Buildings and architecture of Brighton and Hove

Brighton and Hove, a city on the south-east coast of England, has a large and diverse stock of buildings "unrivalled architecturally" among the country's seaside resorts.^[1] The urban area is made up of the formerly separate towns of Brighton and Hove, nearby villages such as Portslade, Patcham and Rottingdean, and 20th-century estates such as Moulsecoomb and Mile Oak. As of 2013, the conurbation had a population of about 253,000. About half of the 20,430-acre (8,270 ha) geographical area is classed as built up.^[2]

Brighton's transformation from medieval fishing village into spa town and pleasure resort, patronised by royalty and fashionable high society, coincided with the development of Regency architecture and the careers of three architects whose work came to characterise the 4-mile (6.4 km) seafront. The previously separate village of Hove developed as a comfortable middle-class residential area "under a heavy veneer of [Victorian] suburban respectability":^[3] large houses spread rapidly across the surrounding fields during the late 19th century, although the high-class and successful Brunswick estate was a product of the Regency era. Old villages such as Portslade, Rottingdean, Ovingdean and Patcham, with ancient churches, farms and small flint cottages, became suburbanised as the two towns grew and merged, and the creation of "Greater Brighton" in 1928 brought into the urban area swathes of open land which were then used for housing and industrial estates. Many buildings were lost in the 1960s and 1970s, when Brighton's increasing regional importance encouraged redevelopment, but conservation movements were influential in saving other buildings.

Much of the city's built environment is composed of buildings of the Regency, Victorian and Edwardian eras.^[4] The Regency style, typical of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, is characterised by pale stuccoed exteriors with Classical-style mouldings and bay windows.^[5][6] Even the modest two-storey terraced houses which spread rapidly across the steeply sloping landscape in the mid-19th century display some elements of this style. Extensive suburban development in Hove and the north of Brighton in the late 19th and early 20th century displays architectural features characteristic of those eras, with an emphasis on decorative brickwork and gables. Postwar developments range from Brutalist commercial and civic structures to pastiches of earlier styles. Sustainable building techniques have become popular for individual houses and on a larger scale, such as at the long-planned New England Quarter brownfield development.

Local and national government have recognised the city's architectural heritage through the designation of listed building and conservation area status to many developments. Since 1969, 34 conservation areas have been created, covering areas of various sizes and eras; and more than 1,200 structures have listed status based on their "special architectural or historic interest".

April 2013 panorama of the eastern side of Brighton seafront. Bring up the full-size image by clicking here; then explore using a mouse cursor and click on buildings and other features to go to their Wikipedia article or a close-up picture.

Brighton was originally an agricultural and fishing village surrounded by fields where sheep were farmed and corn was grown. In the Saxon era, small buildings developed in an area bounded by four streets named after the points of the compass, and a church stood on higher ground inland. Modest cottages for the fishermen stood on the beach below the cliffs and the now vanished South Street.^[7][8] A thriving fishing industry contributed to the town's first period of growth in the 16th and 17th centuries,^[8] but development did not expand beyond the old boundaries.^[9] The industry then contracted in the early 18th century, and depopulation occurred. Labour and land for redevelopment accordingly became cheaper, and because good travel and communication routes were already established the town was well placed to grow rapidly again when sea-bathing became fashionable in the mid-18th century.^[8] Little pre-18th century architecture remains in Brighton,^[10] therefore, although there are some individual buildings. For example, 27 King Street in North Laine is cobble-fronted and retains a timber-framed interior which could be 17th-century.^[11] Hove, meanwhile, was a single-street village with a manor house, some modest cottages and a church further inland. Although St Andrew's Church remains in use and Hove Street survives, the manor house was demolished in 1936 and no other original buildings remain.^[12]

Early-18th-century descriptions of the old town of Brighton (the present Lanes) concentrated on how small and low the houses were, and how the lower storeys were characteristically set slightly below ground level. This, and the proximity of the houses to each other, may have offered protection against storms and flooding from the sea.^[10][13] (In one of the earliest descriptions of Brighton - a letter dated 1736 - the rector of Buxted claims that "we live here underground almost ... the second storey is finished something under 12 feet.")^[14] "Huddling together" may have also helped the houses survive to the present day: they were poorly built and had little structural integrity. Typical Lanes buildings are timber-framed and plastered with load-bearing walls of bungaroosh with some flint.^[10][13] Brick quoins and courses added strength, and façades were often studded with pebbles from the beach. These would sometimes be coated with tar to keep water out,^[10] although this only became common in the early 19th century. In The Lanes, such buildings can be seen at Bartholomews, Middle Street and Ship Street among others.^[15]

Buildings of the 16th and 17th centuries and earlier can be found in the old villages absorbed by modern Brighton and Hove. At St Wulfran's Church, Ovingdean, the 12th-century nave and chancel replaced a Saxon structure.^[16][17] St Helen's Church at Hangleton retains 11th-century herringbone masonry and other ancient fabric.^[18] The old parish churches of Patcham, Portslade, Preston, Rottingdean and Brighton itself all retain some features from the 12th to 14th centuries, although they were all subject to Victorian restoration.^[19] Hove's oldest secular building is Hangleton Manor (now a pub), a Vernacular-style flint building with some 15th-century fabric. Little has changed since the High Sheriff of Sussex rebuilt it a century later, and the dovecote outside it is 17th-century.^[20][21] Other surviving manor houses and mansions in the old villages around Brighton and Hove include Preston Manor, Patcham Place, Stanmer House, Moulsecoomb Place and Ovingdean Grange, while Patcham and Rottingdean have well-preserved lesser houses such as Court House, Down House, Hillside and Southdown House, generally built of brick and flint in the 18th century.

The first development outside the four-street boundary of the ancient village was in 1771–72, when North Row (soon renamed Marlborough Place) was built on the west side of the open land.^[9][22] Some tarred cobble-fronted buildings survive there.^[15] At the same time, inns were becoming established as fashionable venues: the Castle (demolished) and the Old Ship both had "uncommonly large and expensive" assembly rooms for dancing and high-class socialising. The Castle's assembly rooms of 1754 were redesigned by John Crunden in 1776 in Classical style;^{[Note 1]} in 1761 Robert Golden designed Palladian-style rooms for the Old Ship, later redecorated in a "[Robert] Adamish" style after Crunden's work at the Castle.^[24][25] Robert Adam himself redesigned Marlborough House in 1786–87: with its elegant Neo-Palladian façade and "spatially arresting interior",^[26] it has been called the finest house of its era in the city.^[27] Coaching inns became important in the late 18th century—there were many on North Street, but the only survivor is the former Clarence Hotel (closed 1972; now Clarence House), a four-storey building of "Classical severity". It had stables for 50 horses to the rear.^[28][29][30]

The Prince Regent visited Brighton regularly from 1783 and soon wanted a house.^[25] A building near the Castle Inn was found, and Henry Holland extended it in "a stilted Classical style" in 1786–87. The Royal Marine Pavilion, as it was called before its present name (the Royal Pavilion) was adopted, became increasingly important in the growing town as it became the centre of activities for the Prince and his entourage—and the focal point for his regularly changing architectural tastes. Holland revamped the building in 1801–04 in a Chinese style, and the French-inspired interior was changed as well. Meanwhile, William Porden added a "monumental" complex of stables (now the Brighton Dome complex) to the west in 1804–08, in an Indian style. James Wyatt and later John Nash were then commissioned to alter the building again; Nash's work, finished in 1823, gave the building its present opulent Indo-Saracenic Revival/Orientalist appearance.^[26][31]

