Moulsecoomb Place

Moulsecoomb Place, Brighton

A detached house, now offices and social club, dating from 1790 with later alterations. The building incorporates part of a late-medieval structure and was extensively altered in 1913 with the addition of a south wing.

The principal front faces east and was created in 1790 when the house was substantially remodelled for Benjamin Tillstone. The exterior of the main building displays yellow brick set in Flemish bond on the 1790 part of the east front, while the north front has brown brick with dressings of gauged yellow brick. The 1913 wing is constructed of yellow brick in stretcher bond. The roof is slate.

The building rises to two storeys. The 1790 section comprises a seven-window range with a pedimented centre containing three windows. The ground-floor windows have cambered arches, except for the outer ones which feature a Palladian window beneath a round arch in the Adam manner. The first-floor windows are all flat-arched. The glazing, probably dating from around 1900, consists of casements with margin-lights. A stone cornice with mutules supports the pediment, whose shape is echoed in the raised brickwork of the tympanum. The building has a parapet, hipped roof with rebuilt end stacks, and a further stack on the front slope of the hip.

The 1913 wing is similarly detailed on the east front, with a single-storey bay of two windows featuring a cornice and parapet. The left-hand return contains two round-arched openings at ground-floor level with heads of gauged yellow brick, the right-hand one now serving as an entrance. The right-hand return displays a two-storey segmental bay with three windows to each floor, with storey band and cornice continued from the east front, finished with a parapet. Approximately 40 metres of flint wall with brick dressings extends from the south-west corner of the 1913 wing southwards.

The interior retains significant features from the 1790 period. A notable staircase has a curtail step, cast-iron balusters of early Gothic Revival design, a wreathed mahogany handrail, and an open, arcaded string. The arcading is formed by the curved and stepped underside of the staircase, which continues beneath the first-floor landing. The staircase hall has a dado rail and moulded cornice.

All rooms accessed from the staircase hall have mahogany six-panelled doors decorated with Greek Revival incised ornament. The room facing the bottom of the stairs has a more elaborate architrave of Greek Revival character. Ceilings at either end of the staircase feature quadripartite vaulting.

The middle room on the east front of the 1790 section contains a white marble fireplace of neo-Classical design. The ground-floor room in the 1913 wing has a shallow bay to the south with door and windows framed by an architrave and flanked by Ionic columns in antis. An ornate Jacobean-style fireplace faces this bay. The date 1913 is recorded in stained glass over the south door.

Attached to the rear of the main 1790s house is a timber-framed building said to have formed part of a larger late-medieval house. The ground floor is constructed of brick, flint and plaster, with timber-framing above and a tile roof. A flat-arched entrance more or less centrally positioned in the west front is accompanied by an outshut to its left. The first floor projects on a bressumer, evident only to the right of the outshut, with close studding and tension braces forming the frame. Two small windows have sliding 8/8 sashes. The roof is hipped with an extension to the right under a catslide roof, while the left-hand return is rebuilt in brick. This building now forms part of the bar of the Moulsecoomb Social Club and contains no interior features of architectural interest.

To the south, connected to the rear of the 1790 building by a 19th-century bridge, stands a barn. The flint extension is an older timber-framed aisled barn originating from the 16th or 17th century, though altered and rebuilt in the 18th century when the outer walls were probably reconstructed in flint. A larger 19th-century structure, apparently used as a dairy and grain store, was constructed later, resulting in the demolition of part of the south end of the earlier aisled barn.