The Montpelier and Clifton Hill Association

The Alex: restored to rude health

FOR more than four years one of the conservation area’s most distinctive buildings has been shrouded in scaffolding. Now the scaffolding is coming down revealing the imposing facade of the Alex’s main building, one of the most striking features of the conservation area. The building is now being converted into luxury flats. The new owners are due to start moving in early in the new year.

The old Royal Alexandra Children’s Hospital finally closed its doors in 2007. For more than two years the future of the building hung in the balance. Initially the developers wanted to clear the whole site. This meant demolishing the much-loved main hospital building, which dates from 1880 and was designed by the noted local architect Thomas Lainson.

But the MCHA fought tenaciously to save the building, persuading the planning committee to reject the demolition plans—against the recommendation of the planning officers, who were happy to see the building demolished. Continue reading →

The see-through bin

THE city’s unloved and poorly maintained communal bins will be replaced or refurbished in a programme following pressure from the Montpelier and Clifton Hill Association. The chair of the environment committee, Pete West, told the committee on 7th October, that the replacement programme will begin in April next year.

The pledge to replace the bins represents a significant victory for the MCHA. Cityclean, the council’s rubbish department, had no intention of replacing any of the  communal bins for at least a couple of years.

In June the Montpelier and Clifton Hill Association’s survey revealed that the communal bins in our area were in a deplorable state. The survey found that 70 per cent of the bins in our area were defective, with two topless bins and one see-through bin. One of the topless bins has subsquently had an amateurish repair job. Although the MCHA survey only covered the 50 bins in our area other parts of the city clearly had similar problems. Continue reading →

Mind the gap

AS THE thermometer soars and summer at last starts to kick in one of the coolest places to be in Brighton is not lying stretched out on the beach—but chilling out in one of our glorious Regency houses.

In winter, period houses can be draughty, hard to keep warm and the heating bills make the council tax bill look like small change. But in summer they come into their own and are far less likely to need air conditioning than modern houses. This is an important advantage, because it takes twice as much energy to cool a room by one degree as it does to warm the room by one degree.

All the design features of Brighton’s period houses—those fireplaces, the draughty sash windows and those thick walls—that make the houses so hard to heat in winter, make them a really cool place to be in the middle of a heatwave. Continue reading →

Take a walk round our lovely conservation area with local expert Geoffrey Mead, of the University of Sussex. As part of the Brighton fringe festival Dr Mead is conducting a number of tours around the area in May and June.

Dr Mead is a well-respected local tour guide and an acknowledged authority on the local architecture. The tours take an hour and a half and will take in all the main features of the area, as well as some lesser known items.

The tours start at St Nicholas Church at 2pm on 17th, 24th and 31st May. In June there are tours on 1st, 7th and 8th June. The cost is £7. For details of the next tour see our coming soon page.

This year’s annual general meeting will be held at 7 pm on Thursday 29th May in St Michael’s church. After the formal business the guest speaker will be Geoff Mead, who will give an illustrated talk about Sussex Literary Landscapes.

Members should have received the 2013 minutes and this year’s agenda, together with a flyer for the talk, with the March issue of our newsletter.

For more details see our events pages