven) 30, 31, 155, 176, 227, 238, 243, 247, 279, 295, 308, 311, 312, 316, 325, 331, 335–340, 347 Meridian Post 334 Meridian Shopping centre (Peacehaven) 20, 331 Mills, Sarah 24, 313 Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries 72 – Board of Agriculture 71, 72, 84 Mirzoeff, Edward 324 Mnemonic imagination 35, 37, 252, 253, 255, 292, 319–323, 353 Mond, Alfred 126, 127 Mons (Belgium) 64, 72 Montrose, Saskatoon 54, 96 Moore, Frank 199 More, Thomas 54 Morris, William 54, 72, 77 Morton, Chris 43 Moulsecoomb (Brighton) 54

404

Index

Mullin, Chris 113 The Museum of English Rural Life 25 Mythology 11–13, 26, 31, 47, 55, 56, 110, 111, 113, 127, 132, 147–149, 162, 175, 188, 191, 194, 196, 216, 219, 224–243, 246, 247, 289, 323, 330, 341, 353 National Archives, Kew 14, 25, 70, 71 Neville, Charles William 12, 14, 19, 54–56, 58–60, 63, 65–70, 73, 75, 76, 78, 84, 86, 89, 106–108, 111, 113, 123, 128, 142, 158, 172, 175, 335, 344 Neville, Dorothy 176, 178, 190, 192, 195, 200, 203, 205–207, 216, 221, 224, 257, 263 New Anzac-on-Sea. See Anzac Newbould, Frank 214 Newbury, Darren 43, 72, 130 Newhaven 20, 25, 55, 57, 66, 81, 82, 84, 87, 95, 100, 102, 104, 105, 135, 150, 189, 190, 205, 208, 209, 220, 222, 223, 225, 251, 258, 272, 281, 283, 286, 337, 353 – Newhaven Harbour 57 – Newhaven Museum 25, 81 – Newhaven Rural District Council 208 New Jerusalem 115, 196, 221, 247 New Lanark 53 New Zealand Herald 59, 60, 66, 67 New Zealand Post 67 Nietzsche, Friedrich 41 Noble, Mike 64 Nora, Pierre 38, 39, 43, 47 North Peacehaven. See Peacehaven Oakeley, Richard 255, 300 O’Connor, T. P. The Right Hon. 197 Offa House (Peacehaven) 171 Old Tin School (Peacehaven) 264 Olin, Margaret 46 Oliver, Paul 92 Optima Stores (Peacehaven) 96, 276, 277 Ouse Valley 126 Palmer, Margaret 25, 250, 255, 258, 264, 270, 272, 274, 275, 277, 280, 281, 285, 288 Parker, A. E. 105, 154, 163 Parker, Barry 77, 163

Parkin, Katherine 109 Parks, Frank 28, 149–151, 155, 157, 158, 161, 163, 166, 171, 173, 178, 182, 187, 255, 263, 307, 311, 351 Parks, Margaret 9, 25, 250, 254, 257, 258, 263–266, 272–276, 312 Parris, Barbara Paul, Stanley 379, 390 Pavilion Cinema (Peacehaven) 151 Payne, Tony 14, 64, 65 Peacehaven 1, 2, 4–12, 15–31, 33, 43–45, 47, 49–51, 53, 54, 56, 58, 61, 63, 64, 68, 69, 71–353 – Greater Peacehaven Estate 190, 199, 344 – Meridian Monument 30, 31, 155, 176, 227, 238, 243, 247, 279, 295, 308, 311, 312, 316, 325, 331, 335–340, 347 – North Peacehaven 9, 25, 87, 88, 105, 126, 178, 232, 270, 285, 287, 300, 301, 318, 330, 331, 333, 341, 342, 347 – Peacehaven College 273, 274, 288 – Peacehaven Heights 102, 189, 286, 340 – Pioneer Era 20 Peacehaven Building and Supply Company Ltd. 158 Peacehaven Electric Light and Power Company 369, 387 Peacehaven Estates Ltd 205 Peacehaven Guidebooks 211, 247 – The Official 38, 197, 203, 222, 244 – Peacehaven Directory 171, 180, 183, 208, 220 – Peacehaven Golf Guide 232 Peacehaven Hotel. See Hotel Peacehaven Peacehaven Library 21, 23, 24, 309, 349, 350 Peacehaven and Newhaven and South Coast Gazette 87, 225 Peacehaven Parish Council 237, 244 Peacehaven Pioneers 23, 312 Peacehaven Post 5, 7, 10, 12, 22, 26–28, 43, 75, 76, 78, 87, 98, 105–151, 153, 158–163, 165, 166, 168, 171, 172, 174–176, 178, 180–183, 188–190, 192, 194–199, 219, 221, 222, 226, 240, 268, 272, 296, 308, 311, 332, 336, 339, 343, 351 – ‘The Borders of Lureland’ 110, 125

