Church Heritage Record 610092

Cruciform plan: chancel, north transept with organ bay, north-east tower with vestry and entrance, south transept with singing gallery, south-east chapel and short corridor to east entrance, 5-bay aisled nave, arcades blocked, south aisle used as day centre, 4-bays of north aisle used as parish hall, eastern bay a pantry entered from church, entrance to day centre and parish hall from narthex across west end.

Chancel estimated to be c 8m (26ft) x 6.5m (21ft).

Built between 1852 and 1854 to the design of Edward and William Gilbee Habershon for the residents of Adelaide Crescent and Palmeira Square, on land presented by the developer, Sir Isaac Lyon Goldsmid.  The tower and spire were built c 1870, the tower clock being installed two years later.  In 1906 the church was altered and extended by Rogers, Bone and Coles and, seven years after that, a linked series of porches was added to the west end of the church.  The church was for many years one of the most fashionable in Brighton and Hove, hence this expanded narthex for conversations before and after the church service.  From 1854 until 1894 it had a particularly fine organist, Henry Stephen Gates, and in the 1860s the Duchess of Cambridge and Princess Mary Adelaide attended services there. It was for many years the most fashionable church in the Brighton and Hove area.

In 1994, following years of decline, there was a radical change, the chancel, transepts and first bay of the nave were retained for worship, with the rest of the nave partitioned off and converted to a community centre. This has been a great success. There is a PM report written by the CCC in 1980 (PM 960) which describes the church before these changes were made.

The church is designed in the Decorated style.  Rather than being an exceptional building architecturally, it is its position in the townscape which is of most significance. The very tall 3-stage tower is visible from all sides for some distance.  It has angle buttresses with gablets to the belfry stage. The lower and belfry stages have 2-light windows, those in the belfry with louvres, clock face between. The tower is surmounted by a tall octagonal ashlar spire with 3 tiers of lucarnes.

There are 5-light windows in the chancel and nave west end walls, the latter with ogee heads rising almost to the gable, 6-lights in the outer walls of the transepts, all with reticulated tracery. The clearstorey to the aisles and transepts has small 2-lights, longer such in the aisles to each bay and west walls. There is a gabled porch on the north side of the chancel adjacent to the gabled organ chamber, (originally the organist’s entrance), and a large gabled porch on the south side with a main and side entrance, both pointed. The single-storey buttressed west narthex has 2 triangular gabled projections with entrances on the outer returns, and central double doors within a pointed entrance. This is now the way in to the community facilities.  Rooflights have been inserted over the west bays of the nave, scarcely noticeable.

Inside the church has a fine open roof and much good decorative stonework. The walls are rendered, the ceiled chancel roof with stencilled decoration. There is a wooden groin vault to the crossing with gilded decoration, the nave has an open hammer-beam roof. There are stone traceried screens to the arched entrances to the organ chamber from the chancel and transept, the organ itself, which occupies the lower part of the tower to the north of the chancel, is a massive instrument with a fine architectural case raised on four columns. The chancel arch is of two orders, the outer taken down to foliate stops, the inner to shafted consoles. Good carved foliate corbels to the arcade capitals, angel corbels in nave, panels of carved foliage in the crossing piers. Ornately carved and gilded piscina in south chancel wall.

The plan form of the church was that of a Latin cross but, when the west end was separated off, the new worship area took on the shape of a Greek cross instead.  As a result, the space lent itself quite satisfactorily to being re-ordered with a central altar.  A large octagonal corona has been suspended from the centre of the open timber roof and an octagonal altar raised on a wooden plinth has been placed in the centre of the floor.  Modern benches and communion rails have been installed on three sides facing the altar, carpeted floors, parquet in the nave.

The aisles and the three western bays are now used for other purposes, the aisles screened off.  The clean lines of the east front of the nave conversion, in smooth white with a glazed upper part allowing views into the church, is visually a great success, unashamedly modern but also unobtrusive.