French Protestant Church

The French Protestant Church of Brighton is a former place of worship in the English city of Brighton and Hove. Until its closure in 2008, it was the only French Protestant church in Britain outside London, where the French Protestant Church of London, founded in 1550, occupies a building dating from 1893 in Soho Square. Brighton's dates from the previous decade, and is centrally located in Queensbury Mews, a small street just behind Brighton seafront and next to the Metropole Hotel. Opened in 1887, it was put up for sale in June 2008 and was closed a month later.
In 1548, Deryck Carver, a French-speaking Flemish man from a town near Liège, sought refuge in Brighton from the persecution he was experiencing from the ruling powers of the time in respect of his Calvinist beliefs. He had been a lay reader; as well as establishing Brighton's first brewery, the Black Lion, he held Bible reading sessions at his house in Brighton for the next few years until Roman Catholicism was re-established as Britain's state religion by Queen Mary I in 1553. At this time, such meetings of Protestants were banned, and Carver was arrested and committed to trial in London for continuing to hold them. He was burnt at the stake in 1555.

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