Montpelier, Brighton
Encyclopedia
Montpelier is an inner suburban area of Brighton
, part of the English city and seaside resort
of Brighton and Hove. Developed together with the adjacent Clifton Hill area in the mid-19th century, it forms a high-class, architecturally cohesive residential district with "an exceptionally complete character". Stucco
-clad terraced housing
and villa
s predominate, but two of the city's most significant Victorian
churches and a landmark hospital building are also in the area, which lies immediately northwest of Brighton city centre and spreads as far as the ancient parish boundary with Hove
.
Development was initially stimulated when one of the main roads out of Brighton was turnpiked
in the late 18th century, but the hilly land—condemned as a "hideous mass of unfledged earth" by John Constable
, who painted it nevertheless—was mostly devoted to agriculture until the 1820s. The ascent of Brighton from provincial fishing town to fashionable resort prompted a building boom in the next quarter-century, and Montpelier and Clifton Hill were transformed into districts of architecturally homogeneous streets with carefully designed, intricately detailed housing. Little demolition, infilling or redevelopment has occurred since, and hundreds of buildings have been granted listed status. The whole suburb is also one of 34 conservation areas in the city of Brighton and Hove.
Historic buildings include The Temple—local landowner Thomas Read Kemp
's house, now a private school
—the former Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children
, currently being redeveloped, and large mid 19th-century houses such as Montpelier Hall. The area also has several set-piece residential squares and crescents such as Clifton Terrace, Powis Square, Vernon Terrace, Montpelier Crescent and Montpelier Villas. The architectural partnership of Amon Wilds
, his son Amon Henry Wilds
and Charles Busby
—the most important architects in Regency-era Brighton and Hove—designed many of these. Montpelier's range of churches includes some of the city's finest, but others have been demolished in the postwar period.
and east of the ancient parish boundary between Brighton
and Hove
. The Seven Dials
area and the road junction of that name are to the north, forming the apex of the roughly triangular area, and the major city-centre shopping street Western Road lies to the south. Two roads form important through routes for cross-city traffic: Montpelier Road runs south–north from the city centre to Seven Dials, and the west–east Upper North Street links the city centre to Hove. Both are busy, but traffic is limited in the smaller residential streets.
Dyke Road—the ancient route from Brighton to Devil's Dyke
and Steyning
and eventually on to London—forms the conservation area's eastern boundary except at the southern end, where it extends east of the road to include St Nicholas' Church
(Brighton's original parish church
), Wykeham Terrace
and other small parts of West Hill. The land rises gently from the southwest to a summit at Clifton Hill. Writing in 1833, J.D. Parry said that the hill "commands a magnificent view, and has very fine air". John Constable
, who stayed in Brighton several times during the 1820s, was less impressed: he described it as "hideous masses of unfledged earth called the country". Nevertheless, he produced several paintings of the area, which provide a record of its appearance just before it became suburbanised.
Locally, a distinction is made between the northern part of the area towards the top of the hill—this area is known as Clifton or Clifton Hill—and the lower land to the south and west, as far as the Hove boundary and Western Road, known as Montpelier. The names are also used interchangeably, and some sources make further distinctions: the area around Powis Grove, Powis Villas, Powis Road and St Michael and All Angels Church is called Powis in one study of the area. Although Montpelier first appears as the name of the area on a map of 1824, this still makes it the earliest Montpelier in England—predating those in Bristol, Cheltenham and elsewhere in taking and adapting the name of the French spa resort Montpellier
. The town was popular with rich English people in the 18th century for convalescence: it had an excellent climate and good medical facilities. The term "Montpelier Estate" is sometimes used for the area as a whole.
Montpelier and Clifton Hill are predominantly residential: about 20% of buildings have other uses, primarily commercial and retail. Some areas have clusters of small shops, and there are many pubs and restaurants. The southern part of Montpelier is very close to Brighton's main retail area, Western Road and the Churchill Square shopping centre.
The area forms part of Brighton and Hove City Council's Regency ward, one of 21 wards in the city. Regency is classified as a "Prospering Metropolitan B" ward by the Office for National Statistics
. 0.91% of the United Kingdom population live in such a ward, whose characteristics include much lower proportions of children, manufacturing sector workers, detached houses and households with more than one car than the national average, and much higher proportions of single-person households, people qualified to degree level and privately rented accommodation than the average. Population density is also much higher in Prospering Metropolitan B wards than in the United Kingdom as a whole.
The South Downs
, a range of chalk hills, surrounded the ancient fishing and farming village of Brighton (formerly Brighthelmston). The downland pasture sloped down to the English Channel
coast and was farmed in one of two ways: some parts were divided into strips according to a local system of "laines", furlongs" and "paul-pieces", and other areas were left for the grazing of sheep. The area now covered by Montpelier was an example of the latter. The five laines around Brighton were based on land with a relatively gentle slope; when the gradient or height made the land too difficult to work, no more strips were marked out and the rest of the land was given over to grazing. A map of Brighton from the 1740s shows that a large section in the northwest of the parish—north of West Laine, west of North Laine and bisected by the road to Steyning—was marked as "sheep down". It had no official name at the time, but by 1792 it had become known as Church Hill in reference to St Nicholas' Church
, the parish church
of Brighton which stood on a hillock near the road. The part west of the road was sometimes described as "Church Hill – West Side"; the corresponding "East Side" later became known as West Hill
during Brighton's 19th-century growth. The road became a turnpike
in 1777, increasing its importance, and became known as Dyke Road. Vine's Mill, one of several windmills built on the Downs around Brighton, was erected in 1810.
The sheep down was not common land
: its ownership has been traced back to the 11th century (to Canute, Earl Godwin
and his son King Harold
), and by the late 18th century it was held by two influential local landowners. Thomas Kemp held about 41 acres (16.6 ha), and John Sackville, 3rd Duke of Dorset
owned over 5 acres (2 ha). When Kemp died in 1811, his landholding transferred to his son Thomas Read Kemp
. The Kemp family first acquired the land in 1770, when it was sold to them by the Friend family—whose history of large-scale land acquisition around Brighton goes back to the late 16th century and the purchase of the former St Bartholomew's Priory and its grounds.
Thomas Read Kemp had moved out of Brighton in 1807, but decided to return in 1819. By this time he was enjoying "a rich social life" and his considerable inherited wealth. As he owned so much land around Brighton, there were many sites he could choose for his new home; he selected a remote site near the track (running from the seafront to the Ditchling
Road) which later became Montpelier Road. At the time there were only three people living on the farmland of "Church Hill – West Side", including an eccentric former marine corporal who occupied a cave in a former chalk pit. He had been invalided out of the Navy after fighting in the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801, but retained his military interest: he made chalk models to sell, and rigged up four pistols to form a miniature battery
which he would fire to celebrate military anniversaries. Read Kemp's house, probably designed by Amon Wilds
or his son Amon Henry Wilds
, was called The Temple (and was popularly nicknamed "Kemp's Folly" or "the Brighton Mansion"). He may have chosen the secluded site because it was close to the chalybeate
spring at St Ann's Well
in the neighbouring parish of Hove, popularised by Dr Richard Russell
in the 1750s but known to generations of shepherds before that for the health-giving effect it had on their sheep. The iron-rich water was used in "a primitive little spa" for about 100 years, and the associated Pump Room and gardens were popular with visitors long after that.
The increasing popularity of Brighton as a resort resulted in an "exponential growth in housing". In 1783, just after the first expansion outside the ancient four-street village, there were 600 houses; in 1801 there were 1,282, by 1811 another 1,096 had been completed, and in 1821 there were 4,299. The land of Church Hill was ideal for development—land ownership was not complex, unlike in many of the laines, and the sheltered southwest-facing slopes were close to both St Ann's Well and the centre of Brighton's fashionable social scene around Old Steine
. The area developed rapidly as a residential district from the 1820s, and was one of the earliest of Brighton's many 19th-century suburbs. From 1823, Read Kemp became heavily involved in his speculative Kemp Town
estate on the edge of Brighton in the 1820s, and he moved to a house there in 1827 (after which The Temple became a boys' school). He began selling plots of land throughout the area, and streets and areas of housing took shape. Montpelier Road was one of the first to develop, on the site of the long track which had given Read Kemp access to the seafront from his house; it is not named before 1820, but it appears on a map of 1822. Houses such as numbers 53–56, by Amon Henry Wilds
, and the semi-detached villas of numbers 91–96, date from about 1830. Hampton Place, a sloping terrace of "especially pretty houses", was an 1820s development by speculator William Hallett, who occupied one of the houses himself. Around the same time, Amon Henry Wilds and Charles Busby
built several houses on a former track which became Clifton Road, and work started at Montpelier Terrace with the construction of a pair of villas in 1823. Montpelier Lodge ( 1830) on Montpelier Terrace stood out from the surrounding stuccoed buildings due to its red-brick walls; it also had an elaborate entrance with Doric columns
and a delicately patterned fanlight
.
Development accelerated after Thomas Read Kemp was declared bankrupt in 1837, forcing him to sell all his land and move to France. Parcels of land were rapidly developed with terraced streets (especially to the south, leading up from Western Road) and set-piece squares and crescents. The Temple was still isolated until 1834–35, when the firm of George Cheesman & Son built a new vicarage for the Vicar of Brighton Henry Michell Wagner. The "austere Neo-Tudor" house stood back from the nearest road. In about 1840, Wagner's sister moved to the newly built Belvedere House nearby, and encouraged development of the adjacent road which became Montpelier Place. (The four-storey houses of Belvedere Terrace were built on her behalf in the grounds of Belvedere House in about 1852.)