Index

– ‘Captain Stubbs’ 134, 135, 145 – ‘Come to Peacehaven’ 124 – New World 127, 142, 147, 196, 235 – ‘The Peacehaven Pedestrian’ 164 – ‘Pilgrimage’ 140–142, 241 – ‘Trailblazers on a New Frontier’ 113 – ‘The Twelve Posts of Peacehaven’ 114 – ‘What will be seen at Peacehaven’ 110, 117 Peacehaven Postcards 99, 150, 178, 183 Peacehaven Promenade 104 Peacehaven Pylons 240 Peacehaven and South Coast Advertiser 198 Peacehaven and South Coast Record 198 Peacehaven Souvenir Booklet 171 Peacehaven and Telscombe Football Club 338 Peacehaven and Telscombe Neighbourhood Development Plan 291, 322, 346 Peacehaven Town Council 311, 335, 338, 340, 351 Peacehaven Water Company 263 Peace statue (Hotel Peacehaven) 139, 188, 223, 224 Pearsall, Howard 78 Pears, Charles 230 Pegler, Frank 129 Percian House (Peacehaven) 96 Pethes, Nicolas 13, 36 Pevsner, Nikolaus 17, 326 Philps, Alec 318 Phyllis Avenue (Peacehaven) 1, 2, 4, 5, 9–11, 64, 71, 85, 96, 97, 103, 173, 184, 205, 271, 277, 279, 288, 299, 300, 305, 344 Pickering, Michael 35, 37, 42, 253, 255, 320, 321, 353 Piddinghoe 14, 51, 55, 95, 96, 189, 221, 245, 257, 271, 281, 283–285, 297 Pinney, Christopher 43 Pizzey, Blakeney M. 192 Plotland 14, 54 – Plotlanders 54 Pompeii 65, 162 Poplett, Bob 11, 20, 21, 23 Poplett, Christine 23 Portobello Coastguard Station 56 Port Sunlight 53, 324

405

Powell, Felix 27, 106, 107, 281 Powell, George 27, 107, 112, 113, 130, 138, 146, 147, 182, 197 Power, Mark 292 Prime Meridian Obelisk 235, 238 Prochaska, David 98 Promenade, the (Peacehaven) 63, 64, 95, 96, 178, 186, 243, 276, 299, 340 Punch 137 Queen Elizabeth II 337 Quick, Ronald 233 Rach, Ruth 347 Ray-Jones, Tony 31, 323, 324, 326–329 Reconstruction work 13, 35, 38, 40, 46 Regards Croisés 32–34, 36, 188, 216, 292 – methodology 36 Reiss, Richard 74 Rendell, Jane 30, 49, 298, 307 RIBA archives [Royal Institute of British Architects] 25, 326 Ribbon development 53, 207–209 – Ribbon Act 209 Richards, J. M. 93, 104 Robinson, Diana 78, 79 Robinson, Robbie 337 Robson, Flora 139, 167, 222, 335 Roderick Avenue (Peacehaven) 63, 64, 96, 165, 187, 267, 286, 302 Rodhouse, George 383 Rodmell 6 Rogers & Mansons 91 Rose, Gillian 34, 41, 98 Rosemary Tea Gardens (Peacehaven) 119, 138, 174 Rosenbluth, Vera 45 Ross, Walter 79 Rottingdean 6, 189, 199, 205, 208, 220, 225, 226, 256 – Rottingdean Heights 189, 199 Roty, Louis Oscar 122 Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) 25, 212, 213, 238, 326, 328 Ruchatz, Jens 13, 36 Ruskin, John 77

406

Index

St. Dunstans 10 Salonica, Greece 64 Saltdean 6, 68, 189, 199, 225, 226, 238, 283, 327, 328, 344 Sangster, Wallace 128 Sayers, Sue 19 Schama, Simon 18 Schlak, Tim 40 Schwartz, Joan M. 34, 43 Seaford Head 102 Searle Avenue (Peacehaven) 273 Seaview Avenue (Peacehaven) 75, 96, 155, 272, 283 Sebald, W. G. 111 Seed, Peter 25, 250, 251, 256, 286, 291, 348 Sennett, Richard 350 Seven Sisters 102, 202 Shepherd, Amelia 292 Shepherds Cot 342 Shirley, Rosemary 18 Shoreham Beach 17 Shoreham 183, 285 Sims, George R. (Dagonet) 27, 86, 106, 107 Slindon Avenue (Peacehaven) 72 – The Smallholder 57 Smith, F. W. 171, 220 Smith, Philip 41, 47, 117 – The Society of Sussex Downsmen 16, 189, 194, 197, 271 South Africa 12, 143, 269 South Australian Gazette and Colonial Register 66, 67 – The Register 67 South Coast Land Resort Company (SCLRC) 220 South Coast Road (Peacehaven) 6, 11, 19, 20, 55, 56, 63–65, 85, 89, 97, 103, 105, 154, 157, 170, 173, 178, 184, 185, 207, 211, 221, 222, 265, 272, 277, 279, 283, 285, 287, 330, 331, 345, 346, 348 South Downs National Park 348 Southport 54 Stanley Road (Peacehaven) 301 Stewart, Susan 41, 98 Street, Reverend George W. 178, 221 Suburbia 17, 206 Sullivan, Graham 320, 321

