The Royal Pavilion

The Royal Pavilion, formerly a farmhouse, was built for the Prince of Wales (later George IV, 1762-1830) through four distinct building campaigns. The site began in the 1770s as a double-fronted farmhouse. In 1787-88, the Prince's architect Henry Holland undertook the first major alterations, refacing the building in cream-coloured mathematical tile. The third phase, from 1801-08 under William Porden, focused primarily on interior works, with the building fabric largely untouched during this period. Porden's work consisted mainly of additions to subsidiary buildings, including the Stables and Riding School, now the Corn Exchange and Dome Theatre on Church Street. The final phase began in February 1811 under architect James Wyatt. Between 1814 and 1823, John Nash transformed the building, giving it the appearance it retains today. The Pavilion has undergone periodic restorations from the mid-19th century to the late 20th century.

The building is constructed of stucco scored to imitate ashlar, with Bath stone and Portland stone dressings that have been recently renewed. The tent roofs and onion domes were originally surfaced with a patent mastic and painted to resemble Bath stone. When the mastic failed in 1827, it was replaced by copper sheathing. Various other roofs are of slate.

East Front

The east front comprises five distinct parts, symmetrically arranged around a seven-bay colonnade of the rotunda. Three French doors, each with pointed, trilobed heads and glazing bars of original design, open into the saloon. These window heads, inspired by Mughal architecture, are repeated throughout the building. The Bath stone columns have an octagonal socle, leafy base, octagonal shaft, and flaring leaf capitals that terminate above the diamond crenellated parapet in octagonal pinnacles. This column design is repeated throughout the building, often applied to pilasters. Between the tops of each pair of rotunda columns is a screen of pierced quatrefoils arranged in intersecting S-curves formed from the lines of horseshoe arches. Above the centre bay of the colonnade in the parapet are the royal arms and an inscription reading "HRH George IV MDCCLXXXIV".

The domed superstructure over the saloon is supported by an internal cast- and wrought-iron frame designed by Nash. The transition to the dome is achieved through a convex, feathered ring topped by a fluted ring, which is in turn topped by a parapet. Above this rises a ribbed onion dome with reticulated lights, culminating in a high finial. On each corner of the dome stands a minaret, supported by an octagonal leaf column as described above, rising from square, crenellated turrets. The range of decorative elements found in this central section are repeated on all elevations.

At the far ends of the east elevation are cubic pavilions with high tent roofs: the Music Room to the north and the Banqueting Room to the south. In front of each is a six-bay colonnade, identical in design to the saloon colonnade, with French doors featuring Mughal-styled heads. The clerestory below the roof on each face is a horizontal strip window with lattice glazing bars. Broad bracketed eaves sit below a crenellated parapet that encircles the base of each tent roof. At each corner of these pavilions stands a minaret on an octagonal leaf column.

The ranges between the central saloon and the end pavilions have a seven-window range each and two storeys. On the ground floor, the area between the pair of full-height bays is incorporated within a stone projection containing five French doors. One octagonal pilaster stands between each pair of doors, at the corners and returns. Above each pilaster is a panelled pier topped by an obelisk, and the balustrade is pierced by Gothic quatrefoil panels. A lotus-leaf parapet runs continuously across the elevation, and there is an onion dome above each bay.

To the north, the elevation returns briefly before stopping at a two-and-a-half-storey corner pavilion, square in plan, similar to those found on the King's Apartments. Nash's exotic overlay comes to an abrupt end to the south: at the join with the kitchen wing, a single-storey porch in Mughal style abuts a purely Greek Revival elevation. The latter has a seven-window range with two sections of the original tripartite temple facade remaining: the former centre with eight paired, giant Tuscan pilasters forming three broad bays topped by a pediment, and single pilasters marking the four left-hand bays. The roof is parapeted with stacks to the rear and right of the pediment. Over the door in the centre of the pediment are sculpted royal arms. The sashes are of original design. Cast-iron railings attached to this elevation enclose the south border of the east lawn, with similar railings to the area at the foot of the north return.

West Front

The entrance is beneath a porte-cochere, square in plan, topped by an onion dome and supported at each corner by three octagonal leaf columns, with bulbous finials and minarets above the eaves. Behind this is a single-storey octagonal porch with semicircular projection. All French doors and windows on the ground floor have flattened horseshoe arches.

The centre range rises to three storeys, with a bracketed eaves roof below a horizontal strip window with lattice glazing bars. Minarets stand at the corners of the clerestory, and there are clustered flues to the returns. Another stack to the rear of the saloon dome features S-curved flying buttresses, and oval, crenellated Gothic turrets flank the dome.

