Moulsecoomb Place

At the time of the Domesday survey in 1086, Moulsecoomb was an outlying part of the large parish of Patcham, which was centred on Patcham village north of Brighton. Spelt Mulescumba at that time, the name varied considerably over the centuries and was not standardised to its current spelling until the 1960s. The manor and estate of Moulsecoomb later belonged to Lewes Priory, and Mouscombe Farm was first named in the early 17th century when it was owned by Sir Edward Culpepper. On his death in 1730, it was left to Sir William Culpeper, 1st Baronet of Preston Hall, the first of the Culpeper baronets. In the early 16th century, a timber-framed hall house was built on the estate near the farm…

Moulsecoomb Place is the only building in the Moulsecoomb area mentioned by Ian Nairn and Nikolaus Pevsner in the Sussex edition of their Buildings of England architectural guides. They describe it as "an early 19th-century seven-bay house of yellow brick", and note that the hall house attached to the rear is "the only worthwhile timber-framed cottage in Brighton". The seven-bay façade, which faces east, is the original part dating from 1790; another two-window range was added on the south side in the early 20th century, making the composition asymmetrical. The original section has yellow brickwork in a Flemish bond pattern to the main elevation and brown and yellow gauged brickwork on the…