Buildings and architecture of Brighton and Hove

Brighton and Hove, a city on the English Channel coast in southeast England, has a large and diverse stock of buildings "unrivalled architecturally" among the country's seaside resorts.^[1] The urban area, designated a city in 2000, 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. The conurbation was first united in 1997 as a unitary authority and has 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

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

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

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.

The Prince Regent's patronage helped Brighton become a fashionable, high-class resort.

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.

Residential growth continued in the interwar and postwar periods, and the distinctive zonal pattern of development continued. Estates of

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

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).

Since the present urban area's settlements first developed as fishing villages and

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

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

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.

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]

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

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.

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

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:

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.

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

Brighton's

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

The Queen Anne-style Portslade Town Hall^{[LLB 1]} has not been used for that purpose since 1974, when Portslade Urban District became part of Hove; nevertheless part of the premises are still used by Brighton and Hove City Council.^[236] The building was originally the Ronuk Hall and Welfare Institute—a social club and multi-purpose hall built for workers at the nearby Ronuk wax polish factory.^[236][237] Gilbert Murray Simpson designed the red-brick building for the company in 1927; the first stone was laid in July of that year, and the hall opened in 1928. It was lavishly furnished and decorated with paintings by well-known artists.^[237] Portslade Urban District Council bought the "impressive"^[236] building for £36,500 in 1959. Its main hall has two balustraded galleries.^[236]

Brighton's police did not have a central headquarters building until 1965: they were based in the old Town Hall, then in the basement of Thomas Cooper's new building when that was built in 1830.^[238] Brighton Borough Engineer Percy Billington's "graceless" police headquarters^[239] opened on 27 September 1965 on John Street in Carlton Hill.^[238] At 64 St James's Street in Kemptown, an 1850s building with stone urns and a balustrade housed an early district police station. In November 2008, a two-storey sustainable building replaced an existing police facility in Hollingbury.^[238][240] Portslade had two police stations but neither remains in use: one at North Street existed by 1862 but was superseded by the St Andrew's Road station^{[LLB 1]} in 1905. This was built with stables and a hayloft at the rear for the constables' horses. The two-storey brick-built station is a "good quality, dignified" Queen Anne Revival-style building with a gabled façade and a hipped roof of clay.^[150][241]

Until 1869, offenders facing court action were taken to various inns or to Brighton Town Hall. On 3 July of that year, Charles Sorby's two-storey Tudor/Gothic brick and Bath stone hipped-roofed courthouse took over. It still had influences of the Italianate style popular for courthouses 20 to 30 years previously.^{[22][242][243]} Percy Billington designed a new law courts complex at a cost of £665,000 on a site next to the police station in Carlton Hill in 1967, and this replaced the original building on Church Street.^[243] Billington's concrete structure, extended in 1986–89, faced the same criticism as the police station: in particular, the charge that the architecture "failed to provide civic monuments of quality".^[239] In Hove, Holland Road has a modernist police station (1964)^[244] and courthouse, known as Hove Trial Centre, (1971–72). The latter cost £380,000 and has four courtrooms and office accommodation. Designed by Fitzroy Robinson & Partners, the low-set, "strongly horizontal" building has a recessed lower storey and is built of brown-blue brick from Staffordshire.^[245][246]

Graeme Highet's Preston Circus Fire Station in Brighton and Clayton & Black's former Hove Fire Station, built in 1938 and 1929 respectively.