The Prince Regent's patronage helped Brighton become a fashionable, high-class resort.^[32] As it became more popular, it further outgrew its four-street boundaries. Planned development, as opposed to ad hoc growth, started in the 1780s with North Parade and South Parade alongside Old Steine. By the 1790s it spread well to the east along the East Cliff: New Steine (1790–95, but refaced in the 1820s) was the first sea-facing square, then came Bedford, Clarence and Russell Squares (all early 19th century) and Brighton's first crescent, Royal Crescent (1799–1802).^[33] Powered by "fashion, demand and the availability of capital",^[32] the scale of building and architectural ambition kept growing—especially when the father-and-son architects Amon and Amon Henry Wilds and their associate Charles Busby arrived in the town. They helped to develop the Regency style which now characterises the seafront. Hanover Crescent, Montpelier Crescent, Park Crescent, the Kemp Town estate (Sussex Square, Lewes Crescent, Arundel Terrace and Chichester Terrace) and Brunswick Town (Brunswick Terrace, Brunswick Square and associated streets) were among their set-piece developments.^[34][35] (The Brunswick estate was also the first significant development in the parish of Hove.)^[36] Accordingly, by the early 19th century, Brighton was renowned for the splendour and "strongly individual character" of its architecture.^[37] William Cobbett claimed in 1832 that it "certainly surpass[ed] in beauty all other towns in the world".^[38] Due to the quantity and quality of work produced by the Wilds–Wilds–Busby partnership and the groundbreaking designs produced by Holland, Nash and Porden—which "established a vocabulary of architectural elements" that defined the entire Regency style—Brighton's early urban development was characterised by an "overflowing of architectural inventiveness".^[39]

Around the same time, though, the first concerns were raised about the poor quality of houses on the edge of Brighton—especially on St James's Street, Edward Street and the roads running off West and North Streets. Many reports and studies were made by the Corporation and outsiders over the next decades, but little action was taken.^[40] There was, however, some slum clearance in 1845, when Queen's Road was driven through the infamous Petty France and Durham districts to provide a direct link from the recently built station to the town centre.^[41]

The London–Brighton railway reached the coast in 1841, and westward and eastward links were soon built from Brighton railway station. This was built in 1841 to David Mocatta's Italianate design, then added to in 1882–83 when H.E. Wallis added the dramatically curved train shed and F.D. Banister made further alterations, creating a building "entirely characteristic of the greater Victorian railway station".^[42] The line to the east crossed the landmark London Road Viaduct, a 28-arch, 400-yard (370 m), sharply curving brick structure which stood in empty fields when built by John Urpeth Rastrick in 1846.^[43]

Development had not yet reached this part of Brighton because the ancient field system to the north and east of the town constrained its growth,^[8] as did the ownership by the Stanford family of most of the remaining land surrounding Brighton and Hove. They carefully controlled its sale and development, releasing parcels of land gradually and ensuring that visually cohesive planned estates of high-quality housing were built.^[40] The area's 19th- and early 20th-century housing accordingly has a clear pattern and "a distinctive character". The poorest housing was to the east of Brighton (slum clearance around Carlton Hill, Albion Hill and Edward Street has replaced much of this); working-class housing for tradesmen, railway workers and other artisans spread to the northeast around Lewes Road, the viaduct and the station; middle-class developments lay north of the centre around London Road; and the highest-quality suburbs developed to the northwest of Brighton and north of Hove on the Stanford family's land.^[44][45] As originally built, the inner suburbs were of variable architectural quality: small houses with very late Regency-style flourishes predominated, but scattered among these were small-scale industrial and commercial development (the latter especially along the main roads), a range of high-quality Victorian churches such as St Bartholomew's, St Martin's and St Joseph's, and institutional buildings such as workhouses, hospitals and schools.^[46] Improving access to education was a particular priority for Brighton Corporation in the 19th century, so straight after the Elementary Education Act 1870 was passed it set up a school board, appointed Thomas Simpson as its architect and surveyor and provided several schools in suburban areas—most of which survive with little alteration. Simpson also worked for the Hove school board from 1876, the enlarged Brighton and Preston board from 1878 and took on his son Gilbert to assist in 1890.^[47]

The coming of the railway changed Brighton from an exclusive resort to a town popular with all classes of holidaymaker and permanent resident alike: the population grew by nearly 50% in the first decade.^[48] The seafront remained the main attraction, so an array of features were added: pleasure piers, promenades, hotels, entertainment kiosks and an aquarium. The West Pier and Palace Pier date from 1863 and 1891 respectively, although both were completed several years later; Madeira Drive was laid out in 1872 and received its "signature cast-iron terrace" (including a pagoda-shaped lift decorated with Greek gods) in the 1890s; Kings Road was widened in the 1880s; and large hotels began to line it even before this. Early-19th-century hotels such as the Royal Albion, Royal York and Bedford were joined by an Italianate pair by John Whichcord Jr. (the Grand, 1864) and Horatio Nelson Goulty (the Norfolk, 1865). Then in 1890 the vast Metropole Hotel by Alfred Waterhouse "broke the orthodoxy of stucco along the seafront" due to its prominent red-brick and terracotta façade.^[49] Its deliberately different design caused shock and brought criticism, but the British Architect journal considered it "a wonderful relief" from the homogeneity of stuccoed Regency buildings.^[50] Brighton's architecture was beginning to reflect trends in the country as a whole, but the Regency style and the Royal Pavilion's onion-domed, minaret-studded opulence continued to influence architecture throughout the town, and on the seafront in particular.^[51]

Hove, meanwhile, was also developing rapidly — but its influences were different. Although the Brunswick estate was successful, development of the neighbouring Adelaide Crescent stalled for more than 20 years and Decimus Burton's original design was scaled back. Next came Palmeira Square (c. 1855–1865), where the evolution from Regency to Victorian Italianate is clear,^[52] and there was some suburban development (called Cliftonville) around the new Hove railway station in the 1860s, but large tracts of land to the north and west remained undeveloped because of conditions in William Stanford's will. Only in 1872 did these conditions expire, and over the next 30 years Hove developed into a comfortable, spacious, suburban town with "a certain gentility" which it still possesses. Architects James Knowles and Henry Jones Lanchester were involved at first, and William Willett built the streets of ornately decorated gault brick villas they designed. Next came H. B. Measures and Amos Faulkner, who introduced more architectural variety and preferred red brick; then local architects Thomas Lainson and Clayton & Black laid out further estates of spacious tree-lined avenues and large half-timbered houses in the Queen Anne Revival and Domestic Revival styles.^[53] Public buildings were also provided, such as Hove Town Hall (1882; demolished 1966), a public library (1907–08) and Hove Museum and Art Gallery (a converted villa of 1877 designed in "drab Italianate" style by Thomas Lainson).^[54] Good Gothic Revival churches of this era include Central United Reformed Church (1867 by Horatio Nelson Goulty), the "dignified and grand" Sacred Heart (1880–81 by John Crawley) and Holy Trinity (1863 by James Woodman).^[55] Specialist building development company Medical Centre Developments bought the disused Holy Trinity in February 2016 for conversion into a medical centre.^[56]

