St George's Church, Brighton | |
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Denomination | Church of England |
Churchmanship | Broad Church |
Website | www.stgeorgesbrighton.org |
History | |
Dedication | St George the Martyr |
Specifications | |
Capacity | 1,300 |
Administration | |
Province | Canterbury |
Diocese | Chichester |
Archdeaconry | Chichester |
Deanery | Rural Deanery of Brighton |
Parish | Brighton, St George with St Anne and St Mark |
Clergy | |
Vicar(s) | Revd Andrew Manson-Brailsford |
St George's Church is an Anglican church in the Kemptown area of Brighton, in the English city of Brighton and Hove. It was built at the request of Thomas Read Kemp, who had created and financed the Kemp Town estate on the cliffs east of Brighton in the early 19th century, and is now regarded as the parish church of the wider Kemptown area. [1] It is a Grade II listed building. [2]
Thomas Read Kemp, born in 1782 in Lewes, East Sussex, [3] returned to the Church of England in 1823, seven years after founding his own independent sect. Turning his attention to architecture and town planning, he decided to create a residential estate on land beyond the existing eastern boundary of Brighton, with large houses for affluent people. Designed by Charles Busby and Amon Wilds and built by Thomas Cubitt, this estate became Kemp Town, although Kemp had fled the country to escape debts by the time construction finished. [4]
Brighthelmston Chapel Act 1824 | |
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Act of Parliament | |
Long title | An Act for building a Chapel in the Eastern Parts of the Town of Brighthelmston in the County of Sussex. |
Citation | 5 Geo. 4. c. 11Pr. |
Dates | |
Royal assent | 3 June 1824 |
The Busby–Wilds partnership had also been responsible for building the Holy Trinity chapel (in Ship Street in central Brighton) for Kemp's sect, and in 1824 Kemp enlisted Busby to build a church to serve the new estate. [5] He obtained a private act of Parliament, the Brighthelmston Chapel Act 1824 (5 Geo. 4. c. 11Pr.) on 3 June 1824, which allowed him to appoint a perpetual curate and derive income from the rental or sale of pews. This was a common procedure at the time: it allowed churches to be built as an investment, and pew rental could be quite profitable. [4] [5]
Construction work continued throughout 1824 and 1825. The church opened on 1 January 1826, two days after it was consecrated by the Bishop of Chichester. The final cost was £11,000. [4]
By 1831, Kemp had sold his interest in the church to Laurence Peel, [A] the son of Sir Robert Peel, 1st Baronet, who lived in Sussex Square in Kemp Town. [6] Upon Peel's death in 1888 it passed to his son, Charles Lennox Peel, who sold it to the congregation the following year. It was then passed into trust. [6]
St George's had been parished since 1879. The Diocese of Chichester considered closing the church in 1962, but the congregation contested the decision and the threat was lifted. The parish later absorbed that of St Anne's Church in nearby Burlington Street, whose congregation was in decline; it was closed and demolished in 1986. [7] In 1986, St Mark's Church was also closed and officially made redundant, [8] and its parish was also amalgamated with that of St George. The building is now the chapel of St Mary's Hall, an independent school. [8]
Busby designed St George's Church in a Neoclassical style, with simple clean lines and strong symmetry. [4] The exterior consists of yellow brick with some stucco work, regularly spaced tiered pairs of round-headed windows, and a deep cornice with no ornamentation. The western face, where the entrance is situated, has Ionic columns and pilasters on each side of the door, and a central tower topped by a cupola with a small cross. [4] Clock faces were added on each side soon in 1840. [4] [5] Inside, there are galleries at the northern, southern and western sides, reached by curved staircases. There was a three-tier pulpit in front of the reredos at the eastern end, and the organ, by the J.C. Bishop & Son organ builder firm, was initially inside the western gallery. [4] [9]
After Revd James Anderson became curate of the church in 1828, his close association with Queen Adelaide, the consort of King William IV, made the church very popular. The queen consort was popular with the British people and often spent time in Brighton. When in the town, she worshipped at St George's. By 1831, the church's seating capacity was being exceeded, and a new gallery was added at the western end. Thomas Cubitt's building firm completed this in one week. The organ had to be moved from the original western gallery to make room for the new structure; unusually, it was erected behind the altar at the eastern end. [9] [10]
After it was acquired by the congregation and placed in trust, £11,050 was spent on large-scale alterations to the church. [11] A chancel was added at the eastern end, with a new window in the eastern wall; the reredos was replaced with a larger version; the organ was moved again, into a more conventional position in the south gallery; and both the north and the south galleries were rebuilt at their eastern ends to align with the chancel extension. [6] All of the seating was replaced, increasing the capacity to 1,300. [11]
