Steyning Methodist Church is a Methodist place of worship serving Steyning and surrounding villages in the Horsham district of West Sussex, England. Built for a Wesleyan Methodist congregation who had outgrown an earlier chapel nearby, the Gothic Revival building opened in 1878 and has since been extended.[1] The flint and yellow brick church is set back from Steyning's ancient High Street and is within the village conservation area. It is one of nine churches in the Worthing Methodist Circuit.
ProtestantNonconformism was well established in Sussex by the beginning of the 19th century, and Wesleyan Methodism had a strong presence. In 1807, the Lewes and Brighton Wesleyan Circuit was founded, covering much of the county; it administered ten churches by 1841.[2] In September of that year, Methodists first began to meet in Steyning,[3] an ancient village whose strategic position made it an important centre of trade. St Cuthman founded its church in the 8th century; King Æthelwulf of Wessex was later buried there; and George Fox and William Penn were associated with a 17th-century Quaker meeting house.[4]
In 1843, the infant Methodist community (which had formed in September 1841) acquired a chapel built eight years earlier for the Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion, a local Calvinistic Methodist denomination.[3] They joined the Lewes and Brighton Circuit by March 1844,[3] at which time there were 33 members.[5] The "neat" building was called Trinity Chapel by 1855,[6] and its Sunday school thrived.[7] Consideration was given in 1874 to expanding the premises, but the congregation and trustees decided to move out and build a larger chapel instead. Henry Northcroft, active in the Worthing and Lancing Methodist churches nearby, gave a plot of land behind Steyning High Street in 1875.[8]
James E. Lund, an architect from Worthing, was commissioned to design plans for the new church. He attended and preached at Bedford Row Methodist Chapel in his home town, and was later responsible for designing Worthing Tabernacle and West Worthing Tabernacle (now West Worthing Evangelical Church) in the Romanesque Revival and Queen Anne styles respectively.[9][10] He planned a Gothic Revival-style[10] chapel capable of holding 300 worshippers and with an adjoining 200-capacity schoolroom. The Steyning-based building firm of Charles B. Oxley won the contract to build it, and the chapel was officially founded on 12 July 1877.[9] Three dignitaries laid the foundation stone: Henry Northcroft, Sir William McArthurmp and Caroline Spong, wife of the minister of Cliftonville Congregational Church in Hove.[9] There were speeches, a celebratory feast at a nearby inn and a public meeting, at which nearly £100 was raised for the church. Work was scheduled to continue until October 1877,[9] but Oxley's firm went bankrupt and construction was suspended for five months until the receivers made arrangements with another builder.[11] The chapel was completed within a month, and it opened for worship on 13 April 1878. The building contract was valued at £1,220.10s.0d, and the total cost including fittings and land was £1,885. The debt at the time of opening was £203.7s.9d;[12] the church trustees had auctioned their former chapel (by now called Jarvis Hall) in May 1878 and received £223.16s.8d., which went towards the building fund.[8]
The church struggled in its early years: the "peculiar difficulties of the Steyning cause", especially its low membership, were debated throughout the 1880s. Proactive work by ministers and the congregation, including outreach efforts to neighbouring villages and invitations to popular preachers, turned its fortunes around, and membership grew to 27 by 1892.[12] One feature of the church was its lack of a full-time minister: it had been administered from Shoreham-by-Sea Methodist Church since 1870, when the congregation still met in the old chapel. In 1912, a resident minister was appointed to serve Steyning and administer the nearby Ashington Methodist Church as well; but within weeks, he was called away to another position outside Sussex, and left almost immediately.[13] At that time, the congregation consisted mostly of local farming families, and contact with other churches in the village was minimal: when the Anglican vicar of St Andrew's Church attended the Methodist chapel's Golden Jubilee celebrations in 1927, it was headline news in the Sussex Daily News.[1] The building served as a canteen for the armed forces during World Wars I and II,[1][14] and a substantial air-raid shelter was built during the latter.[15]
Structural improvements were carried out in 1907,[16] and in 1925 three extra rooms were built adjoining the schoolroom. These had their own foundation stones.[1] The church was electrically lit from 1952, and major internal refits were carried out in 1968 and 1979.[15] The £21,050 cost of the 1979 refit, which included a larger kitchen and a new meeting room, was partly met by the Joseph Rank Trust.[17]
The church grew in strength in the postwar period. Outreach to the village as a whole and ecumenical activities with other local churches increased, and membership reached 66 in 1962. Services also became popular with pupils from a nearby boarding school.[15] Centenary celebrations included a parade from the church to St Andrew's parish church, which held a special service.[18] Another internal refurbishment was carried out in spring 2001, after which the church was rededicated.[19]