Residential growth continued in the interwar and postwar periods, and the distinctive zonal pattern of development continued. Estates of council housing were built east and northeast of Brighton (at Whitehawk, Bevendean and Moulsecoomb, and in the redeveloped Carlton Hill inner suburb which had been subject to urban renewal); middle-class residential housing developed to the north in the Patcham and Preston areas; and suburbs such as Westdene, Withdean, Tongdean and West Blatchington to the northwest of Brighton and the north of Hove had an upper middle-class character.^[57] The rapid interwar suburban growth was similar to that seen throughout southeast England, but it was particularly stimulated by the introduction of electric trains^[57] on the main railway route to London—bringing a quicker and much more frequent service and increasing the attractiveness of commuting.^[58] Meanwhile, Brighton Corporation began major slum clearance operations in the 1930s when the government offered financial incentives.^[59] Moulsecoomb and the Pankhurst Avenue area near Queen's Park, both started in the early 1920s, were the first council estates.^[60] In the former, the South Moulsecoomb area was laid out first; its 478 houses, on 94 acres (38 ha) taken from the parish of Patcham in 1920, were designed along "garden city" lines with semi-detached houses set in large green spaces.^[61] North Moulsecoomb's 390 houses, including many brick-built terraces at a much higher density, followed from 1926.^[62] Brighton's first council flats were the four-storey Milner (1934) and Kingswood (1938) blocks, built as part of the Carlton Hill slum clearance programme.^[63]

Several streets in central Brighton were also transformed by the Corporation in the 1920s and 1930s: they sought to improve the flow of traffic by widening main roads in the commercial heart of the town. Western Road (1926–36),^[64] West Street (1928–38)^[65] and North Street (1927–36, and again in the 1960s)^[66] were all widened. Many 19th-century buildings were demolished: on North Street, a mixture of shops, houses (some in "squalid courtyards") and inns disappeared, on West Street all buildings on the west side (mostly large houses of the late 18th and early 19th century, when the road was high-class) were removed,^[65] and the north side of Western Road was demolished. Most buildings there were shops with tall 19th-century houses behind.^[64][67]

Another 1930s development could have changed the Regency face of Brighton and Hove and redefined it along Modernist lines. Wells Coates was commissioned to build a block of flats next to Brunswick Terrace. The high-class speculative development was named Embassy Court and was completed in 1935.^[68][69] Praise from the Architects' Journal was matched by Alderman Sir Herbert Carden, who campaigned for every other building along the seafront to be demolished and replaced with Embassy Court-style Modernist structures, all the way from Hove to Kemp Town.^[70] He also wanted to demolish the Royal Pavilion and replace it with a conference centre. This encouraged the formation of the Regency Society, the first of many local conservation and architectural interest groups.^[70]

This era also saw a transformation in Brighton's leisure and entertainment venues as it continued to flourish as a popular resort. Many large cinemas, theatres and dance halls were built, some in the fashionable Art Deco style: among them were the Savoy (later ABC), the Astoria, the Regent, the Imperial Theatre and Sherry's Dance Hall—which was near another "much-loved venue", the SS Brighton] complex. Also in the Art Deco style were the Saltdean Lido and another open-air swimming pool at Black Rock. Older buildings given a new look included the Brighton Dome (originally the Royal Pavilion's stables, built by William Porden) and the Brighton Aquarium.^[58] Local architect John Leopold Denman designed many new buildings, typically in a "well-mannered and individual" Neo-Georgian style:^[71] most were for commercial use, such as 20–22 Marlborough Place, Regent House and the offices for the Brighton & Hove Herald newspaper at 2–3 Pavilion Buildings,^[72] but the Hounsom Memorial Church at Hangleton^[73] and the Downs Crematorium are also his. The latter may have been inspired by Harry Stuart Goodhart-Rendel's St Wilfrid's Church on nearby Elm Grove.^[74][75] Goodhart-Rendel, a native of Brighton, also produced "his own inimitable response to Modernism" at Princes House, a steel-framed building with red and blue patterned brickwork. Several of its neighbouring commercial buildings on North Street are by Denman or the Clayton & Black firm.^[58][76]

Council flats of the 1960s include (left to right) the Swanborough Flats, Conway Court and the Hollingdean Flats (Nettleton Court and Dudeney Lodge).

The urban area was not as badly affected by World War II bombing as some coastal towns, notably Eastbourne,^[77] but some buildings were damaged or destroyed. The central arches of London Road viaduct had to be rebuilt after a direct hit left the tracks hanging in mid-air; the different coloured replacement brickwork is still visible.^[78] St Cuthman's Church, built in 1937 on the new Whitehawk estate, was destroyed in 1943.^[79]

The first council-owned tower blocks date from 1961, when four were built on the steep slopes of Albion Hill; Highleigh, opened on 16 May 1961, was the first.^[80] Other tower blocks of ten or more floors stand in the Edward Street and Upper Bedford Street areas of Kemptown, where five were built in the mid-1960s to complete an urban renewal programme begun in 1926;^[81] Hollingdean, where the landmark Nettleton Court and Dudeney Lodge towers date from 1966;^[82] and Whitehawk, where the Corporation built four ten-storey blocks called Swanborough Flats in 1967.^[83][84][85] Meanwhile, Hove had a high proportion of multi-occupancy residential buildings. Thousands lived in small bedsits hidden "behind the classic proportions [of] many of the older houses": a report by the council in 1976 stated that 11,000 people in Hove lived in "substandard housing".^[86] Given the lack of open land to build on, demolition and redevelopment was championed. Based on Herbert Carden's pre-war suggestion, the whole of Brunswick Square, Brunswick Terrace and Adelaide Crescent were to be replaced by tower blocks after Hove Council approved plans in 1945, but public opposition was too great.^[87] Two decades later, the Conway Street redevelopment scheme (1966–67) replaced 300 slum houses on an 11-acre (4.5 ha) site near the railway station with several tower blocks. A committee was formed to ensure householders received a suitable price for their compulsorily purchased houses.^[87]

The Borough Councils changed their emphasis in the 1970s towards "densely packed low-rise flats" such as Hampshire Court (Kemptown) and Ingram Crescent (Hove).^[88] This new direction was not matched by private firms, which continued to build residential towers into the 1980s—especially in Hove.^[85] Two of the city's tallest privately built blocks, Chartwell Court and Sussex Heights (the latter, at 334 feet (102 m), is Sussex's tallest tower block),^[85] sit on top of Brighton's largest postwar redevelopment scheme—the Churchill Square shopping centre. This 11-acre (4.5 ha) development by Russell Diplock & Associates (1963–68) has been condemned as "a disaster architecturally":^[89] its vast scale and poor relationship to surrounding buildings made it "very typical of its date".^[90] It was rebuilt as a covered shopping mall by Comprehensive Design Group (1995–98).^[91] Most other postwar schemes, whether commercial, residential or mixed-use, have amounted to small-scale infill. Brighton Square, a new pedestrian shopping square in the heart of The Lanes, dates from 1966 and is in harmony with the "intimate" surroundings in terms of scale and architecture.^[90] Elsewhere in The Lanes, Postmodern Regency-style pastiche architecture characterises infill schemes at Nile Street (1987–89 by the Robin Clayton Partnership)^[92] and Duke's Lane (1979 by Stone, Toms & Partners).^[93] A large site between Middle Street and West Street is covered by Avalon, a curvaceous double-fronted block of flats by Christopher Richards (2004–06).^[94]

