Brighton And Hove High School For Girls (The Temple)

This is a house, now a school, built in 1819. It was likely designed by Amon Wilds for Thomas Read Kemp. Originally conceived as a square building with five bays on each side and two stories, it featured a domed upper story recessed on all sides. The building served as a boys’ school from 1828. The first floor of the original building dates from before 1876. A wing was added to the southwest corner in 1891, as the inscription indicates, for the Girls Public Day School Company, with further alterations made in 1911-12. Subsequent additions mean that only the east and north sides retain the original ground-floor treatment of five arcaded bays.

The exterior is stuccoed with a Welsh slate roof. The east front has eight windows and features an entrance in the central bay, probably dating from around 1900, with a flat-arched opening and bracketed canopy. Ground-floor windows are set back under a round-arched arcade with paired engaged columns tapering downwards, adorned with Egyptian bud capitals of an exaggerated form. Recessed panels are present within the spandrels. Above this is a cornice and flat-arched first-floor windows. A stepped parapet tops the elevation, and there are three dormers in the mansard roof with alternating triangular and segmental pediments. The north and south returns are similarly detailed, though the linked dormers on the north front have only triangular pediments. The 1891 addition occupies the westernmost bay of the south front, featuring flat-arched windows set back under a round arch to the ground floor and staircase, a moulded storey band, flat-arched first-floor windows, and corner stacks. Pediments adorn the west and north fronts. The west front of the main block has been significantly altered with a single-storey extension dating from around 1900, and a side-stack is present at the northwest corner with scrolled consoles and a cornice.

Inside, the hall at the southeast corner features a pair of cast-iron columns with scalloped abaci.

It is believed that the building was constructed to the precise measurements of Solomon’s Temple, which has led to it being known as “The Temple”.