The city's main fire station^{[LLB 1]} faces the five-road junction of Preston Circus,^[247] near London Road viaduct. Established on the site of a brewery of 1901, the building was redesigned in 1938; Graeme Highet won the commission in competition. His plain brick exterior, curving gently round the road, combines "restrained Modernism" with more old-fashioned elements such as a canopied entrance and windows with prominent architraves. Sculptor Joseph Cribb provided carved reliefs for the main doors.^[248] Portslade's former fire station^{[LLB 1]} operated from 1909 until about 1941^[249] and passed into commercial use in 1972.^[250] District Surveyor A. Taylor Allen's design was built by Ernest Clevett. The "attractive-looking building" is of white brick and terracotta, and is surrounded by a wall with a multi-coloured brick pier supporting a large gas lamp. There are decorative terracotta plaques and a gabled dormer window with terracotta finials.^[249] In 1914, Hove Council took responsibility for firefighting within its boundaries and immediately sought a replacement for the existing fire station^{[LLB 1]} of 1879 in George Street. Clayton & Black's "elegant" new fire station on Hove Street, completed in 1929 at a cost of £11,098, was inspired by one at Bromley—but the "charming bellcote" on the roof was a reference to the nearby Hove Manor, demolished soon afterwards. The façade had a double archway. The building became redundant in 1976 and was converted into flats in 1981 by architect Denis Hawes.^[251]

Brighton's main hospitals are the Royal Sussex County Hospital (RSCH) in Kemptown and the Brighton General Hospital at the top of Elm Grove on Race Hill. The former was built in several stages. Charles Barry's original buildings (1826–28) are Classical and pedimented; William Hallett and Herbert Williams built three complementary extensions between them by 1853; Edmund Scott and F.T. Cawthorn added the similar Jubilee Building in 1887; Cawthorn built the prominently gabled Outpatients' Building in 1892; John Leopold Denman's Eye Hospital in 1935 is in his characteristic Neo-Georgian style; and Robin Beynon's 2002–05 work on the Audrey Emerton Building reflects Regency-style themes of stuccoed bowed façades.^[252] Brighton General was originally the town's workhouse. Designed in 1853 but not built until 1865–67, it is in a "debased" Italianate style with a long frontage flanked by pavilions. George Maynard and J.C. & G. Lansdown were responsible. More buildings were added in 1887, 1891 and 1898 to the rear.^[252]

The Royal Alexandra Children's Hospital has occupied two buildings of markedly different architectural character. Thomas Lainson's Queen Anne Revival-style building of 1880–81 in the Montpelier district was distinguished by its Dutch gables and much use of terracotta and red brick. Clayton & Black added a colonnade and other parts in 1906, and a major extension (again with prominent gables) was undertaken in 1927 by W.H. Overton.^[253] It closed in 2007 after its replacement opened next to the RSCH,^[254] and has been redeveloped for housing. Lainson's building has been retained but the other parts were demolished in 2012.^[255] The new hospital was designed by Building Design Partnership (scheme architect Ben Zucchi) in 2004–07. Its "boat-like form [is] evocative of Noah's Ark" as it rises dramatically above the other RSCH buildings. Features include low, child-height windows, a multicolour-panelled curved façade and an oversailing roof.^[252] It cost £36 million, has three times the capacity of the old building and won a design award in 2008.^[254]

Hove's first hospital

Basil Spence's buildings at the University of Sussex include Falmer House, Arts Building A and the Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts (pictured left to right).

The Buildings of England series called the "majestic and intimate" University of Sussex "the best architecture of the second half of the 20th century" in Brighton and Hove.^[89] Although buildings are still being added on the 200-acre (81 ha) site, the original development by Basil Spence (1960–65) retains its original character—especially in the relationship between the buildings and the undulating downland landscape on the semi-rural site (carved out of the Stanmer estate). Spence's buildings are "post-1955 Modernist", influenced by both Le Corbusier and the "epic monumentality" of Ancient Roman architecture. They include a library, lecture rooms for arts and sciences, a non-denominational place of worship, an arts centre (the Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts) and Falmer House, the university's social centre. All are articulated in red brick and concrete, with hollow vaults, concrete beams, arches and fins. New buildings including numerous halls of residence have been added at various times by architects including Eric Parry, the RH Partnership, ADP Architecture, DEGW and H. Hubbard Ford.^[263]

