Brighton and Hove, a city on the south-east coast of England, has a large and diverse stock of buildings "unrivalled architecturally" among the country's seaside resorts. The urban area is made up of the formerly separate towns of Brighton and Hove, nearby villages such as Portslade, Patcham and Rottingdean, and 20th-century estates such as Moulsecoomb and Mile Oak. As of 2013, the conurbation had a population of about 253,000. About half of the geographical area is classed as built up.
Brighton's transformation from medieval fishing village into spa town and pleasure resort, patronised by royalty and fashionable high society, coincided with the development of Regency architecture and the careers of three architects whose work came to characterise the seafront. The previously separate village of Hove developed as a comfortable middle-class residential area "under a heavy veneer of [Victorian] suburban respectability": large houses spread rapidly across the surrounding fields during the late 19th century, although the high-class and successful Brunswick estate was a product of the Regency era. Old villages such as Portslade, Rottingdean, Ovingdean and Patcham, with ancient churches, farms and small flint cottages, became suburbanised as the two towns grew and merged, and the creation of "Greater Brighton" in 1928 brought into the urban area swathes of open land which were then used for housing and industrial estates. Many buildings were lost in the 1960s and 1970s, when Brighton's increasing regional importance encouraged redevelopment, but conservation movements were influential in saving other buildings.
Much of the city's built environment is composed of buildings of the Regency, Victorian and Edwardian eras. The Regency style, typical of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, is characterised by pale stuccoed exteriors with Classical-style mouldings and bay windows. Even the modest two-storey terraced houses which spread rapidly across the steeply sloping landscape in the mid-19th century display some elements of this style. Extensive suburban development in Hove and the north of Brighton in the late 19th and early 20th century displays architectural features characteristic of those eras, with an emphasis on decorative brickwork and gables. Postwar developments range from Brutalist commercial and civic structures to pastiches of earlier styles. Sustainable building techniques have become popular for individual houses and on a larger scale, such as at the long-planned New England Quarter brownfield development.
Local and national government have recognised the city's architectural heritage through the designation of listed building and conservation area status to many developments. Since 1969, 34 conservation areas have been created, covering areas of various sizes and eras; and more than 1,200 structures have listed status based on their "special architectural or historic interest".
Historical context
Early buildings
Brighton was originally an agricultural and fishing village surrounded by fields. In the Saxon era, small buildings developed in an area bounded by four streets named after the points of the compass, and a church stood on higher ground inland. Modest cottages for the fishermen stood on the beach below the cliffs.Berry, Sue (1988): Brighton and Hove: Historical Geography, in The fishing industry contributed to the town's first period of growth in the 16th and 17th centuries, but development did not expand beyond the old boundaries. The industry contracted in the early 18th century, and depopulation occurred. Labour and land for redevelopment became cheaper and, because good communication routes were already established, the town was well-placed to grow rapidly again when sea-bathing became fashionable in the mid-18th century. Little pre-18th century architecture remains, although there are some individual buildings. For example, 27 King Street in North Laine is cobble-fronted and retains a timber-framed interior which could be 17th-century. Hove, meanwhile, was a single-street village with a manor house, some modest cottages and a church further inland. Although St Andrew's Church remains in use and Hove Street survives, the manor house was demolished in 1936 and no other original buildings remain.
Early-18th-century descriptions of the old town of Brighton concentrated on how small and low the houses were, and how the lower storeys were characteristically set slightly below ground level. This, and the proximity of the houses to each other, may have offered protection against storms and flooding from the sea. Huddling together may have also helped the houses survive; they were poorly built and had little structural integrity. Typical Lanes buildings are timber-framed and plastered with load-bearing walls of bungaroosh with some flint. Surviving examples can be seen at Bartholomews, Middle Street, and Ship Street, in the area now known as the Lanes.
Buildings of the 16th and 17th centuries and earlier can be found in the old villages absorbed by modern Brighton and Hove. At St Wulfran's Church, Ovingdean, the 12th-century nave and chancel replaced a Saxon structure. St Helen's Church at Hangleton retains 11th-century herringbone masonry and other ancient fabric. The old parish churches—All Saints, Patcham, St Nicolas's, Portslade, St Peter's, Preston, St Margaret's, Rottingdean, and St Nicholas's in Brighton—all retain some features from the 12th to 14th centuries, although they were all subject to Victorian restoration. Hove's oldest secular building is Hangleton Manor, which retains some 15th-century fabric. Other surviving manor houses and mansions in the old villages around Brighton and Hove include Preston Manor, Patcham Place, Stanmer House, Moulsecoomb Place and Ovingdean Grange, while Patcham and Rottingdean have well-preserved lesser houses such as Court House, Down House, Hillside and Southdown House, generally built of brick and flint in the 18th century.
