The original DFL:  James Burton

Moving down to the coast is quite the thing — this century. James Burton got here in the 1820s, when the local scene was mostly rough landscape. As an experienced Georgian builder, he knew how to build a house — or a street. Or how about a complete new town? Bernard McGinley reports on the beginnings of St Leonards-on-Sea, and its pending bicentenary, and how James Burton was the first DFL (‘Down From London’, for DFLs that don’t know).

In 1801 Hastings had a population of just over 3,000 people. Today it is nudging 100,000. Some of that change can be attributed to James Burton, the can-do London builder, who counted his bricks and built houses. 

Burton was a Londoner, born there in 1761 and going to school in Covent Garden. His name was shortened from his father’s Haliburton, who was a Scottish builder. Young James was notably practical — with what today would be called project management skills. By 1786 he had built a number of houses and the Southwark Institution. In 1795, able to afford ‘a low Phæton & Poneys’, he joined the Whig Club, and also began his involvement with the 5th Duke of Bedford to open up the Bedford Estate (Bloomsbury) and create its squares and houses.

Steadily his reputation grew: he was a founder member of the Royal Institution in 1799, alongside Lords, MPs and other grandees. By 1801-2, James Burton was master of the Worshipful Company of Tylers & Bricklayers. When Napoleon threatened invasion in 1803-4, he recruited a military company, the Loyal British Artificers. The terms of service were basic:

. . . officers to receive no pay and privates only in case of exercise in working hours or actual invasion.

Burton was colonel of these many volunteers, and he led the Artificers at Nelson’s funeral. In 1810 he became Sheriff of Kent.

A few years before, the architect and surveyor to the Foundling Hospital Estate, Samuel Pepys Cockerell, wrote to its governors a glowing tribute to James Burton:

Without such a man, possessed of very considerable talents, unwearied industry, and a capital of his own, the extraordinary success of the improvement of the Foundling Estate could not have taken place . . . By his own peculiar resources of mind, he has succeeded in disposing of his buildings and rents, under all the disadvantages of the war, and of an unjust clamour which has been repeatedly raised against him.

The statement continued:

Mr Burton was ready to come forward with money and personal assistance to relieve and help forward those builders who were unable to proceed in their contracts; and in some instances he has been obliged to resume the undertaking and complete himself what has been weakly and imperfectly proceeded in.

His record of competence made other estates (such as the Doughty Estate) willing to work with him. Having leased a site from the Skinners’ Company Estate, he built or had built Burton Place, Burton Crescent and Burton Street. Sometimes (as in Mecklenburgh Square) he supervised. He was involved in developing the Lucas Estate (near modern King’s Cross) and Colonel Eyre’s Estate in St Johns Wood. He built some houses in Tunbridge Wells. Always his retention of space was well considered.

John Nash  

The Prince Regent favoured John Nash, who was a skilled architect but an inept (or unlucky) businessman. Following a bankruptcy arising from Bloomsbury speculation, Nash sought Burton’s diverse help, and got it — in advice, in money, in patronage and recommendations, in knowing potential subcontractors. In return Nash favoured James Burton’s talented architect son, Decimus.

The antiquary John Britton lived in Burton Cottage, Burton Street (near Tavistock Square), and collaborated with A W N Pugin on Illustrations of the Public Buildings of London (2 vols, 1825, 1828). He wrote of Burton in his Autobiography:

During this time he became connected with John Nash, the sycophant architect and companion of the Prince Regent and after King. That architect, like Mr. Burton, was an active, speculating man; and among other plans for the improvement of London, his designs for Regent Street, the Regent’s Park, St. James’s Park, and Buckingham Palace, were accepted and acted upon. Mr. Burton was intimately connected with Nash in carrying into effect much of the New Road, and also the Regent’s Park, in the latter of which he built a handsome villa for himself, where he resided some years. 

The villa was The Holme, which in March 2023 was reported in the New York magazine Architectural Digest with the headline:  

This $300 Million London Mansion Is Now the World’s Most Expensive Home for Sale

Publishers Condé Nast told its readers that the world’s most expensive home was designed by James Burton. (For those without $300m, if a Burton-mansion-in-the-park appeals, Hastings Borough Council are selling one in St Leonards Gardens. South Lodge, designed by James Burton c.1829, is Grade 2 listed. Interest is slight and the price has dropped steadily.) 