Sunview Avenue (Peacehaven) 72, 287 Sussex 12, 14, 16, 17, 19, 21, 26, 28, 29, 51, 55, 69, 72, 75, 82, 100–102, 104, 107, 112, 149, 183, 189, 192, 194–197, 199, 205, 209, 214, 215, 220, 223, 234, 237, 238, 243, 244, 271, 273, 296, 305, 312, 313, 325, 326, 333, 335, 348, 351 – Sussex Coast 12, 325, 326, 351 – Sussex Downs 29, 82, 102, 199, 209, 214, 228 Swenarton, Mark 54 Taylor, Horace 78, 142 Telscombe Cliffs 56, 65, 75, 95, 190, 208, 211, 245, 270, 280, 285, 305 – Telscombe Cliffs Estate 56, 75, 95 Telscombe Road (Peacehaven) 105, 270, 302 Telscombe Training Centre 232 Telscombe Village 6, 56, 190, 245 Teynham, Lord [Henry Roper Curzon] 190, 241 Thompson, Alistair 41, 252 Thomson, Alistair 251, 252 Thurston Hopkins, Robert 29, 194–196, 205, 228 The Times 60, 66, 69, 86, 238 Tinkler, Penny 41, 46, 251, 253 Tor Road (Peacehaven) 88, 263 Town and Country Movement 54 Town planning 15, 16, 26, 51, 53, 63, 75, 76, 79, 86, 162, 189, 190, 200, 208, 322, 326, 348 – Town Planning Act 75, 208 Troak, Brenda 21, 23, 289, 350 Troak, Malcolm 20, 21, 23, 312 Troak-Poplett collection 13, 19–22, 25, 30, 50, 56, 69, 93, 94, 204, 223, 295, 308, 313, 320, 349 Tuan, Yi-Fu 92 Tubb, Dick 225 Tucker, Judith 28, 42, 44 Unwin, Raymond 63, 65, 77–79, 163 Urban Planning 54 Utopia 15, 53, 62, 76, 98, 100, 111, 112, 116, 151, 236 – social Utopia 15

Index

Vadim, Oswald 235 Vale, Patricia 180 – The Valley Estate (Peacehaven) 189 Valley Road (Peacehaven) 96, 285, 287 Vernon Avenue (Peacehaven) 72 Victoria Avenue (Peacehaven) 293 Vincent, Henry 57, 58 Volk, Conrad 107 Volk, Gordon 27–29, 98, 106, 107, 109, 139, 195, 197, 332 Volk, Magnus 197 Voluntary Training Corps 15 Wagstaff, Jack 2, 30 Walton, John K. 54 Ward, Colin 17, 26, 54, 75, 76, 128, 209, 212, 285, 349 Ward, Cyril 192 War Office 71, 72, 214 – The Wartime House Magazine 192 Watson, William 278 Weber, Audrey 101 Welker, Michael 37 Welwyn Garden City 80, 84, 136, 224, 269, 281 Werner, Michael 13, 18, 31, 32, 34, 35, 37, 52 White cliffs 18, 31, 61, 81, 82, 89, 98, 99, 123, 124, 140, 141, 143, 145, 206, 229, 237, 240, 320, 336–338, 340, 351

407

Wilde, Oscar 62 ‘Wild West’ 17, 157, 160, 254, 286, 330 Williams-Ellis, Clough 16, 138, 189, 205–207, 216 Williams, Haydn 9, 255, 258, 271–273, 275, 277, 278, 287, 312 Williams, Raymond 351 Williams, Rita 251, 271 Wilson, Edward A. 113 Wilson, Henry L. 91 Winter, Jay 108 Woolf, Leonard 75 Woolf, Virginia 15, 16 World War I (WWI) 10, 11, 163, 330 – The Great War 12, 18, 72, 73, 75, 122, 142, 145, 212, 218, 227, 258, 259, 292 – WWI Veterans 135, 247 World War II 9 – Second World War 20, 29, 250 Worpole, Ken 224 Worthing 5, 61, 286 Yorke, Trevor 54 Ypres (Belgium) 10, 64, 72 Zimmermann, Bénédicte 13, 18, 31, 32, 34, 35, 37, 52