page_title: John Leopold Denman
section_title: Biography
hierarchical_section_title: John Leopold Denman / Biography
caption_attribution_description: Former Richmond Hotel, Richmond Parade, City of Brighton and Hove, England. Designed in 1931–34 by John Leopold Denman as a hotel/inn for the Kemp Town Brewery; later incarnations included the Pressure Point nightclub, and at the time of the photograph it was a backpackers' hostel.
context_page_description: John Leopold Denman FRIBA was an architect from the English seaside resort of Brighton, now part of the city of Brighton and Hove. He had a prolific career in the area during the 20th century, both on his own and as part of the Denman & Son firm in partnership with his son John Bluet Denman. Described as "the master of ... mid-century Neo-Georgian", Denman was responsible for a range of commercial, civic and religious buildings in Brighton, and pubs and hotels there and elsewhere on the south coast of England on behalf of Brighton's Kemp Town Brewery. He used other architectural styles as well, and was responsible for at least one mansion, several smaller houses, various buildings in cemeteries and crematoria, and alterations to many churches. His work on church restorations has been praised, and he has been called "the leading church architect of his time in Sussex"; he also wrote a book on the ecclesiastical architecture of the county.
  Denman often worked with sculptor Joseph Cribb, whose carved reliefs adorn several of his buildings.
context_section_description: Denman was born on 15 November 1882 in Brighton.  His grandfather was also an architect who had remodelled St Paul's Church in West Street, Brighton, and his father Samuel Denman (who died in 1945) was also based in Brighton and designed buildings including Lewes Town Hall and the Jacobean-style Hove Club (1897) at Fourth Avenue, Hove.  Denman junior studied at Brighton Grammar School and the London County Council (LCC) Central School of Arts and Crafts, and was articled to his father in 1898 at the age of 16.  His professional career as an architect began in 1907: he became an assistant at the firm of Jones & Smithers, studied for his professional qualifications (which he received in 1908) and was accepted as an Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects (ARIBA) on 1 March 1909. His first working address, from that year, was 27 Queens Road, Brighton—the premises from which Samuel Denman had operated since 1896 or earlier.  John Leopold Denman's later addresses included 8 Clifton Hill, in the Montpelier area of Brighton, and The Knoll in the Withdean area.
  During the 1920s, Denman led the Architecture department of the Brighton School of Art (now part of the University of Brighton)—a faculty he was associated with for many years.  He was also elected president of a regional body, the South-Eastern Society of Architects. During his time at the School of Art, he influenced the career development of landscape artist Charles Knight, who studied there between 1919 and 1923, and portrait artist and stained glass designer Louis Ginnett. Around this time, he was also engaged by the Kemp Town Brewery in Brighton to be their in-house architect, responsible for designing new pubs and hotels in Sussex and other southern counties of England; and further afield, he won the commission to design the Royal Masonic Institution for Girls in Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire. Work on this building (now a school) took place between 1928 and 1933, and its chapel is a listed building. Between 1922 and 1927, he was responsible for a small number of houses in various streets in Hove: Rochester Gardens, Montefiore Road, Colbourne Road and New Church Road.
  Denman's first commissions in Brighton were for civic structures to commemorate the creation in 1928 of the Borough of Brighton.  (This greatly enlarged the town's urban area and gave it borough status.) He designed two stone pylons which flanked the main London Road at the new borough boundary north of Patcham, and a commemorative stone seat at Devil's Dyke, a beauty spot on the South Downs overlooking Brighton (although the seat faced northwards, away from the town). Both structures were commissioned by Sir Herbert Carden, a local councillor, and were unveiled on 30 May 1928. Both have extensive carved reliefs and inscriptions—a feature Denman often used in his later work as well.  Throughout his career he worked with sculptors and other craftsmen from Ditchling, a village near Brighton which was home to an art colony, The Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic.  (Both Charles Knight and Louis Ginnett were loosely associated with the Guild, although they were not official members, and Ginnett is believed to have worked with Denman on the pylons.) Another early work was his redesigning and substantial extension of the Sussex Masonic Centre at 25 Queen's Road, next door to his father's office, in 1928.  The local Freemasons had bought the building, a mid 19th-century house, and the surrounding site nine years earlier with the aim of turning it into their local headquarters.  Denman's design included some Art Deco elements.
  By the late 1920s, Brighton had evolved into a major commercial centre.  To a much greater extent than in other places, its commercial and civic buildings were typically designed by locals rather than outside architects, and there was a surge in demand for new commercial premises in the 1930s. In 1930, Denman took over his father's architectural practice at Queen's Road, and over the next few years he was commissioned to design several major commercial buildings in Brighton.
caption: The former Richmond Hotel, Brighton
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