The largest redevelopment scheme in the city since Churchill Square has been the laying out of the New England Quarter mixed-use area on the site formerly occupied by Brighton railway works and Brighton station's car park. The early buildings (2004–07 by Chetwood Associates; mostly residential) are "standard 21st-century developers' fare"; but a second phase of building (2007–09 by Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios), with retail buildings integrated with residential blocks under the name One Brighton, is more distinctive. BioRegional and the World Wide Fund for Nature's "One Planet Living" design principles were used to ensure the development was sustainable. The best building, a residential block, comes to "a dramatic sharp point" at an acute road junction.^[95] Sustainable design also informs smaller developments around the city: Conran and Partners' Atlanta Apartments (2007) in Bevendean have chestnut wood cladding, recycled copper and living roofs of sedum; the Sea Saw Self-Build scheme in Whitehawk (1993) consists of 24 timber-framed houses; the Hedgehog Housing development at Bevendean (2000) is similar; and a multiple award-winning scheme for the South London Family Housing Association at Hollingdean (1988) was also built according to sustainable principles.^[96]

Since the present urban area's settlements first developed as fishing villages and downland hamlets, the local architecture has been influenced by characteristic styles and the use of materials rarely seen elsewhere. Black glazed mathematical tiles and bungaroosh are unique to Brighton and its immediate surroundings,^[97] and tarred cobblestones with brick quoins, salt-glazed brickwork and knapped or plain flints were also common in early buildings.^[98] Stucco—perfectly suited to seaside conditions—predominated throughout the 19th century, such that "of nowhere else did it become so universally characteristic."^[98] Bay windows, a common feature of seaside resorts, were treated distinctively; balconies, sometimes roofed, were included on most 19th-century houses;^[98] Victorian and Edwardian houses were often designed as villas, with elaborate porches and decorative gables;^[99] and terraced housing is prevalent. The Regency style was so popular and influential that it persisted much longer than in other places,^[100] while Gothic Revival architecture is almost absent in secular buildings—although the style was popular for 19th-century churches, of which the city has a large, high-quality range.^[48]

Bungaroosh, a low-quality composite material, was commonly used in construction in the 18th century. The material contained miscellaneous objects such as broken bricks, lumps of wood, pebbles and stone; this mixture was then shuttered in hydraulic lime until it hardened. Bungaroosh walls were often hidden behind stucco or mathematical tile façades, and are susceptible to water penetration.^[101][102] Mathematical tiles, a similarly localised material, were designed to be laid overlapping each other, giving the appearance of brickwork.^[103] Glazed black tiles are closely associated with Brighton,^[97] and survive on 18th- and early 19th-century buildings such as Royal Crescent, Patcham Place and the shop at 9 Pool Valley.^{[104][105][106]} Other colours of tile are occasionally seen, such as cream (in the East Cliff area)^[107] and honey (commonly used by Henry Holland, including on his design for the original Marine Pavilion).^[108] The tiles gave bungaroosh buildings an expensive-looking façade^[103] and were easier to work with than bricks.^[108]

Rendered stucco façades "are a defining characteristic of Brighton and Hove's historic core".^[6] Stucco gave the appearance of stone, left a smooth finish and could be worked into intricate patterns on mouldings, capitals, architraves and other embellishments. It was used prominently on long, continuous terraces of houses, such as in the Brunswick and Kemp Town estates. Rustication was sometimes used, especially at ground-floor level.^[6] Typical decorative mouldings include standard features of Classical architecture such as columns of various orders, pilasters, parapets, cornices and capitals.^[109] Stucco façades were not always well-regarded: writing in 1940, Louis Francis Salzman considered that stucco "hides what architectural features [the buildings] may possess and produces dull uniformity, entirely lacking in character".^[10]

Brick buildings are common throughout the area. Pale gault brick is characteristic of some mid-19th-century residential developments, such as the area around Grand Avenue in Hove and the Valley Gardens area of Brighton (both conservation areas). Later in that century, smooth red brickwork became more common. Yellowish stock bricks were popular in the 19th century for non-residential buildings and walls which were not readily visible. Different coloured bricks, such as brown and grey-blue, were often used in quoins and dressings on walls made of flint or red bricks.^[110] The layout of brickwork "has a significant effect on a building's appearance"; the Flemish bond pattern is encountered most frequently in the city.^[111] On Victorian and Edwardian houses, brick chimney-stacks often served a decorative as well as a functional purpose, and were sometimes tall and ornate:^[112] examples include the Queen Anne-style houses at 8–11 Grand Avenue, Hove (1900–03, by Amos Faulkner).^[113][114]

Stone was rarely used as a building material, as it was not prevalent locally. Some churches and banks of the 19th and early 20th centuries were built of Bath or Portland stone, and Kentish ragstone was used for St Joseph's Church on Elm Grove, but few ordinary residential or commercial buildings have any stonework. Artificial stone was sometimes used for exterior features such as cornices and columns, though, especially during the Victorian era.^[116] Flint was historically a common building material as it was "always readily available in Hove, Portslade, West Blatchington and Hangleton". Agricultural buildings and cottages used random (unknapped) flintwork extensively, as did all four parishes' ancient churches^[117] and others further east such as Ovingdean and Rottingdean. Flints were collected from the beach and the South Downs or dug out of the fields, where they were often found near the surface. A flint pit survived at Southern Cross near Portslade until the 20th century.^[117] It became popular again as a building material in the early 19th century, by which time several styles of flintwork had developed: rounded pebbles in seafront buildings, whole flints in rural cottages and agricultural buildings, knapped (split) flints, and random flintwork with brick dressings.^[118] The use of stone or brick quoins and dressings on flint walls, necessary for structural reasons, enhances the appearance of such buildings, "sometimes to great decorative effect".^[119] Knapped flint was used particularly in farmhouses in nearby villages which later became part of the urban area: Court House and Down House in Rottingdean, Home Farmhouse in Withdean, Southdown House in Patcham and several houses in Ovingdean and Stanmer have them.^[15] The Sussex dialect includes specialist words for types of flint: the irregular joints between randomly laid knapped flints are "snail-creeps", and rounded pebbles are "pitchers".^[15] An old "Brighton Vernacular" style has been identified: small cottages with cobblestone walls laid in courses, whose windows and doors were edged with red brickwork. Many examples of this style were demolished during the mid 20th-century slum clearance programmes.^[120]