Georgian and Regency periods
The first development outside the four-street boundary of the ancient village was in 1771, when North Row (soon renamed Marlborough Place) was built to the west. Some tarred cobble-fronted buildings survive there. At the same time, inns were becoming established as fashionable venues: the Castle (demolished) and the Old Ship both had large assembly rooms for dancing and high-class socialising. The Castle's assembly rooms of 1754 were redesigned by John Crunden in 1776 in Classical style; in 1761 Robert Golden designed Palladian-style rooms for the Old Ship, later redecorated in a Robert Adamish style after Crunden's work at the Castle. Adam himself redesigned Marlborough House in 1786–1787: with its elegant Neo-Palladian façade and "spatially arresting interior", it has been called the finest house of its era in the city. Coaching inns became important in the late 18th century—there were many on North Street, but the only survivor is the former Clarence Hotel.
Prince George, the Prince Regent (later King George IV) visited Brighton regularly from 1783 and soon wanted a house. A building near the Castle Inn was found, and Henry Holland extended it in a Classical style from 1786. The Royal Marine Pavilion (later renamed the Royal Pavilion) became increasingly important in the growing town as it became the centre of activities for the Prince and his entourage—and the focal point for his regularly changing architectural tastes. Holland revamped the building from 1801 to 1804 in a Chinese style, and the French-inspired interior was changed as well. William Porden added a complex of stables (now the Brighton Dome complex) from 1804, in an Indian style. James Wyatt and later John Nash were commissioned to make further alterations; Nash's work, finished in 1823, gave the building its present opulent Indo-Saracenic Revival/Orientalist appearance.
George's patronage helped Brighton become a fashionable, high-class resort. As it became more popular, it further outgrew its four-street boundaries. Planned development, as opposed to ad-hoc growth, started in the 1780s with North Parade and South Parade alongside Old Steine. By the 1790s it spread well to the east along the East Cliff: New Steine (1790–1795, but refaced in the 1820s) was the first sea-facing square, then came Bedford, Clarence and Russell Squares (all early 19th century) and Brighton's first crescent, Royal Crescent, in 1802. The father-and-son architects Amon and Amon Henry Wilds and their associate Charles Busby began working in the town from 1815, helping to develop the Regency style which now characterises the seafront. Hanover Crescent, Montpelier Crescent, Park Crescent, the Kemp Town estate (Sussex Square, Lewes Crescent, Arundel Terrace and Chichester Terrace) and Brunswick Town (Brunswick Terrace, Brunswick Square and associated streets) were among their set-piece developments. By the early 19th century, Brighton was renowned for its architecture. William Cobbett claimed in 1832 that it "certainly surpass[ed] in beauty all other towns in the world".
Around the same time, the first concerns were raised about the poor quality of houses on the edge of Brighton. Many reports were made over the next decades, but little action was taken.Berry, Sue (1988): Brighton and Hove: Historical Geography, in There was some slum clearance in 1845, when Queen's Road was driven through the Petty France and Durham districts to provide a direct link from the recently built railway station to the town centre.
Railway age and Victorian era
The London–Brighton railway reached the coast in 1841, and westward and eastward links were soon built from Brighton railway station, built in 1841 in Italianate style and added to in 1882. The line to the east crossed the 28-arch, , sharply curved London Road Viaduct, which stood in empty fields when built in 1846.
Development had not yet reached this part of Brighton because the ancient field system to the north and east of the town constrained its growth, as did the Stanford family's ownership of most of the remaining land surrounding Brighton and Hove. They carefully controlled its sale and development, releasing parcels of land gradually and ensuring that visually cohesive planned estates of high-quality housing were built. The area's 19th- and early 20th-century housing accordingly has a clear pattern. The poorest housing was to the east of Brighton; working-class housing for tradesmen, railway workers and other artisans spread to the northeast around Lewes Road, the viaduct and the station; middle-class developments lay north of the centre around London Road; and the highest-quality suburbs developed to the northwest of Brighton and north of Hove on the Stanford family's land.Berry, Sue (1988): Brighton and Hove: Historical Geography, in As originally built, the inner suburbs were of variable architectural quality—small houses with very late Regency-style flourishes predominated, but scattered among these were small-scale industrial and commercial development, several Victorian churches such as St Bartholomew's, St Martin's and St Joseph's, and institutional buildings such as workhouses, hospitals and schools. Thomas Simpson, architect and surveyor to the local school board, built several school buildings, most of which survive with little alteration.