It is located on high ground at the junction of Church Street and Dyke Road in the city centre, very close to the main shopping areas.

The higher ground of the hill where the present church stands would have been better strategically and defensively, as well as being highly visible to residents of the village and the fishermen at sea.

The church was damaged twice in under two years by severe storms which caused significant destruction and loss of life elsewhere in Brighton, especially in the buildings of the "lower town" by the coast.

In the second half of that century, when the town's popularity grew substantially in response to Dr. Russell's advocacy of the medicinal benefits of seawater (and, subsequently, the Prince Regent's patronage), space was so limited that a series of galleries had to be built around the roof of the church, accessed by external staircases.

In 1540, it passed to Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex; in 1541, following his death by execution in July 1540, the advowson was granted to Anne of Cleves; and finally, in 1558, the Bishop of Chichester gained it.

Wagner and St. Nicholas Church itself: as a child in the 1780s, he studied for a time at an academy in Nile Street (in what is now The Lanes in the city centre) run by Rev.

[12] The architect Richard Cromwell Carpenter, associated with the architectural aspects of the Cambridge Movement and Tractarianism, was chosen to rebuild St Nicholas Church, after authorisation was granted on 15 April 1853 for demolition and reconstruction.

[14] Much work was carried out over the next fifty years, mostly in the form of additions to or replacements of existing fixtures; nevertheless, many of the original mediaeval features of the church were either lost or had their impact reduced.

Somers Clarke, the clerk of the administrative vestry for 62 years from 1830, donated a new pulpit to the church in 1867, after the original three-deck structure was removed by Carpenter and replaced with a much smaller wooden example.

[16] The first peal of bells, ten in total, was presented to the church in 1777 by Thomas Rudhall, a member of one of the most prominent families in the city of Gloucester's 700-year bell-founding history.

It has not accepted any new burials for many years, and was landscaped by the council in the mid-20th century, although most of the tombs of significant historical interest were left undisturbed[21] and all of those monuments listed below have Grade II status.

Weiss had an abiding fear of being buried alive and to ensure his death he devised a metal spike which would penetrate his heart when the lid was lowered on his coffin.

The concealment of her sex was so effective that she served for 17 years until voluntarily revealing the truth to her commanding officer's wife and being discharged; even after suffering a wounded arm at the Battle of Fontenoy in 1745, she was not discovered during her treatment.

She became a well-known figure after moving to Brighton following the death of Golding in the 1760s, and lived to the age of 108—being granted a special pension by the Prince Regent, and travelling in the procession during his coronation as King George IV.

Dippers had to be of the same sex as their client (or "bathee"), and Martha Gunn was well regarded for many years by locals and visitors, with her size and strength being a particular advantage in this difficult physical task.

However, her romantic life was also noteworthy: she married a Royal Navy lieutenant in 1785 after a brief elopement in Ireland the previous year, but took an Irish actor and operatic singer, Michael Kelly, as a lover shortly afterwards.

[28] Other people important in the history of Brighton to be buried in the churchyard include Sake Dean Mahomet—an Indian man who introduced the Indian curry house restaurant to Great Britain as well as establishing "shampooing" baths in the country,[29] and was appointed shampooing surgeon to both King George IV and William IV[30] and Amon Wilds, one of the most important architects of the Regency era, who provided Brighton with much Regency architecture.

Another modest extension was made in 1831, but the most significant change came in 1841 when land to the west of what is now Dyke Road (then named Church Hill) was acquired and used to form a much larger burial ground.

[32] This western extension was laid out by Regency architect Amon Henry Wilds and contains a series of burial vaults with Grade II listed status.