Brighton was connected to the railway network in 1840 when a line to Shoreham-by-Sea
opened, followed in 1841 by the completion of the link
to London
. This stimulated growth even further, and the 1840s were a boom period for Montpelier. (Brighton as a whole grew rapidly in the 1840s—between 1841 and 1851, 2,806 new houses were built compared to 437 for the preceding decade—but the effect was greater in Montpelier because the station
was close by at the foot of West Hill.) During the 1840s, Montpelier Villas and Montpelier Crescent were laid out, several houses were built in Clifton Road, Montpelier Road and Montpelier Terrace were fully built up, Upper North Street became an important route lined with "modest yet grandly treated" houses, the "very attractive composition" of Clifton Terrace was built (it was finished in 1847), Victoria Street was laid out with bay-fronted terraced houses, and Windlesham House was constructed near The Temple. This became the New Sussex Hospital in 1921 after alterations by the Clayton & Black architecture firm, but is now flats called Temple Heights.
Developments in the 1850s included Powis Square, Villas and Road, Norfolk Terrace and Vernon Terrace. The Powis area took its name from property developer John Yearsley, who was from Welshpool
in Powys
. Yearsley bought several acres of land on a leasehold
basis from the Kemp family in 1846; he acquired the freehold soon after. (Thomas Read Kemp died in France in 1844, seven years after leaving Brighton to escape his debts.) Land was also acquired and developed by the prominent Hallett, Wisden, Baring and Faithfull families. (The Baring Baronets were related to Thomas Read Kemp by marriage; Henry Faithfull, who worked with Yearsley to develop the Powis area, was the brother of MP
George Faithfull; and Thomas and John Wisden were prolific builders.)
Denmark Terrace, a continuation of Vernon Terrace, was erected in the 1860s; at its south end it met Temple Gardens, the road on which The Temple stood. Also of the 1860s were parts of Norfolk Road (where development had started 30 years before), St Michael's Place (1868–69) with terraced houses "impressive in their length and height", and some infill development in Montpelier Terrace, Clifton Place, Powis Road and Vernon Terrace. Montpelier's residential development was nearly complete by the 1870s, as suggested by an Ordnance Survey
map of that time which shows undeveloped fields only in the area beyond Vernon Terrace. In 1870 or 1871, Brighton Children's Hospital—established three years earlier in Western Road—moved to a new building on the site of the former Church Road School in West Hill. In 1880–81, Thomas Lainson
built the new Royal Alexandra Hospital for Sick Children
nearby at the junction of Dyke Road and Clifton Hill. It was extended and altered in 1904, 1906 and 1927–28.
Some more houses were built in the Edwardian era, mostly in the characteristic Edwardian style
with bright red brick "standing out amongst the stucco". Examples include some in Temple Gardens and Vernon Gardens in the 1890s, a row on one side of Denmark Terrace, Windlesham Road (where numbers 14 and 16, built in 1903, are especially elaborate) and 18–25 Clifton Road (1903–04, with ornate gable
s and turreted corners). In 1902, the London & Brighton Express Electric Railway Company sought permission to build a new surface railway line from Westminster
to a terminus near the junction of Montpelier Road and Western Road, passing Clifton Hill. Hove Council supported the parliamentary Bill, but nothing came of it; when the promoters proposed it again in 1903, the council were no longer interested.
Additions and alterations to the streetscape have been minimal since the early 20th century. Windlesham House became the New Sussex Hospital for Women in 1921 following alterations by Clayton & Black, who similarly rebuilt a 19th-century house on Montpelier Road as a chapel for Brighton's Christian Scientist community in the same year. The hospital was extended to the rear in the 1930s (but new flats called York Mansions were built on the site in 2001), and the Royal Alexandra Hospital absorbed a neighbouring villa. Additions to the Brighton & Hove High School, which had taken over The Temple, included a "drab" set of classrooms in the 1960s, a later administration block and a glazed sports hall in 2001–02 (the last two were designed by architects Morgan Carn Partnership). Demolitions included the former Emanuel Reformed Episcopal Church on Norfolk Terrace (replaced by a Baptist church) in 1965, The Dials Congregational Church in 1972 (built in 1871; replaced by sheltered accommodation
) and Belvedere House (replaced in the 1970s by the Park Royal flats). Other blocks of flats were built in that decade on spare land on Montpelier Terrace and Clifton Terrace.
The Montpelier and Clifton Hill areas have four extant churches and one former church building which is now in secular use. Three of these buildings have listed status. Another two churches were demolished in the postwar period.
The Anglican
St Michael and All Angels Church
has been a centre of Anglo-Catholicism
and High church
worship since it opened in 1861. It was one of several daughter churches planted out
of St Paul's Church
in the early Victorian era
. George Frederick Bodley
designed the original building on behalf of his friend Rev. Charles Beanlands, a curate
at St Paul's, and work started in 1858. William Burges
then supplied plans for an extension in 1865, but these were not executed until 1893–95 by J.S. Chapple, an architect from the recently deceased Burges' office. The two parts are connected by a four-bay
arcade inside, and Bodley's original nave has become an aisle. The building is a tall red-brick and stone Gothic Revival
structure with traceried
lancet window
s. The internal fittings combine "grandeur and artistry in a most satisfying way", and the 19th-century stained glass
has been called the best in Sussex. The church is Grade I-listed.
St Mary Magdalen's Church
, another brick and stone Gothic Revival building, was designed for the area's Roman Catholics in 1861–64 by Gilbert Blount
. Frederick Walters
added a complementary school and presbytery
in 1871 and 1891 respectively, and the complex takes up a large site on Upper North Street. A tall tower with a landmark broach spire
stands almost separated from the Decorated Gothic nave and chancel. The interior has contrasting stone (intricately carved to Blount's designs) and marble, and Joseph Cribb
carved the effigies of Saint Joseph
and Saint George
which flank the entrance. St Mary Magdalen's has Grade II-listed status.
The First Church of Christ Scientist, serving the city's Christian Scientists
, is a "notable" former house on Montpelier Road. It was built in the early 1850s and was converted into a church by local architects Clayton and Black in 1921. The exterior is rusticated
and has an elaborate pediment
and large pilaster
s flanking the tiered windows. A panelled gallery survives inside.
,_brighton.jpg)
E. Joseph Wood's Montpelier Place Baptist Church of 1966 replaced the former Emanuel Reformed Episcopal Church. The low brown-brick building stands on a corner site at the top of Norfolk Terrace. There are echoes of Coventry Cathedral
in the treatment of the façade, which has two gable
d bays
linked by an arcaded wall with a sawtooth-style roof. Each bay has vertical rows of recessed bricks. A flat-roofed church hall adjoins.
The Grade II*-listed former St Stephen's Church
on Montpelier Place closed in 1939 and is now used as a day centre for homeless people. George Cheesman designed the plain stucco
ed Classical
façade, with Doric
pilaster
s and an octagonal lantern, in 1851. Behind it lies the opulent former ballroom of the Castle Inn, built by John Crunden
in 1776 and later transported to Montpelier Place. Arthur Blomfield
made additions to the church in 1889. It was refurbished after a fire in 1988.
Christ Church stood on Montpelier Road south of Western Road between 1837 and 1982. George Cheesman designed it and Edmund Scott undertook restoration in 1886; both architects worked on other local churches as well. The Gothic Revival
building had a galleried interior and a spire matching that at Chichester Cathedral
. It was gutted in an arson
attack in 1978; the exterior survived, but it was demolished in 1982 in favour of the International/Modern-style
Christ Church House flats. The congregation of the church moved to nearby St Patrick's Church
.
The Dials Congregational Church stood at the junction of Clifton Road and Dyke Road (the site of the present Homelees House) between 1870 and 1972, although it closed in 1969. Its 150 feet (45.7 m) "Rhenish
helm"-topped clock tower was prominent on the skyline, and behind was a large horseshoe-shaped auditorium
. The Romanesque Revival
building, described as "uncouth" by Nikolaus Pevsner
, was designed by Thomas Simpson. Work on Homelees House, a sheltered housing scheme, began in 1985.
, it was a three-storey Queen Anne-style
building of red brick with terracotta dressings and mouldings
, enlivened by Dutch gable
s, cupola
s and a moulded cartouche
. Extensions included a colonnade of balconies (later enclosed) by the Clayton & Black firm in 1906 and a Vernacular-style
recessed wing of two storeys in 1927–28, partly tile-hung and with timber decoration to the gables. The first mention of its potential closure came in 2001, when the Government allocated £28 million towards new facilities at the Royal Sussex County Hospital on Eastern Road in Kemptown
. By 2004, it seemed likely that the building would be demolished and the site redeveloped with luxury flats. Taylor Wimpey
, a housebuilding company, bought the site in December 2006, but their proposals for a combined residential development and medical facility were refused twice, in 2008 and 2009. Montpelier residents were also unsuccessful in their attempt to get the former hospital listed by English Heritage
, who stated that Lainson's original design had been altered so much that much of its character had been lost.
The Temple, now the main part of Brighton and Hove High School
, was built in 1818–19 by Amon Wilds
or his son Amon Henry Wilds
, and has been described as "certainly exotic enough for their tastes". The Wilds, along with Charles Busby
, were the three architects most closely associated with the development of Brighton and Hove in the Regency era and the exuberant, confident and strongly planned architecture which still characterises the city. The Temple was an early commission: they only moved to Brighton in 1814. The north and east walls retain their original appearance: Egyptian-style
pilaster
s and paired engaged column
s of "bizarre form" with unusual capitals
, linked by arches to form long colonnade
s. The west and south façades also had these, but the building was drastically altered in 1911-12; the domed roof was replaced by a mansard
, a curious central spiral staircase housed in a cylindrical structure was removed, and chimneys were taken away. The dimensions of the building match those of Solomon's Temple
in Jerusalem. The Temple is a Grade II listed building, and the large flint and brick wall surrounding the building is also listed at Grade II; it is decorated with stone lion heads. An extension was also built at the southwest corner in 1891.
