Western Pavilion

Western Pavilion
The building from the southwest
Location	9 Western Terrace, Brighton, Brighton and Hove, East Sussex BN1 2LD, United Kingdom
Coordinates	50°49′29″N 0°09′07″W / 50.8246°N 0.1519°W / 50.8246; -0.1519Coordinates: 50°49′29″N 0°09′07″W / 50.8246°N 0.1519°W / 50.8246; -0.1519
Built	1827–1828
Built for	Amon Henry Wilds
Architect	Amon Henry Wilds
Architectural style(s)	Hindoo/Indo-Saracenic
Listed Building – Grade II*
Official name: The Western Pavilion
Designated	13 October 1952
Reference no.	1381108
Location within central Brighton

The Western Pavilion is an exotically designed early 19th-century house in the centre of Brighton, part of the English city of Brighton and Hove. Local architect Amon Henry Wilds, one of the most important figures in Brighton's development from modest fishing village to fashionable seaside resort, built the distinctive two-storey house between 1827 and 1828 as his own residence, and incorporated many inventive details while paying homage to the Royal Pavilion, Brighton's most famous and distinctive building. Although the house has been altered and a shopfront inserted, it is still in residential use, and has been listed at Grade II* by English Heritage for its architectural and historical importance.

Amon Henry Wilds, his father, Amon Wilds, and another architect, Charles Busby, went into partnership early in the 19th century, and quickly became Brighton's most important firm of architects. When the Wildses moved from nearby Lewes to Brighton in about 1814, the latter's transformation from small, declining fishing village to fashionable, high-class seaside and leisure resort had already started; but the three architects jointly and individually led the town through its period of greatest success, when they established their trademark Regency architectural style in a succession of major residential developments. They designed a wide variety of religious and secular buildings of all types as well, and Amon Henry Wilds was also involved in engineering projects.

Amon Henry Wilds was prolific throughout the 1820s, and after 1822 he increasingly worked on his own. In 1827, he was commissioned to build a mansion for Sir David Scott, 2nd Baronet, on the south side of Western Road—the main route from Brighton to the Brunswick Town estate and Hove. Sillwood House, named after Scott's Berkshire residence of Silwood Park [sic], was ready in 1828. At the same time, on land next to the mansion, Wilds developed a small terrace of five houses called Western Terrace and for a time resided in the central house (now No.6). These five houses were in the Neoclassical style with stucco and columns; beyond these, the terrace incorporated the mansion's coach house; and at its north end Wilds built his own house in a different style again.