The road now named New Church Road is the old route between the ancient villages of Hove and Aldrington.[2] There was some Roman[3] and Saxon[4] activity at Aldrington, but severe decline set in during the 18th and 19th centuries, such that only one person was living there by 1831.[5] The rapid residential growth of Hove in the mid-19th century stimulated development in Aldrington from around 1850, however,[6] and St Leonard's Church was rebuilt from its ruined state to serve the area. By 1894, Aldrington and Hove had merged, and the population of Aldrington alone exceeded 2,200.[7] It was decided that a chapel of ease was needed to serve the area east of St Leonard's Church. Its rector bought land from the Duke of Portland in November of that year and commissioned Sir George Gilbert Scott's son John Oldrid Scott to design a church.[8]
Building work took less than a year: the first service at St Philip's took place on 28 October 1895. The consecration ceremony was not held until 29 May 1898, however. By that date, £5,492.15s.10d (£616thousand in 2021)[9] had been spent on construction and the land.[10] It was extended at a cost of about £4,000 (£411thousand in 2021)[9] between 1909 and 1910,[10][11] at which point the deeds transferring ownership of the land from the Duke of Portland to the rector of St Leonard's Church was found to be invalid. A new arrangement was drawn up and the church became the property of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners.[8] In 1912 it gained its own benefice and parish,[10] which still exists as of 2012 and which has had ten vicars since its creation.[12]
Another extension was added in 1941: architecture firm Tetley and Felce designed and added a porch.[10] The west end of the church was converted into a hall in 1956;[12] a large (300 sq ft) Sussex-themed mural was painted on the dividing wall by the muralist Augustus Lunn in 1957 and 1958.[10][13]
The polychromatic exterior combines several materials, principally red brick.
St Philip's Church is considered a good example of Oldrid Scott's architectural techniques.[14] Architecturally it is broadly Gothic Revival[2] in the Decorated style,[15][16] and is distinguished by its impressive use of building materials of various colours and types.[8][11]Knapped flintwork, limestone, Bath Stone and red brickwork are combined in complex patterns all over the exterior;[8] the extension of 1909–1910 was consistent with this, and is indistinguishable from the older section.[11]
In its current form, the church consists of a 6½-baynave (of which the three westernmost bays form the church hall), aisles on the north and south sides, chancel with chamfered arch, apsidalLady chapel with a lead roof, porch, vestry, clerestory and small flèche.[1][2]Charles Eamer Kempe, an important stained glass designer of the Victorian era, provided the window at the east end and one in the south aisle, and many of the other windows (most of which are lancets) also contain stained glass.[1][10][17] Local firm Cox & Barnard supplied three of these: designer Anthony Gilbert provided a window in the south chapel in 1955, depicting Saint George and commemorating parishioner George Howell; in 1960 Paul Chapman designed another window in the same part of the church, in memory of William Cheverton – it depicts Saint Cecilia holding a musical instrument and crowned with "an unusual halo resembling yellow laurel leaves interspersed with roses" – and in the same year, a window commemorating Halcyon Ann Lopez and depicting the virtue of Charity was installed in the south side of the nave.[17][18] A new bell was cast for the church in 1961.[17]
Holy Cross Church
The Holy Cross Church
In 1903, the Bishop of ChichesterErnest Wilberforce opened a mission hall to serve the northern part of St Leonard's and St Philip's parish.[17] The Holy Cross Church, as it was called, then became part of St Philip's parish in 1912,[10] but gained its own parish in 1932 and is now linked to the Bishop Hannington Memorial Church.[19] The building had been used as a church hall and social venue as well as a place of worship until 1932. Although the vicar of St Philip's later acquired land for a new hall, no such facility was ever built, which encouraged the conversion of part of the church into a hall in 1956.[12][17]
The church today
English Heritage made the church a Grade II listed building on 2 November 1992.[1]
In 2000 the Brighton and Hove Deaneries Pastoral Strategy Review Group was established on the instruction of the Diocese of Chichester to consider the future of churches in the two deaneries. The group's report, published in June 2003, recommended the closure of St Philip's Church and its conversion to alternative uses. This conclusion was based on its proximity to St Leonard's Church (whose status as an ancient parish church gave it more importance within the deanery) and the inability of the churches to cover their maintenance and other costs.[20] As of 2012, the church is still open, and offers two services every Sunday.[21] The parish is bounded by Portland Road, Westbourne Street, Westbourne Place, the seafront, Wish Road and Coleman Avenue on the borders of Hove and Aldrington.[22]
↑ "Strengthening the Church for God's Mission"(PDF). Report from the Brighton and Hove Deaneries Pastoral Strategy Review Group. Diocese of Chichester. 21 June 2003. Archived from the original(PDF) on 9 October 2003. Retrieved 16 March 2009.
