Viva Brighton Issue #50 April 2017

BITS AND BOBS
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PUB: THE FONT
“Classy joint,” says my mate Dave, down from
London for the day, who’s asked me if I fancy
Friday-afternoon lunch, in a swanky restaurant,
on his business account. Thing is, I need to do
some fieldwork research on the Font, so I’ve told
him we’re eating there instead. I arrive early, and
wait with a pint of Camden Hells, absorbing the
oddity of my surroundings. I’ve never before
been in a pub that was originally designed as a
Nonconformist chapel.
I’ve done enough onscreen research to bore poor
Dave to tears. In the late-seventeenth century,
when Brighton was expanding as a fashionable
resort, it only had one church, St Nicholas’, so a
second was built nearer the seafront, named the
Union Chapel. The date of its foundation is under
dispute: some have it as early as 1668, some
as late as 1698. Its first Minister was a Presbyterian,
and the space was also used by other Non-
Anglican groups; 8% of the city’s population was
then Nonconformist.
In 1825, when Brighton was undergoing its
Regency facelift, the building was redesigned
- probably by Amon Wilds Junior and Charles
Busby - which explains its rather gorgeous Classical
façade, rather difficult to admire nowadays in
the narrow alley it resides in. In 1853 it merged
with the Queen Square Congregational Church
(as featured in VB#49); by 1905 it had become an
Evangelical Mission Hall, and subsequently an
Elim Pentecostal Centre. The evangelists left in
1985, and the building was bought by the Firkin
group, who turned it into a real-ale pub - The
Font and Firkin.
Nowadays, run by pubco Mitchells & Butlers,
it’s become something of a twenty-something
vertical-drinking establishment on Friday and
Saturday nights, filling up with revellers enjoying
the sounds spun by its resident DJs, and the
cheap booze on sale. In the weekdays and daytime
weekends its huge screen (above what used
to be the altar) shows live football and rugby: the
seats in the semi-circular gallery on the first floor
look like the perfect place to settle in for a game.
It’s fairly quiet this Friday lunchtime: I enjoy
another couple of pints of craft lager and a very
reasonably priced (£8.95) meat platter as we catch
up on gossip and news. The sausages are pretty
average, but the steak isn’t, actually, at all bad.
It’s not quite The Salt Room, which Dave had in
mind for the afternoon, but when you can mix
work with pleasure… Alex Leith
Union Street, fontbrighton.co.uk
Painting by Jay Collins
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