Single-storey crenellated wings run from the centre axis to the returns of wings, setting back to form a first-floor balcony reached by flat-arched French doors. The bays in the single-storey ranges are marked by attached leaf columns in a five-window range. Each two-and-a-half-storey courtyard wing is topped by an onion dome. The wings have full-height, octagonal leaf pilasters that continue above the parapet to stone minarets. The top storeys of the wings are lit by horizontal strip windows with lattice glazing bars.

To the right of the courtyard, the Mughal-inspired design ends abruptly. The kitchen wing has two storeys and a two-window range with flat-arched windows and cornice to guttered eaves.

To the north, or left of the courtyard, are the King's Apartments, which run between the north pavilion of the courtyard to an identical pavilion on the north corner. There is a nine-window range, with a seven-window range recessed behind the front walls of the pavilions. A stone verandah fills this section, with eight leaf columns, the roof forming a balcony. The first-floor windows in the corner pavilions are each set in an elaborate stone aedicule.

The north return has a seven-window range, with end pavilions similar to those already described, but flush with the intermediate range wall. A five-bay stone verandah projects from this wall and spans the basement area. Stacks with gathered flues are symmetrically disposed across the roof, each flue topped by a minaret-like chimney pot.

At the time of listing (May 1992), an extensive programme of exterior restoration had just been completed, with much of the stonework renewed and the stucco repainted to resemble Bath stone.

Interior

For the most part, the interior decoration was carried out by Frederick Crace and his collaborator Robert Jones.

The Outer Entrance Hall has a shallow saucer dome supported by broad, ribbed coving. The transition to the Inner Entrance Hall is through an apse-like recess opening onto the Entrance Hall, which is square in plan. A clerestory with painted glass fills the space above the recess, the lintel below supported by a pair of octagonal leaf columns. A scalloped drip moulding decorated with palm leaves forms a continuous cornice to the walls. The marble chimneypiece is the only one to survive in situ and was carved by Richard Westmacott.

To the east, the Chinese Gallery of seven bays, dating to 1815, connects all rooms along the ground floor. At either end is a cast-iron, U-plan stair designed and painted to resemble bamboo. Cast-iron skylights are positioned above the centre bay and above each stair. Bays three and five open onto rectangular recesses that form baffle entrances to the North and South Drawing Rooms. Access to the Banqueting Room and Music Room is through flat-arched openings in the centre of each flight of stairs in the Chinese Gallery.

The Banqueting and Music Rooms have identical plans: square, with rectangular recesses to north and south. The ceiling between the recess and the entablature (which forms the base to flattened basket arches supporting the saucer dome) consists of convex coves imitating hung fabric and bamboo.

In the Banqueting Room, a great chandelier, lit by gas in 1821, is suspended by a Chinese dragon carved in wood, above which are plantain leaves that hid the original gas registers. The decoration of the lower walls with orientalising scenes and motifs was carried out by Robert Jones. A concave canopy sits over each door. Each French door to the east verandah is set in a recess. Stone chimneypieces of mid-19th-century date are positioned in the north and south walls. The cornice around the room consists of a trilobed valence and acanthus parapet. The tympanum of each basket arch is filled with a clerestory window of painted glass. A rectangular serving room to the south with marble chimneypiece is lit by an oval skylight, and there is a cupboard room to the west.

Further to the south is the kitchen, with four iron columns cast to resemble bamboo shafts topped by palm leaves. Original kitchen features remain in situ, and the interior was completed in 1816.

The South Drawing Room is reached through a door in the north-east corner of the Banqueting Room. Rectangular in plan, with a bay to the east, the latter has quadrant corners. This room marks the extent of the entire ground floor of the original house on the site. On the line of its outer wall, removed for the broad bay with French doors, stand two palm tree columns. This single room was formed in 1801. A Crace decorative scheme of 1815 was replaced by the current scheme in 1821. The only features to survive from 1815 are the white marble chimneypieces in the west wall, flanking a shallow, flat-arched recess. A flat-arched door leads to Holland's saloon, entered by semicircular pilastered niches to the north and south. The saloon has a shallow saucer dome, and the scheme dates to 1821-23.

The North Drawing Room is identical in plan to the South Drawing Room and was formed in 1802 as the Eating Room and Library. The current scheme dates to 1821.

The Music Room features a painted organ case in the north recess. Painted canvas stretched on walls was completed between 1817 and 1822/3 by Jones.

