Hove was a fishing village with few people as recently as 1801. Thirty-four years later Horsfield, in his history of the county, described it as 'a mean and insignificant assemblage of huts'. On a shoreline subject to erosion and plundering French raiders, it lacked a market for its few families. From this unpromising beginning the town developed with broad avenues and tidy streets which possess a certain amount of style. Due to Victorian entrepreneurs and the search for fashionable places, the village swallowed up the surrounding land to become the Borough of Hove.