Church of St Patrick And Wall Fronting Road

St Patrick's Church is an Anglican church on a narrow site at 3 Cambridge Road in Hove, off Western Road close to the boundary with Brighton — a Victorian proprietary chapel once mocked as "Paddy's Music Hall" that became, a century later, one of the most remarkable churches in Britain: a place of worship that opened its floor, then its narthex, then half its building to the homeless of the city.

The Brunswick Estate had developed from 1824 at the eastern edge of Hove, on land originally belonging to Wick Farm; from 1851 the whole estate passed to the Brunswick Square Commissioners and was rapidly built up by Sir Isaac Goldsmid, 1st Baronet. St Andrew's Church in Waterloo Street, nominally the estate's church, was far from the new housing and, used mainly by the aristocratic classes, had only eighty free pews — unsuitable for the poorer residents. So an Irish-born priest, Dr James O'Brien, decided to build another church: a proprietary chapel which he owned and ran himself, drawing income from pew rents and fees — though, unusually, no Act of Parliament was ever granted for it. Construction began in July 1857 and the church opened under licence on 20 October 1858, the Bishop of Chichester, Dr Ashurst Turner Gilbert, attending the first service. Known first as St James' Church, it became St Patrick's and St James' in 1865 and finally St Patrick's in 1868 — a fitting dedication for its Irish founder. Construction cost nearly £13,500.

The architect was Henry Edward Kendall Jr — designer of the Sussex County Lunatic Asylum at Haywards Heath, who had worked on Bulwer-Lytton's Knebworth estate — building in the Early English Gothic style in Kentish ragstone with stone dressings and a slate roof. An octagonal tower was started but never completed, leaving a stump in one corner, and only the eastern side of the church is visible from the road. Inside are a chancel with 1890s stencilling and paintings under a hammerbeam roof, side chapels, an aisled nave with gabled clerestory windows, and a south narthex. Distinguished architects furnished it: William Butterfield designed the north window — a "memorial" to Dr O'Brien and his wife Octavia installed while they were both still alive, fourteen years before their deaths in 1884 — another north-eastern window, and the brass lectern of 1873 featuring an eagle and St Patrick; Sir George Gilbert Scott designed the pulpit; and Somers Clarke presented a red sandstone reredos of the Crucifixion in 1887. A Henry Willis & Sons organ arrived in 1865. Critics were unkind: Harry Stuart Goodhart-Rendel dismissed the church as "spacious without grandeur and ornate without grace". More controversial were the services — Dr O'Brien, self-appointed perpetual curate, had a passion for music in worship, and for decades St Patrick's was unrivalled in Brighton or Hove for its music and the size of its choir, earning from the towns' many opponents of High Church practice the mocking nickname "Paddy's Music Hall".

The succession itself made legal history of a small kind: the church was given a parish on 21 August 1885 by the Reverend Ridley Daniel-Tyssen, one of the O'Briens' seven nephews, who took control after his uncle's death despite a Court of Chancery challenge from another nephew — Dr O'Brien having failed to name his heir in his will, while his wife's will incorrectly stated that he had; the Bishop of Chichester was called as a witness. In the late twentieth century the parish absorbed that of St Andrew's, Waterloo Street, closed and declared redundant in 1990, and now covers the area between Holland Road, Lansdowne Road, the Brighton boundary and the seafront.

The church's modern fame began in 1985, when Bishop Eric Kemp of Chichester invited the Community of the Servants of the Will of God — an Anglican monastic community based at Crawley Down — to be involved: six monks took up residence at 23 Cambridge Road, converting the house into the Monastery of Christ the Saviour, though the small order could not sustain the project and withdrew. That same winter, the priest Father Alan Sharpe allowed two homeless people who had come to the vicarage to sleep on the church floor. More followed. In 1987 the narthex was converted into a dedicated night shelter, and the Lorica Trust charity was formed to develop the work — extending the shelter to twelve beds in 1993 and twenty-two in 1999, when it moved into the northern part of the church, the building itself reordered to give the homeless half its space. Father Sharpe resigned in 2008 after an undercover documentary alleged he had given a drug addict money from donated funds — allegations he always denied: "Everything I have done has been open, as a genuine, heartfelt Christian response to the needs of marginalised people." He remained in good standing with the diocese and was appointed priest-in-charge of Sedlescombe. The night shelter closed in 2012, but the hostel continues under Riverside Housing Association, accepting referrals from Brighton and Hove Council's Rough Sleepers Street Services Team, with stays averaging twelve to eighteen months.

The Reverend Dr Steven Underdown — whose King's College London doctoral thesis of 2002 was concerned in part with the life and worship of St Patrick's — served as priest-in-charge from 2009. The church closed as a parish in 2015 and was entrusted by the Bishop of Chichester to the Chemin Neuf Community — the international ecumenical community of Catholic origin — under a Bishop's Mission Order, led at St Patrick's by the Reverend Tim Watson. Paddy's Music Hall sings on: half hostel, half mission, and wholly in the service of the city's margins, as its Irish founder's poor-friendly chapel always was.