Congratulations on the 1880 Brighton map printed in The Argus last weekend.

From the point of view of local historians this has to be the best centre-fold ever.

It’s wonderful to think of a time when the Chain Pier and the West Pier ruled the seafront roost, and Hove Station was at the top of Holland Road.

I nearly forgot to mention the 1914 photo, in the same edition of the opening (and almost immediate closing) of the old Brighton Grammar School. What fantastic detail.

I didn’t think it could get any better until I remembered the frontpage headline: SALAD SCREAM. Genius.

Andy Steer, Windlesham Road, Brighton

Your double-page print of the Brighton and Hove 1880s Ordnance Survey map was fascinating and I must thank you for taking me back in time to my ancestors’ habitat, and to 1922 where I was born at 113 Queen’s Park Road, formerly Park Road West.

This number is in the row of houses between Albion Hill and Southover Street, shown on the map as being among the first properties to have been built in this road, which stretches from Egremont Place to Elm Grove.

I recall our terraced house had six rooms, two on each floor. An extension at the back was the scullery or kitchen, which had a red brick floor and was equipped with a gas stove and a shallow stone sink under a brass cold water tap connected to a lead pipe fastened to the wall.

Only the ground floor rooms and main first-floor bedroom had gas mantle lighting, while the hall was lit by a fan-shaped gas jet.

The rear garden, where my father kept chickens and smoked herrings in a shed, backed on to properties in Toronto Terrace.

It was all very primitive but, by 1937, when we moved to a smaller house in Dawson Terrace, electricity had been installed and many other alterarations made.

A book, Brighton (Old Ocean’s Bauble) by Edmund W Gilbert, published in 1954, contains a similar print of the map and is described as being “Brighton in 1875 on the first edition of the Ordnance Survey 6in map OS LXVI (1880) surveyed 1873-5”.

It seems the National Library of Scotland is a little behind the times in its release.

Ken Chambers, Whippingham Road, Brighton I found your map of Brighton and Hove so interesting. As a small child in the late 1940s, I lived at the very top of Holland Road, in Hove, where it meets Lyndhurst Road.

On the 1880s map it shows Hove Station to be situated there but by the 1940s it was Holland Road Halt and Hove Station was where it is now.

Does the map cover more of Hove than you could show and where can it be found to view it?

Liz Cardon, Henfield

In response to Liz Cardon, the reproduced map inside The Argus on March 22 is the whole image as supplied by the National Library of Scotland. This map and others of Sussex can be viewed at http://maps.nls.uk/os/6inch-england-and-wales/sussex.html. A graphic index button takes you through to a section where these maps are presented on a grid that corresponds with a Google map for ease of reference.

Adrian Imms, The Argus