page_title: Round Hill, Brighton
section_title: Conservation area
hierarchical_section_title: Round Hill, Brighton / Conservation area
caption_attribution_description: A westward view along Richmond Road in the Round Hill area of the City of Brighton and Hove, England. Most of these houses date from the 1860s.
context_page_description: Round Hill is an inner suburban area of Brighton, part of the coastal city of Brighton and Hove in England. The area contains a mix of privately owned and privately rented terraced housing, much of which has been converted for multiple occupancies, and small-scale commercial development. It was developed mostly in the late 19th century on an area of high land overlooking central Brighton and with good views in all directions, the area became a desirable middle-class suburb—particularly the large terraced houses of Roundhill Crescent and Richmond Road, and the exclusive Park Crescent—and within a few decades the whole of the hill had been built up with smaller terraces and some large villas.
  Non-residential buildings include the landmark St Martin's Church, Brighton's largest place of worship, with its dramatically extravagant interior; the Brighton Forum, a Gothic Revival former college now in commercial use; Brighton's main fire station; and the oldest working cinema in Britain. The first hospital in England catering for mental illness was established in a house in Roundhill Crescent in 1905.
context_section_description: On 6 January 1977, 29.78 acres (12.05 ha) at the heart of Round Hill was designated as a conservation area; as of 2020 it is one of 34 such areas in the city of Brighton and Hove. Its boundaries are (clockwise from north) Prince's Road, Mayo Road, D'Aubigny Road, Roundhill Crescent, Upper Lewes Road, Wakefield Road, Prince's Crescent and Ditchling Road. This area includes all the Grade II-listed houses of Roundhill Crescent (described by Brighton and Hove City Council as "the most important architecturally"), two pubs (including the Tudor Revival-style New Vic, built in the 1920s and representing a late addition to the mostly late 19th-century streetscape), and four paired semi-detached villas on Ditchling Road which were some of the earliest houses in the area—they date from about 1850.
  The area's character derives from its "tight urban form" and lack of 20th-century redevelopment, resulting in a homogeneous streetscape of mostly residential buildings in long terraces; its steeply sloping land; and the swathes of trees and gardens which can be seen in long views into the area, which help to "define the unaltered Victorian streetplan" when seen from a distance. Roundhill Crescent "both curves and changes height dramatically along its length".  The houses, which on the northwest side of the road are not a continuous terrace and which date from the 1860s to the 1880s, vary in height and the extent of their architectural detailing; canted bay windows and original cast-iron balconies feature prominently. Some pairs of semi-detached villas of the 1860s survive on Richmond Road. Prince's Road, where the 223-foot (68 m) summit of Round Hill is located, has a long, well-defined frontage of rendered terraced houses dating from the 1880s, with an older flint and brick house with decorative bargeboards and gables breaking up the composition.
  Building materials vary greatly. Brick was rarely used at the time Round Hill was developing (although a few houses in Belton Road were built of it); bungaroosh was often used for walls instead. Characteristic of Brighton but almost unknown elsewhere, this consisted of random assortments of materials such as low-quality brick, cobbles, flints, pebbles, rubble, wood and sand, set in hydraulic lime and shuttered. Bungaroosh was often faced with render or stucco to make it weatherproof. Some flint buildings survive on Prince's Crescent. When built, most windows in the conservation area's houses were sashes, and roofs were of Welsh slate.
  The area retains many original boundary walls, often in brick and flint or cast iron. Some pavements were laid with blue-brick paving slabs, and a few survive.  Elsewhere, granite kerbstones, stone-dressed gutters and road crossing points laid with limestone and brick remain from the 19th-century development of the area, and some cast-iron lamp-posts have survived.
caption: Richmond Road has two-storey terraced houses and larger semi-detached villas.
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