Numbers 41-50 And Attached Railings

Terraced houses, most now converted to flats, on the east side of Sussex Square, Brighton. The facades date to 1825–27, with interiors completed over the following years. Designed by Amon Wilds and Charles Augustin Busby for Thomas Read Kemp, the developer of Kemp Town, with Thomas Cubitt involved as builder of some units.

The exteriors are rendered in stucco, except for the return wall of No.41, which is built in brown brick in Flemish bond. All buildings have gambrel roofs of slate, though that of No.41 has been turnerised.

Each unit is three storeys with attic over basement and displays three windows to the facade. All window and door openings are flat-arched. The most striking architectural feature is a giant tetrastyle portico of Composite pilasters applied to the first and second floors of every third unit (Nos 41, 44, 47 and 50), which project slightly beyond the intermediate units. Above these, a plain pilastrade rises to the attic storey. This motif appears elsewhere in Busby's Brighton work, including the remainder of Sussex Square, Lewes Crescent, and Portland Place.

Unifying features throughout the group include: ground floors treated as banded rustication; ground-floor windows with projecting sills (except Nos 42, 43 and 44); French doors to first-floor openings; identical cast-iron railings and brackets to balconies of Nos 41, 45, 46, 49 and 50, and to verandahs serving the remaining units. These verandahs have concave metal roofs with wood valance boards and cast-iron stanchions; the roof of all entrance porches extends from either a balcony or verandah. A storey band separates the first and second floors, and above the second floor sits an entablature with projecting cornice, its upper fascia level with the sill lines of the attic windows. All entrances have overlights.

The sloping topography of Sussex Square is managed by broken party-wall joins between Nos 41 and 42, 44 and 45, and 47 and 48, producing straight joins between every three units—a characteristic feature of Wilds and Busby's Kemp Town work.

Entrance porches front Nos 41–44, with sidelights to the entrance doors. Each porch is nearly identical in design: side walls ending in Tuscan antae support an entablature with projecting cornice. The entablature on No.41's porch is no longer complete.

A considerable number of original early to mid-19th-century sash windows survive: 2 × 2 panes to ground-floor windows of No.43; 3 × 6 panes to second-floor windows of Nos 45, 48 and 50; 3-pane casement windows with margin lights to the second floor of No.47; 3 × 3 panes to attic floors of Nos 47 and 50; and 3 × 6 panes to dormers of No.45. The second-floor windows of No.45 have architraves. Many ground and second-floor windows retain tracks for shutters.

Above the attic storeys, No.42 and No.45 carry single dormers, that of No.42 dating to the late 19th or early 20th century, while No.45 has three flat-arched dormers.

Alterations to the original design include the alteration of the entablature and attic pilastrade on No.44, the enlargement of two of its second-floor windows, and damage to the Composite capitals on No.50. The return to No.41 displays scattered fenestration and steps down to a low service range; like the return to No.10 Sussex Square, the architectural elements of the main elevation are carried around the return but left unpainted, with walls and gable end of brown brick. Every unit except No.45 has a four-panel studded door of original design; on No.48 the studded mouldings have been removed from an otherwise intact door. Stacks rise to party walls.

The attached railings to stairs and broad areas are complete.

Kemp Town constitutes a most important group comprising Arundel Terrace, Chichester Terrace, Lewes Crescent, Sussex Square and related structures on The Esplanade.