Pepper Pot, Brighton

Pepper Pot
The building from the south, looking along Tower Road
Location	Tower Road, Queen's Park, Brighton, City of Brighton and Hove, United Kingdom
Coordinates	50°49′38″N 0°07′29″W / 50.8272°N 0.1247°W / 50.8272; -0.1247Coordinates: 50°49′38″N 0°07′29″W / 50.8272°N 0.1247°W / 50.8272; -0.1247
Built	1830
Built for	Thomas Attree
Restored	2011
Restored by	Brighton and Hove City Council
Architect	Charles Barry
Architectural style(s)	Classical
Governing body	Brighton and Hove City Council
Listed Building – Grade II
Official name: The Tower or Pepper Pot
Designated	13 October 1952
Reference no.	1381031
Location of the Pepper Pot within central Brighton

The Pepper Pot, also known as the Pepperpot, the Pepper Box or simply The Tower, is a listed building in the Queen's Park area of the English city of Brighton and Hove. Designed and built in 1830 by architect Charles Barry in the grounds of a villa built for the owner of Queen's Park, it survived the villa's demolition and is now one of its only surviving remnants. Its original purpose is unknown—several possible explanations have been given for its construction—and it has had a wide variety of uses in the 20th century. It is now owned by Brighton and Hove City Council, and is protected as a Grade II listed building.

Queen's Park was designed and laid out in 1824 in the east of Brighton, which had developed as a fashionable resort over the previous century as it developed a reputation as a healthy spa town patronised by the Prince Regent, other members of the British Royal Family and high society in general. In 1825, Thomas Attree—a property owner and developer in this part of Brighton—bought the park (at that stage known as Brighton Park) from its first owner, and employed architect Charles Barry to design a villa for him on the edge of the park. The Attree Villa, as it became known, stood in substantial grounds north of the park and was one of the earliest Italianate buildings in England. Barry designed the square building in the Quattrocento style; it was intended to be one of several around the park, but no more were built. Between 1909 and 1966 it was a Xaverian Roman Catholic college, but it fell into disrepair and was demolished in 1972 despite being a Grade II* listed building.

Few structural elements of the villa remain, but the Pepper Pot—which originally stood in the western part of the grounds—remains intact. It was built at the same time as the villa, but its original function is uncertain: theories include a water tower for the villa, a vent for the network of large Victorian sewers beneath Brighton, an observatory or even a folly. Research in 2011, based on a record in the Arcana of Science and Art (published in 1836), suggested that the tower stood above a well and housed a steam engine which drew the water out. Its name was given in the Arcana as "Belvedere Tower". Its present name, which has historically been used locally and has now been adopted more generally, makes reference to its shape.