Junior pupils shared the building with the senior school until 1904, after which they moved to Norfolk Terrace, Montpelier Crescent, the former vicarage (in 1922) and later to new facilities in Hove. The former vicarage is now the school's sixth-form. George Cheesman & Son designed it on behalf of Vicar of Brighton Henry Michell Wagner in 1834-35; it is a stucco
ed building with prominent gable
s and windows with mullion
s and transom
s. An ornate staircase survives inside.
, only took that name in 1818. William Vine moved to the area from Patcham
, where he had previously been a miller, in August 1818, having bought the mill at a recent auction. A house came with the windmill; it survives under the name "Rose Cottage" on Vine Place, which also took its name from him (it was previously called Mill Place). A storm in 1828 damaged the mill, but it was repaired. It was the subject of two paintings by Constable in the 1820s and a locally famous watercolour by Henry Bodle, who married into the Vine family, in 1843. By this time Vine had died and the mill had been bought by Edward Cuttress of Round Hill
. It was demolished in 1849 or 1850, and the gardens at 6 and 7 Powis Villas now occupy the site.
A second windmill stood nearby and has been confused with Vine's Mill in some sources. It is missed off most maps and has been called "something of an enigma". It was a fan-tailed post mill, larger than Vine's Mill and of a more modern design-although one historian stated that it existed in 1780. It did not receive an official name until the mid-19th century, by which time it had been moved to Windmill Street on Albion Hill in the Carlton Hill
area of Brighton: because it had stood where the private gardens of Clifton Terrace were later built, it became known as the Clifton Gardens Mill. The Windmill Inn, licensed in 1828, is close to both mills; sources disagree on which one it was named after.
of Aberdeen Lodge (now 5 Powis Villas). Statue-maker Joseph Rogers Browne built this house for himself, along with the neighbouring villas at numbers 6 and 7. He later wanted accommodation for his carriages, so in 1852 he erected the brick, flint and stucco building with space for two coaches and three horses. There was also a hay loft and a separate room for the coachman, and the exterior had Coade stone
decoration. By the 1920s it had become a garage; in 1937, after this closed, the Royal Alexandra Children's Hospital bought it and used it to store their ambulances. A local conservation group bought it in 2006, intending to turn it into a community centre and museum, but it was repossessed
in 2008 and was thereafter used for storage by a clothes shop. In its assessment of the building's architectural importance when granting listed status in 2005, English Heritage
described it as a "substantially intact and rare survival" with "polite architectural and sculptural features".
, a Government department, in accordance with the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990
. English Heritage
, a non-departmental public body
, acts as an agency of this department to administer the process and advise the department on relevant issues. As of February 2001, there were 24 listed buildings with Grade I status, 70 Grade II*-listed and 1,124 Grade II-listed buildings in Brighton and Hove. Grade I-listed buildings are defined as being of "exceptional interest" and greater than national importance; Grade II*, the next highest status, is used for "particularly important buildings of more than special interest"; and the lowest grade, Grade II, is used for "nationally important buildings of special interest". Many of Montpelier's buildings are listed: in 1981, 320 individual buildings were covered by an English Heritage listing, and the figure in 2010 was 351.
In the United Kingdom, a conservation area
is a principally urban area "of special architectural or historic interest, the character or appearance of which it is desirable to preserve or enhance". Such areas are identified by local authorities according to criteria defined by Sections 69 and 70 of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990
. The Montpelier & Clifton Hill conservation area, one of 34 in the city of Brighton and Hove, was created in 1973. Its boundaries were extended in 1977, and it now covers 75.4 acres (30.5 ha).
Brighton
Brighton is the major part of the city of Brighton and Hove in East Sussex, England on the south coast of Great Britain...
, part of the English city and seaside resort
Seaside resort
A seaside resort is a resort, or resort town, located on the coast. Where a beach is the primary focus for tourists, it may be called a beach resort.- Overview :...
of Brighton and Hove. Developed together with the adjacent Clifton Hill area in the mid-19th century, it forms a high-class, architecturally cohesive residential district with "an exceptionally complete character". Stucco
Stucco
Stucco or render is a material made of an aggregate, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as decorative coating for walls and ceilings and as a sculptural and artistic material in architecture...
-clad terraced housing
Terraced house
In architecture and city planning, a terrace house, terrace, row house, linked house or townhouse is a style of medium-density housing that originated in Great Britain in the late 17th century, where a row of identical or mirror-image houses share side walls...
and villa
Villa
A villa was originally an ancient Roman upper-class country house. Since its origins in the Roman villa, the idea and function of a villa have evolved considerably. After the fall of the Roman Republic, villas became small farming compounds, which were increasingly fortified in Late Antiquity,...
s predominate, but two of the city's most significant Victorian
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
churches and a landmark hospital building are also in the area, which lies immediately northwest of Brighton city centre and spreads as far as the ancient parish boundary with Hove
Hove
Hove is a town on the south coast of England, immediately to the west of its larger neighbour Brighton, with which it forms the unitary authority Brighton and Hove. It forms a single conurbation together with Brighton and some smaller towns and villages running along the coast...
.
Development was initially stimulated when one of the main roads out of Brighton was turnpiked
Toll road
A toll road is a privately or publicly built road for which a driver pays a toll for use. Structures for which tolls are charged include toll bridges and toll tunnels. Non-toll roads are financed using other sources of revenue, most typically fuel tax or general tax funds...
in the late 18th century, but the hilly land—condemned as a "hideous mass of unfledged earth" by John Constable
John Constable
John Constable was an English Romantic painter. Born in Suffolk, he is known principally for his landscape paintings of Dedham Vale, the area surrounding his home—now known as "Constable Country"—which he invested with an intensity of affection...
, who painted it nevertheless—was mostly devoted to agriculture until the 1820s. The ascent of Brighton from provincial fishing town to fashionable resort prompted a building boom in the next quarter-century, and Montpelier and Clifton Hill were transformed into districts of architecturally homogeneous streets with carefully designed, intricately detailed housing. Little demolition, infilling or redevelopment has occurred since, and hundreds of buildings have been granted listed status. The whole suburb is also one of 34 conservation areas in the city of Brighton and Hove.
Historic buildings include The Temple—local landowner Thomas Read Kemp
Thomas Read Kemp
Thomas Read Kemp was an English property developer and politician. He was the son of Sussex landowner Thomas Kemp, whose farmhouse in Brighton was rented by the Prince of Wales in 1786.-Biography:...
's house, now a private school
Brighton and Hove High School
Brighton & Hove High School is an independent day school for girls aged 3 – 18 in the city of Brighton and Hove, East Sussex, England.Founded in 1876, the school has expanded from being a very small school for less than twenty pupils to its present size of taking some 700 students...
—the former Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children
Royal Alexandra Hospital, Brighton
The Royal Alexandra Hospital for Sick Children is a children's hospital located within the grounds of the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton in the English county of East Sussex...
, currently being redeveloped, and large mid 19th-century houses such as Montpelier Hall. The area also has several set-piece residential squares and crescents such as Clifton Terrace, Powis Square, Vernon Terrace, Montpelier Crescent and Montpelier Villas. The architectural partnership of Amon Wilds
Amon Wilds
Amon Wilds was an English architect and builder. He formed an architectural partnership with his son Amon Henry WildsIn this article, Amon Wilds is referred to as Wilds senior and his son Amon Henry Wilds as Wilds junior. in 1806 and started working in the fashionable and growing seaside resort...
, his son Amon Henry Wilds
Amon Henry Wilds
Amon Henry Wilds was an English architect. He was part of a team of three architects and builders who—working together or independently at different times—were almost solely responsible for a surge in residential construction and development in early 19th-century Brighton, which until then had...
and Charles Busby
Charles Busby
Charles Augustin Busby was an English architect.He created many buildings in and around Brighton such as Brunswick Square and St Margarets Church. His style usually included Romanesque style pillars to his buildings....
—the most important architects in Regency-era Brighton and Hove—designed many of these. Montpelier's range of churches includes some of the city's finest, but others have been demolished in the postwar period.
Location and character
There is no single official definition of the area covered by Montpelier and Clifton Hill, but most authorities (including Brighton and Hove City Council) define it as the area west of West HillWest Hill, Brighton
West Hill is an area of Brighton and Hove, East Sussexsituated on the east-facing hill rising west from Brighton railway station towards Seven Dials...
and east of the ancient parish boundary between Brighton
Brighton
Brighton is the major part of the city of Brighton and Hove in East Sussex, England on the south coast of Great Britain...
and Hove
Hove
Hove is a town on the south coast of England, immediately to the west of its larger neighbour Brighton, with which it forms the unitary authority Brighton and Hove. It forms a single conurbation together with Brighton and some smaller towns and villages running along the coast...
. The Seven Dials
Seven Dials, Brighton
Seven Dials is an area surrounding a major road junction of the same name in Brighton, in the city of Brighton and Hove. It is located on high ground just northwest of Brighton railway station, and approximately ¾ mile north of the seafront....
area and the road junction of that name are to the north, forming the apex of the roughly triangular area, and the major city-centre shopping street Western Road lies to the south. Two roads form important through routes for cross-city traffic: Montpelier Road runs south–north from the city centre to Seven Dials, and the west–east Upper North Street links the city centre to Hove. Both are busy, but traffic is limited in the smaller residential streets.
