page_title: Clayton & Black
section_title: New buildings
hierarchical_section_title: Clayton & Black / Summary of works / New buildings
caption_attribution_description: Atlas Chambers, 33 West Street, Brighton. Offices designed by the local architecture firm Clayton &amp; Black.
context_page_description: Clayton & Black were a firm of architects and surveyors from Brighton, part of the English city of Brighton and Hove. In a career spanning the Victorian, Edwardian and interwar eras, they were responsible for designing and constructing an eclectic range of buildings in the growing town of Brighton and its neighbour Hove. Their work encompassed new residential, commercial, industrial and civic buildings, shopping arcades, churches, schools, cinemas and pubs, and alterations to hotels and other buildings. Later reconstituted as Clayton, Black & Daviel, the company designed some churches in the postwar period.
  Charles E. Clayton and Ernest Black, their sons Charles L. Clayton and Kenneth Black, and other architects articled to the firm, worked in a range of styles. The "architectural pantomime" of their Tudor Revival King and Queen pub and the elaborate Classical façade of the First Church of Christ, Scientist contrast with their plain Neo-Georgian Barclays Bank branch and the Gothic Revival St Thomas the Apostle's Church. Elsewhere in Brighton and Hove, they designed buildings in the Flemish Renaissance, Arts and Crafts, Art Deco and François Premier Revival styles.
context_section_description: Gwydyr Mansions, Holland Road, Hove (1890)
  Named after Peter Drummond-Burrell, 22nd Baron Willoughby de Eresby, who at the time of his visits to Hove's Brunswick estate in the 1820s was the 2nd Baron Gwydyr, these were built on the initiative of the Holland Road Baptist Church's pastor.  Wealthy people were expected to occupy the building: the 50 flats each had a room for a servant.  From the start it had a 60-seater residents' restaurant and a basement barber shop.  The latter is still in operation and was refitted in vitrolite in 1936.  The building has bands of red brick and ashlar, oriel and canted bay windows, corner turrets, expansive gables and an entrance set between Tuscan columns and below a pediment.
  French Convalescent Home, De Courcel Road, Brighton (1895–1898; Grade II-listed)
  Built at Black Rock on behalf of the French government, this building's curious French Renaissance Revival styling makes it appear "out of place on Brighton's seafront" (which consists almost exclusively of stuccoed Regency-style buildings).  Described variously as "drab", "gauche", "chateau-like" and "interesting", it was closed in 1999 and converted into luxury flats.  Steep-roofed pavilions with some ironwork were added in 1904 and 1907.
  Portland Road Schools, Hove (1897)
  When Aldrington was absorbed into the Borough of Hove in 1894, more school accommodation was needed.  Clayton & Black were commissioned to execute the School Board's "grandiose plans" for three blocks accommodating about 1,200 children and associated facilities.  Limited finances meant the plans had to be redesigned, and the firm provided for a single block for 580 children.  An extension was needed by 1904, however, and Clayton & Black were commissioned again.  They had to work to a modest budget, and problems with the design of the fireplaces caused Charles Clayton to return in 1907 and carry out more work.  The red-brick buildings are still in use under the name West Hove Junior School.
  Hannington's Depository (now Montefiore Hospital), Montefiore Road, Hove (1899–1904)
  Hannington's was Brighton's oldest and most famous department store.  The company set up a nationwide removals business and commissioned Clayton & Black to design a furniture repository.  The plans were approved in 1899, but the land was not bought until 1901 and construction work apparently continued until 1904.  Described as "a magnificent red-brick building embellished with white stone and fine arched windows", it stands on a corner and has a domed turret.  The Davigdor Road elevation is 120 feet (37 m) wide, and the building goes back 277 feet (84 m) along Montefiore Road.  It was "elegantly converted" by Devereux and Partners in 1972 into an office for Legal & General.  In 2012 it was redeveloped as a private hospital by Spire Healthcare.
  Royal Assurance Society offices, 163 North Street (1904; Grade II-listed)
  Clayton & Black's chef d'œuvre has been called "an ebullient essay in Edwardian Baroque, the "most impressive" building on North Street, and "a confident composition in delicate pink granite".  Later used by the Leeds Permanent Building Society and now by a bookmaker, the three-storey building has elevations to North Street and New Road, and a corner bay in which the entrance is set between Tuscan columns and beneath an arched pediment.  At each corner is a tower; another topped with a copper dome sits above the entrance bay.
  Branch Tavern, London Road, Brighton (1905)
  One of several pubs on the stretch of London Road south of Preston Circus, this corner-site building is distinguished by a corner turret of square form with an ogee-shaped cap.  The gables are timber-framed.  Soon after its construction, the building was occupied by "William Barge, beer retailer".
  Electric Bus Garage and Recharging Station, Montague Place, Kemptown (1908; Grade II-listed)
  This modest single-storey brick-built garage was built in 1908 for the Brighton, Hove and Preston United Omnibus Company (predecessors of the present Brighton & Hove bus company).  It was used to recharge the company's fleet of electr
caption: Atlas Chambers are Classical-style offices.
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