Weatherboarding is uncommon, but there are several examples at Stanmer and Patcham (barns and cottages) and in Meeting House Lane in The Lanes.^[15] Nearby, 37a Duke Street—the oldest building on that road—is a "remarkable" late 18th-century house with a façade of painted wooden blocks imitating stonework.^[15][93] Timber framing is also rare in the city, but modern self-build schemes at Sea Saw Way, Whitehawk (1993) and Hogs Edge, Bevendean (1997–2000) feature this structural system. The latter development was built according to Walter Segal's self-build methods and has sustainable features including recycled paper insulation.^[96] Waste House, a conceptual sustainable building within the University of Brighton Faculty of Arts campus in central Brighton, was built between 2012 and 2014. Nearly 90% of its materials—from the timber-framed structure (made of reclaimed wood from building sites) and exterior walls formed of waste chalk and clay to the household-rubbish insulation (VHS cassettes, toothbrushes and denim offcuts)—were destined for landfill. The project, which has won several architectural awards, attempts to show how unwanted materials can be used to create a viable and energy-efficient building.^{[121][122][123]}

Concrete and steel framing became common in the 20th century: examples include the new Hove Town Hall, Brighton's police station and courthouse,^{[LLB 1]} and the original Churchill Square shopping centre. Amex House, a corporate headquarters in the Carlton Hill area, was the first building in Britain to use glass-reinforced plastic.^[124] The New England Quarter, an early 21st-century mixed-use development, has many buildings clad in an elastomeric render with timber cladding and large areas of glass.^[125]

Many of the city's old buildings have "butterfly roofs"—double-pitched, with a central depression between the slopes.^[126] The oldest roofs tended to be laid with handmade clay tiles; slate tiles and mass-produced clay tiles were popular later.^[127] Elaborately decorated gables characterise the roofs of many houses and villas of the Victorian and Edwardian eras, especially in suburban areas. These are usually steep and triangular: curved and shaped gables are uncommon in the area. Stucco, plaster, weatherboarding and woodwork were often used to decorate the face of the gable.^[128]

Bow or bay windows were the "chief architectural feature" of Brighton's early houses.^[10] Vertical sliding timber-framed sash windows with glazing bars were usually inserted into these, although casements were sometimes used—typically on the oldest or most modest buildings. Casements would sometimes be given glazing bars as well. Such bars were usually slim and had mouldings in various patterns. The combination of partly recessed sashes and bow windows is characteristic of Brighton's Regency-era residential developments.^[129] The Queen Anne Revival-style housing popular in Hove in the late 19th century^[53] had its own window pattern: two-part sashes with many panes on the upper section, separated by wider glazing bars than those used in earlier years.^[130] Casement windows were popular on interwar Tudor Revival houses,^[131] as at Woodland Drive (a conservation area) in West Blatchington;^[132] and steel-framed Crittall windows are found in interwar Modernist buildings such as Embassy Court^[131] and the Moderne-style mansion flats at 4 Grand Avenue, Hove.^[114]

Elaborate doorcases and porticos with Classical-style details are seen on many 19th-century houses, especially those built in the Regency era. A typical form consisted of two columns with decorative mouldings, an entablature and a straight roof, all stuccoed, supporting a cast-iron balcony.^[133] Suburban villas often feature brick and timber porches with gabled tiled roofs.^[134] In central areas, many old houses have been converted into shops and have lost their original doorways in favour of glazed shopfronts.^[10]

Balconies and canopied verandas are often seen on larger Regency- and Victorian-era houses in central Brighton and Hove. Typically at first-floor level, made of Portland stone or lead-coated timber and surrounded by cast iron railings with elaborate patterns, they sometimes span entire terraces of houses. They were provided to extend the living space of the drawing room, considered the most important room in the house for socialising during that era; accordingly they extended some way beyond the ground floor. Many terraces and squares faced central gardens or the sea, so balconies would give uninterrupted views of these.^[135] Queen Anne Revival and Arts and Crafts-style villas of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, especially in Hove and around Preston Park, featured wooden balconies with simple balustrades formed of upright timbers.^[136]

Mouldings of various types were common external decorative features in the 18th and 19th centuries, especially on Regency-style buildings. Many structural elements would typically feature moulded stucco work—pilasters, entablatures, pediments, brackets and courses—while other mouldings would be merely decorative. Typical designs included shells, foliage (especially on capitals) and vermiculation. The Ammonite Order is a Classical order found almost exclusively in Brighton and Hove, consisting of fluted columns topped by capitals whose volutes are shaped like ammonite fossils. Architect Amon Henry Wilds used them extensively. Pilasters and columns of the Corinthian order are also common. Victorian and Edwardian buildings made use of intricately moulded courses and bracketed eaves.^[109] Elaborate carved reliefs are found on some of John Leopold Denman's buildings of the 1930s as a result of his collaboration with sculptor Joseph Cribb. In central Brighton, 20–22 Marlborough Place has a series of reliefs showing workers in the building trade,^[137] and 2–3 Pavilion Buildings^{[LLB 1]} have Portland stone capitals with scallops and seahorses.^[138]

Terracotta was popular in the Victorian and Edwardian eras as an external decorative element, as was yellowish faience earthenware. They were commonly used to top off a structure such as a wall or roof, in the form of finials, urns and caps. Carved terracotta panels were also used to decorate façades, especially below windows:^[139] the former Hove Hospital^{[LLB 1]} (now Tennyson Court) has prominent examples of this.^[140]

Basements are a very common feature of houses in Hove: it was customary for servants to live in them in the Victorian and Edwardian era. According to a Hove Council survey in 1954, 2,573 houses were built with basements.^[141]

Brighton's earliest council houses date from the 19th century. Two landowners donated land around the present St Helen's Road in 1897, and simple polychromatic brick cottages were built to commemorate Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee.^[60] Much council building took place in the 1960s and 1970s, often in the form of tower blocks.^[85] In Hove, the Conway Redevelopment Scheme lasted from April 1966 until July 1967. Hundreds of slum houses were replaced by five towers with between 54 and 72 flats each; the ten-storey Conway Court is the tallest. Dark red and buff brickwork, small areas of blue plastic panelling and recessed balconies characterise the buildings.^[87] About £2 million was spent.^[88] In 1976–77, old council houses in the Ingram Crescent area off Portland Road were replaced by low-rise flats in a modern style with varied architectural features such as weatherboarding-style timber, dark brickwork and catslide roofs.^[88] The first council houses built in the city since the 1980s were completed in 2013. In July 2010 the council announced plans to demolish Ainsworth House, a 1960s low-rise block in the Elm Grove area, and build a higher-density high-rise "family complex".^[142] Planning permission was granted in April 2011, and the 15-home development called Balchin Court was opened in September 2013.^[143] In November 2011 squatters had occupied Ainsworth House, which was in a dangerous condition because it contained asbestos.^[144] In February 2016 work started on a larger development of council flats on the site of the old Whitehawk Library. Kite Place, a block of 57 flats, was finished in January 2018, at which time it was reported another 29-unit block was under construction nearby.^[145]

