Built about 1935 and originally called ‘Pantiles’, this property is situated on one of several parcels of land between Salthill Road and Westgate which had originally belonged to the brewer, George Henty.
We have recorded elsewhere, that in 1780 the founder of the Brewery, William Humphrey (Snr), had bought land in Scuttery Fields (of which you may not know today’s Brewery Field remains a rump), to build some malthouses.
This extract of Loader’s map from 1812 clearly show this arrangement. The river (top right) comes west out of its Orchard St conduit at the Squittery Bridge and runs south west down through the Squittery Fields in between the malthouses and the garden of no 46.
Further development ensued. The large house you can see to the west of the river is the current no 52, and had been erected on the adjoining plot some 30 years earlier, around 1750. Humphrey bought this and its grounds to install his actual brewery.
Although the Lavant ran through the Brewery site and may be assumed to have provided water for making beer originally, it would have been far from clean. George Henty, on acquiring the business from Humphrey, began accumulating additional plots even further west along the north side of the road. This was not for speculative building nor industrial development but for tapping the aquifers of clean water, filtered by the chalk as it descended from the Downs.
These parcels of land eventually totalled an impressive 128 acres, on which were installed at least six wells. Jealous ownership of such a large area ensured that no developer would ever get near enough to destroy the purity of Henty beers.
Having descended through different members of the family until 1st October 1934, the land was finally conveyed to a developer from Worthing called Brazier for £20,000 – an amount equivalent to approximately £1,826,920 in 2025.
Residents
Two days later Brazier sold on a single plot, covered in covenants and where no 64 now sits, for £280; to a builder, Arthur Clare and his wife Rosa of Westgate. That’s approximately £25,646 today (2025).
The plot was described as:
“a plot of land on the north side of the Portsmouth Road, with a frontage to the road, with a width of 70 feet and a depth of 200 feet. There are a number of covenants including ‘the purchaser will not erect more than one dwelling house on the plot with the usual outhouses and a private garage’. It should cost at least £1000 and ‘there is to be neither trade, business, educational or institutional use, nor public meetings or worship’. ‘Learned and artistic’ uses (art and music lessons are permitted) as is a doctor’s surgery or a dental practice as long as the extent of their advertising is restricted to a modest brass plate.’
No mention that there was an industrial site next door, and the Hentys no doubt still protecting the site of their wells.
From an original entry by Richard Brownfield