Holland Road Baptist Church is a
Baptist
Baptists form a major branch of Protestantism distinguished by baptizing professing Christian believers only ( believer's baptism), and doing so by complete immersion. Baptist churches also generally subscribe to the doctrines of soul compe ...
church in
Hove
Hove is a seaside resort and one of the two main parts of the city of Brighton and Hove, along with Brighton in East Sussex, England. Originally a "small but ancient fishing village" surrounded by open farmland, it grew rapidly in the 19th c ...
, part of the
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
city of
Brighton and Hove
Brighton and Hove () is a city and unitary authority in East Sussex, England. It consists primarily of the settlements of Brighton and Hove, alongside neighbouring villages.
Often referred to synonymously as Brighton, the City of Brighton and H ...
. Built in 1887 to replace a temporary building on the same site, which had in turn superseded the congregation's previous meeting place in a nearby
gym
A gymnasium, also known as a gym, is an indoor location for athletics. The word is derived from the ancient Greek term " gymnasium". They are commonly found in athletic and fitness centres, and as activity and learning spaces in educational i ...
nasium, it expanded to take in nearby buildings and is a landmark on Holland Road, a main north–south route in Hove. It is one of ten extant Baptist church buildings in the city, and is the only one to have been
listed
Listed may refer to:
* Listed, Bornholm, a fishing village on the Danish island of Bornholm
* Listed (MMM program), a television show on MuchMoreMusic
* Endangered species in biology
* Listed building, in architecture, designation of a historicall ...
by
English Heritage
English Heritage (officially the English Heritage Trust) is a charity that manages over 400 historic monuments, buildings and places. These include prehistoric sites, medieval castles, Roman forts and country houses.
The charity states that i ...
in view of its architectural importance.
History
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 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
Anthony Stapley (born 30 August 1590 – buried 31 January 1655) was one of the regicides of King Charles I of England.
Stapley was M.P. for New Shoreham (1624–1625), Lewes (1628), Sussex (1640, 1653–1654). He was colonel and governor of Ch ...
, one of the
regicide
Regicide is the purposeful killing of a monarch or sovereign of a polity and is often associated with the usurpation of power. A regicide can also be the person responsible for the killing. The word comes from the Latin roots of ''regis'' ...
s of
King Charles I, held it for nearly 50 years.
In 1830, Thomas Scutt and
Thomas Read Kemp
Thomas Read Kemp (23 December 1782 – 20 December 1844) was an English property developer and politician.
Life
He was the son of Sussex landowner and Member of Parliament Thomas Kemp, and his wife Anne, daughter of Henry Read of Brookland ...
owned the land, and a portion on the south side was used to build the
Brunswick estate. They sold the remaining to Goldsmid for £55,525 (£ as of ).
Holland Road was named after
Henry Vassall-Fox, 3rd Baron Holland
Henry Richard Vassall-Fox, 3rd Baron Holland of Holland, and 3rd Baron Holland of Foxley PC (21 November 1773 – 22 October 1840), was an English politician and a major figure in Whig politics in the early 19th century. A grandson of Henry F ...
(Lord Holland), a
Whig statesman and friend of Isaac Lyon Goldsmid. It was one of the first roads planned in the area—the name was decided by 1833—but development was slow. Only two buildings were in place by 1854.
By the 1860s it had reached its full length, running from the seafront to the original (now closed) Hove station on the
London, Brighton and South Coast Railway
The London, Brighton and South Coast Railway (LB&SCR; known also as the Brighton line, the Brighton Railway or the Brighton) was a railway company in the United Kingdom from 1846 to 1922. Its territory formed a rough triangle, with London at its ...
's
line to Portsmouth.
A Baptist fellowship was founded in the area in the 1870s. In its early years, their meetings and services were held at a gymnasium on Western Road. In 1881, George Congreve moved to Hove. He was trained in medicine and became wealthy by selling an
elixir
ELIXIR (the European life-sciences Infrastructure for biological Information) is an initiative that will allow life science laboratories across Europe to share and store their research data as part of an organised network. Its goal is to bring t ...
which apparently cured
tuberculosis
Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, i ...
,
but he also had a religious calling and planned to establish a new church. Between 1882 and 1883 he bought the site on which the church now stands from Sir
Julian Goldsmid, who owned it by that stage. Congreve founded a Young Women's Christian Institute in 1882, and an iron building was erected on the site to accommodate it.
