St Mary and St Abraam Coptic Orthodox Church, Hove

St Mary and St Abraam
The church from the northeast
50°49′51.89″N 0°9′21.04″W / 50.8310806°N 0.1558444°W / 50.8310806; -0.1558444Coordinates: 50°49′51.89″N 0°9′21.04″W / 50.8310806°N 0.1558444°W / 50.8310806; -0.1558444
Location	Davigdor Road, Hove, East Sussex, BN3 1RF
Country	United Kingdom
Denomination	Coptic Orthodox Church
Website	www.stmary-stabraam.co.uk
History
Founded	1994
Dedication	Mary and Abraham of Egypt
Dedicated	1909 (as Anglican church); 1994 (as Coptic Orthodox church)
Architecture
Architect(s)	Clayton & Black (original building); Antonius Saad, Brighton (alterations)
Style	Early English Gothic Revival
Completed	1909
Administration
Division	The Coptic Orthodox Patriarchate

St Mary and St Abraam Church is a Coptic Orthodox Church in Hove, in the English city of Brighton and Hove. It is one of 27 such churches in the British Isles, twelve of which are British Orthodox churches. The Race community in Brighton and Hove was founded in 1990; four years later it moved to its present site on Davigdor Road, on the Brighton/Hove border.

The church is based in a much older building: the former church of St Thomas the Apostle, an Anglican church built in 1909 by the Brighton-based architecture firm Clayton & Black (who were responsible for many local buildings including the Duke of York's Picture House, the French Convalescent Home on the seafront, and a reconstruction of the Theatre Royal). The tall red-brick building, in Early English style, has a large pointed-arch window in its eastern face and five smaller windows across the northern face, where the entrance is situated. The last service was held on 17 January 1993, and the church was declared redundant on 20 July 1993. Although the Diocese of Chichester identified the building's poor condition as one of the reasons for closure, the Coptic Orthodox Church bought it shortly afterwards. St Thomas the Apostle's parish was subsumed into that of All Saints Church nearby, and its locally-produced Stations of the Cross were moved to St Mary's Church, Kemptown.

The founders of the Race community in Hove were refugees from the Second Sudanese Civil War, and many of the worshippers are from Sudan. Many Copts of Egyptian origin also attend the church. In 2000, there were believed to be around 4,000 Sudanese worshippers, with two priests.