List of demolished places of worship in Brighton and Hove
In the city of Brighton and Hove, on the English Channel coast of Southeast England, more than 40 former places of worship—many with considerable architectural or townscape merit—have been demolished, for reasons ranging from declining congregations to the use of unsafe building materials. Brighton and Hove was granted city status in 2000 after being designated a unitary authority three years earlier through the merger of the fashionable, long-established seaside resort of Brighton and the mostly Victorian residential town of Hove. In both towns, and in surrounding villages and suburbs, a wide range of Christian churches were established—mostly in the 19th and early 20th centuries. More than 150 of these survive (although not all are still in religious use), but demolition and the redevelopment of sites for residential and commercial use has been happening since the 1920s. Postwar trends of declining church attendance and increasing demands for land accelerated the closure and destruction of church buildings: many demolitions were carried out in the 1950s and 1960s, and five churches were lost in 1965 alone. Although most of these buildings dated from the urban area's strongest period of growth in the 19th century, some newer churches have also been lost: one survived just 20 years.
The former fishing village of Brighthelmston, with its hilltop parish church dedicated to St Nicholas, experienced steady growth from the mid-18th century as its reputation as a fashionable resort grew. More chapels and churches were founded as the seasonal and permanent population grew; one of the first was linked to the Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion, a Methodist-based sect whose stronghold was the county of Sussex (which Brighton was part of). The first chapel on the site, founded in 1761, was the Connexion's first church in England. A Baptist chapel of 1788 in Bond Street, the predecessor of Salem Strict Baptist Chapel (demolished 1974), was the first of many places of worship for that denomination in the Brighton area. Neighbouring Hove, which also had an ancient parish church (dedicated to St Andrew), in turn began to thrive, and churches of many denominations were built as its population rose.
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