The shortage of building materials caused by the First World War prompted the government to seek alternatives. Hundreds of prefabricated homes were built, especially on the outskirts of the urban area,^[84] but more innovative were the two all-metal houses built in 1923 on the Pankhurst estate. The government paid half the cost of construction of the "Weir Steel Homes". They were demolished in 1969.^[60][146] In 1934, the New Zealand-based architecture firm Connell, Ward and Lucas built three Cubist houses on a hillside site on the Saltdean estate—among the earliest buildings of that style in Britain. More were planned, in an attempt to demonstrate that the design could work on a large scale; but no more were built, although some later houses in the area adopted elements of the style. Two of the three "iconoclast machines for living", as they were called in 1987, survive in much-altered form,^[124] "forlorn among their conformist brothers and sisters". The starkly white-painted cubes were originally sold for £550.^[147]

The fields around the ancient village of Hove were owned by a few large landholders, whose gradual release of land for development in the 19th and early 20th centuries contributed to the town's distinctive pattern of growth: individual architects or firms designed small estates with a homogeneous overall style but with much variation between them.^[99] The Wick Estate's land was transformed between the 1820s and 1860s into the Brunswick Town estate, consisting of grand Regency/Classical-style squares and crescents of houses, with smaller versions in grid-pattern side streets.^[148] Next came the Cliftonville estate, which filled the gap between Brunswick Town and Brighton. Two-storey semi-detached stuccoed villas in the Italianate style, often with canted bay windows, characterised the early part of the estate—the long north–south roads between Church Road and the seafront. Cliftonville (now Hove) railway station opened to the north in 1865, stimulating further development in a similar style. A railway architect, F.D. Banister, designed most of Cliftonville,^[36][149] including number 42 Medina Villas (his own home during the 1850s) and three surrounding houses, whose Jacobethan red-brick exteriors and curved gables contrast with the surrounding villas.^[149] The West Brighton estate's rapid development began in 1872 on land bought from the Stanford family, the area's largest landholders. Until the Stanford Estate Act of Parliament was passed in 1871, no houses could be built on the land, despite tremendous pressure for growth; within 12 years, 550 acres (220 ha) were developed and Hove's housing stock had trebled.^[36] Sir James Knowles and Henry Jones Lanchester were the principal architects, and William Willett built the houses to a high standard.

Many flats and mansion blocks were built in Brighton, Hove and Portslade in the interwar and immediate postwar periods. St Richard's Flats^{[LLB 1]} (mid-1930s, by Denman and Son), "cottagey and jazzy at the same time", are stuccoed with wooden balconies and a clay-tiled roof. King George VI Mansions^{[LLB 1]} at West Blatchington consist of three long groups of three-storey brick and tile terraces forming a quadrangle around an area of open space; designed by T. Garratt and Sons in the "Vernacular Revival" style, they are little changed since their construction. Wick Hall^{[LLB 1]} (1936) and Furze Croft^{[LLB 1]} (1937, by Toms and Partners) occupy the old gardens of the original Wick Hall mansion. Their "elegant" form and high quality makes them "well-respected local landmark[s]". Furze Croft retains its Crittall steel windows and is characteristic of the 1930s Moderne style. Courtenay Gate^{[LLB 1]} occupies a prime site on Hove seafront; designed in 1934, it rises to seven storeys and has good architectural detail. In The Drive in Hove, numbers 20 and 22^{[LLB 1]} are brick- and stone-built flats which enhance the streetscape of this important residential road; number 22 was "designed to resemble a castle". John Leopold Denman's Harewood Court^{[LLB 1]} (1950s), built for the Royal Masonic Benevolent Institution, is a seven-storey brick-built block in the Art Deco style.^[150] Nearby, at the junction of The Drive and Cromwell Road, Eaton Manor^{[LLB 1]} dates from 1968–72, rises to eight storeys and contains over 100 flats. It is described on the local list as "handsome ... well articulated ... [and] an excellent example of the type".^[150]

The former French and Police Convalescent Homes are now flats and a nursing home respectively.

For many years, convalescent homes and similar institutions have taken advantage of the mild climate and sea air. The Convalescent Police Seaside Home in Hove was Britain's first when it opened in 1890 in a house in Clarendon Villas. Almost immediately, architect J.G. Gibbins was engaged to design a purpose-built home on land nearby. This plot on Portland Road was in "a charming position, [...] open to the sea" at the time. William Willett erected the building, which opened in July 1893. The red-brick home has gabled roofs, substantial chimney-stacks and a visually prominent entrance, and is a dominant presence on Portland Road.^[151] The home moved to Kingsway in 1966, and East Sussex County Council converted the old building into the Portland House Nursing Home.^[152] The French government paid for a large home to be built on the cliffs at Black Rock in 1895–98. The château-like French Convalescent Home was converted into flats in 1999, but retains its slate mansard-roofed corner pavilions, gabled entrance and garden-facing colonnade. The French Renaissance Revival style chosen by architects Clayton & Black contrasts with surrounding seafront developments. St Dunstan's, a charity which looks after blind former members of the Armed Forces, is based at Ovingdean, and its rest and rehabilitation home is based on a prominent downland site overlooking the coast road. The Burnet, Tait and Lorne Partnership's International Modern steel-frame and pale brick home has a cruciform plan with a symmetrical west-facing façade. Some windows are recessed, and others are flanked by brown-tiled columns. Described as "slightly reminiscent of Charles Holden's London Underground stations", its shape recalls that of a biplane. A low chapel in front is topped by a Winged Victory sculpture.^[153] On The Drive in Hove, the Grade II-listed number 55 (now flats) was a convalescent home called Catisfield House between 1939 and 1999. It was run by the Rose Elizabeth Greene Charitable Trust: Miss Greene had left the original Catisfield House (in rural Sussex) in her will to house poor women recovering from stays in hospital. It moved to Hove when larger premises were needed.^[154]

