Brighton College Chapel

Brighton College Chapel

A private school chapel built in 1859 by George Gilbert Scott, with significant extensions added as a war memorial in 1922–23 by Thomas Graham Jackson, an alumnus of the College who had been articled to Scott. The building is constructed of flint with Caen stone dressings, supplemented by Clipsham stone dressings in the 1922–23 work; the roofs are tiled. The chapel is designed in the Gothic Revival style with all tracery in the Geometrical style. It forms an important architectural group with other College buildings including the Classroom and Head Master's House, the Dormitory and Administration range, the Burston Gallery and Hall, and the music room and hall to the north, all listed for group value.

Scott's original chapel consisted of an aisleless nave and a two-bay chancel. The current building comprises a nave of three bays and a chancel of three bays with a north aisle and south chapel, the chancel having been enlarged by Jackson as the war memorial extension. The north elevation is largely obscured by the music room and hall, also by Scott.

The south elevation displays three pointed-arch windows with hood mouldings, each containing three lancets with the two outer lights topped by cusped trefoils. Heavy buttresses with two set-backs stand between the windows and at the corners, with a sill band running across all features and continuing to the west elevation. The west elevation features a simple pointed-arch entrance in its centre, above which are two pointed-arch windows each with two lights topped by a quatrefoil roundel. At the gable centre is a roundel with very deep splays filled with three cusped quatrefoils. The gable has kneeler and coping with a floriate gable cross. Corner buttresses match those on the south side.

The interior walls are plastered throughout with only stone dressings exposed. Scott's chapel originally had a parochial seating arrangement. The present collegiate seating with finely carved return stalls dates from 1911 and was executed by Messrs TB Colman and Sons. An organ is positioned in the north wall.

Of particular note is a fine collection of memorial tablets dating from 1882 to 1898, designed by Jackson and carved, many in alabaster, by Farmer and Brindley. These tablets adopt a variety of post-Reformation classical styles to reproduce the accretive quality of real church interiors. Farmer and Brindley also executed carving in the College buildings designed by Jackson along Eastern Road.

The nave roof, dating from Scott's time, covers three bays, each consisting of an arched truss supported by a pair of simply chamfered corbels, with intermediate bays of simply strutted principals. Common rafters are exposed and form scissor braces towards the ridge. Scott's original east window was reused by Jackson as the east window of his extension.

Jackson's chancel matches the width of Scott's nave and reproduces the overall impression of the original while introducing subtle distinctions in his work: shallow set-back buttresses and stepped springing bands along the south elevation. The chancel projects well beyond the aisle and south chapel, with corner buttresses similar to those of the south chapel. The five-light chancel window follows Scott's design and is in the Geometrical style. Four-light Geometrical windows light the east walls of the south chapel, while the north aisle is lit by a three-light window and three flat-arched windows, two of which have simply carved stone columns in deep splays.

The main entrance to the chapel is set in the west corner of the north aisle, with an additional pointed-arch entrance in the west wall of this aisle. The three windows of the south chapel follow a similar design to Scott's original but with sharper and more acute cusping. At the junction between old and new work on the west face of the south chapel, Jackson deliberately distinguished his work from the original, creating an ad hoc appearance with the west door inauspiciously positioned in the corner and the reused window above set off-line with the gable peak. Internally, this junction is marked equally self-consciously: the original pair of wall shafts were cut down by Jackson and left sitting awkwardly against the haunches of the first bay of his three-bay chancel arcade.

The chancel arcade is supported by pairs of round columns and shallow corbels, with subordered arches of very shallow projection. The north and south aisles are differentiated, the south aisle being broader and featuring an open-framed roof of six tie-and-collar-beam trusses. From each arched tie springs a king stud and a pair of queen posts supporting an arched, strutted collar. The trusses are paired behind each arcade column with a single truss at the east and west walls. The ceiling is five-part with a flat centre and angled sides, all boarded and panelled. The north aisle has a lean-to roof with exposed common rafters and principals and two heavy through purlins; an arched-braced joist springs from the north face of each column to support the north wall.

Seating in Jackson's chancel and the wrought-iron altar rails were executed by Farmer and Brindley. The chapel contains stained glass by Clayton and Bell (1875–1911), Dudley Forsyth (1919, exhibited at the Royal Academy), and Morris and Company (1923–27). A panelled wood reredos and a sacrarium paved with black and white marble squares complete the interior. The remainder of the floor is laid in wood block set in herringbone pattern.