John Wills, a prolific designer of buildings for
Nonconfirmist communities, was asked to design a permanent church for the congregation.
(One of his later commissions was the
Hove Methodist Church.)
Congreve paid the full cost of construction and also became the church's first treasurer.
Building work took place during 1887, and the first service was held on 29 July 1887.
Charles Spurgeon
Charles Haddon Spurgeon (19 June 1834 – 31 January 1892) was an English Particular Baptist preacher.
Spurgeon remains highly influential among Christians of various denominations, among whom he is known as the "Prince of Preachers". He wa ...
, an influential Baptist preacher, was invited, but he could not attend because of illness.
He helped in other ways, however: he sent his brother to preach in his place at the inaugural service and selected the church's first
pastor
A pastor (abbreviated as "Pr" or "Ptr" , or "Ps" ) is the leader of a Christian congregation who also gives advice and counsel to people from the community or congregation. In Lutheranism, Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy and ...
; and one of his sons took this role subsequently.
The first pastor, Rev. David Davies, served from 1887 until 1907; on his initiative,
Gwydyr Mansions
Gwydyr Mansions is a block of mansion flats in the centre of Hove, part of the English coastal city of Brighton and Hove. Built on the initiative of a Baptist pastor and designed by the prolific architecture firm of Clayton & Black, the "elegan ...
—an "elegant" block of
mansion flats in the
Flemish Renaissance style—
were built opposite the church in 1890.
The temporary iron building was removed to allow the church to be built, and the Young Women's Christian Institute moved into new premises next to the church.
A similar institute for men was established in 1899, but neither remain in existence. The church helped to establish two other Baptist places of worship in Hove. In 1901, a mission church established four years earlier in the west of Hove was connected administratively with Holland Road Baptist Church, and by 1904 it was able to move to its own 400-capacity premises. The Stoneham Road Baptist Church remained open on the same site
until 2008, but the building was sold and demolished in that year.
In 1957, a
deaconess
The ministry of a deaconess is, in modern times, a usually non-ordained ministry for women in some Protestant, Oriental Orthodox, and Eastern Orthodox churches to provide pastoral care, especially for other women, and which may carry a limited l ...
at Holland Road founded a new church on the rapidly developing
Hangleton
Hangleton is a residential suburb of Hove, part of the English city and coastal resort of Brighton and Hove. The area was developed in the 1930s after it was incorporated into the borough of Hove, but has ancient origins: its parish church was ...
housing estate (the population grew from 109 to 6,158 between 1931 and 1951).
It is now called the Oasis Christian Fellowship Church and is part of both the
Baptist Union of Great Britain
Baptists Together (officially The Baptist Union of Great Britain) is a Baptist Christian denomination in England and Wales. It is affiliated with the Baptist World Alliance and Churches Together in England. The headquarters is in Didcot.
Hi ...
and the
Evangelical Alliance
The Evangelical Alliance (EA) is a national evangelical alliance, member of the World Evangelical Alliance. Founded in 1846, the activities of the Evangelical Alliance aim to promote evangelical Christian beliefs in government, media and socie ...
.
In the 1970s, the church hall was redesigned, and exterior alterations and cleaning took place between 1980 and 1981.
Work on the interior of the church had been proposed for many years, and an architect was appointed in 1991. When the plans were ratified in 1997, the structure and fabric of the building were found to be in unexpectedly poor condition. The hall was completely redesigned, an extension was built at the rear, the south end was altered, new windows were installed in the porch and structural alterations were carried out in the main part of the church.
The project cost about £700,000 and was completed in 1999.
The church repurchased the former Young Women's Christian Institute building in the 1990s after it had passed out of their ownership; it was believed to be in such poor condition that a proposal was made to demolish it and replace it with a new multi-purpose building to be used by the church and other groups.
It eventually turned out to be in better condition than previously thought and was instead just completely refurbished.
The church is licensed for worship in accordance with the
Places of Worship Registration Act 1855
The Places of Worship Registration Act 1855 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which governs the registration and legal recognition of places of worship. It applies only in England and Wales, and does not cover the Church of Englan ...
and has the registration number 30365.
It was registered for the solemnisation of marriages on 21 August 1888.