Regent Street

Under the New Street Act 1813, Crown property was developed as what became Regent Street. James Burton built both sides of Regent Street, nearly 200 houses, and much of the adjoining area including Lower Regent Street and Waterloo Place. The relevant Commissioners were wary of funding speculative development, but Burton was ready and able to buy leases for large sites in Regent Street.

(Similarly with regard to Regent’s Park, many of the ‘Nash terraces’ and villas are Burtonian. Nash was dissatisfied with the last, Chester Terrace, completed in 1825, and tried – unsuccessfully – to achieve its demolition and rebuilding. When the Commissioners of the Office of Woods – what was later the Crown Estate – referred to ‘the architect of Regent’s Park’, that was neither John Nash nor Decimus Burton but James Burton.)

After 99 years those Regent Street leases expired. Redevelopment followed under the indulgent supervision of the Crown Estate. Robert Byron, co-founder of the Georgian Group, wrote a spiky protesting pamphlet published in May 1937, How We Celebrate the Coronation (published also in the Architectural Review).  Punkily it included the phone numbers of relevant bishops.

Leaving for the coast

Having made a fortune, James Burton proceeded to a final project. Following the death of Charles Eversfield, land for sale was eventually advertised in the Morning Herald in April 1825:

CERTAIN Plots of Freehold Grounds, at Hastings, possessing the great advantages of being the most eligible and almost the only good building land in this much-admired watering place. It is proposed to sell this property in suitable Lots to form a Crescent upon a large scale, intended as the commencement of a very extensive building plan to be called New Hastings having easy access to the old town, and which will also be approached by the parish road, now about to undergo a thorough repair, leading thence to the metropolis through Battel [sic] which will shorten the distance by at least two miles. The ground and elevation plans, with a drawing of the proposed buildings, which are prepared by gentlemen of great practical knowledge and skill in their respective branches, and to which great consideration and attention have been given, are in the state of forwardness, and may be seen ten days prior to the sale at the offices of Messrs. Wardroper and Beecham, solicitors, Hawkhurst, Kent, and at Mr. Deudneys, Gensing Farm House, near the ground, where a person will be in attendance to show the property. 

Mr Burton was in a state of forwardness too, for a final phase of ambition and speculation:  a complete new town. Two years of consideration of the merits of the prospective venture passed before he committed to the purchase of the southern strip of Gensing Farm for £7,800. Mr Deudney was the agent for the Eversfield Estate. By 1835 he had relocated to Marina.

An extensive seafront of two-thirds of a mile, with a narrower hinterland, the new site was a wilderness. James Burton’s extensive experience of villas and terraces, water mains, landscaping and drainage was to change all that: his drawings date from 1827. The future Royal Victoria Hotel (foundation stone laid, 1 March 1828) was a centrepiece enhanced by two Colonnades. Additionally there was the Crown House and a church (his only one). The windswept ensemble was named St Leonard’s On Sea, after an obscure mediæval church under what became the Methodist Church in Norman Road.  

It wasn’t easy, as John Britton noted with a little exaggeration:

He next ventured on the perilous task of building the new town of St. Leonard’s; to convey occupants to which he established coaches to run between that place and the metropolis. These were hazardous and losing schemes, and the very worthy but daring builder was, consequently, involved in ruin.

Quite rapidly the new town gained cohesion, with an infrastructure of horses and servants and different types of accommodation. The former estuary of the Tapshaw Stream created the valley of St Leonards Gardens. The Harold Hotel was licensed by August 1829. The Assembly Rooms were built by October 1829 and a grand dinner was held. Mercatoria and Lavatoria indicated their intended function, though the Horse & Groom was serving beer before it was completely built.

In 1830 at the Harold Hotel, James Burton diplomatically proposed a toast of ‘Prosperity to the Town and Corporation of Hastings’, recognising that the futures of the two towns were intertwined. He was a skilled watercolourist too, and effective at networking. His connexions included Chas Jas Fox, Thomas Coutts, Sir Joseph Banks, William Wilberforce, Michael Faraday, Sir John Soane, Count Rumford, Sir Humphry Davy (who became a business partner), Earl Spencer (who moved to St Leonards), and George Bellas Greenough, first President of the Geological Society (who lived in The Grove, a villa James Burton had built in Regent’s Park). Greenough gave geological advice to Burton (possibly along the lines of ‘Don’t build at the western end of Undercliff, near St Leonard’s Church’). 

