Church Of St Paul And Attached Walls

Church of St Paul and Attached Walls

Anglican church built 1846–8, designed by Richard Cromwell Carpenter and built by George Cheeseman. The tower and spire were added 1873–5 by Richard Herbert Carpenter. A narthex was added in 1887 and a fishermen's institute at the west end in the same period, both by George Frederick Bodley. On the south side, a covered way leading to the west end was constructed by Bodley and remodelled by John Leopold Denman in 1937. The building is constructed of knapped flint with limestone dressings, wood and lead, with roofs of slates and tiles.

The church comprises a chancel with a lower roof, a nave, north and south aisles, and a north tower positioned at the junction of chancel and nave. The chancel has angle buttresses and a small gabled chapel alongside the two westernmost bays. The south side features three bays with three pointed-arched windows of three lights with curvilinear tracery, separated by buttresses. The principal entrance is in the east face of the tower, a pointed-arched portal with clustered columns and elaborate moulding to the arch, containing two segmental-arched entrances with foliage architraves. The trumeau acts as a corbel to a statue of St Paul in the tympanum, with roundels depicting scenes from the life of St Paul filling the rest of the space. The stone tower rises sheer to the belfry with two plain stone bands as its only articulation. The upper portion—tower and spire—is constructed of wood sheathed in lead. The wooden tower is octagonal with paired ogee lights to the belfry and tall two-light, one-transom windows with geometrical tracery to each face. Each corner has a buttress crowned by a pinnacle. A balustrade (now largely missing details) sits below a short spire. Flanking walls to either side of the east end are of flint banded and coped with dressed stone, with a gabled pier to the north end. These walls were originally part of a forecourt and were relocated in their present position following street-widening in the 1930s.

The interior is plastered throughout. The chancel contains fragments of painting from around 1860 flanking the reredos and further fragments on stencils on the north wall. The floor is paved with encaustic tiles by Minton's, using an early decorative design in the sanctuary and down the centre of the choir, with alternating red and black tiles elsewhere. The chancel windows are framed by engaged colonnettes and archivolts. The ceiling features painted decoration with banded ribs, bosses and sacred emblems, designed by George Frederick Bodley around 1905. An organ by Hunter and Sons of Clapham was installed in 1893, with crocketed and embattled pinnacles. The choir stalls are decorated with blank cinquefoil arcading and have carved misericords.

The chancel arch comprises three clustered columns with foliage capitals supporting a double-chamfered arch. The rood screen, designed by Richard Cromwell Carpenter, has cinquefoil tracery to the arcade. Figures of saints painted on the lower panels were created by S. Bell. The vaulted canopy and rood were designed by George Frederick Bodley and executed around 1910. Wall painting above the chancel arch—Christ in Glory—is also by S. Bell.

The nave extends six bays with quatrefoil columns and double-chamfered arches. The timber roof has arched braces carried on carved corbels, with three layers of curved wind-braces.

The north aisle contains a pointed-arched entrance to the vestry at its east end with chamfered piers and archivolt, a shoulder-arched entrance, and five windows with trefoil tracery in the north wall, plus one window in the west wall. The south aisle has one pointed-arched entrance (now blocked), an east window with quatrefoil tracery, and six windows to the south with trefoil tracery. Both aisles have lean-to roofs with braces carried on carved corbels.

At the south-east corner is the Chapel of the Holy Spirit, now used as a store, featuring a panelled dado and glass to the lantern by Charles Eamer Kempe.

Nearly all stained glass in the chancel, nave and aisles (except the window over the former entrance in the south aisle) was designed by Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin around 1848 and made by Hardman and Co. The Tree of Jesse in the east window and the figures of St Paul and his companions in the west window are particularly notable. The glass was repaired and refurbished by David Lawrence in 1990–91. It is exceptionally rare to find a church with almost all windows filled with stained glass of a single date by Pugin and Hardman.

The pulpit, designed by Richard Cromwell Carpenter, is octagonal and wooden, decorated with blank tracery and painted panels, standing on a stone octagonal shaft; the tester was added around 1960. Early 19th-century Neoclassical communion rails, originally from a church in Edinburgh, sit in front of the chancel, and similar rails from the Convent of St Mary, Rottingdean, are positioned behind the central altar. An alabaster memorial to Father A.D. Wagner, designed by George Frederick Bodley around 1902, is present but was not visible at the time of inspection. An early 16th-century retable stands in the south aisle. On the south wall of the south aisle is a small bronze and enamel memorial to William Bainbridge Reynolds and his wife, presumably by Reynolds, dating to around 1935. The octagonal stone font, designed by Richard Cromwell Carpenter, is plain except for a small panel carved in low relief.

In the narthex are two groups of four trefoiled windows in the west wall and one sexfoil window in the south wall, all fitted with glass by Charles Eamer Kempe.

The fishermen's institute features a fireplace with a massive segmental-arched canopy designed by George Frederick Bodley and panelling of 1937. The main part of the covered passage to the south, remodelled by John Leopold Denman, has a low timber roof with pointed-segmental arches and decorative leading to the windows.

St Paul's was financed by Reverend H.M. Wagner. His son, Reverend A.D. Wagner, was its first perpetual curate and later vicar. The church was designed to serve the poorer community in the western part of Brighton and became the first centre of the Oxford Movement in the town.