Dyke Road—the ancient route from Brighton to Devil's Dyke
Devil's Dyke, Sussex
Devil's Dyke is a V-shaped valley on the South Downs Way in southern England, near Brighton and Hove. It is part of the Southern England Chalk Formation.Devil's Dyke is on the way to Brighton and is a big hill at the side of the road.-Geological history:...
and Steyning
Steyning
Steyning is a small town and civil parish in the Horsham District of West Sussex, England. It is located at the north end of the River Adur gap in the South Downs, four miles north of Shoreham-by-Sea...
and eventually on to London—forms the conservation area's eastern boundary except at the southern end, where it extends east of the road to include St Nicholas' Church
St Nicholas' Church, Brighton
The Church of Saint Nicholas of Myra, usually known as St. Nicholas Church, is an Anglican church in Brighton, England. It is both the original parish church of Brighton and the oldest surviving building in Brighton. It is located on high ground at the junction of Church Street and Dyke Road in...
(Brighton's original parish church
Parish church
A parish church , in Christianity, is the church which acts as the religious centre of a parish, the basic administrative unit of episcopal churches....
), Wykeham Terrace
Wykeham Terrace, Brighton
Wykeham Terrace is a row of 12 early 19th-century houses in central Brighton, part of the English city of Brighton and Hove. The Tudor-Gothic building, attributed to prominent local architect Amon Henry Wilds, is built into the hillside below the churchyard of Brighton's ancient parish church...
and other small parts of West Hill. The land rises gently from the southwest to a summit at Clifton Hill. Writing in 1833, J.D. Parry said that the hill "commands a magnificent view, and has very fine air". John Constable
John Constable
John Constable was an English Romantic painter. Born in Suffolk, he is known principally for his landscape paintings of Dedham Vale, the area surrounding his home—now known as "Constable Country"—which he invested with an intensity of affection...
, who stayed in Brighton several times during the 1820s, was less impressed: he described it as "hideous masses of unfledged earth called the country". Nevertheless, he produced several paintings of the area, which provide a record of its appearance just before it became suburbanised.
Locally, a distinction is made between the northern part of the area towards the top of the hill—this area is known as Clifton or Clifton Hill—and the lower land to the south and west, as far as the Hove boundary and Western Road, known as Montpelier. The names are also used interchangeably, and some sources make further distinctions: the area around Powis Grove, Powis Villas, Powis Road and St Michael and All Angels Church is called Powis in one study of the area. Although Montpelier first appears as the name of the area on a map of 1824, this still makes it the earliest Montpelier in England—predating those in Bristol, Cheltenham and elsewhere in taking and adapting the name of the French spa resort Montpellier
Montpellier
-Neighbourhoods:Since 2001, Montpellier has been divided into seven official neighbourhoods, themselves divided into sub-neighbourhoods. Each of them possesses a neighbourhood council....
. The town was popular with rich English people in the 18th century for convalescence: it had an excellent climate and good medical facilities. The term "Montpelier Estate" is sometimes used for the area as a whole.
Montpelier and Clifton Hill are predominantly residential: about 20% of buildings have other uses, primarily commercial and retail. Some areas have clusters of small shops, and there are many pubs and restaurants. The southern part of Montpelier is very close to Brighton's main retail area, Western Road and the Churchill Square shopping centre.
The area forms part of Brighton and Hove City Council's Regency ward, one of 21 wards in the city. Regency is classified as a "Prospering Metropolitan B" ward by the Office for National Statistics
Office for National Statistics
The Office for National Statistics is the executive office of the UK Statistics Authority, a non-ministerial department which reports directly to the Parliament of the United Kingdom.- Overview :...
. 0.91% of the United Kingdom population live in such a ward, whose characteristics include much lower proportions of children, manufacturing sector workers, detached houses and households with more than one car than the national average, and much higher proportions of single-person households, people qualified to degree level and privately rented accommodation than the average. Population density is also much higher in Prospering Metropolitan B wards than in the United Kingdom as a whole.
History
South Downs
The South Downs is a range of chalk hills that extends for about across the south-eastern coastal counties of England from the Itchen Valley of Hampshire in the west to Beachy Head, near Eastbourne, East Sussex, in the east. It is bounded on its northern side by a steep escarpment, from whose...
, a range of chalk hills, surrounded the ancient fishing and farming village of Brighton (formerly Brighthelmston). The downland pasture sloped down to the English Channel
English Channel
The English Channel , often referred to simply as the Channel, is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that separates southern England from northern France, and joins the North Sea to the Atlantic. It is about long and varies in width from at its widest to in the Strait of Dover...
coast and was farmed in one of two ways: some parts were divided into strips according to a local system of "laines", furlongs" and "paul-pieces", and other areas were left for the grazing of sheep. The area now covered by Montpelier was an example of the latter. The five laines around Brighton were based on land with a relatively gentle slope; when the gradient or height made the land too difficult to work, no more strips were marked out and the rest of the land was given over to grazing. A map of Brighton from the 1740s shows that a large section in the northwest of the parish—north of West Laine, west of North Laine and bisected by the road to Steyning—was marked as "sheep down". It had no official name at the time, but by 1792 it had become known as Church Hill in reference to St Nicholas' Church
St Nicholas' Church, Brighton
The Church of Saint Nicholas of Myra, usually known as St. Nicholas Church, is an Anglican church in Brighton, England. It is both the original parish church of Brighton and the oldest surviving building in Brighton. It is located on high ground at the junction of Church Street and Dyke Road in...
, the parish church
Parish church
A parish church , in Christianity, is the church which acts as the religious centre of a parish, the basic administrative unit of episcopal churches....
of Brighton which stood on a hillock near the road. The part west of the road was sometimes described as "Church Hill – West Side"; the corresponding "East Side" later became known as West Hill
West Hill, Brighton
West Hill is an area of Brighton and Hove, East Sussexsituated on the east-facing hill rising west from Brighton railway station towards Seven Dials...
during Brighton's 19th-century growth. The road became a turnpike
Toll road
A toll road is a privately or publicly built road for which a driver pays a toll for use. Structures for which tolls are charged include toll bridges and toll tunnels. Non-toll roads are financed using other sources of revenue, most typically fuel tax or general tax funds...
in 1777, increasing its importance, and became known as Dyke Road. Vine's Mill, one of several windmills built on the Downs around Brighton, was erected in 1810.
The sheep down was not common land
Common land
Common land is land owned collectively or by one person, but over which other people have certain traditional rights, such as to allow their livestock to graze upon it, to collect firewood, or to cut turf for fuel...
: its ownership has been traced back to the 11th century (to Canute, Earl Godwin
Godwin, Earl of Wessex
Godwin of Wessex , was one of the most powerful lords in England under the Danish king Cnut the Great and his successors. Cnut made him the first Earl of Wessex...
and his son King Harold
Harold Godwinson
Harold Godwinson was the last Anglo-Saxon King of England.It could be argued that Edgar the Atheling, who was proclaimed as king by the witan but never crowned, was really the last Anglo-Saxon king...
), and by the late 18th century it was held by two influential local landowners. Thomas Kemp held about 41 acres (16.6 ha), and John Sackville, 3rd Duke of Dorset
John Sackville, 3rd Duke of Dorset
John Frederick Sackville, 3rd Duke of Dorset was the only son of Lord John Philip Sackville, second son of Lionel Sackville, 1st Duke of Dorset. He succeeded to the dukedom in 1769 on the death of his uncle, Charles Sackville, 2nd Duke of Dorset...
owned over 5 acres (2 ha). When Kemp died in 1811, his landholding transferred to his son Thomas Read Kemp
Thomas Read Kemp
Thomas Read Kemp was an English property developer and politician. He was the son of Sussex landowner Thomas Kemp, whose farmhouse in Brighton was rented by the Prince of Wales in 1786.-Biography:...
. The Kemp family first acquired the land in 1770, when it was sold to them by the Friend family—whose history of large-scale land acquisition around Brighton goes back to the late 16th century and the purchase of the former St Bartholomew's Priory and its grounds.
Thomas Read Kemp had moved out of Brighton in 1807, but decided to return in 1819. By this time he was enjoying "a rich social life" and his considerable inherited wealth. As he owned so much land around Brighton, there were many sites he could choose for his new home; he selected a remote site near the track (running from the seafront to the Ditchling
Ditchling
Ditchling is a village and civil parish in the Lewes District of East Sussex, England. The village is contained within the boundaries of the South Downs National Park; the order confirming the establishment of the park was signed in Ditchling....
Road) which later became Montpelier Road. At the time there were only three people living on the farmland of "Church Hill – West Side", including an eccentric former marine corporal who occupied a cave in a former chalk pit. He had been invalided out of the Navy after fighting in the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801, but retained his military interest: he made chalk models to sell, and rigged up four pistols to form a miniature battery
Artillery battery
In military organizations, an artillery battery is a unit of guns, mortars, rockets or missiles so grouped in order to facilitate better battlefield communication and command and control, as well as to provide dispersion for its constituent gunnery crews and their systems...
which he would fire to celebrate military anniversaries. Read Kemp's house, probably designed by Amon Wilds
Amon Wilds
Amon Wilds was an English architect and builder. He formed an architectural partnership with his son Amon Henry WildsIn this article, Amon Wilds is referred to as Wilds senior and his son Amon Henry Wilds as Wilds junior. in 1806 and started working in the fashionable and growing seaside resort...
or his son Amon Henry Wilds
Amon Henry Wilds
Amon Henry Wilds was an English architect. He was part of a team of three architects and builders who—working together or independently at different times—were almost solely responsible for a surge in residential construction and development in early 19th-century Brighton, which until then had...
