St Mary and St Abraam Coptic Orthodox Church, Hove

The church is based in a much older building: the former church of St Thomas the Apostle, an Anglican church built in 1909 by the Brighton-based architecture firm Clayton & Black (who were responsible for many local buildings including the Duke of York's Picture House, the French Convalescent Home on the seafront, and a reconstruction of the Theatre Royal). The tall red-brick building, in Early English style, Although the Diocese of Chichester identified the building's poor condition as one of the reasons for closure, the Coptic Orthodox Church bought it shortly afterwards. St Thomas the Apostle's parish was subsumed into that of All Saints Church nearby, and its locally produced Stations…

The founders of the Race community in Hove were refugees from the Second Sudanese Civil War, and many of the worshippers are from Sudan. Many Copts of Egyptian origin also attend the church. and in 1995 it was licensed to perform marriage ceremonies. An extension to the building was approved in 1998. Small pieces were individually carved in Egypt; they were taken to Hove and assembled in six hours by a team of volunteers in time for the Easter celebrations at the end of April (in Eastern Christianity, Easter is celebrated according to a different calendar calculation than in Western Christianity). Pope Shenouda III returned to the church on 13 August 2000 to dedicate the iconostasis, Father…