Hove is a seaside resort in the county of East Sussex, and a constituent part of the city of Brighton and Hove. Originally a "small but ancient fishing village" surrounded by open farmland, it grew rapidly in the 19th century in response to the development of its eastern neighbour Brighton, and by the Victorian era it was a fully developed town with borough status. Neighbouring parishes such as Aldrington and Hangleton were annexed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1997, as part of local government reform, the borough merged with Brighton to form the Borough of Brighton and Hove, and this unitary authority was granted city status in 2000.
St Leonard's Church is an Anglican church in Hove, in the English city of Brighton and Hove. It is on New Church Road in the Aldrington area of Hove, which was previously a separate village, and it serves as Aldrington's parish church. The church was on Church Road but now stands on New Church Road, renamed in reference to the other church which was started in 1894 as a chapel of ease.
Aldrington is an area of the city of Brighton and Hove, previously part of the old borough of Hove. For centuries it was meadow land along the English Channel stretching west from the old village of Hove to the old mouth of the River Adur, and it is now a prosperous residential area integrated within Hove.
St Peter's Church is an Anglican church in the West Blatchington area of Hove, part of the English city of Brighton and Hove. Although it has 11th- and 12th-century origins, the church was rebuilt from a ruined state in the late 19th century and extended substantially in the 1960s, and little trace remains of the ancient building. The church serves the parish of West Blatchington, a residential area in the north of Hove near the border with Brighton.
St Nicolas Church is an Anglican church in the Portslade area of the English city of Brighton and Hove. It has 12th-century origins, and serves the old village of Portslade, inland from the mostly 19th-century Portslade-by-Sea area.
Holy Trinity Church is a former Anglican church in Hove, in the English city of Brighton and Hove. Built in the early 1860s to provide extra capacity for Anglican worshippers in the rapidly growing town of Hove, its use declined in the 20th century and it was closed in 2007 following a Diocesan review. Until 2015—when a planning application to convert the building into a doctors surgery was approved—its future was uncertain, and a heritage group has described it as one of Britain's top ten threatened Victorian and Edwardian buildings. The church, which has been a medical centre since 2017, has Grade II listed status, reflecting its architectural and historic importance.
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.
St Peter's Church is a Roman Catholic church in the Aldrington area of Hove, part of the English city of Brighton and Hove. It is one of three Roman Catholic churches in Hove and one of eleven in the wider city area. Built between 1912 and 1915 in a red-brick Romanesque style, its tall campanile forms a local landmark. It has been listed at Grade II by English Heritage in view of its architectural importance.
St Augustine's Church is a former Anglican church in Brighton, part of the English city of Brighton and Hove. It is close to the Preston Park and Round Hill areas in the central northern part of the city. Built in 1896 and extended in 1914, its parish was extended after a nearby church closed, but in 2003 it was declared redundant itself. The building, which is listed at Grade II in view of its architectural importance, has stood empty since then, apart from a few years from 2004 when the building was leased by the Elim Pentecostal Church. The Pentecostal congregation made free-standing internal changes to create internal spaces which could be heated in winter, but did not touch the fabric of the building.
St Botolph's Church is an Anglican church in the Heene area of the borough of Worthing, one of seven local government districts in the English county of West Sussex. It had 11th-century origins as a chapelry within the parish of West Tarring, but declined and fell into disuse by the 18th century. Neighbouring Worthing's rapid development as a seaside resort in the 19th century encouraged residential growth around the ancient village of Heene, and a new church with the same dedication was built to serve both Heene and the high-class planned estate of West Worthing. Edmund Scott's Early English Gothic-style church stands next to the fragmentary ruins of the old church, which are listed separately at Grade II.
St Leonards-on-Sea Congregational Church is a former Congregational church in St Leonards-on-Sea, part of the town and borough of Hastings in East Sussex, England. Considered "one of the most ambitious Nonconformist buildings in Sussex", the sandstone building of 1863 forms a significant landmark on one of the Victorian resort's main roads—despite the loss of its copper spire in the Great Storm of 1987. Unlike most churches of its denomination, it did not join the United Reformed Church when that denomination was formed in 1972. It fell out of religious use in 2008 and had stood empty and was at risk of demolition. English Heritage has listed the building at Grade II for its architectural and historical importance. Bought by a new owner in 2012 it was almost completely renovated, but was then sold again in 2019. The new owner plans to open the church to the public as an arts and antiques centre with a cafe in the tower.
