St Philip's Church, Hove

St Philip's Church is a former Church of England parish church on New Church Road in Hove, in the city of Brighton and Hove — a Grade II listed building of 1895 by John Oldrid Scott, son of the great Sir George Gilbert Scott, celebrated for its richly patterned polychrome exterior. After more than a century and a quarter of worship, the church closed in October 2023, its freehold offered for sale by the Diocese of Chichester in late 2024.

New Church Road is the old route between the ancient villages of Hove and Aldrington. There had been Roman and Saxon activity at Aldrington, but the settlement declined so severely through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that by 1831 only one person lived there. Hove's rapid mid-Victorian growth revived the area from around 1850, and St Leonard's, Aldrington's ruined parish church, was rebuilt to serve it. By 1894 Aldrington and Hove had merged and Aldrington's population alone exceeded 2,200; a chapel of ease was needed for the area east of St Leonard's, whose rector bought land from the Duke of Portland in November that year and commissioned John Oldrid Scott. Building took less than a year — the first service was held on 28 October 1895 — though consecration waited until 29 May 1898, by which time £5,492 15s 10d had been spent on construction and land. An extension of 1909–10, costing about £4,000, brought an awkward discovery: the deeds transferring the land from the Duke of Portland to the rector were found to be invalid, and under a new arrangement the church became the property of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. It gained its own benefice and parish in 1912, served by ten vicars over its first century; the parish was bounded by Portland Road, Westbourne Street, Westbourne Place, the seafront, Wish Road and Coleman Avenue on the Hove–Aldrington border.

The church is considered a good example of Oldrid Scott's techniques: broadly Gothic Revival in the Decorated style, distinguished above all by its impressive use of materials of various colours and types — knapped flintwork, limestone, Bath stone and red brickwork combined in complex patterns across the exterior, the 1909–10 extension so consistent as to be indistinguishable from the older work. The plan comprises a six-and-a-half-bay nave — the three westernmost bays converted into a church hall in 1956 — north and south aisles, a chancel with chamfered arch, an apsidal lead-roofed Lady chapel, porch, vestry, clerestory and a small flèche; the architects Tetley and Felce added a porch in 1941. The glass is notable: Charles Eamer Kempe, the great Victorian designer, provided the east window and one in the south aisle, and the local firm Cox & Barnard supplied three more — Anthony Gilbert's St George of 1955 commemorating parishioner George Howell; Paul Chapman's 1960 window in memory of William Cheverton, depicting St Cecilia with a musical instrument and "an unusual halo resembling yellow laurel leaves interspersed with roses"; and a 1960 window of Charity commemorating Halcyon Ann Lopez. A new bell was cast in 1961, and on the wall dividing nave from hall the muralist Augustus Lunn painted a large 300-square-foot Sussex-themed mural in 1957–58.

The parish's wider story includes the Holy Cross Church, a mission hall opened in 1903 by Bishop Ernest Wilberforce of Chichester for the northern part of the parish; it joined St Philip's parish in 1912, gained its own in 1932, and is now linked to the Bishop Hannington Memorial Church. The vicar of St Philip's later acquired land for a new hall that was never built — which encouraged the 1956 conversion of the church's west end instead.

St Philip's enjoyed a moment of national attention in its centenary year, when the BBC Radio 4 programme Any Questions? was recorded there on 10 March 1995, broadcast live with a panel including the former Conservative Prime Minister Sir Edward Heath, the Labour minister and SDP founder Roy Jenkins, the former Labour minister Gerald Kaufman, and The Spectator's deputy editor Anne Applebaum.

English Heritage listed the church Grade II on 2 November 1992 — but its future had long been in question. The Brighton and Hove Deaneries Pastoral Strategy Review Group, established in 2000 by the Diocese of Chichester, recommended in its June 2003 report that St Philip's close and be converted to alternative uses, citing its proximity to the ancient parish church of St Leonard's and the inability of both churches to cover their costs. The church carried on for another two decades, offering two Sunday services — until the final service was held on 11 October 2023. Oldrid Scott's flint-and-brick patterned chapel of ease now awaits its next chapter, its Kempe glass and Lunn mural intact behind closed doors on the old road between two vanished villages.