page_title: Gothic House
section_title: Architecture
hierarchical_section_title: Gothic House / Architecture
caption_attribution_description: Gothic House, 95–96 Western Road, Brighton, City of Brighton and Hove, England. Designed by Amon Henry Wilds and Charles Busby in 1822–25. Latterly it housed the Rock 'N' Roller Bar and Blockbuster Video (both closed early 2013). At the time of the photo, the building is being offered for sale and rental in two separate parts. This view is a close-up of the ornate crocketted pinnacles on the polygonal corner tower. Listed at Grade II by English Heritage (NHLE Code 1381101)
context_page_description: Gothic House is a Gothic-style building in the centre of Brighton, part of the English city of Brighton and Hove. Although it has been in commercial use for more than a century, it retains some of its original appearance as "one of the most fascinating houses" built by the prolific partnership of Amon Henry Wilds and Charles Busby. It is the only Gothic Revival building they are known to have designed: they typically adopted the Regency style, sometimes with Classical or Italianate touches. The building is Grade II listed.
context_section_description: Non-ecclesiastical Gothic-style buildings are rare in Brighton: the only other examples are Wykeham Terrace, the Percy and Wagner Almshouses on Lewes Road, and the former Brighton Forum (now Citibase Brighton; originally a teacher training college). (Wilds may have been commissioned to design Wykeham Terrace, but there is no definite proof of this). Wilds and Busby were accustomed to designing in various styles—their range in Brighton along encompasses Greek Revival, Classical, Regency, and Italianate, and Wilds tried a fusion of Oriental and Indo-Saracenic Revival styles for his own home at Western Pavilion, built in 1831. Gothic House is their only known commission in the Gothic style, though, and it is the only such design they actually executed. Although its date puts it at the beginning of the Gothic Revival period, "it is not early Gothic Revival but Gothick (i.e. Georgian Gothic)", a style also described as Regency Gothic. The only other Regency Gothic buildings in Brighton, the National Schools at Church Street in the North Laine, were demolished in 1971 for a road widening scheme which never happened. The design has been likened to the proto-Gothic of Strawberry Hill House (1749–1776) in London by local historian Antony Dale, who calls it "more realistic than [that] ... [but] the house could hardly lay claim to be called a serious Gothic construction".  He instead describes it as an "experiment" by Wilds and Busby. The building has also been called "fanciful and irresponsibly Gothick".
  The building's placement opposite the Western Pavilion "nicely illustrates the stylistic variation of the Regency period" and provided a clear contrast to its elaborate Oriental style, especially before it was converted for commercial use. Above the "mutilated" ground floor, the upper parts of the building are mostly unchanged from the original design: the hood-moulded windows have pointed arches and tracery, and the polygonal corner tower has a crocketted pinnacle at each corner. Buttresses rise from ground-floor level on this section.  The shopfront added in 1920 by Henry Ward has two storeys and rounds the corner into Western Terrace, partly hiding the original structure.
caption: Ornate crocketted pinnacles adorn the roof of the tower.
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