The redevelopment of Brighton's three major commercial streets—North Street, West Street and Western Road—in the 1930s means that they are now characterised by distinctive interwar commercial buildings. Western Road has "a good run of large" department stores and other shops:^[67] a ship-like Art Deco corner building by Garrett & Son (1934) incorporating Clayton & Black's Imperial Arcade^{[LLB 1]} (1924), the Moderne former Wade's (now New Look) and Woolworth's stores (1928), the British Home Stores (1931 by Garrett & Son; now Primark) and the Stafford's hardware shop (1930; now Poundland) in American-influenced and Continental European-influenced versions of the Classical style and both decorated with elaborate motifs, and the "unusually palatial" Neoclassical Boots the Chemist (1927–28; now McDonald's).^[155][156] Covering the block between Dean and Spring Streets, its stone façade has four evenly spaced Ionic columns in the centre of the upper storey—originally a restaurant and tearoom which featured regular orchestral performances.^[157][158] Mitre House is a monolithic red-brick and stone structure dating from 1935. Now housing miscellaneous shops at ground-floor level, it originally incorporated the south coast's largest branch of International Stores,^{[Note 3]} a car showroom and Brighton's branch of W H Smith below its five storeys of flats. It replaced the 19th-century premises of Le Bon Marché, which after closure in 1926 were acquired by Brighton Corporation to house shops whose premises had been compulsorily purchased.^[157][158] Older buildings survive on the south side, including two Classical-style bank branches—Thomas Bostock Whinney's Doric-columned Classical-style Bath stone Midland Bank (1905; now HSBC) and Palmer & Holden's heavily rusticated National Westminster Bank of 1925, with large arched windows flanked by pilasters and a prominent balustrade on the parapet.^[159] The north side of North Street became the centre for bank and office buildings, though.^[160] Survivors include Denman & Son's "sombre Classical" Barclays Bank branch (1957–59), a very late use of that style,^[161] the Modernist/Brutalist Prudential Buildings (1967–69, by the Prudential's in-house architect K.C. Wintle),^[161] originally that company's headquarters but now shops and a hotel;^[162] another Thomas Bostock Whinney-designed Midland Bank branch, built in 1902 with a colonnade of Tuscan columns and a balustrade at the top, typical of the Edwardian era;^[161] and the former National Provincial Bank branch by Clayton & Black and F.C.R. Palmer (1921–23; now a Wetherspoons pub), with intricate carving and use of detail throughout the Louis XVI-style Neoclassical stone façade.^[161] Nearby at 163 North Street is "the chef d'œuvre of Clayton & Black, an ebullient essay in Edwardian Baroque", which they built in 1904 for an insurance company.^[163] The Boots store which replaced the Regent Cinema in 1974 had a "sculptural quality" because of the way its steel frame projected beyond the glazed curtain walls. Derek Sharp of Comprehensive Design Group undertook the work, but it the building was re-clad and redesigned in 1998, losing the original impact. Waterstones bookshop opposite, designed for Burtons in 1928 by their in-house architect Harry Wilson, has a Classical theme with full-height pilasters.^[91]

Several financial services companies made Hove their base in the late 20th century. The Sussex Mutual Building Society's new head office on Western Road (1975), called "one of the finest new office buildings in the locality" in contemporary reports, is a well-lit slate-roofed building with a glazed clay mosaic mural depicting scenes from Sussex, designed by Philippa Threlfall.^[88] The Alliance Building Society's three-storey steel-framed head office building at Hove Park was designed in the 1960s by Jackson, Greenen and Down, who gained the commission at the end of a competition started in 1956. It had strong horizontal lines offset by granite columns and tall, narrow steel-framed windows.^[164] On its opening in 1967, it was anticipated to be "a great contribution to the architectural thought of the 20th century"; but by the 1980s it was derided as a "carbuncle" and a "white elephant", its stark Modernist form having dated badly. The merged and greatly enlarged Alliance & Leicester Building Society moved out in 1994 and the building was knocked down in 2001. David Richmond and Partners' £65 million "City Park" scheme, consisting of houses and three curved-roofed office blocks rising to four storeys, replaced it.^[165] The Legal & General insurance company moved there from their earlier home at the former Hanningtons furniture depository on Montefiore Road (now the Montefiore Hospital); architects Devereux and Partners had "elegantly converted" this 1904 building for its new purpose in 1972.^[166]

High-tech offices of the 21st century include Exion 27 (built in 2001 by the Howard Cavanna consultancy), now used by the University of Brighton.^[167] The exterior is panelled with aluminium cladding and has extensive areas of tinted glass. Structurally, the building is steel-framed with steel and concrete floors and a large brise soleil.^[168][169] The "imposing" 28,000-square-foot (2,600 m²) building was the city's first ultramodern commercial property and was intended for mixed commercial and industrial use, but its completion coincided with a slump in demand for high-tech premises.^[170]

Brighton's first large-scale industry was the railway works, established next to the railway station in 1842. Several extensions were built as demand grew for locomotive manufacture and repair: in 1889, the buildings had to be extended on iron piers across the floor of the steeply sloping valley.^[171] After closure in 1957, some of the buildings were converted into a bubble car factory, which made 30,000 three-wheeled Isettas in the next seven years.^[172] The whole site was cleared between 1962 and 1969, and the mixed-use New England Quarter now covers the area.^[171][173] (The LBSCR also established a railway mission chapel for employees of the locomotive works; the flint-built Gothic Revival-style building on Viaduct Road is still in religious use, having been taken over by an Evangelical group.)^[171] The British Engineerium in West Blatchington is a museum which occupies a mid-Victorian former water pumping station. Its bold polychromatic brickwork, symmetrical High Victorian Gothic engine room building, visually dominant chimney and associated structures—all of which are listed—combine to form "an unusually fine asset"^[174] which is "a splendid example of Victorian industrial engineering".^[175][176] A former brewery^{[LLB 1]} in the ancient village centre of Portslade dominates the surrounding flint buildings. The "characterful" Classical/Italianate five-storey yellow-brick building was built in 1881 and is now in mixed industrial and commercial use.^[177][178] The former Phoenix Brewery (1821) between Grand Parade and the Hanover district was historically significant but architecturally modest, apart from the later brewery office and adjacent Free Butt pub. Closure came in the early 1990s, and the site was redeveloped for student housing.^[179] Allen West & Co. Ltd, an electrical engineering company which was a major employer in northeast Brighton from 1910, built several distinctive factories on Lewes Road and the Moulsecoomb estate, especially in the 1940s and 1950s. Most were demolished in the 1960s and 1970s, and the large warehouses of the Fairway Trading Estate occupy the Moulsecoomb site; but the company's wide brown-brick administrative and design office, built in 1966 on Lewes Road, was sold to Brighton Polytechnic and became Mithras House.^[180][181]

Brighton's parish church, dedicated to St Nicholas, dates from the 14th century,^[182] St Andrew's Church at Hove is a century older,^[183] and the formerly outlying villages of Ovingdean, Hangleton, Rottingdean, West Blatchington and Portslade have even more ancient buildings at their heart. Nevertheless, the defining characteristic of Brighton and Hove's religious architecture is the exceptional range of richly designed, landmark Victorian churches—particularly those built for the Anglican community.^[48] The city's stock of such churches is one of the best outside London: this is attributable to the influence of fashionable society and the money it brought, and to the efforts of two Vicars of Brighton, Henry Michell Wagner and his son Arthur, to endow and build new churches throughout Brighton's rapidly developing suburbs and poor districts. Both men were rich and were willing to pay for well-designed, attractive and even flamboyant buildings by well-known architects such as Benjamin Ferrey, Richard Cromwell Carpenter and George Frederick Bodley. An early preference for the Classical style, as at Christ Church (now demolished) and St John the Evangelist's at Carlton Hill, gave way to various forms of Gothic Revival design—principally in the starkly plain form of the gigantic St Bartholomew's Church and the even larger St Martin's, whose fixtures and furnishings are classed among the best in England.^[184] However, Charles Barry's imposingly sited St Paul's Church (1824), which began the Gothic trend,^[48] was not commissioned by the Wagners; nor were Hove's new parish church, the Grade I-listed All Saints (1889–91) or Cliftonville's St Barnabas' (1882–83), both by John Loughborough Pearson.^[185] St Michael and All Angels Church, built in two stages by Bodley (1858–61) and William Burges (1893–95), was established by Rev. Charles Beanlands, a curate under Arthur Wagner at St Paul's. The two parts, in different interpretations of the Gothic Revival style, harmonise well, and the interior (mostly by W. H. Romaine-Walker) is one of the city's grandest.^[186] The present St Mary the Virgin Church is the second on the site: Amon Henry Wilds's Classical building collapsed during renovation and was replaced in 1877–79 by William Emerson's "dynamic" Early English/French Gothic design—his only church in England.^[185][187]