St George's was a chapel of ease until 1879, when it was given its own parish. In its present form, incorporating the former parishes of St Anne and St Mark, this covers a large area of eastern Brighton, including the whole of Kemptown, parts of Whitehawk, Brighton Marina and Roedean School. [12]
The church has a community centre at which various groups meet regularly, [13] and a café, in the crypt below the building. The café is operated in partnership with a local special school. [14] The crypt facilities were built (along with some supporting structural work for the rest of the church) with support from the European Union's "URBAN" regeneration fund, for which they had to compete with other local projects. [15]
St George's also acts as one of Brighton's largest venues for alternative and folk music concerts. [1]
Kemp Town Estate, also known as Kemp Town, is a 19th-century Regency architecture residential estate in the east of Brighton in East Sussex, England. It consists of Arundel Terrace, Lewes Crescent, Sussex Square, Chichester Terrace, and the Kemp Town Enclosures. The estate was conceived and financed by Thomas Read Kemp, designed by Charles Busby and Amon Henry Wilds, and constructed by Thomas Cubitt. Work began in 1823 and it was completed in 1855. It has given its name to the larger Kemptown region of Brighton.
St Peter's Church is a church in Brighton in the English city of Brighton and Hove. It is near the centre of the city, on an island between two major roads, the A23 London Road and A270 Lewes Road. Built from 1824–28 to a design by Sir Charles Barry, it is arguably the finest example of the pre-Victorian Gothic Revival style. It is a Grade II* listed building. It was the parish church of Brighton from 1873 to 2007 and is sometimes unofficially referred to as "Brighton's cathedral".
St Paul's Church, dedicated to the missionary and Apostle to the Gentiles Paul of Tarsus, is a Church of England parish church in Brighton, Sussex, England. It is located on West Street in the city centre, close to the seafront and the main shopping areas.
The Church of Saint Nicholas of Myra, usually known as St. Nicholas Church, is an Anglican church in Brighton, England. It is both the original parish church of Brighton and, after St Helen's Church, Hangleton and St Peter's Church in Preston village, the third oldest surviving building in the city of Brighton and Hove. It is located on high ground at the junction of Church Street and Dyke Road in the city centre, very close to the main shopping areas. Due to its architectural significance the church is a Grade II* listed building.
St Martin's Church is an Anglican church in Brighton, England, dating from the mid-Victorian era. It is located on Lewes Road in the Round Hill area of the city, northeast of the city centre and approximately 1.1 miles (1.8 km) north of the seafront. It is the largest church in Brighton by capacity and is noted for its ornate interior.
St. Michael's Church is an Anglican church in Brighton, England, dating from the mid-Victorian era. Located on Victoria Road in the Montpelier area, to the east of Montpelier Road, it is one of the largest churches in the city of Brighton and Hove. The church is a Grade I listed building.
St Barnabas Church is an Anglican church in Hove, part of the English city of Brighton and Hove. It was built between 1882 and 1883 to serve residents of the newly developed streets to the south and west of Hove railway station, which had opened in 1865 and had stimulated growth in the previously undeveloped area between the Brunswick estate to the west and Cliftonville to the east.
All Saints Hove is an Anglican church in Hove, part of the English city of Brighton and Hove. It has served as the parish church for the whole of Hove since 1892, and stands in a prominent location at a major crossroads in central Hove.
St Andrew's Church is an Anglican church in Church Road, Hove, in the English city of Brighton and Hove. It is usually referred to as St Andrew (Old Church) to distinguish it from another St Andrew's Church in Waterloo Street, elsewhere in Hove. It served as Hove's parish church for several centuries until 1892, although the building was in a state of near-ruin until Hove began to grow from an isolated village to a popular residential area in the early 19th century.
St Patrick's Church is an Anglican church in Hove, in the English city of Brighton and Hove. Situated on a narrow site at 3 Cambridge Road, off Western Road close to the boundary with Brighton, it is still in use as a place of worship. Since 1985 St Pat's developed a special ministry with homeless people, setting up a night shelter and a homeless hostel. In 2012, St Patrick's night shelter was closed. The homeless hostel continues to operate under new management, and is currently run by Riverside Housing Association. The church closed as a parish in 2015, and was then entrusted by the Bishop of Chichester to the Chemin Neuf Community under a Bishop's Mission Order. The leader of the Chemin Neuf Mission at St Patrick's is currently the Revd Tim Watson.