The University of Brighton's Moulsecoomb site consists of Mithras House, a former industrial building, and "a collection of utilitarian modern buildings" flanking Lewes Road.^[264] Mithras House dates from 1966 and was built for industrial use; more prominent is the 300-foot (91 m), ten-storey slab of the Cockcroft Building. Built entirely of concrete—mostly precast except for the lowest storeys—it has an east-facing entrance flanked by two-storey concrete piers and set below panels of flint. The main elevations are "busy" with a regular rhythm of windows. Long & Kentish's adjacent Aldrich Library (1994–96), curtain-walled with concrete and aluminium, is a "light and elegant" contrast to Cockcroft. The curvaceous Huxley Building (2010) also adjoins.^[265] The University also has a site at Grand Parade, which consists of the Phoenix Building and the former College of Technology. The former, designed by Fitzroy Robinson Miller Bourne and Partners in 1976, forms a "brutal intrusion" into the early-19th-century terrace of Waterloo Place: only two of its 14 houses remain.^[266] Now known as the Grand Parade Annexe, the former College of Technology—a Modernist building with sections of unequal height and windows set in prominent concrete frames—was designed by Percy Billington between 1962 and 1967.^[267][268] Described as "one of Brighton's better postwar buildings" for its sensitive relationship to its prominent curved site, the layout of its windows recalls the 19th-century terraces it adjoins.^[268] It replaced the former Municipal School of Art by J.G. Gibbins, built in 1876–77 of brick, terracotta and granite in the 14th-century Italianate style.^[269][270]

Brighton College is the only surviving building in the city by George Gilbert Scott: his Brill's Baths have been demolished. Many additions have been made to his 14th-century Gothic-style flint and Caen stone complex, on which work started in 1848. The design has been criticised by Harry Stuart Goodhart-Rendel^[271] and Nikolaus Pevsner, who called the ensemble "joyless" and preferred T.G. Jackson's "lavishly Gothic" additions of 1886–87, in which terracotta was used extensively.^[267] BHASVIC^{[LLB 1]} is a "splendid" former grammar school on Old Shoreham Road in Prestonville. Designed by Samuel Bridgman Russell in 1911–12, in a Neo-Georgian/Queen Anne style with extensive red brickwork and wings joined to a central section by a series of staircases lit by round windows), it occupies a prominent corner site and retains its original iron gates with the emblems of Hove and Brighton Boroughs and East and West Sussex.^[272] The Municipal Technical College on Richmond Terrace, north of Grand Parade (now flats) was designed in 1895–96 by the Brighton Borough Surveyor Francis May. Extensions of 1909 and 1935 were in a complementary style with brick and dark terracotta, and the whole complex has been described as "Free Jacobean" in style.^[273] Roedean School (1898–99), a girls' boarding school high on the cliffs towards Ovingdean, is a Free Jacobean composition by John William Simpson. From the centre of the symmetrical range rise two identical towers. Several wings then project forwards from this central block, each with a large gable end. Simpson also designed the chapel in 1906, a sanatorium in 1908 and a library in 1911. Hubert Worthington worked on a dining room extension in the 1960s.^[274] St Mary's Hall, a private school affiliated to Roedean but closed since 2011, has a symmetrical façade with prominent gables and mullioned windows. The design resembles simplified Tudor Revival, although it is early for that style (George Basevi designed it in 1836).^[272]

Most secondary schools in the city date from the 20th century and have been extended regularly: examples include

Thomas Simpson's board schools include those at Rugby Road, Elm Grove (both 1893) and Preston Road (1880) (pictured left to right).

Gilbert Murray Simpson originally worked with his father in the firm Thomas Simpson & Son.