, was called The Temple (and was popularly nicknamed "Kemp's Folly" or "the Brighton Mansion"). He may have chosen the secluded site because it was close to the chalybeate
Chalybeate
Chalybeate waters, also known as ferruginous waters, are mineral spring waters containing salts of iron.-Name:The word "chalybeate" is derived from the Latin word for steel, "chalybs", which follows from the Greek word "khalups"...
spring at St Ann's Well
St. Ann's Well Gardens, Hove
St. Ann's Well Gardens is a park in Hove, East Sussex about half a mile from the shore. The park is renowned for its chalybeate spring, which is now named St. Ann's Well....
in the neighbouring parish of Hove, popularised by Dr Richard Russell
Richard Russell (doctor)
Richard Russell was an 18th century British Physician who encouraged his patients to use a form of water therapy that involved the submersion or bathing in, and drinking of, seawater...
in the 1750s but known to generations of shepherds before that for the health-giving effect it had on their sheep. The iron-rich water was used in "a primitive little spa" for about 100 years, and the associated Pump Room and gardens were popular with visitors long after that.
The increasing popularity of Brighton as a resort resulted in an "exponential growth in housing". In 1783, just after the first expansion outside the ancient four-street village, there were 600 houses; in 1801 there were 1,282, by 1811 another 1,096 had been completed, and in 1821 there were 4,299. The land of Church Hill was ideal for development—land ownership was not complex, unlike in many of the laines, and the sheltered southwest-facing slopes were close to both St Ann's Well and the centre of Brighton's fashionable social scene around Old Steine
Old Steine
The Old Steine is a thoroughfare in central Brighton, East Sussex, and is the southern terminus of the A23. The southern end leads to Marine Parade, the Brighton seafront and the Palace Pier. The Old Steine is also the site of a number of City Centre bus stops for Brighton buses...
. The area developed rapidly as a residential district from the 1820s, and was one of the earliest of Brighton's many 19th-century suburbs. From 1823, Read Kemp became heavily involved in his speculative Kemp Town
Kemp Town
Kemp Town is a 19th Century residential estate in the east of Brighton in East Sussex, England, UK. Kemp Town was conceived and financed by Thomas Read Kemp. It has given its name to the larger Kemptown region of Brighton....
estate on the edge of Brighton in the 1820s, and he moved to a house there in 1827 (after which The Temple became a boys' school). He began selling plots of land throughout the area, and streets and areas of housing took shape. Montpelier Road was one of the first to develop, on the site of the long track which had given Read Kemp access to the seafront from his house; it is not named before 1820, but it appears on a map of 1822. Houses such as numbers 53–56, by Amon Henry Wilds
Amon Henry Wilds
Amon Henry Wilds was an English architect. He was part of a team of three architects and builders who—working together or independently at different times—were almost solely responsible for a surge in residential construction and development in early 19th-century Brighton, which until then had...
, and the semi-detached villas of numbers 91–96, date from about 1830. Hampton Place, a sloping terrace of "especially pretty houses", was an 1820s development by speculator William Hallett, who occupied one of the houses himself. Around the same time, Amon Henry Wilds and Charles Busby
Charles Busby
Charles Augustin Busby was an English architect.He created many buildings in and around Brighton such as Brunswick Square and St Margarets Church. His style usually included Romanesque style pillars to his buildings....
built several houses on a former track which became Clifton Road, and work started at Montpelier Terrace with the construction of a pair of villas in 1823. Montpelier Lodge ( 1830) on Montpelier Terrace stood out from the surrounding stuccoed buildings due to its red-brick walls; it also had an elaborate entrance with Doric columns
Doric order
The Doric order was one of the three orders or organizational systems of ancient Greek or classical architecture; the other two canonical orders were the Ionic and the Corinthian.-History:...
and a delicately patterned fanlight
Fanlight
A fanlight is a window, semicircular or semi-elliptical in shape, with glazing bars or tracery sets radiating out like an open fan, It is placed over another window or a doorway. and is sometimes hinged to a transom. The bars in the fixed glazed window spread out in the manner a sunburst...
.
Development accelerated after Thomas Read Kemp was declared bankrupt in 1837, forcing him to sell all his land and move to France. Parcels of land were rapidly developed with terraced streets (especially to the south, leading up from Western Road) and set-piece squares and crescents. The Temple was still isolated until 1834–35, when the firm of George Cheesman & Son built a new vicarage for the Vicar of Brighton Henry Michell Wagner. The "austere Neo-Tudor" house stood back from the nearest road. In about 1840, Wagner's sister moved to the newly built Belvedere House nearby, and encouraged development of the adjacent road which became Montpelier Place. (The four-storey houses of Belvedere Terrace were built on her behalf in the grounds of Belvedere House in about 1852.)
Brighton was connected to the railway network in 1840 when a line to Shoreham-by-Sea
Shoreham-by-Sea
Shoreham-by-Sea is a small town, port and seaside resort in West Sussex, England. Shoreham-by-Sea railway station is located less than a mile from the town centre and London Gatwick Airport is away...
opened, followed in 1841 by the completion of the link
Brighton Main Line
The Brighton Main Line is a British railway line from London Victoria and London Bridge to Brighton. It is about 50 miles long, and is electrified throughout. Trains are operated by Southern, First Capital Connect, and Gatwick Express, now part of Southern.-Original proposals:There were no fewer...
to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
. This stimulated growth even further, and the 1840s were a boom period for Montpelier. (Brighton as a whole grew rapidly in the 1840s—between 1841 and 1851, 2,806 new houses were built compared to 437 for the preceding decade—but the effect was greater in Montpelier because the station
Brighton railway station
Brighton railway station is the principal railway station in the city of Brighton and Hove, on the south coast of England. The station master is Mark Epsom...
was close by at the foot of West Hill.) During the 1840s, Montpelier Villas and Montpelier Crescent were laid out, several houses were built in Clifton Road, Montpelier Road and Montpelier Terrace were fully built up, Upper North Street became an important route lined with "modest yet grandly treated" houses, the "very attractive composition" of Clifton Terrace was built (it was finished in 1847), Victoria Street was laid out with bay-fronted terraced houses, and Windlesham House was constructed near The Temple. This became the New Sussex Hospital in 1921 after alterations by the Clayton & Black architecture firm, but is now flats called Temple Heights.
Developments in the 1850s included Powis Square, Villas and Road, Norfolk Terrace and Vernon Terrace. The Powis area took its name from property developer John Yearsley, who was from Welshpool
Welshpool
Welshpool is a town in Powys, Wales, or ancient county Montgomeryshire, from the Wales-England border. The town is low-lying on the River Severn; the Welsh language name Y Trallwng literally meaning 'the marshy or sinking land'...
in Powys
Powys
Powys is a local-government county and preserved county in Wales.-Geography:Powys covers the historic counties of Montgomeryshire and Radnorshire, most of Brecknockshire , and a small part of Denbighshire — an area of 5,179 km², making it the largest county in Wales by land area.It is...
. Yearsley bought several acres of land on a leasehold
Leasehold estate
A leasehold estate is an ownership of a temporary right to land or property in which a lessee or a tenant holds rights of real property by some form of title from a lessor or landlord....
basis from the Kemp family in 1846; he acquired the freehold soon after. (Thomas Read Kemp died in France in 1844, seven years after leaving Brighton to escape his debts.) Land was also acquired and developed by the prominent Hallett, Wisden, Baring and Faithfull families. (The Baring Baronets were related to Thomas Read Kemp by marriage; Henry Faithfull, who worked with Yearsley to develop the Powis area, was the brother of MP
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
George Faithfull; and Thomas and John Wisden were prolific builders.)
Denmark Terrace, a continuation of Vernon Terrace, was erected in the 1860s; at its south end it met Temple Gardens, the road on which The Temple stood. Also of the 1860s were parts of Norfolk Road (where development had started 30 years before), St Michael's Place (1868–69) with terraced houses "impressive in their length and height", and some infill development in Montpelier Terrace, Clifton Place, Powis Road and Vernon Terrace. Montpelier's residential development was nearly complete by the 1870s, as suggested by an Ordnance Survey
Ordnance Survey
Ordnance Survey , an executive agency and non-ministerial government department of the Government of the United Kingdom, is the national mapping agency for Great Britain, producing maps of Great Britain , and one of the world's largest producers of maps.The name reflects its creation together with...
map of that time which shows undeveloped fields only in the area beyond Vernon Terrace. In 1870 or 1871, Brighton Children's Hospital—established three years earlier in Western Road—moved to a new building on the site of the former Church Road School in West Hill. In 1880–81, Thomas Lainson
Thomas Lainson
Thomas Lainson was a British architect. He is best known for his work in the East Sussex coastal towns of Brighton and Hove , where several of his eclectic range of residential, commercial and religious buildings have been awarded listed status by English Heritage...
built the new Royal Alexandra Hospital for Sick Children
Royal Alexandra Hospital, Brighton
The Royal Alexandra Hospital for Sick Children is a children's hospital located within the grounds of the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton in the English county of East Sussex...
nearby at the junction of Dyke Road and Clifton Hill. It was extended and altered in 1904, 1906 and 1927–28.