St Wulfran's Church, dedicated to the 7th-century French archbishop Wulfram of Sens, is an Anglican church in Ovingdean, a rural village now within the English city of Brighton and Hove. Parts of the structure date from the early 12th century, and the church is listed at Grade I, a designation used for buildings "of outstanding architectural or historic interest".
St Andrew's Church is a former Anglican church in the Brunswick Town area of Hove, part of the English city of Brighton and Hove. It is in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust, the national charity protecting historic churches at risk.
St Luke's Church is an Anglican church in the Queen's Park area of Brighton, part of the English city of Brighton and Hove. Occupying a large corner site on Queen's Park Road, it was designed in the 1880s by Sir Arthur Blomfield in the Early English style, and has been given listed building status because of its architectural importance.
The former Holy Trinity Church, a closed Anglican church in the centre of Brighton, part of the English city of Brighton and Hove, now serves as an art gallery. Established in the early 19th century by Thomas Read Kemp, an important figure in Brighton's early political and religious life, it was originally an independent Nonconformist chapel but became an Anglican chapel of ease when Kemp returned to the Church of England. The church closed in 1984, but was converted into a museum and later an art gallery. Reflecting its architectural and historical importance, it has been listed at Grade II since 1981.
St Mary's Church is an Anglican church in the Kemptown area of Brighton, in the English city of Brighton and Hove. The present building dates from the late 1870s and replaced a church of the same name which suddenly collapsed while being renovated. The Gothic-style red-brick building, whose style resembles Early English revival and French Gothic revival, is now a Grade II* listed building, and remains in use despite threats of closure.
Amon Wilds was an English architect and builder. He formed an architectural partnership with his son Amon Henry Wilds in 1806 and started working in the fashionable and growing seaside resort of Brighton, on the East Sussex coast, in 1815. After 1822, when the father-and-son partnership met and joined up with Charles Busby, they were commissioned—separately or jointly—to design a wide range of buildings in the town, which was experiencing an unprecedented demand for residential development and other facilities. Wilds senior also carried out much work on his own, but the description "Wilds and Busby" was often used on designs, making individual attribution difficult. Wilds senior and his partners are remembered most for his work in post-Regency Brighton, where most of their houses, churches and hotels built in a bold Regency style remain—in particular, the distinctive and visionary Kemp Town and Brunswick estates on the edges of Brighton, whose constituent parts are Grade I listed buildings.
The Union Chapel, also known as the Union Street Chapel, Elim Free Church, Four Square Gospel Tabernacle or Elim Tabernacle of the Four Square Gospel, is a former chapel in the centre of Brighton, a constituent part of the city of Brighton and Hove, England. After three centuries of religious use by various congregations, the chapel—which had been Brighton's first Nonconformist place of worship—passed into secular use in 1988 when it was converted into a pub. It was redesigned in 1825, at the height of Brighton's Georgian building boom, by at least one of the members of the Wilds–Busby architectural partnership, Brighton's pre-eminent designers and builders of the era, but may retain some 17th-century parts. It has been listed at Grade II in view of its architectural importance.
St Mark's Church is a former Anglican church in the Kemptown area of Brighton, part of the English city of Brighton and Hove. Originally intended as the private chapel of the adjacent St Mary's Hall school, it was partly built in 1838 at the request of Frederick Hervey, 1st Marquess of Bristol; but arguments over whether or not it should also be open to the public delayed its completion for more than 10 years. It became the parish church of Kemptown in 1873, but declining attendances resulted in a declaration of redundancy in 1986. At that time it was taken over by the school and became its chapel, nearly 150 years after this was first proposed. The Early English-style stone and concrete structure has been criticised by architectural historians, but has been listed at Grade II by English Heritage for its architectural and historical importance.
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Henry Michell Wagner (1792–1870) was a Church of England clergyman who was Vicar of Brighton between 1824 and 1870. He was a descendant of Melchior Wagner, hatmaker to the Royal Family, and married into a wealthy Sussex family who had a longstanding ecclesiastical connection with Brighton. Wagner paid for and oversaw the building of five churches in the rapidly growing seaside resort, and "dominated religious life in the town" with his forceful personality and sometimes controversial views and actions. His son Arthur Wagner (1824–1902) continued the family's close association with Brighton.
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