First Church of Christ, Scientist

Montpelier was one of Brighton's earliest suburbs, laid out on a hillside between the 1820s and the 1860s in response to the town's rapid development as a fashionable seaside resort. The most rapid period of housebuilding was in the 1840s and 1850s, when Montpelier Road was developed with terraces of high-quality stuccoed Regency-style houses and larger villas. Number 97 Montpelier Road was built in about 1850 at the south end, near the junction with the major commercial route of Western Road. North Street was another important commercial street, lined with banks, offices, shops, inns and entertainment venues. In 1890, the Athenaeum Recreation Hall was built at number 148. Equipped with…

The Clayton & Black firm started in the 1870s, and by 1921 they had designed a wide range of buildings for many functions and in a great variety of styles, including Flemish Renaissance, François Premier Revival and Edwardian Baroque. Their two previous church commissions, both in Hove, included the Gothic Revival St Thomas the Apostle's Church. For their Montpelier Road commission, they added an elaborate Neoclassical-style façade to a house which, like its neighbours, reflected the transition from the Regency style to the Italianate; some original features were kept though. The whole façade is stuccoed and there is rustication all round the entrance, which is set in a three-bay section to…