Some more houses were built in the Edwardian era, mostly in the characteristic Edwardian style
Edwardian architecture
Edwardian architecture is the style popular when King Edward VII of the United Kingdom was in power; he reigned from 1901 to 1910, but the architecture style is generally considered to be indicative of the years 1901 to 1914....
with bright red brick "standing out amongst the stucco". Examples include some in Temple Gardens and Vernon Gardens in the 1890s, a row on one side of Denmark Terrace, Windlesham Road (where numbers 14 and 16, built in 1903, are especially elaborate) and 18–25 Clifton Road (1903–04, with ornate gable
Gable
A gable is the generally triangular portion of a wall between the edges of a sloping roof. The shape of the gable and how it is detailed depends on the structural system being used and aesthetic concerns. Thus the type of roof enclosing the volume dictates the shape of the gable...
s and turreted corners). In 1902, the London & Brighton Express Electric Railway Company sought permission to build a new surface railway line from Westminster
Westminster
Westminster is an area of central London, within the City of Westminster, England. It lies on the north bank of the River Thames, southwest of the City of London and southwest of Charing Cross...
to a terminus near the junction of Montpelier Road and Western Road, passing Clifton Hill. Hove Council supported the parliamentary Bill, but nothing came of it; when the promoters proposed it again in 1903, the council were no longer interested.
Additions and alterations to the streetscape have been minimal since the early 20th century. Windlesham House became the New Sussex Hospital for Women in 1921 following alterations by Clayton & Black, who similarly rebuilt a 19th-century house on Montpelier Road as a chapel for Brighton's Christian Scientist community in the same year. The hospital was extended to the rear in the 1930s (but new flats called York Mansions were built on the site in 2001), and the Royal Alexandra Hospital absorbed a neighbouring villa. Additions to the Brighton & Hove High School, which had taken over The Temple, included a "drab" set of classrooms in the 1960s, a later administration block and a glazed sports hall in 2001–02 (the last two were designed by architects Morgan Carn Partnership). Demolitions included the former Emanuel Reformed Episcopal Church on Norfolk Terrace (replaced by a Baptist church) in 1965, The Dials Congregational Church in 1972 (built in 1871; replaced by sheltered accommodation
Sheltered housing
Sheltered housing is a British English term covering a wide range of rented housing for older and/or disabled or other vulnerable people. Most commonly it refers to grouped housing such as a block or "scheme" of flats or bungalows with a scheme manager or "officer"; traditionally the manager has...
) and Belvedere House (replaced in the 1970s by the Park Royal flats). Other blocks of flats were built in that decade on spare land on Montpelier Terrace and Clifton Terrace.
Churches
The Anglican
Anglicanism
Anglicanism is a tradition within Christianity comprising churches with historical connections to the Church of England or similar beliefs, worship and church structures. The word Anglican originates in ecclesia anglicana, a medieval Latin phrase dating to at least 1246 that means the English...
St Michael and All Angels Church
St Michael's Church, Brighton
St. Michael's Church is an Anglican church in Brighton, England, dating from the mid-Victorian era. Located on Victoria Road in the Montpelier area, to the east of Montpelier Road, it is one of the largest churches in the city of Brighton and Hove...
has been a centre of Anglo-Catholicism
Anglo-Catholicism
The terms Anglo-Catholic and Anglo-Catholicism describe people, beliefs and practices within Anglicanism that affirm the Catholic, rather than Protestant, heritage and identity of the Anglican churches....
and High church
High church
The term "High Church" refers to beliefs and practices of ecclesiology, liturgy and theology, generally with an emphasis on formality, and resistance to "modernization." Although used in connection with various Christian traditions, the term has traditionally been principally associated with the...
worship since it opened in 1861. It was one of several daughter churches planted out
Church planting
Church planting is a process that results in a new Christian church being established. It should be distinguished from church development, where a new service, new worship centre or fresh expression is created that is integrated into an already established congregation...
of St Paul's Church
St Paul's Church, Brighton
St Paul's Church, dedicated to the missionary and Apostle to the Gentiles Paul of Tarsus, is a Church of England parish church in Brighton in the English county of Sussex. It is located on West Street in the city centre, close to the seafront and the main shopping areas.-History and...
in the early Victorian era
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
. George Frederick Bodley
George Frederick Bodley
George Frederick Bodley was an English architect working in the Gothic revival style.-Personal life:Bodley was the youngest son of William Hulme Bodley, M.D. of Edinburgh, physician at Hull Royal Infirmary, Kingston upon Hull, who in 1838 retired to his wife's home town, Brighton, Sussex, England....
designed the original building on behalf of his friend Rev. Charles Beanlands, a curate
Curate
A curate is a person who is invested with the care or cure of souls of a parish. In this sense "curate" correctly means a parish priest but in English-speaking countries a curate is an assistant to the parish priest...
at St Paul's, and work started in 1858. William Burges
William Burges (architect)
William Burges was an English architect and designer. Amongst the greatest of the Victorian art-architects, Burges sought in his work an escape from 19th century industrialisation and a return to the values, architectural and social, of an imagined mediaeval England...
then supplied plans for an extension in 1865, but these were not executed until 1893–95 by J.S. Chapple, an architect from the recently deceased Burges' office. The two parts are connected by a four-bay
Bay (architecture)
A bay is a unit of form in architecture. This unit is defined as the zone between the outer edges of an engaged column, pilaster, or post; or within a window frame, doorframe, or vertical 'bas relief' wall form.-Defining elements:...
arcade inside, and Bodley's original nave has become an aisle. The building is a tall red-brick and stone Gothic Revival
Gothic Revival architecture
The Gothic Revival is an architectural movement that began in the 1740s in England...
structure with traceried
Tracery
In architecture, Tracery is the stonework elements that support the glass in a Gothic window. The term probably derives from the 'tracing floors' on which the complex patterns of late Gothic windows were laid out.-Plate tracery:...
lancet window
Lancet window
A lancet window is a tall narrow window with a pointed arch at its top. It acquired the "lancet" name from its resemblance to a lance. Instances of this architectural motif are most often found in Gothic and ecclesiastical structures, where they are often placed singly or in pairs.The motif first...
s. The internal fittings combine "grandeur and artistry in a most satisfying way", and the 19th-century stained glass
Stained glass
The term stained glass can refer to coloured glass as a material or to works produced from it. Throughout its thousand-year history, the term has been applied almost exclusively to the windows of churches and other significant buildings...
has been called the best in Sussex. The church is Grade I-listed.
St Mary Magdalen's Church, Brighton
St Mary Magdalen's ChurchSome sources incorrectly give the spelling "Magdalene". is a Roman Catholic church in the Montpelier area of Brighton, part of the English city of Brighton and Hove. It is one of six Roman Catholic churches in Brighton and one of eleven in the city area...
, another brick and stone Gothic Revival building, was designed for the area's Roman Catholics in 1861–64 by Gilbert Blount
Gilbert Blount
Gilbert Blount was an English architect working mostly for Catholic Churches. He started his career as a civil engineer under Brunel and became superintendent of the Thames Tunnel works...
. Frederick Walters
Frederick Walters
Frederick Arthur Walters was a Scottish architect working in the Victorian and Edwardian eras, notable for his Roman Catholic churches.-Life:...
added a complementary school and presbytery
Rectory
A rectory is the residence, or former residence, of a rector, most often a Christian cleric, but in some cases an academic rector or other person with that title...
in 1871 and 1891 respectively, and the complex takes up a large site on Upper North Street. A tall tower with a landmark broach spire
Broach spire
A broach spire is a type of spire, a tall pyramidal or conical structure usually on the top of a tower or a turret. A broach spire starts on a square base and is carried up to a tapering octagonal spire by means of triangular faces....
stands almost separated from the Decorated Gothic nave and chancel. The interior has contrasting stone (intricately carved to Blount's designs) and marble, and Joseph Cribb
Joseph Cribb
Joseph Cribb was born in Hammersmith, London, in 1892, and became Eric Gill's assistant at the age of 14. The following year he started an official five year apprenticeship with Gill. He became a well-known sculptor in his own right, after Gill left Ditchling for Wales in 1924...
carved the effigies of Saint Joseph
Saint Joseph
Saint Joseph is a figure in the Gospels, the husband of the Virgin Mary and the earthly father of Jesus Christ ....
and Saint George
Saint George
Saint George was, according to tradition, a Roman soldier from Syria Palaestina and a priest in the Guard of Diocletian, who is venerated as a Christian martyr. In hagiography Saint George is one of the most venerated saints in the Catholic , Anglican, Eastern Orthodox, and the Oriental Orthodox...
which flank the entrance. St Mary Magdalen's has Grade II-listed status.
The First Church of Christ Scientist, serving the city's Christian Scientists
Christian Science
Christian Science is a system of thought and practice derived from the writings of Mary Baker Eddy and the Bible. It is practiced by members of The First Church of Christ, Scientist as well as some others who are nonmembers. Its central texts are the Bible and the Christian Science textbook,...
, is a "notable" former house on Montpelier Road. It was built in the early 1850s and was converted into a church by local architects Clayton and Black in 1921. The exterior is rusticated
Rustication (architecture)
thumb|upright|Two different styles of rustication in the [[Palazzo Medici-Riccardi]] in [[Florence]].In classical architecture rustication is an architectural feature that contrasts in texture with the smoothly finished, squared block masonry surfaces called ashlar...
and has an elaborate pediment
Pediment
A pediment is a classical architectural element consisting of the triangular section found above the horizontal structure , typically supported by columns. The gable end of the pediment is surrounded by the cornice moulding...
and large pilaster
Pilaster
A pilaster is a slightly-projecting column built into or applied to the face of a wall. Most commonly flattened or rectangular in form, pilasters can also take a half-round form or the shape of any type of column, including tortile....
s flanking the tiered windows. A panelled gallery survives inside.