To the west are the King's Apartments, a suite of three rooms connected by wide double doors and completed in 1821-22. All rooms are rectangular in plan, with recesses for the State Bed, coved recesses, and round-arched niches.

The North Gallery on the first floor was created in 1815 as a toplit space that once gave access to the principal bedrooms and was decorated in the Chinese style. Now plain, it is called the North Lobby. Queen Victoria's bedroom and related apartments above the entrance range are under restoration.

Between 1825 and his death, George IV visited the Pavilion only once. Queen Victoria stayed often between 1837 and 1845. She announced the sale of the Pavilion to pay for works to Buckingham Palace in 1846. A local committee was formed to purchase the Pavilion for the Borough, which transfer was approved in 1850. The Royal Chapel and buildings to the south were then demolished and the land sold. The building was put to various municipal uses. As early as 1863 there were attempts to acquire furniture sold by the Queen in the late 1840s. All main rooms are now open to the public with the exception of the Red Drawing Room.

Historical Note

The Prince of Wales first came to Brighton in 1783, staying with his uncle, the Duke of Cumberland, in Grove House, a brick building that stood on the site of the present Music Room. In 1786, one year after his secret marriage to Mrs Fitzherbert, the Prince took the lease on a farmhouse built in the 1770s and owned by Thomas Kemp. This structure—a double-fronted building of two storeys and three-window range, with two full-height canted bays to Old Steine—can still be seen through later alterations in the south range of the present east front.

The second phase of building began in the summer of 1787, when the Prince instructed Henry Holland, his architect for the grand works at Carlton House, to enlarge the premises. Holland duplicated the two-bayed farmhouse to the north, connecting the two sections by the Saloon, a domed rotunda with a circular colonnade. At the rear he constructed a long corridor, which would later form the basis for the current Chinese Gallery of 1815 and 1822. The saloon, with shallow domed ceiling, is extant, though overlaid by Nash's Mughal-inspired decoration. Holland also converted the canted bays of the farmhouse into segmental ones.

To the rear, or west elevation, Holland built two projecting wings, each pedimented. On axis with the rotunda he constructed a tetrastyle portico in the Ionic order with a pediment above. The rough outline of this U-shaped courtyard can still be seen under Nash's additions. The Prince and Holland planned to erect a wing to the south, similar to that on the north and containing the King's apartments, but this was never completed. At the end of Holland's works in 1788, the structure was named the "Marine Pavilion".

Absent from Brighton between 1796 and 1800, the Prince commissioned no new works until July 1801, when Holland proposed to sheath his earlier works in Chinese ornament. Only interior decorations in this manner were carried out, being completed in 1804. Between 1801 and 1804 the firm of Crace was first employed on the interior decoration. There are no architectural remains of the first oriental phase. Holland also added two new wings to the east elevation, projecting at obtuse angles towards the Steine. Although replaced by the Music and Banqueting Rooms, these rooms would mark the furthest extent of the east elevation.

In 1803 Porden replaced Holland and made plans to continue the exoticisation of the exterior. In 1805 Humphry Repton was called in to landscape the grounds. The idea for redesigning the Marine Pavilion as an Indian palace can be dated to the years 1803-05, during the Porden-Repton collaboration.

The final phase of building commenced when the Prince was made Regent in February 1811. Nothing is known of the plans made by James Wyatt, nor does any trace of Nash's work between 1813 and 1815 survive. The first work of what would prove to be the final scheme was the expansion of Holland's west corridor into the long Chinese Gallery, beginning in January 1815 and completed before the end of the year along with the Inner Entrance Hall. The two bedroom storeys above the Entrance Hall were added before 1819. In the years between 1815 and 1820, the west courtyard was partly filled in with service rooms and stairs. The kitchen wing to the south was completed next, between 1816 and 1818.

In 1817, Holland's angled bays were replaced by the box-like pavilions containing the Music and Banqueting Rooms. During the following summer, Nash erected the great onion dome that dominates the east elevation and is flanked, to the west, by a pair of crenellated, oval towers. In 1819 the Bath stone window tracery and leaf columns were added, and by the end of the year the east front assumed the appearance it has today.

In the same year, Holland's portico on the west elevation was replaced by the domed porte-cochere with octagonal vestibule, or Outer Entrance Hall, behind. Nash then constructed the pavilioned King's Apartments, incorporating Holland's north courtyard wing. This and the stone verandah on the west elevation were completed by the close of 1820.

When the newly crowned George IV took up residence in the now Royal Pavilion on 2 January 1821, only the decoration of his apartments and the Red Drawing Room (not open for inspection at the time of writing) remained to be done. All was completed by the summer of 1823.