Architecture
John Wills built the church in a Transitional
Gothic
Gothic or Gothics may refer to:
People and languages
*Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes
**Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths
**Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...
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
Purbeck stone refers to building stone taken from a series of limestone beds found in the Upper Jurassic to Lower Cretaceous Purbeck Group, found on the Isle of Purbeck, Dorset in southern England. The best known variety of this stone is Purbeck ...
, 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
The Rhineland (german: Rheinland; french: Rhénanie; nl, Rijnland; ksh, Rhingland; Latinised name: ''Rhenania'') is a loosely defined area of Western Germany along the Rhine, chiefly its middle section.
Term
Historically, the Rhinelands ...
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
Granite () is a coarse-grained ( phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies under ...
memorial tablets laid in 1887,
leads to the
transept
A transept (with two semitransepts) is a transverse part of any building, which lies across the main body of the building. In cruciform churches, a transept is an area set crosswise to the nave in a cruciform ("cross-shaped") building wi ...
, lit by a series of
lancet windows with coloured glass. Below the
hammerbeam roof, a gallery runs round three sides of the church, supported by
Corinthian Corinthian or Corinthians may refer to:
*Several Pauline epistles, books of the New Testament of the Bible:
**First Epistle to the Corinthians
**Second Epistle to the Corinthians
**Third Epistle to the Corinthians (Orthodox)
*A demonym relating to ...
columns made of
cast iron
Cast iron is a class of iron– carbon alloys with a carbon content more than 2%. Its usefulness derives from its relatively low melting temperature. The alloy constituents affect its color when fractured: white cast iron has carbide impur ...
.
There are
rose windows in the south and north walls; the north window has a
quatrefoil design and is decorated in the
Arts and Crafts style.
The original
pew
A pew () is a long bench seat or enclosed box, used for seating members of a congregation or choir in a church, synagogue or sometimes a courtroom.
Overview
The first backless stone benches began to appear in English churches in the thirt ...
s and an elaborate
pulpit are still in place inside.
The church today
Holland Road Baptist Church was
listed
Listed may refer to:
* Listed, Bornholm, a fishing village on the Danish island of Bornholm
* Listed (MMM program), a television show on MuchMoreMusic
* Endangered species in biology
* Listed building, in architecture, designation of a historicall ...
at Grade II by
English Heritage
English Heritage (officially the English Heritage Trust) is a charity that manages over 400 historic monuments, buildings and places. These include prehistoric sites, medieval castles, Roman forts and country houses.
The charity states that i ...
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
Brighton and Hove () is a city and unitary authority in East Sussex, England. It consists primarily of the settlements of Brighton and Hove, alongside neighbouring villages.
Often referred to synonymously as Brighton, the City of Brighton and H ...
.
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 Evangelical Lutheran Church of England (ELCE) is a confessional Lutheran synod in the United Kingdom. It has congregations in England, Wales and Scotland.
The ELCE's oldest congregations date back to 1896, and the ELCE itself was founded ...
.
The church is one of eleven Baptist communities in the city of Brighton and Hove, ten of which have their own church premises. Seven of the eleven are part of the Mid Sussex Network of the South Eastern Baptist Association, one of nine divisions of the
Baptist Union of Great Britain
Baptists Together (officially The Baptist Union of Great Britain) is a Baptist Christian denomination in England and Wales. It is affiliated with the Baptist World Alliance and Churches Together in England. The headquarters is in Didcot.
Hi ...
. Apart from the Holland Road Baptist Church, the other member churches are at Brighton (Florence Road and Gloucester Place), West Hove, Hangleton and Portslade, and the Downs Community Baptist Church in Woodingdean which no longer has its own building and meets in a school.
[ ]
See also
*
Grade II listed buildings in Brighton and Hove: E–H
*
List of places of worship in Brighton and Hove
The city of Brighton and Hove, on the south coast of England, has more than 100 extant churches and other places of worship, which serve a variety of Christian denominations and other religions. More than 50 former religious buildings, althou ...
Notes
Bibliography
*
*
*
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Holland Road Baptist Church, Hove
Baptist churches in East Sussex
Grade II listed churches in East Sussex
Churches in Brighton and Hove
Churches completed in 1887
19th-century Baptist churches
Grade II listed buildings in Brighton and Hove
19th-century churches in the United Kingdom