Church Of St Peter (Brighton Parish Church)

Church of St Peter (Brighton Parish Church)

An Anglican church comprising a nave with north and south aisles, a chancel, vestry, south-east chapel, west tower, and memorial hall. The building was constructed in two main phases. The nave, aisles and west tower were built between 1824 and 1828 by Sir Charles Barry in Portland stone ashlar. The nave and aisles were then lengthened by one bay, and a new chancel, vestry and south-east chapel were added between 1898 and 1906 by George Somers Clarke the Younger and J T Micklethwaite, built in Sussex sandstone ashlar. A memorial hall was added to the north in 1927. The roof is obscured by a parapet. All directional references are ritual.

The church is designed in Perpendicular Gothic style, with windows generally having rectilinear tracery. The east end features pinnacled angle buttresses and a four-centred, eleven-light east window set under an ogee hoodmould with a crowstepped gable above and emblems on shields in the spandrels. The north side of the chancel has an arcade of six three-light windows at clerestory level, then a canted tower, followed by two more three-light windows. The south side contains a south-east chapel of four bays with a five-light east window under a depressed arch. The south side of the chapel has a four-centred-arched entrance beneath a lean-to roof with ogee hoodmould, flanking lesenes, a band of dogtooth ornament and cornice, with four four-centred, four-light windows alongside between pinnacled and crocketed buttresses. The chancel clerestory matches the north side design, with embattled parapet above.

The south aisle comprises five bays with pointed-arched, three-light windows under hoodmoulds with head stops. The windows are divided horizontally by a broad band of panel tracery corresponding to the former galleries. Pinnacled and crocketed buttresses stand between the windows. The clerestory has five flat-arched windows with trefoiled and intersecting tracery between pinnacles. The parapet is pierced by quatrefoils and punctuated by gablets. The west end of the aisle features a pointed-arched entrance with steep gabled extrados, its tympanum filled with blank tracery and flanked by blind arcading, all beneath a three-light window with curvilinear tracery and hoodmould with head stops. The north aisle matches this design, except that it was extended eastward by one bay by Somers Clarke and Micklethwaite, with window tracery in this bay matching that of the chancel.

The tower rises almost as wide as the nave until the parapet is reached and features buttressed octagonal piers at the corners. Tall, shallow, pointed-arched and vaulted recesses occupy each of the four open sides, all of identical design with moulded and pinnacled flanking buttresses and two orders of colonnettes crowned by an ogee hoodmould. The pointed-arched entrance beneath the tower has a flat-arched hoodmould with quatrefoils in the spandrels, surmounted by a band of blind arcading and a three-light window with curvilinear tracery. The door itself is panelled with blank tracery. The parapet of the nave continues around the tower with octagonal piers as crocketed pinnacles at the four corners. The tower proper sits square but set back from the parapet, with small flying buttresses from the corner piers and octagonal piers at its own four corners. The tower includes a clock stage with two-light belfry openings under an ogee hoodmould, the hoodmould flanked by blank tracery. The parapet is pierced by quatrefoils with corner and subsidiary side pinnacles.

The memorial hall is rendered with stone dressings and slate roof, measuring five-and-a-half bays in length. Its east window comprises five stepped lancets with a transom band, while the five windows on the long side are three-light Tudor-arched openings between shallow buttresses. An entrance is set in a canted bay.

The interior presents the chancel and first bay of the nave faced in stone, with the remainder of the church in plaster. The sanctuary features niches and sedilia with crocketed canopies on the south side. The choir arcade of two bays, with the second bay to the north containing the organ, comprises clustered columns with wave mouldings. Vault shafts supporting wooden brackets rise through a coved frieze of scrolling foliage at wall-plate level. The roof is low-pitched and panelled with bosses and painted emblems. Two corbelled and chamfered piers, each containing a niche, run up through the roof to mark the transition from chancel to nave.

The nave consists of six bays, the easternmost dating from 1898 to 1906. The arcade features clustered columns with hollow mouldings, with columns serving as vault shafts. The aisles and west end were galleried until 1898. A sexpartite plaster roof covers the nave with foliate bosses. A canted apse occupies the west end.

The south-east chapel of 1898 features a flat panelled ceiling and a late Gothic reredos incorporating a triptych of circa 1918, painted by Edward A Fellowes Prynne. The first bay of both aisles has a flat ceiling; the south aisle has a flat-arched entrance with an ornate crocketed archivolt of ogee profile. Quadripartite vaulting covers the aisles. Dado panelling runs along the aisles and the base of the nave arcade. An octagonal wooden pulpit on a stone base with late Gothic detailing dates to 1907. Two trefoiled lancets flank the apsed west end, whose embrasures are stencilled in the style of G F Bodley.

The east window and east and south-east windows in the south chapel are by C E Kempe. A Jesse window in the north aisle is by Hugh Easton. Wall monuments at the west end include that to Joseph Allan, who died in 1851, featuring a bracketed bust with drapery, and that to Emily Jane Crozier, a female figure with urn on column. The organ is by Henry Willis, of late 19th-century date, with a case of circa 1965 by A J Denman.