French church may be listed
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The MCHA has applied to English Heritage to have the French protestant church listed. The church is in the city’s Regency Square conservation area, tucked away behind the seafront in a mews that partly serves the adjacent Metropole Hotel.
The church closed in 2008 and is now a private house. The present owners now want to put a glass box over the church’s northern apse. The council has refused the planning application, but it seems likely that there will be an appeal.
We have asked English Heritage to list the building largely because of its cultural significance. The French Protestant Church of Brighton is the only Huguenot church in Britain outside London and is conveniently located opposite the Queensbury Tavern—also known as the Hole in the Wall. The only other purpose-built Huguenot church is on the north side of Soho Square in London. The Brighton church predates the one in Soho Square by half a dozen years.
The church was built in 1887 to serve the 2,000-strong French-speaking community, many of whom were protestants. This Francophone community is an important part of the city’s heritage. This was not just a community of rich folk, but a cross section of classes, ranging from French governesses down to hotel staff and servants.
Part of the inspiration for this modest building programme came from the celebrations surrounding the 200th anniversary of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, in which the Confederate Churches of the Huguenots of London, Canterbury and Brighton played a prominent part. The Huguenot Churches of Holland and local supporters helped to raise the money needed to build the church.The red-brick church was designed by the local architect John G. Gibbins (1843-1932), who had offices in both Brighton and London. Gibbins was a prolific designer of public buildings and the French protestant church is designed in a simple style for a small congregation. It is reminiscent of chapels in northern France.
Boxing stupid
What’s green, as tall as President Nicolas Sarcozy and coming to a street near you? The answer is one of Openreach’s new fibre optic junction boxes.
The boxes are all part of the plans for super-fast broadband in the city. It will enable very large files to be transferred quickly, allowing your doctor, for example, to download your X-rays electronically from your hospital.
But the boxes are 5’ 3” tall—which is close to one Sarcozy in European units—4’ wide and 18 inches deep.
Openreach, which is a subsidiary of British Telecom, only has to get planning permission for these boxes in conservation areas. It has already run into stiff opposition in St Albans and Muswell Hill, where 20 boxes were refused planning permission.
We organised a meeting with Openreach to discuss what its siting guidelines were for the location of boxes in conservation areas and in the proximity of listed buildings. We also wanted to know what options there were for different-size boxes and if the equipment could be put underground.
Openreach has one size of box. We asked why NTL had boxes a quarter of the size. Openreach simply said it was a different system. There are no special rules for conservation areas and they wouldn’t consider putting some of the equipment underground. They were completely inflexible and showed no sign of wanting to find any compromise.
The new boxes will not replace the existing junction boxes. And they cannot be sited on hills, apparently because Openreach is unwilling to spend any money laying a concrete plinth.
By early June Openreach had submitted 28 planning application for these boxes in the city centre. Five of these are in our conservation area. There will be a grand total of 77 planning applications in the Hove telephone exchange area—which includes our conservation area.
When the council’s Conservation Advisory Group discussed the first batch of boxes it was dismayed at BT’s “one size fits all” approach. The group recommended refusing the first batch of boxes, largely because it felt that BT had failed to explore all the options.