Church Heritage Record id18821

The original chapel consisted of a rectangular body with a west bell turret and porch and a small narrow room on the north side (now the choir vestry) which was apparently used as a schoolroom. The younger Barry's additions provided a chancel under a dome, north and south transepts, a north vestry and south baptistery (now a porch).

The church was originally built in 1827-28 to designs by Sir Charles Barry and was consecrated by the Bishop of Chichester on 5 July 1828; the eastern parts were added by his son, also christened Charles, in 1882. These additions cost £ 5,203-10-10. There were alterations to the interior, chiefly in the way of fittings, in 1925 by W.H. Randoll Blacking. Sir Charles Barry was born in 1795 and after a prolific architectural career, he died in 1860. He was trained by Middleton and Bailey, surveyors, of Lambeth, and made a tour of Europe in 1817-20, accompanied for part of the time by (Sir) Charles Eastlake. On his return he set up practice in London, where he designed numerous churches and public buildings, at first in a Gothic style and later in an Italianate classical style which he had learnt in Rome. Between Gothic and Italianate he also produced some buildings in a severe Grecian mode. Later, in country houses, he also turned his hand to essays in Tudor, Jacobean and Scottish Baronial styles. His greatest coup was to win the competition held in 1836 for the new Palace of Westminster, and he was knighted in 1852 after Queen Victoria had used the Royal Entrance for the first time. His chef d'oeuvre, however, is usually taken to be the Travellers Club in Pall Mall which was built in 1830-2. Barry was doubtless employed by the Revd. Edward Everard to design St. Andrews Church (then known as Brunswick Chapel) because Mr. Everard had been a curate at St. Peter's, Brighton, which had been built to Barry's (gothic) designs in 1824-8. Excavation of the site began in April 1827, and the building of the chapel occupied just over one year. 

The original church consisted of only the nave of the present building and was externally very plain. The west front only was intended to be seen, and is naturally the showpiece of the exterior. It is divided into three parts articulated by pilasters with Corinthian capitals, the central parts being wider than the flanking walls and projecting beyond their plane. It has rusticated walls with paired pilasters at the corners, between which is a round-headed arch leading into a porch. This also has pilasters with similar capitals and a moulded surround. The flanking walls have pilasters at the angles and niches placed in the middle of each area of wall with curved heads formed into shells. A heavy dentilled cornice runs above the pilasters and there is a plain parapet above, with an attic above the central section decorated with paterae and a rectangular opening filled with wrought iron. Above this stands the small square turret housing the bell and with a clock face in each wall under paired round-headed arches. The wall surface here is rusticated like that on the main walls below and there are pilasters with Corinthian at the corners. The roof has a curved profile and is covered with scale pattern slates, and a small cross is affixed to the apex. On the north side of this facade there is a plain classical doorway which gives access to the former school room on the north side of the building.

The south wall is faced with brick, the stucco merely returning a few feet from the west facade. There are five recessed arches in the brick facing those at the east and west ends originally with larger windows than the three between, although both have been reduced to match the three smaller windows.

This completes the elder Barry's building. The eastern extension added by his son are much less neat externally, for he was apparently only concerned to provide an interior of quality, clothed in the cheapest possible structure. The south transpet is cross-gabled and has two windows with round heads and paired lights with a roundel above in plate-tracery and a further separate roundel above and between the windows. The east wall is blind save for a single roundel in the lower part on the south which lights the south-east porch and a round-headed window in the lower part to the north which lights the vestry. The doorway at the south-east is quite plain also.

Within the west porch is a complicated series of small chambers and stair cases, the latter leading to the west gallery, all that remains of galleries which once ran round three sides of the original chapel. These spaces are filled with white memorial tablets on black grounds, mostly in the classical taste, commemmorating those buried in the vaults below and initially placed on the walls of the nave. The vaults are entered by a door within the "area" at the west end of the church, and from it a straight passage runs along the north side of the building with five burial vaults branching off it at right angles to the south. These were filled from the east end, the coffins being placed within iron. shelves and then bricked up, with tablets indicating the name of the person buried within. 

The interior of Barry's original chapel was quite plain. It was of four bays, typical of the plain preaching house erected at this period, with plastered walls and a coved plaster ceiling. At the east and west ends lay lights (possibly inserted in 1882) give extra light to the interior which is not otherwise well provided with natural light. The walls were formerly covered with memorial tablets but with the exception of about four these have now been moved to the west lobbies. An interesting water colour drawing by Barry which is kept in the church shows the original arrangement of the east end, with a broad central bay divided from narrow flanking bays by moulded plaster strips similar to those on the three surviving walls of the chapel, the outer bays being provided with windows but the middle bay blind. Beneath the windows were tablets painted with the usual texts and in the central bay was an elaborate sanctuary with three round arches against the east wall also filled with the usual texts. Beneath the outer pair of these were two symmetrical reading desks and between these iron altar rails enclosed a communion table. All the architectural features were marbled. At the other end of the church, an organ was built in the west gallery by Lincoln, organ maker to the king, although the organ has now been moved and rebuilt at least twice and the gallery itself now looks to be late Victorian in date. At gallery level are two segmental arches in the rear wall giving access from the stone stairs in the lobbies, and above these gilded winged cherubs' heads are placed below the moulded strips which mark out the ceiling. There are also pairs of small winged cherubs' heads under the sills of the windows. Below the gallery there are two round-headed doors and between these the font and its baldacchino were placed by Randoll Blacking in 1925. Behind it are three small windows which gain light from the porch. The side walls and west wall have a wooden dado and the pews look to be of the 1882 work. The floor is of stone in the alleys and of raised timber platforms under the pews. The narrow chamber along the north side of the nave still retains some desks from its days of use as a schoolroom.

The additions by the younger Barry are in some ways the making of the church internally, for there is little doubt that Barry's original building was quite plain. The Revd. Daniel Winham had been appointed incumbent of the chapel in 1868, after three ministers had stayed for relatively short spells over the previous ten years. He was the proprietor of the chapel and therefore presumably appointed himself. In the same year the right of presentation, after forty years of vesting in the proprietor, reverted to the Vicar of Hove, as the Act of Parliament of 1828 provided. Until Mr. Winham's time, no alteration had been made to the building save for the substitution of a cross for the Lord's Prayer in the central panel of the altarpiece and the removal of the two large pulpits. The number of houses in the district had greatly increased since 1850 and the arrangement of the interior of the chapel was distinctly old-fashioned. Mr. Winham therefore purchased the ground east of the building at a cost of £2,000 and demolished the stables which stood there. The chancel which Charles Barry Junior added was in three divisions, the central part square with the sanctuary in a blind apse the east and a roof in the form of a shallow dome. Additional accommodationfor the congregation was provided in transeptal areas to the north and south, separated from the domed area by arches of semi-circular profile carried on detached unfluted marbled pillars with small Ionic capitals. The apse is divided into three tiers of which the lowest has niches with shell-shaped heads, doubtless derived from those placed by his father on the exterior of the west wall. Above these are large rectangular panels and above them the semi-dome, divided into panels also. In the east walls of the north and south transepts are round-headed doorways which look like scaled-up versions of the surrounds of the niches on the west front with paterae in the spandrels; above these are large round windows with tracery consisting of four big circles and four small circles round a central small circle. Through the door on the south can be seen a further round window in the east wall of the porch beyond, and a dove in plaster suggests that this was used as a baptistery until 1925. The north door leads to the vestry. The apse is lit by a small semi-circular light set in the apex and invisible from the body of the church. The organ now occupies much of the north transpet, and there are choir stalls in the south transept.