An artist's impression has revealed a doomed Victorian plan to build tennis courts in the centre of one of Sussex's most famous neighbourhoods.

The watercolour, by an unknown painter, shows an ambitious plan from about 1895 to level the landscaped gardens in Adelaide Crescent and Palmeira Square in Hove and replace them with nine lawn tennis courts.

The picture, which is to be auctioned by Scarborough Perry auctioneers in Hove, offers an intriguing glimpse of how the face of Hove seafront could have been transformed, had the plan gone ahead.

The picture shows four courts in the middle of Adelaide Crescent - then called Queen Adelaide Crescent - and five more in Palmeira Square.

The plan was drawn up at a time in Victorian England when tennis was all the rage.

The first Wimbledon championships had taken place in London just a few years before.

Minutes from meetings of the Adelaide ward enclosures committee at the time show the idea of creating tennis courts in the gardens was first posited in December 1893.

A gardener was instructed to remove shrubs and turf over sections of the northern end of the garden in Palmeira Square to make way for a single court, though it is not clear if the work was actually carried out.

In September 1895 the committee approved plans to build more courts and chairman Alfred Henriques wrote to residents asking them to contribute to the £25 cost of carrying out the work.

Only ten residents came forward and the plan was abandoned.

In the painting, tennis courts are being used by men in white trousers and women in long white dresses on an idyllic sunny day.

Small groups of people dressed in Victorian clothes stand watching the games or stroll past along the seafront.

Auctioneer Stephen Perry said: "One suspects the artist had an architectural training because, architecturally, it is not bad. But as a painting it is completely dead and really not very good.

"Like in all architectural suggestion pictures, he has not included too many people cluttering up the place. There are no tennis louts, or whatever they would have been called at the time."

Mr Perry said the picture had been sent to the auctioneers by a local resident who had no idea where it had come from.

He said: "It is not of huge value but I think it could have a degree of local interest. I would expect it to fetch a couple of hundred pounds."

The painting is to be auctioned at Scarborough Perry in Hove Street, Hove, on March 8. Viewing takes place on March 5 and 6.

Also in the sale is a painting of the White Rock in Hastings, which was destroyed in 1835.