St Andrew's Church, Waterloo Street, Hove

St Andrew's Church is a former Anglican church in the Brunswick Town area of Hove, part of the English city of Brighton and Hove. Although declared redundant in 1990, it was one of the area's most fashionable places of worship in the 19th century, when it was built to serve the wealthy residents of the Brunswick estate and surrounding areas. It is listed at Grade I, a designation used for buildings "of outstanding architectural or historic interest".HistoryThe area between Brighton, to the east, and the ancient centre of Hove, to the west, was farmland until the 1820s, when Brunswick Town was developed in response to the success of the Kemp Town estate in Brighton—a planned estate of high-class houses, servants' quarters and other buildings, all in the Regency style. Architect Charles Busby planned and built the Brunswick Town estate, which (together with other nearby residential development) helped the population of Hove to rise from 100 in 1801 to 2,500 in 1841.The only church nearby was St Andrew's, the ancient parish church; this was some distance away and had fallen into near-dereliction. The curate of the (now demolished) St Margaret's Church in Cannon Place, Brighton, Rev. Edward Everard, owned some land near the former Wick Farm, on which the Brunswick Town estate had been built. He was aware that there was no plan to build a church in the estate, so he decided to build a proprietary chapel on his land. Rev. Everard knew Charles Busby, but they had fallen out after a disagreement in 1824 over the commission for the Sussex County Hospital (now the Royal Sussex County Hospital) in Brighton: Everard was overruled by other members of the planning committee and had to break his promise that Busby would be allowed to design it. Therefore, Everard looked for a different architect to design and build the church, and Charles Barry—who had already built the hospital and St Peter's Church in Brighton—was chosen. The church has a blue plaque commemorating Barry.