The ten original houses of Percival Terrace, overlooking Brighton's Marine Parade, were built in 1845-50 by the prolific Cheesemans (George Cheeseman Junior may have been the architect).

The imposing bow-fronted,five-storey dwellings, now listed, were developed on land bought from the London builder Thomas Cubitt for the wealthy philanthropist William Percival Boxall, who had much to do with the foundation of the Children's Hospital.

Three of the properties are of particular interest.

Numbers three and four were occupied by Sir James Knowles (1831-1908), writer and architect, who lived there from 1903 until his death.

In 1860 he published The Story Of King Arthur and seven years later was introduced to Tennyson, whose house, Aldworth, on Blackdown, he designed this led to a close friendship.

In 1869, with Tennyson's cooperation, he started the Metaphysical Society, whose aim was to attempt some intellectual rapprochement between religion and science by getting the leading representatives of faith and unfaith to meet and exchange views.

Its last meeting was held in 1880.

In 1870 he became editor of The Contemporary Review, but left it in 1877 and founded The Nineteenth Century (to the title of which, in 1901, were added the words And After).

Both periodicals became very influential.

His architectural works included Princes' Hotel in Hove (now the council offices in Grand Avenue) and a large number of dwellings in the avenue near it, and the Grosvenor House Hotel.

He was also responsible for laying out London's Leicester Square.

Number four Percival Terrace bears a Brighton Corporation slate roundel in Knowles' honour.

In 1939, the Red Cross Hospital for Officers occupied numbers three to five.

Two of the employees were night orderly 38-year-old William Charles Cowell and 33-year-old Annie Farrow Cook.

Cowell, a married man whose wife and son lived in straitened circumstances in Tunbridge Wells, became attached to Cook.

Despite a later assertion by her sister that she did not like men, the fact remains she went out with Cowell more than once and was last seen around August 19, 1939.

On September 27, her decomposed body, covered with brushwood and branches, was found in a ditch by a gamekeeper in Shaves Wood, near Muddleswood, not far from Hurstpierpoint.

On August 22, Cowell had walked into Brighton police station and made a voluntary statement saying that he had arranged to meet Annie at The Level, from where they would go to the circus together.

He claimed, however, that she had had to go off to catch a train.

Police interest in Cowell grew when their investigations showed that, in 1937, he had lived in a cottage in Muddleswood only a few hundred yards from the wood where Cook had been found.

When they called at Percival Terrace he had decamped to the New Steine, where he made another statement.

When a butcher's roundsman from Hurstpierpoint positively identified Cowell from a photograph as a man seen hanging round the wood on 22 August, the police returned, but he had again fled, this time to Southover Street.

On his startling admission, "I went to see the body. I done it," he was charged with Annie Cook's murder.

His trial at Lewes on March 6, 1940, before Mr Justice Humphreys lasted for three days.

Brighton pathologist Dr LR Janes stated the cause of Cook's death was a fracture to the skull.

Cowell had admitted in a statement that he had killed her by striking her with a large piece of wood after they had argued.

He also described how he had visited the body each day from August 22 to 26 to make sure it was well hidden and undiscovered.

The jury took just 40 minutes to find Cowell guilty.

Before sentence of death was passed, he said, "All I can say is that I am not guilty".

Following an unsuccessful appeal, William Charles Cowell was hanged at Wandsworth by Thomas Pierrepoint and Stanley Cross on April 24, 1940.

At 5 Percival Terrace, Herbert Spencer, scientist and philosopher (1830-1903), lived in seclusion from 1898 until his death in December 1903.

The present stone plaque is so eroded as to be utterly indecipherable.

It replaces one topped with the Brighton dolphins designed by Eric Gill.

It was the very first official Brighton Corporation plaque, unveiled on October 10, 1925.

Writing to The Argus in August 2003, William Mollroy of Hove pointed out it was the centenary year of Spencer's death and that the Brighton Gazette had described the man as one of the greatest thinkers of the Victorian era.

But the plaqueon his house was a disgrace. That remains the case.

The Terrace was dramatically in the news in 1987 when, on November 13, the front of number ten completely collapsed as a large crater opened up in front of the house.

Number nine was also demolished but both properties have been so skilfully restored as to be indistinguishable from the others.

Buildings are interesting.

But often it is the achievements or misdeeds of their occupants which interest us more.