Church of the Annunciation, Brighton

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Church of the Annunciation, Brighton
Dedication	The Annunciation
Denomination	Church of England
Tradition	High Church
Administration
Parish	Brighton, The Annunciation
Deanery	Brighton
Archdeaconry	Chichester
Diocese	Chichester
Province	Canterbury
Clergy
Priest	Revd Steven Foster
Other

The Church of the Annunciation is an Anglican church in Brighton, part of the English city of Brighton and Hove. It was one of several churches built in the 1860s on behalf of Rev. Arthur Wagner, the son of Rev. Henry Michell Wagner, Vicar of Brighton (1824–1870), and served a new area of poor housing in what is now the Hanover district.

[edit] History

Arthur Wagner was ordained in 1850.^[1] For the next 20 years, until his father's death, he had some degree of freedom to choose the sites and designs for new churches in Brighton, which was growing rapidly at the time.^[2] Having paid for the construction and opening of one chapel of ease in 1862, in a working-class area in what is now the North Laine area, he decided to do the same in 1864 in another poor area which was being constructed on high ground between the Old Steine (site of the Royal Pavilion) and Queen's Park. The chosen site, on Washington Street, was narrow and offered little room to expand. Nevertheless, a local architect named William Dancy designed a building similar to St Mary Magdalene's (the church financed by Wagner in 1862) but adapted to fit the location.^[2]

The Church of the Annunciation was opened on the feast day it commemorated: 15 August 1864, and was initially administered by curates from St Paul's Church^[3] before being allocated its own parish, which covers much of the present-day Hanover area.^[4] Its popularity ensured that an enlargement was required by 1881. Little could be done in the small space available, but Brighton-based architect Edmund Scott — who had worked with Wagner on St Bartholomew's Church a few years earlier — was able to provide a new north aisle in a similar style to the original south aisle, using wooden columns for support in the same way as Dancy had. The rebuilt church, which cost £5,000 (again, fully funded by Wagner), was consecrated in 1884.^[5]

Reverend Arthur Wagner's churches followed the Anglo-Catholic Ritualist tradition, for which he often faced hostility and attack from reactionary Protestant figures within the Anglican church. In 1902, the ecclesiastical court ruled that many of the elaborate fixtures within the church, including icons, candlesticks and confessional boxes, had to be removed, after receiving a complaint. In the interwar period, however, there was a new wave of decoration and ornamentation, including the introduction of two reredos.^[6]

[edit] Architecture

The main (eastern) side of the church consists of twin gables decorated with flint facings and red-brick surrounds. The western side has three sets of triple lancet windows, the centre set of which is above the high altar. The overall style suggests a revival of Early English Gothic.^[3][7]

In 1882, the church was presented with the east window from St Nicholas' Church, which had been designed for that church 29 years previously by the ecclesiastical architect Richard Cromwell Carpenter. It was built into the centre of the eastern face when the church was being rebuilt by Scott.^[5] A tower was added by Scott and another architect, Cawthorn, in 1892, with a vicarage being built next to the church in 1898.^[6]

[edit] References