Brighton Religion

Spending a day in Brighton I could hardly miss looking in at St Bartholomew's Ann Street, could I, especially as it was only round the corner from the car park, looming over the blocks of flats like some red-brick cruise liner from a 1930s Cunard poster. Of course I'd seen pictures of it before, Father Wagner's stupendous 1870s marvel which quite justifiably outraged every good Protestant in the Church of England, and just went up the candle from there. But nothing prepares you for the sheer size of it internally. Because the space is unbroken, and the flat wall pillars soar upwards into the dark recesses of the pitched roof, it seems even bigger than it is. The corpus of the crucifix on the High Altar is life size.
You just know that what goes on here is a bit mad, but it's a madness that carries with it such conviction and intensity (the building leaves little option) that you can only stand and gaze - as people clearly do, constantly coming and going while I was there. I wonder whether anyone reflects how bizarre it is that this amazing building stands here amid a downbeat housing estate with a 1960s prefab primary school abutting it on one side.

I do like the freakish confessional booths that look like little wooden Serbian churches!