Viva Brighton Issue 34 December 2015

icks and mortar
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St Nicholas Church
Brighton’s oldest building?
Here’s the mystery about St
Nicholas’ Church. Well, one
of the mysteries. Writing
in 1795, the historian Paul
Dunvan claimed the view
from the site ‘would make
a church-goer even of an
infidel’. Dunvan could see
the sea and the countryside
so well because there weren’t
buildings in the way – the
town itself was ‘about two
hundred yards’ down the hill.
St Nick’s was built in the
late 14th century, when the
church would have been
“very much central” to life in the fishing village of
Brighthelmstone, I’m told. So why the awkward
location? It’s speculated that it had previously
been a holy place for pagans; that it offered a good
landmark for fishermen returning to shore; and/or
that it was a good place to light a warning beacon,
or take refuge, in case of invasion.
There had been a local church named after St
Nicholas, the patron saint of fishermen, since 1091.
But was it on the same site? What happened to it?
When exactly was this one built? And is it really
the city’s oldest building?
No-one really seems sure, though I think the answer
to the latter question is pretty clear. One night
in 1514, French raiders descended on the village,
and set it on fire. Clifford Musgrave writes that
‘Brighton was almost completely destroyed, except
for the church on the hill’.
It was the only church in Brighton for many years,
I’m told, but from the 18th century, as the population
rose, other churches and chapels were built,
as well as a ‘gallery’ in St Nick’s, to cram more
people in.
By 1852, the church was in
real need of renovation. It
had a ‘dark, overcrowded and
generally “cluttered up” appearance,
more appropriate
to the hold of a ship than to a
medieval church,’ according
to AF Day’s guidebook. This
was ‘anathema indeed to
the people of “quality” now
being attracted to the new
Brighton, but greatly loved,
for all its untidiness, by the
ordinary townsfolk.’
The vicar at the time, Henry
Wagner, was a divisive figure - either an energetic
and generous doer of good deeds, or ‘ambitious,
tyrannical, overbearing and selfish’, depending
on who you spoke to. His renovation plans faced
‘determined opposition,’ one guidebook notes.
But with typical wilfulness, he stuck at it, eventually
getting his way ‘by a skilful manoeuvre.’ He
used the fact that the Duke of Wellington, who’d
worshipped at St Nick’s in his youth, had just died.
Why not make the renovation Brighton’s tribute to
the heroic Duke? How could people refuse?
With donations from the public, and a decent sum
of Wagner’s own money, a contractor was hired.
‘Like so many Victorian architects,’ Antony Dale
writes, ‘he lacked the feeling that medieval work
was better than anything he could do in his own
time. His restoration of St Nicholas was therefore
very little short of a complete rebuilding’. Pevsner’s
Architectural Guide agrees with this, but notes that
the place still retains ‘the character of a medieval
village church’. Though, alas, not quite such a good
view. Steve Ramsey
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