Arthur Douglas Wagner (13 June 1824 – 14 January 1902) was a Church of England clergyman in Brighton, East Sussex, England. He served for more than 50 years at St Paul's Church in the town—first as a curate, then from 1873 as its vicar. As the only son of the Rev. Henry Michell Wagner (Vicar of Brighton for 46 years) and his wife Elizabeth Harriott, who died when he was a child, Arthur Wagner inherited considerable wealth. Following the pattern set by his father—who founded several churches in Brighton—he was able to pay for the construction and endowment of four churches in the town, three of which survive, and another in rural East Sussex where he owned a country estate. Like his father, he became embroiled in disputes and controversy: he held strongly Tractarian views and was often criticised for the advanced ritualism of the services he held at St Paul's, while his involvement in the Constance Kent affair caused national debate about priest–penitent privilege.
Wagner's influence in Victorian Brighton was considerable. "Not just a very rich clergyman of advanced religious beliefs", he was also greatly interested in church architecture and decoration. His wealth and his successful ministry at St Paul's allowed Wagner to found new churches in growing suburbs such as Hanover, Montpelier and the London Road/Lewes Road areas, which were notable both for their richly designed interiors and for their determinedly Tractarian tradition. The vast St Bartholomew's Church continues to serve a densely populated inner-city area; St Martin's Church, built shortly afterwards, is even larger and served a district partly developed by Wagner himself; the Church of the Annunciation combines a modest exterior with striking internal fittings; and he was involved with the design and fitting out of St Paul's Church, although his father paid for it. Arthur Wagner's influence was also seen in the "grandeur and artistry" of St Michael and All Angels Church, built for the ministry of one of his curates at St Paul's. Although his official status was never more than vicar of a single church, his influence was such that "he was acknowledged as virtual Bishop-coadjutant of Brighton".
Early life and ordination Arthur Douglas Wagner was the only son of Henry Michell Wagner (1792–1870), Vicar of Brighton from 1824 until his death, and Elizabeth Harriott Douglas (1797–1829). They had met in 1820 and were married in 1823. Both had an ecclesiastical background: Henry Wagner's grandfather Henry Michell was Vicar of Brighton during the 18th century and was an influential figure when the town's fashionability was at its height, and Elizabeth Harriott's father William Douglas and grandfather John Douglas were respectively the Precentor of Salisbury Cathedral and the Bishop of Salisbury.
Wagner's birthplace, Park Hill in Windsor, was owned by his mother's family. Born on 13 June 1824, he was named Arthur after Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, whose son had been tutored by Henry Wagner from 1817 and who later appointed Wagner as Vicar of Brighton. His baptism took place at St Mary's Church in nearby Winkfield on 6 August 1824.
The family's permanent residence from 1824, when Henry Michell Wagner became Vicar of Brighton, was the medieval vicarage in The Lanes. This was demolished and replaced by a new vicarage (still extant as part of Brighton and Hove High School, and now a Grade II listed building) in 1835. After Wagner's mother died in 1829, his grandmother Anne Elizabeth Wagner and maiden aunt Mary Ann Wagner moved into the vicarage and helped with his upbringing. He attended St Nicholas' parish church from an early age, and is believed to have gone to school for a time at an "academy for young gentlemen" in Montpelier Road, next to where the new vicarage was later built. He then attended Eton College for seven years from September 1835 and then studied mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge between 1842 and 1846. He graduated with an honours degree.
"It [was] evident from the earliest days" that Wagner would follow his father into Anglican ministry. Henry Michell Wagner had already funded three new Anglican churches in Brighton when, in 1846, he engaged the Tractarian-influenced architect Richard Cromwell Carpenter to design and build a fourth specifically for Arthur Wagner—who had already formed Tractarian views on ecclesiology and worship, particularly through the influence of Joshua Watson, his step-grandfather and a prominent High Churchman. St Paul's Church, centrally located on West Street close to long-established poor districts around the old town, was completed in 1848 and consecrated in October 1849. In January 1850, Wagner was ordained and became perpetual curate of the church, which was not yet parished because it was administered as a chapel of ease by St Nicholas' Church, Brighton's ancient parish church.
Wagner's churches
Although his father paid for its construction, St Paul's Church on West Street was effectively Arthur Wagner's first church: he ministered there from the start and paid for many of the fittings himself. Soon, he was looking to expand the Church of England's reach in poor areas of Brighton, just as his father had done, by finding sites for new churches and paying for them to be built. His first two churches were built while Henry Michell Wagner was still Vicar of Brighton, a position he held until his death in 1870.
