Thomas Read Kemp's finances were overstretched by his involvement with the Kemp Town estate east of Brighton, and by the time he fled to France in 1837 he had sold or given away most of his landholding in the Montpelier area. Parcels of land were bought by builders and speculators, and a series of carefully planned set-piece residential developments were laid out. Work on Montpelier Crescent started in 1843, on and behind a stretch of Kemp's land previously occupied by a cricket pitch. The Lillywhite's Ground (also known as the Temple Fields Ground) was in use between 1831 and 1844 and was one of Brighton Cricket Club's venues. Amon Henry Wilds was commissioned to design the first set of houses; in view of the vast scale he worked to, which was unusual on a site so far inland from the coast, the crescent has been called the grandest of his many works. The houses lacked a sea view, as they faced northwest towards the open land of the South Downs. The crescent was completed in 1847; within ten years, the downland vista had been obscured by the construction of Vernon Terrace opposite. This impressive set of four-storey terraced houses, dating from between 1856 and the mid-1860s, lined the west side of the former Montpelier Road, which by this stage had been renamed except for the stretch south of Denmark Villas. Between the east side of Vernon Terrace and the crescent, a curved area of green space was retained.