In the city of Brighton and Hove, on the English Channel coast of Southeast England, more than 40 former places of worship—many with considerable architectural or townscape merit—have been demolished, for reasons ranging from declining congregations to the use of unsafe building materials. Brighton and Hove was granted city status in 2000 after being designated a unitary authority three years earlier through the merger of the fashionable, long-established seaside resort of Brighton and the mostly Victorian residential town of Hove. In both towns, and in surrounding villages and suburbs, a wide range of Christian churches were established—mostly in the 19th and early 20th centuries. More than 150 of these survive (although not all are still in religious use), but demolition and the redevelopment of sites for residential and commercial use has been happening since the 1920s. Postwar trends of declining church attendance and increasing demands for land accelerated the closure and destruction of church buildings: many demolitions were carried out in the 1950s and 1960s, and five churches were lost in 1965 alone.