Aside from the former board schools, the city has many other primary schools in a range of styles. St Christopher's School in Aldrington[LLB 1] is housed in "one of the most intact of a series of large 1880s villas" that characterise the New Church Road area. Original features include iron fixtures and stained glass. Portslade Infants School was designed by E.H.L. Barker and opened on 23 July 1903. The building has distinctive polychromatic walls with bands of red, black and blue bricks, and the steep roof continues this pattern by contrasting red tiles against black slates.^[282] In contrast, the nearby St Nicolas' Church of England School, designed by the architect of St Bartholomew's Church Edmund Scott in 1867, is a simple Gothic Revival building of flint.^{[283][Note 4]} Anthony Carneys' design for the new Aldrington Church of England Primary School (1991) consisted of a "cluster of buildings with a Dutch barn feel to the roofline" and a rural ambience, despite the urban location. The red-tiled, steeply pitched gabled roofs have inbuilt windows including an oculus, and the walls are of yellow and red brick.^[285]

Pictured left to right: Postwar libraries include Hollingbury, Portslade and Woodingdean (demolished 2013).

Throughout East Sussex, few original libraries survive in use. In Brighton and Hove, only Hove's central library (1907–08, by

Pictured left to right: The Duke of York's Picture House has been in continuous use since 1910; the Odeon Kingswest Cinema opened in 1973; but the Granada in Aldrington was demolished in 2012.

The

The Brighton Dome complex incorporates the

Brighton in particular has

SS Brighton was also known as the Brighton Sports Stadium; genuine football stadiums used by

Ornate shelters and kiosks characterise Brighton and Hove seafront. Below the East Cliff runs a two-storey colonnade with a pagoda-roofed lift.

The seafront was originally dominated by defensive structures and batteries, including some designed by James Wyatt.^[329] As the threat of foreign invasion lessened in the 19th century, Brighton and Hove's seafront was redeveloped with pleasure and recreation as its focus, and from the 1860s it represented "the idée fixe of how [a seafront] should look".^[286] Bandstands, elaborately roofed kiosks, shelters with decorative awnings, pale green railings and tall, ornate lamp-posts are found regularly along the whole seafront; most structures date from the late 19th century^[286] and many are Grade II-listed.^[330]

The

Birch was also responsible for Brighton Aquarium (now the Sea Life Centre) in 1872. The 21-bay double-aisled interior remains as built, but of his High Victorian Gothic-style work on the exterior only an "attention-seeking clock tower" survives,^{[Note 7]} because the building was revamped in 1927–29 by the Borough Surveyor David Edwards. He rebuilt it in pale artificial stone in the Louis XVI Neoclassical style.^[334] Also in 1872, the long, straight Madeira Drive—which runs at sea level below the East Cliff—was greatly extended. Borough Surveyor Philip Lockwood designed a "superb" two-storey arcaded promenade alongside the cliff; it includes a pagoda-roofed lift to Marine Parade. Work took place in 1889–97, and Madeira Drive was extended further to Black Rock in 1905.^[335]

Brighton Marina at Black Rock dates from 1971–76 and has little architectural interest:^[89] an "insipid neo-Regency" pastiche style was used for many of the residential buildings, and the wide range of commercial premises are dominated by a vast supermarket. Module 2 Architects drew up a masterplan for these buildings in 1985. Additional commercial development called The Waterfront (1999–2000 by Design Collective) pays no homage to existing architectural styles but has a "distinctive arched roofline". The Marina faced opposition when it was proposed,^[336] and a proposed development consisting of a 28-storey tower block and hundreds of other homes—first agreed in 2007 and signed off again in 2013—continues to cause controversy.^[337][338]

The esplanade at Hove is well known for its brightly coloured timber beach huts. The first were installed in around 1930, 290 were in place by 1936 and there are now several hundred.^[339]

