BPC00363
Aquatint, drawn, engraved and published by J Bruce in his Select Views of Brighton, 1829. This illustration is the re-engraved plate of BPC00362, which showed the church spire as originally planned. When the plans for the spire were abandoned, Bruce re-engraved the plate and took nearly two inches off the sky. In Bruce’s 1827 History of Brighton he describes the church as being built in Purbeck Stone (Portland Stone) and that it reflected lasting credit on Mr Barry the architect and Mr William Ranger Junior of Brighton, the builder. The cost was estimated at £15,000.
In his History of Brighthelmstone, J A Erredge notes the symbolism of the trees that were originally planted in the churchyard – the cedar (selected by Solomon for the first Temple), the weeping willow (a native of Babylon upon which the exiled Israelites hung their harps as they mourned the loss of Jerusalem), the sycamore (which Zaccheus climbed to see Jesus in the crowd), the thorn (from the crown of thorns) and the aspen (from which the cross is said to have been formed). He lists 15 other symbolic species that were also planted.
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