R-EX data Utilities

People who lived in these houses: the retiree who lives in Brighton permanently; the affluent individual who may have a country mansion or London townhouse and who buys a Brunswick house as a seaside home; they may keep it principally for their own occupation, or make it available to friends and colleagues who they want to impress; thirdly we have the seasonal let property, where speculators purposefully acquired the property in order to rent it out and make a profit through letting income with the rental being highest during the social season (the winter period).

The fashionable season in Brighton changes at different points in history. In the Regency period, the fashionable season began in the autumn, September or October, and ran through to the spring, March or April. It was divided into two parts, around New Year, and many families came for half the season. As the 19th century progresses, Brighton comes to comes to have two seasons. The railway first connects London with Brighton in 1841. The aim was to bring affluent people to the seaside, but the railway company has many spare seats, so begins selling cheap day trip tickets to Londoners. They don't want to visit in the cold winter months, they want to come in the warm summer months, so we end up with a second season of less affluent visitors.

The drawing room was a flexible space. The children may have used the room in the daytime; it was the place to bring guests for conversation following a meal in the ground floor dining room. The doors between the front and rear drawing rooms would be opened to increase the floor space so that people can dispose themselves comfortably into groups and pursue conversation, music, or whatever their particular interest might be.

The drawing room would often include musical instruments, a piano, perhaps a harp, and other instruments for the children to practice on. Children would quite likely practise wind and stringed instruments and so the front room provided a location where that could take place. The back drawing room with the doors between the two rooms closed, would have been commonly used by the ladies of the household who might have written letters to friends there, read poetry books perhaps, playing games or sketched.

Rental houses in Regency Brighton were rented much like today. Long term rental would often be for an empty, unfurnished house. While  short-term trental may also include the basic furnishings. There are a few properties where rental periods for longer and families then took them bare and fitted them out according to their needs, a bit like today, while if you are only renting the house for a season, it is most unlikely you would be expected to furnish it.

How did they clean the chimneys? Although there was a practice of using small ‘climbing boys’ to clean the insides of the chimneys of large houses, it was seen as cruel and dangerous and was in decline by the Regency period. In a house like this one, every room in the house has a fireplace and every fireplace has an individual flue to carry the smoke up through the chimney stack to the pot on top and to the open air. The flues are only about 9 inches or 25 centimetres square in section, so too small for even the smallest boy! The chimneys of this house would have been swept in much the same way as they would be if they were in use today, using a brush on an extendable pole, pushed up the chimney until it pops out at the top. In the case of longer flues, these would be built with 'rodding points', iron covers that could be removed to provide access at various parts of the flue as it ascends the building. Sweeping the chimney may be required every year.

There are some very early examples of what we would recognise as central heating, with a boiler and radiators, in a few Brighton houses in the 1820s. This house was heated with than coal fires until the early 20th century, when a central heating boiler and radiators were installed. This was removed when the house was converted into flats in the 1950s, when individual heating systems would have been installed. 

The street lighting was gas powered when the houses here were first built. Some houses could have tapped into the gas supply to light the interiors. However, this was not a popular idea because people did not trust gas and were fearful of gas explosions.

Instead, most houses would have used oil lamps, and candles. The high-status rooms above stairs, using beeswax candles, while the lower-status servant areas below stairs used candles made from tallow – animal fat. Drawing rooms often featured chandeliers and decorative candelabras.

Bell systems in more prestigious homes allowed servants to be summoned discreetly through call points in each room. Evidence of these can be seen in the circular holes that remain to either side of the fireplace. Here, a handle would have been attached to a cable hidden in the wall, the cable running to a ‘bell board’ in the basement. On the bell board, each room had its own bell and a flag system to show where the call originated.