Also characteristic of the Victorian era was the rebuilding or restoration of the area's ancient churches. Richard Cromwell Carpenter rebuilt St Nicholas' Church from a ruined state in 1853–54, and Somers Clarke did more work in 1876.^[188] George Basevi carried out an "uninspiring" neo-Norman revamp of the 13th-century St Andrew's Church in the 1830s,^[189] James Woodman and Ewan Christian "over-restored"^[190] St Peter's Church at Preston Village in 1872 and 1878,^[191][192] and the 11th- and 12th-century St Peter's Church at West Blatchington was initially rebuilt by Somers Clarke in 1888–91^[193][194] and comprehensively extended in 1960 in a complementary style by John Leopold Denman.^[195][196] The partly Saxon St Wulfran's Church, Ovingdean (the city's oldest building) was altered in the 1860s, although the overwhelming impression is that of a 12th-century Downland village church;^[197][198] and similar work was carried out at St Helen's Church in Hangleton in the 1870s, which nevertheless "retains its medieval character".^[199][200]

Anglican churches continued to be built in the 20th century. The stripped-down Modern Gothic of Edward Maufe's Bishop Hannington Memorial Church (1938–39), with its "simple and gracious interior", has been called "Historicism at its most simplified".^[201][202] The Gothic Revival style was also used for Edward Prioleau Warren's Church of the Good Shepherd (1921–22) and Lacy Ridge's St Matthias Church (1907), with its round tower and hammerbeam roof. Harry Stuart Goodhart-Rendel's widely praised St Wilfrid's Church of 1932–34 (closed 1980), which embraced architectural Eclecticism and Rationalism, used two-tone brick and reinforced concrete and had an unusual interior layout designed to make the altar highly visible. John Betjeman said it was "about the best 1930s church there is".^[74][203] Postwar churches are mostly Modernist in style: the Church of the Good Shepherd in Mile Oak (1967, by M.G. Alford) has two angular roofs with six irregular vertical windows mounted between them,^[204] and Bevendean's brick and knapped flint Church of the Holy Nativity (1963, by Reginald Melhuish) has a distinctive roof with two unequal upward slopes.^[205] An exception is the 1950s St Mary Magdalene's Church on the Coldean estate, converted from an 18th-century barn in 1955 by John Leopold Denman and still wholly Vernacular in style.^[206]

The city's 11 Roman Catholic churches range in style from the Classical St John the Baptist's Church (1832–35) in Kemptown—with monumental Corinthian columns and pilasters—to the varied Gothic Revival designs of St Joseph, St Mary Magdalen, the Church of the Sacred Heart^[207] and St Mary's at Preston Park (which has some Arts and Crafts elements).^[208] The "startling" Romanesque Revival St Peter's Church at Aldrington (1915) has a landmark campanile,^[209] while Henry Bingham Towner's design for the Church of Our Lady of Lourdes, Queen of Peace at Rottingdean (1957) was a "very conservative" and simplified modern interpretation of the Gothic form.^[210] Other postwar churches are vernacular or Modernist in style, such as St Thomas More Church at Patcham (1963)—distinguished by a wooden geodesic dome and large areas of glass.^[211]

Nonconformist churches and chapels vary in age and style. Holland Road Baptist Church in Hove (1887, by John Wills) is a landmark Purbeck stone Transitional Gothic Revival building—a rare design for that denomination,^[212][213] although the flint-built Florence Road Baptist Church near Preston Park (1894–95, by George Baines) is in the similar Early English style.^[214] The same architect designed a smaller flint and brick chapel at Gloucester Place in 1904; its symmetrical façade was spoiled by wartime bomb damage to the miniature flanking towers.^[215] Strict Baptists meet at the starkly plain Neoclassical Galeed Strict Baptist Chapel (1868).^[216] Methodist church designs include Romanesque Revival (the Grade II-listed Hove Methodist Church, by John Wills in 1895 and featuring a prominent rose window),^[212] Early English Gothic Revival (E.J. Hamilton's 1897–98 building at Stanford Avenue in Preston Park, with stone-faced brickwork)^[214] and Modernist at Patcham (1968)^[217] and Dorset Gardens in Kemptown (2003). Former chapels of that denomination include the Gothic Revival United Church in Hove (1904),^[218] the Renaissance-style church at nearby Goldstone Villas (converted into offices in 1968),^[218][219] W.S. Parnacott's distinctive Gothic-style stuccoed and pinnacled Primitive Methodist chapel (1886) in Kemptown,^[220] Thomas Lainson's Romanesque Revival church at nearby Bristol Road^[221] and James Weir's Free Renaissance design of 1894 on the main London Road.^[222] The Brutalist Brighton and Hove National Spiritualist Church (1965) on Edward Street has a "starkly unperforated" windowless concrete exterior softened by the effect of its "sinuous" curving walls.^[223][224]

The headquarters of the Anglican Diocese of Chichester are in the grounds of Aldrington House, a Victorian villa now used as a mental health support centre. The Diocese previously used two houses in Brunswick Square, but in 1995 James Longley & Co. of Crawley constructed the new building—Church House—to the design of architect David Grey and at a cost of £670,000. It is in the Sussex vernacular style and makes extensive use of local materials. The uppermost of the three storeys is hidden within a deep tiled roof with high-level windows. The red-brick walls have contrasting string courses of dark blue brick.^[225]

Brighton, Hove, Brunswick Town and Portslade have each had a town hall, but only those at Hove and Brighton are still in use and Hove's was rebuilt after a fire. Medieval Brighthelmston used a building (called the Townhouse) which was more of a market hall, and a later building (1727) known as the Town Hall was principally used as a workhouse.^[226] Work on the first purpose-built town hall began in 1830; Thomas Read Kemp laid the first stone, and Thomas Cooper designed it on behalf of the Brighton Town Commissioners (of which he was a member). Brighton Corporation spent £40,000 to extend it in 1897–99, to the design of Francis May. Its severe Classical design, with huge Ionic columns and wide staircases, was criticised in the 19th century, and May's infilling of the cruciform building's wings affected the composition's symmetry. Nevertheless, English Heritage has awarded it Grade II listed status.^{[227][228][229][230]}

Brunswick Town Hall, built on behalf of the Brunswick Square Commissioners, was the first town hall in the Hove area.^[231] Its Classical-style stucco façade concealed stone and brickwork. It cost £3,000 and opened in 1856. The three-storey building served Brunswick Town and Hove jointly from 1873, when the Hove Commissioners moved in; but more space was needed, so leading Victorian Gothic Revival architect Alfred Waterhouse was controversially commissioned to design a new building on a large site bought from the Stanford Estate's land.^[232] The Brunswick building, at 64 Brunswick Street West, passed into commercial use, is now part of the Brighton Institute of Modern Music,^[233] and is Grade II-listed.^[234]

Waterhouse was thought by some Hove Commissioners to be too important an architect to design Hove's