Coventry Cathedral
Coventry Cathedral, also known as St Michael's Cathedral, is the seat of the Bishop of Coventry and the Diocese of Coventry, in Coventry, West Midlands, England. The current bishop is the Right Revd Christopher Cocksworth....
in the treatment of the façade, which has two gable
Gable
A gable is the generally triangular portion of a wall between the edges of a sloping roof. The shape of the gable and how it is detailed depends on the structural system being used and aesthetic concerns. Thus the type of roof enclosing the volume dictates the shape of the gable...
d bays
Bay (architecture)
A bay is a unit of form in architecture. This unit is defined as the zone between the outer edges of an engaged column, pilaster, or post; or within a window frame, doorframe, or vertical 'bas relief' wall form.-Defining elements:...
linked by an arcaded wall with a sawtooth-style roof. Each bay has vertical rows of recessed bricks. A flat-roofed church hall adjoins.
The Grade II*-listed former St Stephen's Church
St Stephen's Church, Brighton
St Stephen's Church is a former Anglican church in the Montpelier area of Brighton, part of the English city of Brighton and Hove. The building, which dates from 1766 in its original incarnation as the ballroom of Brighton's most fashionable Georgian-era inn, has been used for many purposes since...
on Montpelier Place closed in 1939 and is now used as a day centre for homeless people. George Cheesman designed the plain stucco
Stucco
Stucco or render is a material made of an aggregate, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as decorative coating for walls and ceilings and as a sculptural and artistic material in architecture...
ed Classical
Classical architecture
Classical architecture is a mode of architecture employing vocabulary derived in part from the Greek and Roman architecture of classical antiquity, enriched by classicizing architectural practice in Europe since the Renaissance...
façade, with Doric
Doric order
The Doric order was one of the three orders or organizational systems of ancient Greek or classical architecture; the other two canonical orders were the Ionic and the Corinthian.-History:...
pilaster
Pilaster
A pilaster is a slightly-projecting column built into or applied to the face of a wall. Most commonly flattened or rectangular in form, pilasters can also take a half-round form or the shape of any type of column, including tortile....
s and an octagonal lantern, in 1851. Behind it lies the opulent former ballroom of the Castle Inn, built by John Crunden
John Crunden
John Crunden was an English architectural and mobiliary designer.-Biography:Most of his early inspiration was drawn from Chippendale and his school, but he fell later under the influence of a bastard classicism...
in 1776 and later transported to Montpelier Place. Arthur Blomfield
Arthur Blomfield
Sir Arthur William Blomfield was an English architect.-Background:The fourth son of Charles James Blomfield, an Anglican Bishop of London helpfully began a programme of new church construction in the capital. Born in Fulham Palace, Arthur Blomfield was educated at Rugby and Trinity College,...
made additions to the church in 1889. It was refurbished after a fire in 1988.
Christ Church stood on Montpelier Road south of Western Road between 1837 and 1982. George Cheesman designed it and Edmund Scott undertook restoration in 1886; both architects worked on other local churches as well. The Gothic Revival
Gothic Revival architecture
The Gothic Revival is an architectural movement that began in the 1740s in England...
building had a galleried interior and a spire matching that at Chichester Cathedral
Chichester Cathedral
The Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity, otherwise called Chichester Cathedral, is the seat of the Anglican Bishop of Chichester. It is located in Chichester, in Sussex, England...
. It was gutted in an arson
Arson
Arson is the crime of intentionally or maliciously setting fire to structures or wildland areas. It may be distinguished from other causes such as spontaneous combustion and natural wildfires...
attack in 1978; the exterior survived, but it was demolished in 1982 in favour of the International/Modern-style
International style (architecture)
The International style is a major architectural style that emerged in the 1920s and 1930s, the formative decades of Modern architecture. The term originated from the name of a book by Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson, The International Style...
Christ Church House flats. The congregation of the church moved to nearby St Patrick's Church
St Patrick's Church, Hove
St Patrick's Church is an Anglican church in Hove, in the English city of Brighton and Hove. Situated on a narrow site in Cambridge Road, off Western Road close to the boundary with Brighton, it is still in use as a place of worship, but since 1985 it has also been used as a night shelter for...
.
The Dials Congregational Church stood at the junction of Clifton Road and Dyke Road (the site of the present Homelees House) between 1870 and 1972, although it closed in 1969. Its 150 feet (45.7 m) "Rhenish
Rhineland
Historically, the Rhinelands refers to a loosely-defined region embracing the land on either bank of the River Rhine in central Europe....
helm"-topped clock tower was prominent on the skyline, and behind was a large horseshoe-shaped auditorium
Auditorium
An auditorium is a room built to enable an audience to hear and watch performances at venues such as theatres. For movie theaters, the number of auditoriums is expressed as the number of screens.- Etymology :...
. The Romanesque Revival
Romanesque Revival architecture
Romanesque Revival is a style of building employed beginning in the mid 19th century inspired by the 11th and 12th century Romanesque architecture...
building, described as "uncouth" by Nikolaus Pevsner
Nikolaus Pevsner
Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner, CBE, FBA was a German-born British scholar of history of art and, especially, of history of architecture...
, was designed by Thomas Simpson. Work on Homelees House, a sheltered housing scheme, began in 1985.
Other public buildings
The Royal Alexandra Hospital for Sick Children, "an important part of Brighton life and a well known local landmark", was officially opened on 21 July 1881 and was used until 22 June 2007, when a new children's hospital opened on the Royal Sussex County Hospital campus elsewhere in the city; as of the original building's future is uncertain. Designed by Thomas LainsonThomas Lainson
Thomas Lainson was a British architect. He is best known for his work in the East Sussex coastal towns of Brighton and Hove , where several of his eclectic range of residential, commercial and religious buildings have been awarded listed status by English Heritage...
, it was a three-storey Queen Anne-style
Queen Anne Style architecture
The Queen Anne Style in Britain means either the English Baroque architectural style roughly of the reign of Queen Anne , or a revived form that was popular in the last quarter of the 19th century and the early decades of the 20th century...
building of red brick with terracotta dressings and mouldings
Molding (decorative)
Molding or moulding is a strip of material with various profiles used to cover transitions between surfaces or for decoration. It is traditionally made from solid milled wood or plaster but may be made from plastic or reformed wood...
, enlivened by Dutch gable
Dutch gable
A Dutch gable or Flemish gable is a gable whose sides have a shape made up of one or more curves and has a pediment at the top. The gable may be an entirely decorative projection above a flat section of roof line, or may be the termination of a roof, like a normal gable...
s, cupola
Cupola
In architecture, a cupola is a small, most-often dome-like, structure on top of a building. Often used to provide a lookout or to admit light and air, it usually crowns a larger roof or dome....
s and a moulded cartouche
Cartouche
In Egyptian hieroglyphs, a cartouche is an ellipse with a horizontal line at one end, indicating that the text enclosed is a royal name, coming into use during the beginning of the Fourth Dynasty under Pharaoh Sneferu, replacing the earlier serekh...
. Extensions included a colonnade of balconies (later enclosed) by the Clayton & Black firm in 1906 and a Vernacular-style
Vernacular architecture
Vernacular architecture is a term used to categorize methods of construction which use locally available resources and traditions to address local needs and circumstances. Vernacular architecture tends to evolve over time to reflect the environmental, cultural and historical context in which it...
recessed wing of two storeys in 1927–28, partly tile-hung and with timber decoration to the gables. The first mention of its potential closure came in 2001, when the Government allocated £28 million towards new facilities at the Royal Sussex County Hospital on Eastern Road in Kemptown
Kemptown
Kemptown is a small community running along the King's Cliff to Black Rock in the east of Brighton, East Sussex, England.-History:The area takes its name from Thomas Read Kemp's Kemp Town residential estate of the early 19th Century, but the one-word name now refers to an area larger than the...
. By 2004, it seemed likely that the building would be demolished and the site redeveloped with luxury flats. Taylor Wimpey
Taylor Wimpey
Taylor Wimpey plc is one of the largest British based housebuilding companies. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index...
, a housebuilding company, bought the site in December 2006, but their proposals for a combined residential development and medical facility were refused twice, in 2008 and 2009. Montpelier residents were also unsuccessful in their attempt to get the former hospital listed by English Heritage
English Heritage
English Heritage . is an executive non-departmental public body of the British Government sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport...
, who stated that Lainson's original design had been altered so much that much of its character had been lost.
The Temple, now the main part of Brighton and Hove High School
Brighton and Hove High School
Brighton & Hove High School is an independent day school for girls aged 3 – 18 in the city of Brighton and Hove, East Sussex, England.Founded in 1876, the school has expanded from being a very small school for less than twenty pupils to its present size of taking some 700 students...
, was built in 1818–19 by Amon Wilds
Amon Wilds
Amon Wilds was an English architect and builder. He formed an architectural partnership with his son Amon Henry WildsIn this article, Amon Wilds is referred to as Wilds senior and his son Amon Henry Wilds as Wilds junior. in 1806 and started working in the fashionable and growing seaside resort...
or his son Amon Henry Wilds
Amon Henry Wilds
Amon Henry Wilds was an English architect. He was part of a team of three architects and builders who—working together or independently at different times—were almost solely responsible for a surge in residential construction and development in early 19th-century Brighton, which until then had...
