Church of the Annunciation, Brighton

The Church of the Annunciation stands in Brighton’s Hanover district on a narrow site on Washington Street. Built in the 1860s for Rev. Arthur Wagner, it served a fast-growing area of poor housing. Wagner paid for its construction himself, following designs by local architect William Dancy. The building’s twin gables of flint and red brick face east, while the west end shows three sets of triple lancet windows. Its Early English Gothic style echoes the nearby St Mary Magdalene’s, another church Wagner funded. The church is worth the journey for its Anglo-Catholic Ritualist heritage and the craftsmen who shaped it. Edward Burne-Jones designed the Annunciation stained-glass window, made by Morris & Co. The east window came from St Nicholas’ Church, designed by Richard Cromwell Carpenter decades earlier. Edmund Scott enlarged the church in the 1880s, adding a north aisle with wooden columns. A tower followed in 1892, designed with F.T. Cawthorn, and a vicarage was built in 1898. Inside, the high altar sits beneath the Carpenter window, its centrepiece a striking east-facing composition. The Burne-Jones window glows above the nave, while the 1892 tower rises above the western entrance. The small site forced clever solutions, yet the church expanded without losing its original character. The Hanover area around it remains a tightly packed mix of terraces and streets.