St Matthew's Church is an Anglican church in the Silverhill suburb of Hastings, a town and borough in the English county of East Sussex. The present building, a large brick structure of 1884 by ecclesiastical architect John Loughborough Pearson, replaced a much smaller church founded in 1860 when Silverhill began to grow from an agricultural area with scattered cottages into a suburb of the increasingly fashionable seaside resort of Hastings. Although a planned tower was never built, the "imposing" church dominates its steeply sloping site; and although its architect—a leading Gothic Revivalist—considered it one of his lesser works, it has been described as "outstanding" and "architecturally inventive". English Heritage has listed the building at Grade II* for its architectural and historical importance.
St Mary Magdalene's Church is a Greek Orthodox place of worship in St Leonards-on-Sea, a town and seaside resort which is part of the Borough of Hastings in East Sussex, England. Built in 1852 for Anglican worshippers in the growing new town of St Leonards-on-Sea, a seaside resort which had been laid out from the 1820s, the church's prominent position on the skyline overlooking the town was enhanced in 1872 by the addition of a tower. No longer required by the Anglican community in the 1980s, it was quickly bought by the Greek Orthodox Church and converted into a place of worship in accordance with their requirements. The alterations were minimal, though, and the building retains many of its original fittings and its "archaeologically correct Gothic" exterior which reflected architectural norms of the early Victorian era. English Heritage has listed the church at Grade II for its architectural and historical importance.
St John the Evangelist's Church is the Anglican parish church of the Upper St Leonards area of St Leonards-on-Sea, a town and seaside resort which is part of the Borough of Hastings in East Sussex, England. The present building—a "very impressive and beautifully detailed" church in the Gothic Revival style, with a landmark tower—combines parts of Arthur Blomfield's 1881 church, wrecked during World War II, and Harry Stuart Goodhart-Rendel's 1950s rebuild. Two earlier churches on the site, the second possibly designed by Samuel Sanders Teulon, were themselves destroyed earlier in the 19th century. The rich internal fittings include a complete scheme of stained glass by Goodhart-Rendel's favoured designer Joseph Ledger and a 16th-century painting by Ortolano Ferrarese. English Heritage has listed the church at Grade II* for its architectural and historical importance.
Cox & Barnard Ltd was a stained glass designer and manufacturer based in Hove, part of the English city of Brighton and Hove. The company was founded in Hove in 1919 and specialised in stained glass for churches and decorative glass products. Many commissions came from Anglican and Roman Catholic churches in the English counties of East Sussex, West Sussex and Kent. The company was also responsible for six war memorial windows at an Anglican church in Canada, made from shards of glass collected from war-damaged church windows across Europe.
John Leopold DenmanFRIBA was an architect from the English seaside resort of Brighton, now part of the city of Brighton and Hove. He had a prolific career in the area during the 20th century, both on his own and as part of the Denman & Son firm in partnership with his son John Bluet Denman. Described as "the master of ... mid-century Neo-Georgian", Denman was responsible for a range of commercial, civic and religious buildings in Brighton, and pubs and hotels there and elsewhere on the south coast of England on behalf of Brighton's Kemp Town Brewery. He used other architectural styles as well, and was responsible for at least one mansion, several smaller houses, various buildings in cemeteries and crematoria, and alterations to many churches. His work on church restorations has been praised, and he has been called "the leading church architect of his time in Sussex"; he also wrote a book on the ecclesiastical architecture of the county.
Clayton & Black were a firm of architects and surveyors from Brighton, part of the English city of Brighton and Hove. In a career spanning the Victorian, Edwardian and interwar eras, they were responsible for designing and constructing an eclectic range of buildings in the growing town of Brighton and its neighbour Hove. Their work encompassed new residential, commercial, industrial and civic buildings, shopping arcades, churches, schools, cinemas and pubs, and alterations to hotels and other buildings. Later reconstituted as Clayton, Black & Daviel, the company designed some churches in the postwar period.
St Peter's Church is a Church of England parish church in the large village of Henfield, West Sussex. Placed on the site of an 8th century Saxon church also dedicated to St Peter, it was built in the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries, but was heavily restored and partially rebuilt in the 19th century. English Heritage has listed it at Grade II* for its architectural and historical importance. Services for the parish continue and also cover the parishes of St Giles', Shermanbury and St. Peter's, Woodmancote, which form its united benefice.
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