Hove Museum of Creativity

Address 19 New Church Rd, Hove

The Hove Museum of Creativity is a Victorian villa housing the city's decorative and fine art collections, with a particular focus on local history, craft, and early cinema. The permanent collection is modest but well-curated, with strength in ceramics, glass, and local scenes from the 19th century. The early cinema section is the most distinctive — Hove had a significant cluster of film pioneers in the late 1890s and early 1900s, and the equipment and footage on display tell a story that is less well known than it deserves to be.

The museum is free to enter and small enough to cover in an hour. It sits in a quiet residential part of Hove, a twenty-minute walk from the seafront.

things to do museum
A story
Hove was the site of some of the earliest film production in Britain — James Williamson and G.A. Smith were making films here in 1897, just two years after the Lumière brothers' first screening in Paris. The museum holds a collection of early cinema equipment and documents Hove's claim to be one of the birthplaces of the British film industry.