Brighton College BUILDING AMBITIONS

ISSN: 2632-6523 Brighton College BUILDING AMBITIONS REGENCY SOCIETY OCCASIONAL PAPER 1 SPRING 2019 Regency Society 1 Brighton College BUILDING AMBITIONS LESSONS IN AMBITION The Buildings of Brighton College This is the first of our new series of hope other institutions in our city will more Occasional Papers about the built Occasional Papers. It replaces the learn from. heritage of Brighton and Hove. Raising Regency Society Journal. We are grateful to the many members awareness and promoting excellence of Brighton College past and present in design are core to our purpose. We who have helped make this publication look forward to hearing from potential Brighton College is a fine example of possible, giving generously of their time, authors of future issues in this series. an ambitious approach to building thoughts and research. We are also Contact [email protected] success in every sense. The history of its grateful for the college’s partnership in buildings recounted here demonstrates the cost of publication. Roger Hinton, Chairman of the Regency that the college has not always been the Society, March 2019 leading institution it is today. Vision, I would like to thank John McKean for top quality design and a refusal to producing this first issue of what we hope compromise have contributed centrally will be a successful new venture for the to its transformation. This has clearly not Regency Society. The Regency Society always been easy, and is an example we would like in the future to produce Introduction This construction of Brighton College Tudor gatehouse but added a very programmes of the past decades, from its beginning in 1845 to its very contemporary asymmetry to the begins on page 23. successful present day is quite a story. ground level, which for those with One learns much about how an The college’s attempts to define itself eyes to see, is typically Victorian. The institution sees itself from the way in built form offer a complicated, project ran out of steam when only it builds itself. The story of Brighton though illuminating journey, involving half built. Remaining truncated for 130 College has lessons not only for as much failure as success. years, it was probably easy to forget institutions but for the city. Pride in Our front cover, the gateway to that they job was half done. place and ambition for excellence our tale, immediately raises the issues The College’s 21st-century, needs much more than money. Put at at the centre of informed debate on historically-aware architect recreated its simplest, to achieve an articulate, any institution concerned with quality the 19th century memory of the 16th attractive and sophisticated building in its built environment. How are its century tower. The top half of what you need an articulate, attractive and buildings read? How do you add new we see in this picture is 21st century. sophisticated client. building to complement and enhance But the proudly completed gateway But buildings are not just an existing estate? What happens is in no way diminished by its crisp, reflections of their institution. As when, for one reason or another, that stone double-glazed windows making Winston Churchill wisely noted, grip falters? no pretence to be draughty old leaded we create our buildings - and our The great ‘whoosh!’ of this panes. It could only be of our time, for buildings create us. picture is of the towering entrance to those with eyes to see. the college, with its battlements and Rather than dwell on this pointed arches. Though designed in parable, we invite you to ponder this the late 19th century, features like tale yourself. Presented as a simple these were already a theatrical conceit chronology, it falls into three parts. in the 16th century when Ann Boleyn’s Part One, its first sixty years begins on Gateway at Hampton Court was built. page 3 opposite. Part two, virtually its The College’s 19th century, historically- 20th century, begins on page 15. aware architect recreated the famous Part Three, the great building Regency Society Occasional Papers. No 1: Spring 2019 ISSN: 2632-6523 Views expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Regency Society of Brighton & Hove, © 2019. Published by the Regency Society of Brighton & Hove, 12 Abbotts, 159 Kings Road, Brighton BN1 2FA Designed and printed by reprintbrighton.com 2 Regency Society BUILDING AMBITIONBrighton College BUILDING AMBITIONS By John McKean Brighton College’s efforts to define itself in built form, have waxed and waned over its nearly two centuries. Had it not been for its renaissance in the 21st century, this might have been a tale too depressing to tell. Today there are important lessons here for all concerned with the quality of our built environment. meet in the National School building PART ONE 1845 – 1907 on Church Street (where Carluccio stands in the 21st century) to plan Being a tale of high ambition defeated by circumstance, of for ‘a college on Church of England hubristic architectural ideas and clients blind to the value of principles’. Moreover, it will not be a forming high quality places; of concerns easily lost amidst financial beneficent foundation, but a business; a company built of its shares. mismanagement and bankruptcy. In November 1845 a meeting For any institution, its foundation process is always very revealing. Were I to is held in Brighton Town Hall to establish what now becomes the imagine the opening of a new school, I’d presume an educational purpose last of England’s urban ‘proprietary’ driving it, the funds raised to get it going, a site purchased and the buildings rather than private, endowed schools, erected. Then, with staff in place, off it goes. This innocent presumption the first Sussex ‘public’ school. (This would fit with my having written quite a lot about the beginnings of new confusing term was adopted later, English universities in the early 1960s. after the 1864 Clarendon Commission forced reform on the old beneficent Brighton College, in the 1840s, begins After the debauched decades of establishments - such as Eton, Harrow rather differently. When it opens, it has Georgian England, the moral tone has or the Bluecoat schools – founded no land, no buildings and certainly not to be raised. In Brighton, only half the on generous legacies for local poor enough money; neither bequests and population even attends the national children but by then deeply corrupt generous legacies nor funds from any church (as the shocking 1851 census and abusive – by opening places to the civic or public purse. shows), while the English average ‘public’ after a competitive entry exam To ensure the moral fibre of the is a deplorable enough 60 per cent. in the classics; one unlikely to be won gentlemen who would take the civic Things must change. by a local poor scholar.) and national reins on behalf of their Symbolically, the queen is even We need not concern ourselves pious young queen, private schools intending to sell off the Royal Pavilion with what the ‘Provisional Committee’ are being founded in towns across estate. A group of the Brighton great formed that afternoon ‘to Prepare the land in the 1830s and 1840s. and good, mostly entitled ‘Rev.’, a Plan for the Proposed College at Occasional Paper 1 3 Brighton College BUILDING AMBITIONS Brighton’ intended to happen within their college. The subject of this study is the shells this institution grows, in which to house and identify itself, and to represent it within our town through the subsequent 175 years. But its foundation process is the seed from which grows both its strengths and its problems. While the founding committee includes a few senior army officers and members of the nobility and gentry, almost half are Anglican clergymen. They have to sell shares, each linked to a (not automatically guaranteed) place in the school; they have no buildings, far less a site. But they, who became the council of the nascent college, appoint a principal (an evangelical Rev in their Portland House, the first home of Brighton College. own image) six months later and, within a further six months, in January Above: in a print published in 1829, showing the county hospital beyond, to its north east. 1847, are open for business. And ‘the Right: in a photograph of 1855-60, showing St George’s Church to the east. school’s first business,’ as its historian Between the publication of these images, to the college it is known as Lion House. A model Martin Jones so nicely puts it, is ‘to be of the lion surmounting its facade, is ceremoniously dragged from here to the foundation a nursery of Christian gentlemen.’ laying of the college’s first new building. Their organisational structure needs them to be in business smartly We know that Portland House, the within St Dunstan’s and then the NHS to make their shares attractive and to grand mansion topping Portland Place, to this day—dates from the 1840s. That attract the fees. They quickly take a designed by Charles Busby for Major second rebuild dates from a decade three-year lease on ‘Lion House’ at the Villeroy Russell, had been burned down later, once Brighton College has moved head of Portland Place (around where before completion in 1825; the fire is on. In 1846 the first rebuilt grand other schools are also starting to fill undisputed and usually described as mansion (planned, like the original, with up the new buildings), as they begin total destruction. I suspect, however, its two wings as separate and side- to consider premises appropriate to that at least the masonry shell stands entered) houses the nascent college.

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