Built as a chapel of ease, it became one of Brighton's most important churches, gaining its own parish and becoming closely associated with the Prince Regent and fashionable Regency-era society.

In the 18th century, Brighton was a small town based on a declining fishing industry and still suffering the effects of damage caused by the Great Storm of 1703.

[1] Its fortunes improved after a doctor from nearby Lewes, Richard Russell, wrote a treatise encouraging the use of seawater as a cure for illness, in particular glandular swellings.

[2] Brighton became increasingly popular throughout the rest of the century, but received its next significant boost when the Prince Regent, son of King George III, made his first visit in 1783.

[3] By 1786 he had a home in the town—a rented farmhouse near the Old Steine, inland from the coast—and he later commissioned the architect John Nash to build a palace, the Royal Pavilion, for him on the site.

[5] Among other things, this act allowed Hudson, in his position as Vicar of Brighton, and his successors in that role, to appoint a perpetual curate for the chapel, and to fund a stipend of £115 (at 1803 prices) by the rental of pews.

In return, the curate's responsibilities included paying for a clerk and the sacramental bread and wine used at Communion, and funding maintenance of the building.

)[6] Other members of the Royal Family occasionally visited the chapel later, however; the last recorded attendance was by Princess Augusta Sophia, the Prince Regent's sister, in 1840.

Three proposals had been made by 1930 to incorporate the unparished Holy Trinity Church in nearby Ship Street into the Chapel Royal's parish, in order to expand it and make it more viable.

[13] The original chapel was a stuccoed building in a broadly Classical style, with rounded sash windows and a pediment with the Prince's coat of arms.

[8] It is neither as tall nor as long as the east side (facing Prince's Place), and has no pediment, but was otherwise very similar until the alterations of 1995 changed the entrance area and added more glass to make more of the interior visible from the street.

[16] A coffee shop, run jointly by parishioners from the Chapel Royal and St Peter's Church on behalf of local charities, operates every Saturday.

[17] The building is also a venue for regular Alcoholics Anonymous meetings,[18] as part of the chapel's pastoral responsibility to help people in the city who face difficulties in their lives.