St Martin's Church, Brighton

St Martin's Church
East and south sides of St Martin's Church.
Denomination	Church of England
Churchmanship	High Church
History
Dedication	St. Martin of Tours
Administration
Parish	Brighton, St Martins
Deanery	Brighton
Archdeaconry	Chichester
Diocese	Chichester
Province	Canterbury

St Martin's Church (in full, St Martin with St Wilfrid, St Alban and St Richard Hollingdean) is an Anglican church in Brighton, England, dating from the mid-Victorian era. It is located on the Lewes Road (the present A270) in the Round Hill area of the city, northeast of the city centre and approximately 1.1 miles (1.8 km) north of the seafront. It is the largest church in Brighton by capacity and is noted for its ornate interior.

Although the church was built between 1872 and 1875 and consecrated on 1 May 1875, its founding was closely connected with the former Vicar of Brighton, Reverend Henry Michell Wagner, who had served the town from 1824 until his death in 1870. He had been responsible for the construction of several churches during his period of office, including St Peter's which later became the town's parish church. At the time of his death, he was planning the construction of another and had set aside £3,000 from his personal wealth, but had not decided on a location or any other details.

Wagner's son, Arthur, had been ordained in 1850. When his father died, Arthur Wagner inherited his wealth and set out to build a church both to commemorate him and to fulfil the plans he had towards the end of his life. To achieve this he convened with his half-brothers Joshua and Henry and decided on a site. The area chosen was largely under construction at the time, with large numbers of small terraced houses for poorer people being built to fill the space around the Lewes Road. Some of this development was funded by Arthur Wagner himself, and as neither this area nor the nearby Round Hill district had a proper church, it was considered appropriate to finance and oversee the building of a church at the same time. (A small temporary church which had been built on a nearby street became a school when St Martin's Church opened.)

One action the Revd Henry Wagner had taken before his death was the creation of a "building committee", consisting of other prominent members of the local clergy. The three Wagners offered this committee a choice between constructing a new church on a site chosen by the committee members - in which case only the original £3,000 set aside for the project would be granted, with the committee paying for any work beyond this - and accepting a site chosen by the Wagners, in which case the brothers would bear the full cost. The committee decided to allow the Wagners to choose the site themselves; accordingly, a position on the west side of Lewes Road, just north of the bottom of Elm Grove, was selected.