Hanningtons Department Store

Hannington’s Department Store is a late 1866 department store, designed by Henry Jarvis, located in Brighton. It is a building of group value, appreciated for its contribution to the townscape. The building is constructed of painted brick in Flemish bond, with a parapeted roof.

The exterior is four storeys high, above a basement, and has a four-window range. The architectural style is High Victorian Gothic. The first and second floors have flat-arched windows, set into round-arched aedicule niches recessed from the front wall. On the first floor, the niches are set under plain Gothic aedicules with gabled tympanums, and the window heads are connected by a springing band. The second floor has a sill band; the window-niche heads have architraves with hood mouldings, and between the chamfered window lintel, which features ogee stops, and the round head of the niche is a blind roundel. The rebated jambs of the second-floor windows are flanked by an attached column with a capital cast in naturalistic forms. The third-floor windows are segmental arched, set under aedicules consisting of Gothic gables supported by a pair of corbels, which intersect with the entablature's bracketed cornice. These features are repeated in the first bay of the right return, which is partially obscured by a 1989 bridge spanning the north end of Market Street. At the rear of the return, flat-arched windows are grouped into shallow round-arched arcades; the entablature breaks out over the centre to form a shallow pediment with a blind roundel.

The ground floor interior features cast-iron columns standing on broached socles. The upper two thirds of each column shaft are diapered, and the capitals are formed from stylised acanthus leaves supporting an octagonal impost block.

Hannington’s began as a textile and hosiery business in North Street in 1808, and the store expanded through a series of additions, including the acquisition of Hannington’s Corner in 1924 and further properties in 1960 and 1974. Plans by the architect Henry Jarvis, dated January 1866, are held at the Borough’s Plans Registry Office. This listing does not include any other parts of the Hannington’s complex.