St Mary Magdalen's Church, Brighton

Brighton had only one Roman Catholic place of worship until 1861: St John the Baptist's Church, built in 1835 in the Kemptown area to replace an earlier building. A mission district was established to serve West Brighton, and priest Fr George Oldham was responsible for planning a church to serve it. Gilbert Blount, who entered the field of ecclesiastical architecture (specialising in Roman Catholic churches) after an earlier career as an engineer working alongside Isambard Kingdom Brunel, was commissioned to design it. The first part of the church to be built was the sanctuary and its adjoining chapels, which were finished in 1861. The first part of the nave was added in 1862; this was then…

The church is a 13th-century Early English/Decorated Gothic-style building—a design favoured by Gilbert Blount for his churches. He used red brick, laid out in an English bond pattern, for the exterior walls; there are decorative dressings of blue and black brick, and larger areas of stonework. The brick and stone tower tapers in three stages and is topped with a spire of stone. The layout consists of a chancel, five-bay nave, aisles, vestry and the tower in which a porch and the entrance door are incorporated. There are lancet windows with ornate tracery on all sides and on the middle and upper stages of the tower. The stone dressings on the exterior have intricate carvings.

St Mary Magdalen's Church was listed at Grade II by English Heritage on 10 June 1988. 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. Some reconstruction of the sanctuary took place between 2008 and 2010, together with new decorative lighting, restoring the church to an appearance closer to that previous to re-ordering which had taken place following the liturgical changes after the Second Vatican Council. The church is one of eleven Roman Catholic churches in Brighton and Hove. There are five others in Brighton, three in Hove and one each in Rottingdean and Woodingdean. Hugh Gerard McGrellis (known as…