Preston Manor and Preston Park: Brighton Travel Guide (4.5★)

Brighton’s big green lung

Preston Park is mostly grass, and lots of it. At around 63 acres it is the largest urban park in Brighton. It stretches along the A23 London Road corridor, so traffic runs down one long edge while football pitches, tennis courts and playgrounds fill the open ground inside.

At the northern end, behind flint walls, stands Preston Manor. It is a pale Georgian house rebuilt in 1738 and enlarged in 1905. The Stanford family lived here until 1932, when the house and grounds were left to the town. Beside it is St Peter’s, a small flint church whose origins go back to the 13th century.

Inside Preston Manor

The house is set up as a lived-in Edwardian home, not a gallery. Upstairs you walk through rooms furnished as the Stanfords had them: dark panelled reception rooms, bedrooms laid out as if someone has just stepped out, and family portraits on the walls.

Below stairs is the part most visitors remember. The servants’ quarters show the working side of the house:

• the kitchen and scullery
• storerooms and the butler’s domain
• the passages staff used to stay out of sight

The manor also has a reputation as one of the most haunted houses in Brighton, and ghost tours lean into it. Outside, the walled garden holds a small pet cemetery where the family buried their dogs and cats. It’s an oddly touching corner.

Walking the park

Do a full loop and you pass most of Brighton’s park life in under an hour. Near the café you’ll find the Rotunda, a round 1920s building looking over formal flowerbeds, along with a rose garden. Further on are the bowling greens.

Look for the remaining tree of the Preston Twins. These two English elms were long counted among the oldest of their kind in the world, until one was felled in 2019 after Dutch elm disease.

On the western edge sits Preston Park Velodrome. Built in 1877, it is the oldest surviving velodrome in Britain. Its flat concrete track is still used by local cycling clubs.

Crossing to The Rookery

Don’t skip the other side of Preston Road. Across from the main park is The Rookery, a terraced rock garden opened in the 1930s and one of the largest municipal rock gardens in the country. Paths zigzag up a slope of stone, water and dense planting. It feels a world away from the flat lawns opposite.

Cross at the lights rather than trying to dodge the traffic. Preston Road is a main route into the city and the cars are fast.

Getting there without a car

The train is the easy way in. Preston Park station is on the line to London, one stop north of Brighton, and you can walk from the platform to the park in a few minutes. From Brighton station it is also a flat walk of around half an hour up London Road and Preston Road.

Plenty of city buses run along Preston Road from the centre and stop beside the park. Street parking nearby is limited and controlled, so public transport is usually the simpler choice.

Timing your visit around the manor

The park never closes, but the house is a different matter. Preston Manor opens on selected days and for guided and themed tours, not on a daily schedule. Check the Brighton & Hove Museums website for current dates and ticket details before you go. Admission prices are posted there too.

A few habits help:

• Book ghost tours ahead. The evening events are small groups and popular around Halloween.
• Watch the events calendar. Preston Park hosts concerts, fairs and circuses. Each August, Brighton Pride’s main ticketed event fences off a large part of the park, so park access changes that weekend.
• Go early on sunny weekends. The flat lawns fill with picnics and team games, and the playgrounds get busy by midday. Arriving in the morning usually gets you quieter paths and an easier time at the café.
• Pair it with the church. St Peter’s sits right beside the manor. When it’s open, its medieval wall paintings are worth a few minutes.

Allow about an hour for the manor, an hour for the park and Rookery, and longer if you bring a picnic.