First Base Day Centre

BRIGHTON

TQ3004NW MONTPELIER PLACE 577-1/31/533 (North side) 13/10/52 First Base Day Centre (Formerly Listed as: MONTPELIER PLACE St Stephen's Church (Deaf and Dumb Institute))

GV II*

Day centre. A plaque on the building relates that it originally stood in Castle Square, Brighton, and was built in 1766 to the designs of John Crunden as the ballroom of the Castle Tavern; that it became the chapel of the Royal Pavilion in 1822; and that it was moved to its present site in 1852. The pedimented street-front and lantern, but not the broad, single-storey porch are of that date, by Cheeseman; and the church was remodelled by Arthur Blomfield in 1889. In the C20 it has been known as St Stephen's church, and was used by the Sussex Diocesan Association for the Deaf and Dumb; it became a Day Centre in 1988, was badly damaged by fire in that year, and restored. Stucco, roof of Welsh slate. EXTERIOR: the building presents a single pedimented front to Montpelier Place, with the addition of the porch which is divided into 3 bays by paired pilasters with stepped capitals: segmental-arched entrance in the centre with double panelled doors and segmental-arched windows in the outer bays. The main front is divided into 3 bays by single Doric pilasters; plain architrave and dentilled pediment; octagonal lantern at the apex, the lower part sheathed in lead, the upper part an open arcade between pilasters; tent-like roof; the return elevations have round-arched windows and transepts, that to the west very shallow; single-storey extension to the east of the original building with flat-arched entrance. INTERIOR: the interior is in the Adam style and consists of a single principal space, the walls articulated with pilasters whose faces are decorated with griffins, urns, palmettes and repeating calyx forms, with palm-leaf capitals; the central portion of each wall is recessed with an arrangement of pilasters and columns, similarly detailed, distyle in antis; entablature with frieze of urns enclosed in ovals, missing at the south-west corner; segmental-arched ceiling with 3 large roses of acanthus ornament. (Carder T: The Encyclopaedia of Brighton: Lewes: 1990-).

Listing NGR: TQ3018004635