St Barnabas Church, Hove

St Barnabas Church, Hove www.stbarnabashove.co.uk
The church from the northeast
50°50′05″N 0°10′39″W / 50.8346°N 0.1774°W / 50.8346; -0.1774Coordinates: 50°50′05″N 0°10′39″W / 50.8346°N 0.1774°W / 50.8346; -0.1774
Denomination	Church of England
Churchmanship	High Church
History
Dedication	St Barnabas
Administration
Parish	Hove, St Barnabas
Deanery	Rural Deanery of Hove
Archdeaconry	Chichester
Diocese	Chichester
Province	Canterbury
Clergy
Vicar(s)	Fr Lawrence MacLean

St Barnabas Church is an Anglican church in Hove, part of the English city of Brighton and Hove. It was built between 1882 and 1883 to serve residents of the newly developed streets to the south and west of Hove railway station, which had opened in 1865 and had stimulated growth in the previously undeveloped area between the Brunswick estate to the west and Cliftonville to the east.

Preston Manor (to the northeast of present-day Hove) and its surrounding land were sold in 1794 to the family of Richard Stanford, who had been a tenant of the house for many years. The house stayed in the family until 1933, but much of the land was developed with housing in the second half of the 19th century. This included substantial building between 1865 and 1880 on land south of the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway's line between Brighton and Portsmouth, with several wide north-south "Avenues" and higher-density housing filling the gap between the Cliftonville area on the edge of Brighton and the outlying Brunswick estate of exclusive houses built between 1830 and 1850. This new district was originally known as "West Brighton", and the station briefly took this name; over time, the area was fully assimilated into Hove, and the station was renamed to reflect the identity of the town as a whole.

In 1879, the former parish of Hove-cum-Preston was divided into two smaller parishes covering Hove and Preston. The first vicar of the newly created Hove parish, Revd Thomas Pearcy, recognised the need for a church in the area, whose population had increased by 10,000 during the most intensive period of development (1865 to 1880). At a meeting on 14 March 1881 at Hove town hall, a piece of land was offered, and this was purchased for £1,500; a subsequent meeting helped to start the fundraising effort, which by June 1881 had generated £2,500 towards the eventual £6,500 cost of construction.

John Loughborough Pearson, who had designed Truro Cathedral two years earlier, was appointed as the architect of St Barnabas Church in 1882; construction started on 27 May 1882, and continued for a year. The Bishop of Chichester, who had laid the first stone, consecrated the new church on 11 June 1883.