Royal residents

From the Prince Regent’s Carlton House, and the Athenæum Club, Burton was well connected, and he knew the royal family. Gloucester Lodge at the top of St Leonard’s Gardens was the residence of Princess Sophia of Gloucester. Adelaide House on the seafront was lived in by the widowed queen of William IV: 23 Grand Parade (formerly Adelaide Place).  

Certainly his greatest coup was to offer a home to the Duchess of Kent and her teenage daughter, HRH Princess Victoria, who arrived in 1834. Crown House had swanky Ionic pillars but was essentially a prefab. Having been shipped in by sea it was flatpack accommodation. No doubt boats came along the coast from Hastings for neighbours to wonder at this strange new settlement to the west. Possibly there was money to be made from pleasure cruises. The White Rock, a coastal obstruction between the two towns, was blown up only in 1834. Bad roads meant that building materials and scaffolding often were moved by sea, by sloop (for example) from London. Then waggons were needed for local transportation.  

My kind of town

Burton’s town was stuccoed on the seafront and also focused on St Leonard’s Gardens behind. There were public buildings, hotels and a turnpike. Groynes were built as sea defences. He could do symmetry on the seafront at the Colonnades (with classical baths opposite the Hotel). The hilliness behind was more suited for picturesque grand houses such as Gloucester Lodge, the Clock House and others in Maze Hill, Quarry House, Allegria, the double villas of The Uplands, the Archery Ground and much else besides. A planned St Leonards Harbour was eventually abandoned, but a bank and a circulating library were among the local amenities. Many years before Ebenezer Howard and his garden cities, here was a planned new settlement. Inspirations may have included New Winchelsea, Salisbury and Edinburgh New Town.

James Burton was never a Victorian, dying at 75, months before the Queen came to the throne in 1837. About a decade later, the railway arrived at Bo Peep, and the penny post made SLoS part of the language. Over time, DFLs became part of the local language.

Still a New Town

St Leonards-on-Sea is an exceptional place — so photogenic that it’s nicknamed Lensville. By sheer bad luck (two world wars and economic downturn), it has survived with its nineteenth-century integrity broadly intact. The New Town of SLoS is a perfect complement to Hastings Old Town, but it remains underappreciated, particularly by the authorities. East of Kenilworth Road and the Market Street junction with Marina, it becomes ‘St Leonards Without’, all the way to Falaise Road and the Pier.

Nevertheless St Leonards retains its own identity despite having lost its own governing system comprising Commissioners and a Beadle in 1885. A few years later James Burton’s Archway (above) was demolished overnight (without notice) by the local authority. Now a red cairn on the seafront states:

THIS STONE | ERECTED IN 1898 | MARKS THE EASTERN | BOUNDARY AT THIS | POINT OF THE TOWN OF | ST LEONARD | FOUNDED BY THE LATE | JAMES BURTON ESQR | 1828

Soon it will be 200 years since James Burton considered moving to the Sussex coast.  

In Hastings, Joseph Kaye, an old colleague from the Foundling Estate project, did St Mary-in-the-Castle and Pelham Crescent, and villas in Belmont, beyond the Old Town. In Brighton, the beginnings of Kemp Town and Brunswick Town may have provided another stimulus for James Burton, though the former was initially just a few houses.

James Burton’s grave (also his wife’s) is in West Hill Road, the pyramid in the West Hill Road burial ground, opposite Archery Road which used to hold the Archery Ground.  Unfortunately the grave is at risk from land instability, a matter of great concern for the Burtons’ St Leonards Society and many others.

Jas B 200:  meeting

St Leonards-on-Sea is still a fine town, with beautiful details such as the Warrior Square station bowl. James Burton’s achievement was vast, and added to. The reputational contrast between New York (where James Burton is acclaimed) and St Leonards (where he is buried) is marked. Residents of Clapham, St Johns Wood and Bloomsbury and occupants of the West End enjoy his prestige. How will his town mark 200 years of SLoS? And when will that be? A festival celebration is one possibility, and it is hoped that an exploratory community meeting on the subject will be held soon — to be announced in HOT.

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