Church Heritage Record 610043

Six-bay aisled nave, the south aisle wider,  narthex,  chancel, north-east tower.

Nave estimated to be c 31m (100ft) x 7m (22ft), aisles 7m and 10m wide.

St Paul’s was built by Henry Mitchell Wagner, Vicar of Brighton, for the ministry of his High Church son, Father Arthur Douglas Wagner (1824-1902).  The church therefore has an important place in the history of the Oxford Movement. The site chosen was next to the Fishery, at that time one of the most disreputable and poverty stricken parts of the town.  The church was designed by Richard Cromwell Carpenter and built between 1843 and 1846. The stained glass and many of the furnishings and fittings were designed by Pugin, and made by Hardman.  The tower, spire and covered way were added between 1873 and 1875 by the architect’s son, Richard Herbert Carpenter.  The narthex and Fishermen’s Institute added in 1887 were built by George Frederick Bodley.  The covered way was remodelled by John Leopold Denman in 1937, under whose regime the stained glass was “pickled”, an operation since reversed in an English Heritage grant-aided campaign of works in the 1990s that saw the octagon repaired.

The church is designed in the Decorated style.  The most striking feature of the church externally is the tall tower crowned with its delicate wooden octagon and spire.  The octagon is of oak with lead flashings, and is a remarkable structure, framed by four pinnacles rising from the ends of angle buttresses at its base, a quatrefoiled parapet from which rise eight smaller pinnacles.  The belfry openings in between are tall 2-lights with louvres, there are also pairs of short lancets to each face around an internal gallery at the base of the octagon. There are dragon water spouts at the corners, beautifully carved and restored. There is a west doorway with double doors with arched heads under a pointed arch with finely carved tympanum around a central figure of St Paul. This doorway is approached by a flight of steep steps, but is now not used.

This, the covered way and the buttressed east end, with its impressive 7-light window and sexfoil gable light, is pretty much all that can be seen of the church from the street. In order to enter the building, one now needs to walk along the (rather shabby and forbidding) covered way which leads through a narrow pointed doorway to the narthex at the west end.  This is a pleasant space with a row of four cusped 2-lights in the west wall within an arcaded niche, and a rather grand doorway in the north wall which leads through to the Fisherman’s Institute, intended as a meeting room and library for the fishermen.  Here there is a huge hooded fireplace resembling that of a medieval hall, fine chandeliers and panelling and portraits around the walls, a  welcoming room, especially on a miserable morning in February. The narthex also houses a display on the restoration of the church.

Moving east into the church itself, the architecture is relatively simple, merely a stage for the furnishings and fittings, which are superb.  The stained glass throughout by Pugin and Hardman (and some others), the mural decoration, painted woodwork, encaustic tiles and delicate metalwork by Bodley, Hardman and others all combine to impress. The interior is still fully pewed with dark-stained benches, but there have been some changes to the interior, as we will see.

But starting with the stage, looking west there is a huge 5-light window, over a double pointed entrance from the narthex.  The aisle and chancel side walls are pierced by 2-light windows, with 3-lights at the ends of the aisles and a shortened 3-light above a pointed doorway in the middle of the south aisle. The slender doubled-chamfered arcades are carried on quatrefoil piers with simple capitals, carrying a tall arch-braced roof with wind-braces. The arcade arches and the chancel arch are tall and pointed, leaving just enough space for colourful murals over the chancel arch. 

Under this is a fine filigree 5-bay gilded and painted rood screen by Bodley with coved cornice, painted rood and dado panels with Saints.  Bodley also decorated the barrel-vaulted chancel ceiling. There are carved figures of saints around the walls, and  large figure of Christ on a  plinth within a pointed niche in the north aisle. More colour is provided by the excellent Minton tiles in the sanctuary and choir. Black-and white patterned floors, patterned paisley carpet to the nave platform.

However, the chancel has been reduced in grandeur since the excellent brass communion rails were scrapped in 1937, some changes in the 1960s which removed some of Pugin’s canopies, and since the Burne-Jones retable, commissioned for this church, was sold to finance the repairs in the 1990s; this all makes the focus at the east end less than it once was, and indeed there is now a nave altar, just in front of the rood screen, with an attractively carved and gilded communion rail set to curve behind it.  This highlights the fact that the interior of this church is not frozen in time, nor a period snapshot of the Tractarian vision, but an accretive ensemble, the work of many people over a period of a hundred and fifty years.