Chapel Royal, Brighton - History

History

In the 18th century, Brighton was a small town based on a declining fishing industry and still suffering the effects of damage caused by the Great Storm of 1703. Its population in the middle of the century was approximately 2,000. Its fortunes improved after a doctor from nearby Lewes, Richard Russell, wrote a treatise encouraging the use of seawater as a cure for illness, in particular glandular swellings. He recommended bathing in the sea and drinking the water at Brighton. This form of medical therapy became popular, and helped make the town a fashionable place to visit. Brighton became increasingly popular throughout the rest of the century, but received its next significant boost when the Prince Regent, son of King George III, made his first visit in 1783. By 1786 he had a home in the town—a rented farmhouse near the Old Steine, inland from the coast—and he later commissioned the architect John Nash to build a palace, the Royal Pavilion, for him on the site. The Prince was an infrequent churchgoer, and Brighton's only Anglican church, St Nicholas, was a long way from his home and up a steep hill. Furthermore, the ever-increasing number of visitors and residents caused overcrowding in the church. In 1789 the new Vicar of Brighton, Revd Thomas Hudson, decided to resolve these problems by building a new chapel near the Prince's house. He hoped to encourage the Prince to attend, and thereby worship more often than he had in the past, and considered that a more central chapel would relieve the pressure on the parish church.

The Prince was happy with the arrangement, agreeing to rent a pew and lay the foundation stone. A ceremony took place on 25 November 1793 at the corner of North Street and the newly built and named Prince's Place. Construction work, overseen by a builder named Bodle and to the design of London-based architect Thomas Saunders, lasted a year. The Prince and his wife of four months, Caroline of Brunswick, attended the inaugural service on 3 August 1795.

Revd Hudson owned and ran the chapel himself at first, opening it only during the peak seasons when Brighton was at its busiest. In 1803 it became the official chapel of ease to St Nicholas' Church when he obtained a private Act of Parliament formalising this. Among other things, this Act allowed Hudson, in his position as Vicar of Brighton, and his successors in that role, to appoint a perpetual curate for the chapel, and to fund a stipend of £115 (at 1803 prices) by the rental of pews. Of the pew spaces in the church, only 224 had to be provided free—the others could be "auctioned"—and visitors with no pew of their own could be charged an admission fee of 1/-. In return, the curate's responsibilities included paying for a clerk and the sacramental bread and wine used at Communion, and funding maintenance of the building. Many later chapels of ease in Brighton and Hove had similar Acts passed for them, imposing similar conditions.

Soon after becoming a formal chapel of ease, the Chapel Royal was consecrated by the Bishop of Chichester, John Buckner. However, by that date (16 August 1803), the Prince Regent was no longer worshipping there. His attendance became infrequent soon after the chapel was built, and he eventually stopped worshipping there when a sermon, said to have been on the topic of immorality, offended him. (Sources differ on who preached the sermon, thought to have been entitled "Thou art the man".) Other members of the Royal Family occasionally visited the chapel later, however; the last recorded attendance was by Princess Augusta Sophia, the Prince Regent's sister, in 1840. Later in the 19th century, two future British Prime Ministers were regular worshippers at the chapel. William Ewart Gladstone attended whenever he visited Brighton, and Winston Churchill attended between 1883 and 1885 when he was a pupil at a local school.

The ownership of the chapel passed to various curates until Revd Thomas Trocke, formerly of St Nicholas' Church, became perpetual curate in 1834. He stayed until his retirement in 1875, seeing the chapel taking charge of its own district for the first time in 1873 when the parish structure in Brighton was reorganised. The building was closed for eight months in 1876 and 1877 for internal structural repairs and reordering. Architect Arthur Blomfield was responsible for the changes, which cost £2,700. Soon afterwards, in 1880, demolition of houses facing North Street revealed the southern face of the chapel for the first time: until then, only the east elevation (facing Prince's Place) could be seen. Blomfield produced a design for a completely new exterior, including a tower in the southeast corner at the junction of the two streets. The work was completed in two parts—the new south face first, then the remodelled east elevation in 1896—and cost £1,200.

The chapel gained its own full parish for the first time in 1896, at which point the ownership of the church was transferred to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. By this time, however, the residential population of central Brighton was declining rapidly as the streets making up the parish became more commerce– and retail–focused. Three proposals had been made by 1930 to incorporate the unparished Holy Trinity Church in nearby Ship Street into the Chapel Royal's parish, in order to expand it and make it more viable. These were all resisted, however, and by the mid-20th century the local population was so low that the parish was instead merged with that of St Peter's Church at the top of Old Steine. Legally, this took effect from 25 July 1978 by means of an Order in Council. The Chapel Royal again became a separate parish in July 2009 after the legal redundancy of St. Peters Church. Services became irregular, and one aisle of the chapel was converted into a Christian bookshop. However, the closure of the Holy Trinity church in 1984 resulted in additional services being provided for the displaced congregation, and a regular schedule of services is now in operation. Alterations and a reconfiguration of the church interior in the bicentennial year (1995) completed the transition from a parish church, focusing on the population of a specific locality, to a "city church" open to the whole community and meeting the spiritual needs of the permanent and transient population of Brighton.