Holland Road Baptist Church

The Wick estate was a large area of land north of the ancient village of Hove. Sir Isaac Lyon Goldsmid, part of the Goldsmid banking dynasty, bought most of the land for development in 1830. The estate was 250 acre in size and consisted of farmland, pastures and woodland, all centred on Wick Farm. Its boundaries were the parish of Brighton, the road along the seafront, the Stanford estate (a similar landholding, owned by Sir William Stanford) and Dyke Road at the boundary of the parish of Preston. The Wick estate was first described in print in 1247, and it passed through many owners in the next six centuries; Anthony Stapley, one of the regicides of King Charles I, held it for nearly 50…

John Wills built the church in a Transitional style—commonly associated with Anglican churches of the 19th century but rare for a Nonconformist church of the era. The exterior is of pale Purbeck Stone, and the roof is tiled with slate. The church tower forms a local landmark: it stands slightly forward from the rest of the building, rises in four stages and is topped by a pointed roof in the Rhenish style. The interior is aligned north to south, parallel to the road. The arched entrance door in the base of the tower, flanked by granite memorial tablets laid in 1887, leads to the transept, lit by a series of lancet windows with coloured glass. Below the hammerbeam roof, a gallery runs round…

Holland Road Baptist Church was listed at Grade II by English Heritage on 26 February 1991. It is one of 1,124 Grade II-listed buildings and structures, and 1,218 listed buildings of all grades, in the city of Brighton and Hove. There are services on Sunday mornings, Sunday evenings and Tuesday afternoons. Some of these include Holy Communion. Several prayer groups and activities for children and young people take place regularly. The church also plays host to other Christian communities in the city, including Brighton Lutheran Mission—a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of England. The church is one of eleven Baptist communities in the city of Brighton and Hove, ten of which have…