, and has been described as "certainly exotic enough for their tastes". The Wilds, along with Charles Busby
Charles Busby
Charles Augustin Busby was an English architect.He created many buildings in and around Brighton such as Brunswick Square and St Margarets Church. His style usually included Romanesque style pillars to his buildings....
, were the three architects most closely associated with the development of Brighton and Hove in the Regency era and the exuberant, confident and strongly planned architecture which still characterises the city. The Temple was an early commission: they only moved to Brighton in 1814. The north and east walls retain their original appearance: Egyptian-style
Ancient Egyptian architecture
The Nile valley has been the site of one of the most influential civilizations which developed a vast array of diverse structures encompassing ancient Egyptian architecture...
pilaster
Pilaster
A pilaster is a slightly-projecting column built into or applied to the face of a wall. Most commonly flattened or rectangular in form, pilasters can also take a half-round form or the shape of any type of column, including tortile....
s and paired engaged column
Engaged column
In architecture, an engaged column is a column embedded in a wall and partly projecting from the surface of the wall, sometimes defined as semi or three-quarter detached...
s of "bizarre form" with unusual capitals
Capital (architecture)
In architecture the capital forms the topmost member of a column . It mediates between the column and the load thrusting down upon it, broadening the area of the column's supporting surface...
, linked by arches to form long colonnade
Colonnade
In classical architecture, a colonnade denotes a long sequence of columns joined by their entablature, often free-standing, or part of a building....
s. The west and south façades also had these, but the building was drastically altered in 1911-12; the domed roof was replaced by a mansard
Mansard roof
A mansard or mansard roof is a four-sided gambrel-style hip roof characterized by two slopes on each of its sides with the lower slope at a steeper angle than the upper that is punctured by dormer windows. The roof creates an additional floor of habitable space, such as a garret...
, a curious central spiral staircase housed in a cylindrical structure was removed, and chimneys were taken away. The dimensions of the building match those of Solomon's Temple
Solomon's Temple
Solomon's Temple, also known as the First Temple, was the main temple in ancient Jerusalem, on the Temple Mount , before its destruction by Nebuchadnezzar II after the Siege of Jerusalem of 587 BCE....
in Jerusalem. The Temple is a Grade II listed building, and the large flint and brick wall surrounding the building is also listed at Grade II; it is decorated with stone lion heads. An extension was also built at the southwest corner in 1891.
Junior pupils shared the building with the senior school until 1904, after which they moved to Norfolk Terrace, Montpelier Crescent, the former vicarage (in 1922) and later to new facilities in Hove. The former vicarage is now the school's sixth-form. George Cheesman & Son designed it on behalf of Vicar of Brighton Henry Michell Wagner in 1834-35; it is a stucco
Stucco
Stucco or render is a material made of an aggregate, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as decorative coating for walls and ceilings and as a sculptural and artistic material in architecture...
ed building with prominent gable
Gable
A gable is the generally triangular portion of a wall between the edges of a sloping roof. The shape of the gable and how it is detailed depends on the structural system being used and aesthetic concerns. Thus the type of roof enclosing the volume dictates the shape of the gable...
s and windows with mullion
Mullion
A mullion is a vertical structural element which divides adjacent window units. The primary purpose of the mullion is as a structural support to an arch or lintel above the window opening. Its secondary purpose may be as a rigid support to the glazing of the window...
s and transom
Transom (architectural)
In architecture, a transom is the term given to a transverse beam or bar in a frame, or to the crosspiece separating a door or the like from a window or fanlight above it. Transom is also the customary U.S. word used for a transom light, the window over this crosspiece...
s. An ornate staircase survives inside.
Windmills
Vine's Mill, a post millPost mill
The post mill is the earliest type of European windmill. The defining feature is that the whole body of the mill that houses the machinery is mounted on a single vertical post, around which it can be turned to bring the sails into the wind. The earliest post mills in England are thought to have...
, only took that name in 1818. William Vine moved to the area from Patcham
Patcham
Patcham is an area of the city of Brighton and Hove. It is approximately north of the city centre, bounded by the A27 to the north, Hollingbury to the east and southeast, Withdean to the south and the Brighton Main Line to the west...
, where he had previously been a miller, in August 1818, having bought the mill at a recent auction. A house came with the windmill; it survives under the name "Rose Cottage" on Vine Place, which also took its name from him (it was previously called Mill Place). A storm in 1828 damaged the mill, but it was repaired. It was the subject of two paintings by Constable in the 1820s and a locally famous watercolour by Henry Bodle, who married into the Vine family, in 1843. By this time Vine had died and the mill had been bought by Edward Cuttress of Round Hill
Round Hill, Brighton
Round Hill is an inner suburban area of Brighton, part of the coastal city of Brighton and Hove in England. The area contains a mix of privately owned and privately rented terraced housing, much of which has been converted for multiple occupancy, and small-scale commercial development...
. It was demolished in 1849 or 1850, and the gardens at 6 and 7 Powis Villas now occupy the site.
A second windmill stood nearby and has been confused with Vine's Mill in some sources. It is missed off most maps and has been called "something of an enigma". It was a fan-tailed post mill, larger than Vine's Mill and of a more modern design-although one historian stated that it existed in 1780. It did not receive an official name until the mid-19th century, by which time it had been moved to Windmill Street on Albion Hill in the Carlton Hill
Carlton Hill, Brighton
Carlton Hill is an inner-city area of Brighton, part of the English city and seaside resort of Brighton and Hove. First developed in the early and mid-19th century on steeply sloping farmland east of central Brighton, it grew rapidly as the town became a fashionable, high-class destination...
area of Brighton: because it had stood where the private gardens of Clifton Terrace were later built, it became known as the Clifton Gardens Mill. The Windmill Inn, licensed in 1828, is close to both mills; sources disagree on which one it was named after.
The Coach House
Now a Grade II listed building, The Coach House stands on Clifton Hill. It was built as the coach houseCarriage house
A carriage house, also called remise or coach house, is an outbuilding which was originally built to house horse-drawn carriages and the related tack.In Great Britain the farm building was called a Cart Shed...
of Aberdeen Lodge (now 5 Powis Villas). Statue-maker Joseph Rogers Browne built this house for himself, along with the neighbouring villas at numbers 6 and 7. He later wanted accommodation for his carriages, so in 1852 he erected the brick, flint and stucco building with space for two coaches and three horses. There was also a hay loft and a separate room for the coachman, and the exterior had Coade stone
Coade stone
Lithodipyra , or Coade stone, was ceramic stoneware that was often described as an artificial stone in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It was used for moulding Neoclassical statues, architectural decorations and garden ornaments that were both of the highest quality and remain virtually...
decoration. By the 1920s it had become a garage; in 1937, after this closed, the Royal Alexandra Children's Hospital bought it and used it to store their ambulances. A local conservation group bought it in 2006, intending to turn it into a community centre and museum, but it was repossessed
Repossession
Repossession is generally used to refer to a financial institution taking back an object that was either used as collateral or rented or leased in a transaction. Repossession is a "self-help" type of action in which the party having right of ownership of the property in question takes the property...
in 2008 and was thereafter used for storage by a clothes shop. In its assessment of the building's architectural importance when granting listed status in 2005, English Heritage
English Heritage
English Heritage . is an executive non-departmental public body of the British Government sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport...
described it as a "substantially intact and rare survival" with "polite architectural and sculptural features".
Heritage and conservation area
A building or structure is defined as "listed" when it is placed on a statutory register of buildings of "special architectural or historic interest" by the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and SportDepartment for Culture, Media and Sport
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport is a department of the United Kingdom government, with responsibility for culture and sport in England, and some aspects of the media throughout the whole UK, such as broadcasting and internet....
, a Government department, in accordance with the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990
Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990
The Planning Act 1990 is an Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom that altered the laws on granting of planning permission for building works, notably including those of the listed building system in England and Wales....
. English Heritage
English Heritage
English Heritage . is an executive non-departmental public body of the British Government sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport...
, a non-departmental public body
Non-departmental public body
In the United Kingdom, a non-departmental public body —often referred to as a quango—is a classification applied by the Cabinet Office, Treasury, Scottish Government and Northern Ireland Executive to certain types of public bodies...
, acts as an agency of this department to administer the process and advise the department on relevant issues. As of February 2001, there were 24 listed buildings with Grade I status, 70 Grade II*-listed and 1,124 Grade II-listed buildings in Brighton and Hove. Grade I-listed buildings are defined as being of "exceptional interest" and greater than national importance; Grade II*, the next highest status, is used for "particularly important buildings of more than special interest"; and the lowest grade, Grade II, is used for "nationally important buildings of special interest". Many of Montpelier's buildings are listed: in 1981, 320 individual buildings were covered by an English Heritage listing, and the figure in 2010 was 351.
In the United Kingdom, a conservation area
Conservation Area (United Kingdom)
In the United Kingdom, the term Conservation Area nearly always applies to an area considered worthy of preservation or enhancement because of its special architectural or historic interest, "the character or appearance of which it is desirable to preserve or enhance," as required by the Planning ...
is a principally urban area "of special architectural or historic interest, the character or appearance of which it is desirable to preserve or enhance". Such areas are identified by local authorities according to criteria defined by Sections 69 and 70 of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990
Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990
The Planning Act 1990 is an Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom that altered the laws on granting of planning permission for building works, notably including those of the listed building system in England and Wales....
. The Montpelier & Clifton Hill conservation area, one of 34 in the city of Brighton and Hove, was created in 1973. Its boundaries were extended in 1977, and it now covers 75.4 acres (30.5 ha).