The Chapel Royal

The Chapel Royal is a proprietary chapel, now an Anglican church, built between 1793 and 1795 for the Reverend Thomas Hudson, Vicar of Brighton, to designs by architect Thomas Saunders. Between 1876 and 1896, the building underwent extensive rebuilding to designs by Arthur Blomfield for successive rectors (the Reverends CS Childer, D Harrison, WS Andrews and S Panzer), with George Lynn and Sons of Brighton as builders.

The building is constructed of brick in Flemish bond with dressings in rubbed brick, terracotta and split flint. The upper sections of the tower feature flint insets. The roof is hipped and covered in slate. Unusually, the church's orientation is inverted, with the ritual east end located at the cardinal west end of the nave. All directional references below follow ritual rather than compass orientations.

Plan and Style

The nave is square in plan, with galleried aisles on three sides. A shallow chancel of one bay is as broad as the nave. An organ chamber occupies the north-east corner, with a vestry to the south-west. A long entrance porch at the west end has two entrances. At the north-west corner stands a two-stage tower with a high hipped roof. The elevation facing North Street has a four-window range, whilst the return elevation has five windows. The architectural style is eclectic, freely combining Italian Renaissance, Italian Romanesque and northern Gothic forms.

Exterior

At the extreme ends of the return or west elevation are round-arched and subordered entrances, each set within a steeply pitched Gothic gable. Between them are three windows surviving from the original chapel. These are round-arched, like all ground-floor openings, and linked by a springing band. Below the centre is a segmental-arched basement door with one segmental-arched basement window to either side. All first-floor windows on both elevations are flat-arched, with continuous sill bands, and set within shallow recesses topped by a brick dentil cornice.

The centre three ranges of the west elevation project by one brick's thickness and are topped by a high pediment—a feature Blomfield intended as a reference to the original elevation. The pediment's tympanum has blind arcading. The first-floor windows in this section are separated by narrow, round-arched recesses. In the tympanum of the west pediment are the Royal Arms, carved in stone, surviving from the original building and inscribed with the date the Prince of Wales laid the foundation stone: MDCCXCIII (1793).

From either side of the pediment runs an arcaded balustrade which continues on the North Street elevation. The bay elevation found in the centre section of the west elevation is repeated on the North Street elevation, which has no pediment. The balustrade is interrupted by four Gothic socles, each topped by a floriate cross. The North Street elevation is not parallel to the street but angles in from the party wall to provide space for the tower. A stair porch with lean-to roof is attached to the east face of the tower. The north face of the tower has an entrance similar to one on the west face.

Above, the centre section of each tower face sets back, creating corner buttresses. In the west face of the tower are three round-arched lights with two roundels above, all gathered under a round relieving arch. At the top of each recess is an arcaded corbel table, in turn topped by a band of blind arcading with terracotta cornice. A gargoyle projects from each corner of this cornice. Each face of the top stage of the tower has a clock face set in a terracotta surround. The roof has a cornice, with one narrow hipped gable to each face, and a metal pinnacle and cross at the peak.

Interior

The interior plan is most unusual. Twelve octagonal, double-height wooden columns define a square nave, each elevation articulated as a three-bay arcade supporting an entablature with an inscription. The centre bay of each arcade is wider than those flanking, forming a tripartite screen. Blomfield may possibly have intended this arrangement as a reference to the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

On the east, this screen opens into a shallow chancel raised above the nave floor. Features include a pulpit to the north and an altar rail, both made from wood with metal railings. The altarpiece, completed in October 1926, was executed by local artist Harry Mileham. Of special note are the wall paintings in the chancel. These once covered most of the interior and traces of the original scheme can still be seen on the ceiling, which follows the line of the roof. Evangelists' symbols appear on each facet of the pyramidal ceiling. The original scheme probably dates to the early 1880s; by 1912 it had so faded that repainting was necessary. The ceiling over the nave terminates in a square light register with coloured glass.

On the remaining three sides of the nave, the arcades support galleries. Many windows contain coloured glass, and there is stained glass in the ground-floor windows of the north aisle. This area has been screened off for use as a bookshop; these windows were originally located in the south aisle. At the time of writing, there are plans to rearrange the interior as a centralised church, converting the undergalleries into areas for kitchen and related facilities, and opening up an entrance on North Street by cutting down one of the north aisle windows.

Historical Development

Originally the Chapel Royal presented an elevation to Prince's Place only and was flanked by late 18th-century and early 19th-century buildings. The original elevation was two storeys with a five-window range, the wall and cornice stepping up to form a pediment over the three centre window ranges. By the mid-19th century the peak of the pediment was cut back to form a shelf holding the Royal Arms which survive on this elevation today. All ground-floor windows and the centre window on the first floor were round-arched; the rest were flat-arched.

In 1876 Blomfield, working for the Reverend Chilver (appointed perpetual curate in 1870), refurnished the interior and installed the three-light wood mullioned windows still found on the return to Prince's Place. In 1879, after the Corporation pulled down a weatherboarded cottage on the corner for the widening of North Street, Blomfield was asked to provide plans for the west elevation and a new elevation to North Street. His first plan was rejected because of the tower. By 1881, however, local opinion changed, and it was thought that a tower would provide a much-needed "ornament to the town". The Town Council gave the land for the tower and a local clockmaker provided the works for free. Blomfield's design was published in The Builder for 28 October 1882.

The tower and North Street elevation were completed first, by the end of 1883, for £1,200. The Prince's Place elevation was completed only in 1896. The delay in completion was caused by lack of funds, especially dire in this case as the only income after 1870 came from offertories (instituted in 1881) and pew rents, which were fast disappearing. A stipend and endowment were provided by the Ecclesiastical Commission when the chapel was constituted as a separate parish church in 1896.

The Reverend Thomas Hudson had hoped that the chapel would attract the Prince of Wales and large congregations to the new chapel whilst also relieving overcrowding in the parish Church of St Nicholas, Church Street. Although the Prince and Princess of Wales did lay the corner stone on 25 November 1793 and attend the opening service on 3 August 1795, their attendance was irregular and finally ended after Hudson delivered a controversial sermon. In 1803 the building became a Chapel of Ease. Gladstone attended services in the Chapel Royal on his numerous visits to Brighton. Between 1883 and 1885 the young Winston Churchill worshipped here along with the other children who attended the small school run by the Misses Thompson.