The First Church of Christ, Scientist is a church serving members of the

Church of Christ, Scientist The Church of Christ, Scientist was founded in 1879 in Boston, Massachusetts, by Mary Baker Eddy, author of '' Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,'' and founder of Christian Science. The church was founded "to commemorate the word an ...

denomination in the English coastal 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 ...

. The present building, originally a "notable" private house in Brighton's exclusive Montpelier suburb, was extended and converted into a church by prolific local architecture firm

Clayton & Black Clayton & Black were a firm of architects and surveyors from Brighton, part of the English city of Brighton and Hove. In a career spanning the Victorian, Edwardian and interwar eras, they were responsible for designing and constructing an eclec ...

in 1921.

History

Montpelier was one of Brighton's earliest suburbs, laid out on a hillside between the 1820s and the 1860s in response to the town's rapid development as a fashionable seaside resort. The most rapid period of housebuilding was in the 1840s and 1850s, when Montpelier Road was developed with terraces of high-quality

stucco Stucco or render is a construction material made of aggregates, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as a decorative coating for walls and ceilings, exterior walls, and as a sculptural and a ...

ed Regency-style houses and larger villas. Number 97 Montpelier Road was built in about 1850 at the south end, near the junction with the major commercial route of Western Road. North Street was another important commercial street, lined with banks, offices, shops, inns and entertainment venues. In 1890, the Athenaeum Recreation Hall was built at number 148. Equipped with several rooms and capable of holding 500 people, it became one of the first meeting places in Brighton of followers of

Mary Baker Eddy Mary Baker Eddy (July 16, 1821 – December 3, 1910) was an American religious leader and author who founded The Church of Christ, Scientist, in New England in 1879. She also founded ''The Christian Science Monitor'', a Pulitzer Prize-winning s ...

movement. Worship took place there from the early 20th century, and another church—the Central Spiritualist Church—was later established there as well. In 1921, Brighton architects

were commissioned (Charles Clayton had executed the original conversion of Montpelier House into two houses so was a natural choice to convert it back again) to convert 97 and 97a Montpelier Road (which had been acquired in 1909 and used as a separate church and reading room) back into a single large church to provide for the rapidly growing congregation. They substantially extended the building, creating a chapel to the south and embellishing the entrance in a Neoclassical style. The church is registered as a place of 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 ...

; its number on the register is 44386. It lies within the Montpelier & Clifton Hill Conservation Area, one of 34 conservation areas in the city of Brighton and Hove. This was designated by Brighton Council in 1973 and extended to in 1977. In their character statement published in 2005, Brighton and Hove City Council describe it as a "notable" building in an area "contain nga high proportion of

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

s and high quality unlisted properties ... which together form a cohesive and attractive street scene."

Architecture

The Clayton & Black firm started in the 1870s, and by 1921 they had designed a wide range of buildings for many functions and in a great variety of styles, including

Flemish Renaissance The Renaissance in the Low Countries was a cultural period in the Northern Renaissance that took place in around the 16th century in the Low Countries (corresponding to modern-day Belgium, the Netherlands and French Flanders). Culture in the Low C ...

, François Premier Revival and

Edwardian Baroque Edwardian architecture is a Neo-Baroque architectural style that was popular in the British Empire during the Edwardian era (1901–1910). Architecture up to the year 1914 may also be included in this style. Description Edwardian architecture is ...

. Their two previous church commissions, both in Hove, included the

Gothic Revival Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic, neo-Gothic, or Gothick) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. The movement gained momentum and expanded in the first half of the 19th century, as increasingly ...

St Thomas the Apostle's Church. For their Montpelier Road commission, they added an elaborate Neoclassical-style façade to a house which, like its neighbours, reflected the transition from the

Regency A regent (from Latin : ruling, governing) is a person appointed to govern a state '' pro tempore'' (Latin: 'for the time being') because the monarch is a minor, absent, incapacitated or unable to discharge the powers and duties of the monarchy ...

style to the

Italianate The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style drew its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century Italian R ...

; some original features were kept though. The whole façade is

ed and there is rustication all round the entrance, which is set in a three- bay section to the left (north). This is elaborately treated, with arched and straight-headed windows, a

frieze In architecture, the frieze is the wide central section part of an entablature and may be plain in the Ionic or Doric order, or decorated with bas-reliefs. Paterae are also usually used to decorate friezes. Even when neither columns nor ...

and a "richly decorated

pediment Pediments are gables, usually of a triangular shape. Pediments are placed above the horizontal structure of the lintel, or entablature, if supported by columns. Pediments can contain an overdoor and are usually topped by hood moulds. A pedimen ...

". To the right, the body of the chapel has five bays separated by full-height

pilaster In classical architecture Classical architecture usually denotes architecture which is more or less consciously derived from the principles of Greek and Roman architecture of classical antiquity, or sometimes even more specifically, from the ...

s. The ground-floor windows are flat-headed; those above are arched. There is a gallery inside, and timber panelling is used around the reader's dais.

References

Notes

Bibliography

* * * * {{Christian Science Christian Science churches in England Churches completed in 1921 20th-century Christian Science church buildings Churches in Brighton and Hove Clayton & Black buildings

History

Architecture

See also

References

Notes

Bibliography