Description

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

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• St Stephen's Church, Brighton at Wikipedia
• Wikidata Q7595471

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Nottinghamshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Warwickshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Suffolk: West: The Buildings of England (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Hampshire: South (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Wiltshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Northumberland (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)