Church of the Sacred Heart, Hove

The Church of the Sacred Heart is a Roman Catholic church in Hove, part of the English city of Brighton and Hove. It is the oldest of Hove's three Roman Catholic churches, and one of eleven in the city area. It has been designated a Grade II Listed building.HistoryRoman Catholic worship was prohibited in Britain between the time of the English Reformation and the late 18th century. At that time, some Acts of Parliament were passed to remove some of the restrictions. The Roman Catholic Relief Act 1791 allowed Roman Catholic churches to be built for the first time. In Hove's neighbour, Brighton, a community quickly established itself and built a permanent church, St John the Baptist's, in 1835. Hove's community took longer to become established; by the 1830s they were meeting secretly in a chapel established in a private house, but there had been no thought of building a permanent church. The first plans were made in the 1870s, when the former priest in charge of St Mary Magdalen's Church in Brighton, Fr George Oldham, left money in his will for the establishment of a mission church. He died in 1875, and the decision to establish Hove's first church was made the following year. Finding a site was troublesome: the original choice, on Tisbury Road, was abandoned in favour of one opposite Hove Town Hall, which the Church authorities bought for £3,746. Although an architect—John Crawley, a London-based ecclesiastical designer who had built several churches in Sussex and Hampshire—had been selected, not enough money was available to execute his proposed design immediately; and during the delay, the West Brighton Estate Company (which owned the surrounding land and the houses on it) complained about the supposed negative effect a Roman Catholic church would have on house prices. The Company bought the land back from the Church and agreed to help them find a new site; after Denmark Villas in the far northeast of Hove was considered and rejected, land on the west side of Norton Road was selected in October 1879. John Crawley's plans were approved a year later, and building work started on 3 November 1880 with the laying of the foundation stone.