First to be established was the St Mary and St Mary Magdalene's Church (1862), a small and plain Gothic Revival building in "a poor quarter of the original town" (Bread Street, in the present North Laine district). It was a chapel of ease to St Paul's and was never consecrated. George Frederick Bodley, a Gothic Revival architect who lived in Brighton at the time, was responsible for the simple design, and Wagner paid for the £2,500 cost himself. The area became depopulated in the mid-20th century as commercial development took over, and the church closed temporarily in the 1920s and permanently in 1948. After a period of use by the local electricity board, it was demolished in the mid-1960s to be replaced by an office building which severed the old street. Architecturally it was a "modest" building but "of distinction" because of its arched timber-framed roof and red-brick exterior.
The Church of the Annunciation, built to serve the Hanover neighbourhood whose houses included many built with the help of loans from Wagner, was his next church. It opened in 1864 on the Feast of the Annunciation (25 March) and was a chapel of ease to St Paul's until a parish was allocated in 1881. Local architect William Dancy designed an Early English Gothic Revival building on an awkward, narrow and sloping site on Washington Street. It was similar on the outside to St Mary and St Mary Magdalene's Church.
Wagner founded a temporary church dedicated to Saint Bartholomew in 1868 in the densely populated area between London Road and Brighton railway station. It stood on Providence Place next to a 400-capacity church school. After his father's death in 1870, Wagner made plans for a much larger permanent church on the site. Originally conceived as a 13-bay, by building with an integrated school, it was shortened to 11½ bays before building began in February 1872 (and in the end only nine were built). The new plans (submitted in September 1873) provided for a shorter but wider and much taller church: . When it opened in September 1874, the new St Bartholomew's Church offered free seating for 1,500 worshippers—the first church in Brighton to be free of pew rents from the date of opening. Despite its vast size (the nave is the largest in any British parish church), the church cost £18,000—much less than St Peter's Church, built 50 years previously—because plain brickwork was used instead of the latter's Portland stone and certain planned features such as transepts were omitted. Much was spent on the ornate interior decoration, though.
Although built just after Henry Michell Wagner's death, St Bartholomew's Church was not planned as a memorial to Arthur Wagner's father: that distinction went to St Martin's Church nearby on the Lewes Road in the Round Hill area of Brighton, also planned and built in the early 1870s. At the time of his death, Henry Michell Wagner was planning to found another Anglican church in Brighton and had set aside £3,000 from his personal wealth, but had not decided on a location or any other details. Arthur Wagner and his half-brothers Joshua and Henry chose the site and agreed to fund the whole project themselves. The Round Hill area was being developed with high-density housing at this time, and the Wagner family planned to build the church on the west side of Lewes Road opposite the bottom of Elm Grove.
The Church of the Transfiguration, soon afterwards renamed the Church of the Resurrection, was built in 1876–77 and was situated just from St Paul's Church on West Street. Wagner intended to attract the town's fishermen and other poor residents to the church, realising that they were "awed by the size and grandeur" of St Paul's and its congregation, which by this stage consisted of fashionable high-class visitors and wealthy residents. Construction was problematical because the owner of an adjacent brewery objected, forcing Wagner to change the plans and have it built underground. Richard Herbert Carpenter was the architect. The church opened in 1878 but was never successful: it was converted into a warehouse in 1912 and demolished in 1966.
Community of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Wagner founded a religious order in Brighton in 1855. Named the Community of the Blessed Virgin Mary, it was linked with St Paul's Church: the sisters helped to look after the building, visit parishioners and run the Sunday School. At first they were based in two houses on nearby Queen's Square. Around the same time, Wagner's cousin Rev. George Wagner—curate of St Stephen's Church—had established a "Home for Female Penitents" (prostitutes) on the Lewes Road. George Wagner died in 1857, at which point Arthur Wagner moved the home to Wykeham Terrace (adjacent to Queen's Square) and put the sisters in charge of rehabilitating the former prostitutes and taking in others who had been referred to the home by police officers or doctors. (Prostitution was a significant problem in mid-19th-century Brighton: more than 300 women and some children were known to work as prostitutes at that time, and there were nearly 100 brothels). Moving the home to Wykeham Terrace, where it took up nine of the twelve houses, allowed more than 40 women to be looked after, whereas the capacity at Lewes Road had been 12. Wagner and the sisters maintained a strict regime, with regular surveillance, hard work and punishments for misbehaviour, but the women were offered proper healthcare, education, training for domestic service, and charitable help. At a time when such assistance was limited, and provided only by private means, it was "probably the most effective single unit in the town".
By the late 19th century, St Mary's Home for Penitents had outgrown the Wykeham Terrace buildings. Wagner's ill health meant no action could be taken to address this; but ten years after his death, a large new site was secured on the Falmer Road in Rottingdean and a much larger building designed by local architect F.T. Cawthorn was erected. It remained in use until the late 20th century. Short-lived stints as an old people's home, a school and a centre for the Church of Scientology ended in 1977, 1980 and 1984 respectively, at which point it was converted into flats called Rottingdean Place (opened in 1987).
Constance Kent affair