Brighton railway station, a Grade II*-listed structure, was built in two parts. Most of David Mocatta's stuccoed Italianate building of 1841 survives—albeit hidden by H.E. Wallis's extensions of 1882–83. He added an elaborate iron porte-cochère over the forecourt and an impressive curved train shed, 21 bays and 597 feet (182 m) long, at the rear. Its glazed three-span roof is supported on octagonal fluted columns. F.D. Bannister, the chief architect of the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway (LBSCR), made other alterations at the same time, such as removing an entrance colonnade designed by Mocatta.^[340][341] The modern entrance has round-arched windows and doorways which recall its design.^[342] The roof was comprehensively restored in 1999–2000.^[341] Elsewhere in the city, the stations at Hove (original building), Kemp Town (demolished), London Road and Portslade were built to a common design in the 1850s–1870s.^[171] The "stately" two-storey buildings^[343] are Italianate,^[344] reminiscent of a Tuscan villa,^[345] and have symmetrical layouts. London Road station, by W. Sawyer in 1877, also has a wide staircase leading up to its entrance.^[344][346] Moulsecoomb, newly built in 1980, was designed by the Chief Architect's Department of the Southern Region of British Railways. Intended to be difficult to vandalise,^[264] it has two "well-detailed" Swiss chalet-style wooden and tiled buildings linked by a footbridge.^{[171][264][347]} Preston Park's platform-level buildings were replaced in 1974^[348] by flat-roofed timber and glass structures,^[343] although the yellow-brick street-level entrance survives. Aldrington has basic shelters emphasising "utility rather than elegance".^[349]

The Grade II*-listed

Trams (from 1901) and trolleybuses used to run in Brighton. The Lewes Road Bus Garage was originally the Brighton Corporation Tramways depot; it retains windows etched with this name. Wooden tram shelters survive on Dyke Road, Ditchling Road and Queen's Park Road. They have been turned into bus shelters,[358] and the same has happened in Old Steine with a series of trolleybus shelters designed in 1939 by Borough Surveyor David Edwards. The cream-coloured structures have curved windows and flat roofs with similarly curved ends which oversail the shelter itself. Their style is Streamline Moderne.^[71]

The city has an array of free-standing

Buildings have been lost to fire, damage or demolition since the urban area's earliest days, and the frequent replacement of buildings (even those with architectural merit) by Victorian-era speculators was particularly common along the seafront.[374] After World War II, Brighton's seaside resort function declined, demand for housing rose and it became an important regional commercial centre.^[38] Pressure for redevelopment and the prevailing attitudes towards pre-20th-century architecture resulted in widespread demolition; many of the new buildings were architecturally unsuccessful because their scale, build quality and relationship with their surroundings were poor.^[375] In other cases, large sites stayed vacant for decades pending redevelopment.^[374] The city faces unusually severe geographical constraints—it lies between the English Channel and the South Downs (an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty), and has continuous urban development to the east and west—and intense pressure for redevelopment continues.^[376] Nevertheless, many buildings have also been saved—not least the Royal Pavilion, which was bought by the local authorities when Queen Victoria moved out and which faced another threat in the 1930s.^[70]

National conservation groups such as

Postwar demolition and redevelopment has been extensive in places. An especially infamous incident occurred in 1971, when Stroud and Mew's "Regency Gothic" Central National School in North Laine was knocked down

Road schemes have long been a source of demolition and redevelopment: as early as 1902, part of the historic Brighton Brewery was removed to remove a notorious bottleneck (known locally as "The Bunion") on Church Road in Hove.[392] Large-scale projects then threatened several parts of central Brighton between the 1960s and 1990s, but all were abandoned. A 1973 report by town planners Hugh Wilson and Lewis Womersley, which recommended large-scale demolition in North Laine in favour of a flyover and car park, was rejected.^[216][393] The idea re-emerged in the late 1980s as the "Breeze into Brighton" Preston Circus Relief Road scheme, one of many ideas for the vacant Brighton Locomotive Works site now occupied by the New England Quarter; this would have replaced several buildings of historic interest on York Place and Cheapside,^[394] driven a trunk road through hundreds of houses and commercial buildings and sliced a corner off the listed Bedford Square on the seafront.^[216][394]

Grade I listed buildings in Brighton and Hove include Brunswick Terrace and the ruined West Pier.