Spring Meeting

250px-St_Mary_Magdalen's_RC_Church,_Upper_North_Street,_Brighton_(NHLE_Code_1381058)

The Brighton and Hove High School kindly provided the venue for a talk given recently by Dr. Sandy Kennedy. Dr Kennedy explained how the re-emergence of Roman Catholicism in 18th and 19th Centuries Brighton was reflected in the buildings used for worship. An Act of Parliament in 1793 had forbidden bells and steeples in Roman Catholic churches in an attempt to restrict their impact on the local non-catholic communities in an age when the Roman Church was still held in suspicion by many as an agent of foreign tyranny. By the time St Mary Magdalen was built in our area some seventy years later, however, such restrictions had been lifted as the soaring steeple in this picture demonstrates.

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