St Mary the Virgin, Brighton

Brighton's increasing popularity in the early 19th century, especially among high society, encouraged wealthy people to build proprietary chapels—private churches with no parish but with an Anglican minister. The original St Mary's was one of four such chapels built in the 1820s. Acts of Parliament were granted to people wishing to build proprietary chapels. Barnard Gregory had obtained such an Act in 1825 to allow him to build St Margaret's Church in Cannon Place in central Brighton; the same Act permitted him to build one in St James's Street, In 1826 he sold this right to Charles Elliott, a merchant who divided his time between London and Brighton. Elliott was a member of the Clapham…

The design of St Mary's Church has been described as Early English Gothic Revival, "Neo-Gothic" and French Gothic Revival; most sources prefer the latter. It was built of red brick in Flemish bond with some external sandstone and terracotta dressings and Bath stonework inside. There is a chancel with a pentagonal apse and an ambulatory, transepts, an extremely long four-bay nave with aisles on both sides and spanned by large arches, a semicircular baptistery (next to which a tower was planned to be built; it was never completed and only a stump exists), two entrance porches—one of which is set into the base of the tower stump—an organ chamber and two vestries. The nave is on two levels, and…

St Mary's Church was listed at Grade II* on 20 August 1971. The parish covers an area of Brighton just behind the seafront and immediately east of the centre. The boundaries are the seafront, Old Steine, White Street, Sussex Street, the top of Queen's Park, Sutherland Road and Bedford Street.