St Leonards-on-Sea United Reformed Church

The former St Leonards-on-Sea United Reformed Church — originally the St Leonards-on-Sea Congregational Church — is a striking Victorian Nonconformist building in St Leonards-on-Sea, part of the seaside town of Hastings in East Sussex. Described as "one of the most ambitious Nonconformist buildings in Sussex", this great sandstone church of 1863 remains a significant landmark on one of the main roads of the Victorian resort, even though it lost its tall copper spire in the Great Storm of 1987. A Grade II listed building, it is no longer used for worship, but after years of careful restoration it has found a vibrant new life as a market and events venue.

The church was built in 1863 to serve the Congregationalists of St Leonards-on-Sea — the elegant new resort town founded by the builder James Burton in 1827. The Congregationalists, or Independents, were one of the great Nonconformist denominations descended from the Puritan dissenters of the seventeenth century, and at St Leonards they built a church of unusual scale and ambition, in the Gothic Revival style, of local sandstone, crowned by a tall spire that made it a prominent feature of the townscape. Its grandeur reflected the prosperity and confidence of Victorian Nonconformity in the fashionable seaside resorts of the south coast.

The church's history took an unusual turn in the twentieth century. When most Congregational churches joined with the Presbyterians in 1972 to form the United Reformed Church, the St Leonards congregation did not join the new denomination, remaining independent. In 1987 the building suffered a notable loss when its copper spire was brought down in the Great Storm that devastated the south-east of England. The congregation eventually dwindled, and the church fell out of religious use in 2008. For some years it stood empty and was at risk of demolition — a fate that has befallen many redundant Victorian churches.

Its rescue came through private enterprise. The building was bought by a new owner in 2012 and almost completely renovated, before being sold again in 2019. The new owner set about restoring the church painstakingly to its original glory over five years, with the aim of opening it to the public. In April 2024 the lower church hall reopened as an indoor weekend market, open on Saturdays and Sundays, selling vintage and collectable items, while the spectacular Gothic "Great Hall" upstairs has become a registered wedding venue, available to hire for couples, with a large reception area below — so that weddings and receptions can take place in the same building. Thus this ambitious Victorian church has been saved and given new purpose, its fine fabric preserved and once again enjoyed by the public.

The building stands on a main road in St Leonards-on-Sea, the western part of Hastings on the East Sussex coast. The Regency seafront and architecture of James Burton's new town lie close by, along with the old town of Hastings with its fishing quarter, net huts and castle, the site of the Battle of 1066 at Battle Abbey, the High Weald countryside, and the wider Sussex coast, with the cliffs of the Hastings Country Park within easy reach.

From its building as an ambitious Congregational church in 1863, through the loss of its spire in the Great Storm of 1987, its closure in 2008 and its rescue and restoration as a market and wedding venue, the former St Leonards-on-Sea Congregational Church gathers the history of Victorian Nonconformity and modern preservation into one building. A Grade II listed landmark of the seaside resort, saved and given new life, it remains one of the most remarkable Nonconformist buildings in Sussex — a great Victorian church preserved for a new age.