ARCHIVE OF THE MIGHELL FAMILY OF BRIGHTON

Summary of contents

AMS 5575/1-26 Deeds of property in Brighton, Hove and Burgess Hill 1761-1902

AMS 5575/27-32 Business 1768-1950

AMS 5575/33-49 Correspondence 1796, 1869-1907

AMS 5575/50-58 Personal papers 1788-1951

AMS 5575/59 Printed miscellanea 1828

Documents donated by the executors of G E Mighell, November 1977 (ACC 2158)

The first link between the Mighell (pronounced Mile) family and Brighton comes in the earliest parish register, in the year 1560. Earlier examples of the name exist, but not in Sussex, and the date at which the family first appeared in Brighton is totally obscure.

Although sixteenth-century French Protestant connections have been suggested, the most likely derivation of the name is from Michael, shared with other surnames such as Mitchell and Miall. Mighell occurs in the first Brighton register as a synonym for Michael, while alternative forms of Michaelmas and St Michael's are Mighellmas and St Mighell's.

The Mighells were prominent Brighton nonconformists in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: many Mighell children were baptised in the Union Street Independent Chapel from 1700.

Philip Mighell (1747-1836), who appears in this catalogue as table president in the festival banquet of 1814, also leased (and later sold) to the Prince Regent land now forming part of the west lawn of the Royal Pavilion.

His nephew Richard Mighell (1794-1865) was apprenticed to a Cuckfield tanner in 1808. After some years in this trade, he appears in the 1830s as joint owner, with one of his brothers, of a wet fish shop in Brighton; the documents here show him supporting the newly opened London to Brighton railway. By 1850 he had become a large-scale urban property owner and builder and was one of the four men responsible for the development of the suburb Cliftonville.

Later members of the family are also represented in the archive; Edward and Alfred Mighell of Burgess Hill and A and J Mighell of Steyning continued the family tradition of building, the former involved in speculative developments in the growing settlement at St John's Common and the latter as builders and decorators.

The most significant elements of the archive are the letters from Richard Mighell's children in the United States, which vividly describe the development of the West Coast and the trials of settler life in New Orleans and Mobile, and shed light on the slavery debate and the American Civil War, and the papers relating to Richard's own development of Queen Square and other areas of Brighton and Hove.