Steyning Methodist Church now shares a minister with another Methodist church at nearby Storrington as part of the Downs Section of the Worthing Methodist Circuit. A third church in the section, Ashington Methodist Church, closed in October 2010. Steyning and Storrington are two of the nine extant churches in the Circuit;[20][21] the others are in Worthing, Durrington, Goring-by-Sea, Southwick, Shoreham-by-Sea and Lancing.[22]
Architecture
James E. Lund designed Steyning Methodist Church in the Gothic Revival style. The main building materials are flint and pale yellow brick, and there are stone dressings and quoins.[10] The design is in contrast to the plain stuccoedNeoclassical architecture[10] of the congregation's former chapel, the present Jarvis Hall. The lobby, widened in 1968, is reached through an entrance porch.[10] and was originally lined with glass panels with etched Gothic-style lettering reading Enter into His gates with praise.[11] Other original fittings included tapestry carpets, stone tablets with the Ten Commandments, a tall curved rostrum with decorative ironwork and a timber communion rail. A pulpit was mounted centrally on the rostrum, and an organ stood behind.[18] The 1968 refurbishment included replacing the organ with one taken from Whitefield's Tabernacle, Moorfields, removing the rostrum in favour of a flat platform with a side pulpit and a communion table in the centre, and mounting a teak cross on the wall above.[18]
The chapel is set back a long way from Steyning High Street, behind a garden which was laid with lawn and shrubs in 1879.[12] In its assessment of the Steyning village centre conservation area, in which the chapel is situated, The Steyning Society commented that the chapel's environs were "a delightful area with a mixture of buildings on both sides of the road with a pleasing irregularity of building line".[23]
Hove Methodist Church is one of five extant Methodist churches in the city of Brighton and Hove, England. Founded on a site on Portland Road, one of Hove's main roads, in the late 19th century by a long-established Wesleyan community, it was extended in the 1960s and is now a focus for various social activities as well as worship. The red-brick building has been listed at Grade II by English Heritage in view of its architectural importance.
Bristol Road Methodist Church is a former Methodist place of worship in the Kemptown area of Brighton, part of the English city of Brighton and Hove. Built in 1873 to an Italian Romanesque Revival design, it served this part of eastern Brighton for more than a century until its closure in 1989, after which it became a recording studio. It is owned by Brighton College, an independent school based nearby. The building has been listed at Grade II in view of its architectural importance.
Christ Church and its burial grounds in Worthing, England, were consecrated in 1843 by the Bishop of Chichester, Ashurst Turner Gilbert, to meet the need for church accommodation for the poor. Built by subscription between 1840 and 1843, the Church was initially regarded as a chapel of ease to St Mary's Church in Broadwater. The chapel of ease was upgraded to the status of church with its own parish in 1855.
St George's Church is an Anglican church in the East Worthing area of the borough of Worthing, one of seven local government districts in the English county of West Sussex. Built in 1867–68 to serve new residential development in the southeast of the town, the Decorated Gothic-style structure was extended later in the 19th century, and expanded its reach further by founding three mission halls elsewhere in Worthing. English Heritage has listed it at Grade C for its architectural and historical importance.
Worthing Tabernacle is an independent Evangelical Christian church in the town and borough of Worthing, one of seven local government districts in the English county of West Sussex. The present building, with its distinctive pale stone exterior and large rose window, dates from 1908, but the church was founded in 1895 in a chapel built much earlier in the 19th century during a period when the new seaside resort's population was growing rapidly. In its present form, the church is affiliated with the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches. English Heritage has listed the building at Grade II for its architectural and historical importance.
The Thieves' Kitchen is a pub in the centre of the town and borough of Worthing, West Sussex. Established as a public house in the late 20th century, it occupies two early 19th-century listed buildings in the oldest part of the town: a Greek Revival-style former wine merchants premises, and a Neoclassical chapel built for Wesleyan Methodists in 1839. The main part of the pub is in the wine merchants building facing Warwick Street, while the old chapel, facing Bedford Row, serves as its function room. Both buildings have been designated separately as Grade II Listed Buildings.
Shover's Green Baptist Chapel is a former Strict Baptist place of worship in the hamlet of Shover's Green in East Sussex, England. Shover's Green is in Wealden, one of six local government districts in the English county of East Sussex, and stands on the road between the market town of Wadhurst and the village of Ticehurst in the neighbouring district of Rother. Founded by Strict Baptists from nearby Burwash in 1816, the chapel—one of three Baptist places of worship in Wadhurst parish—continued to serve the community until the 1970s, when it was sold for conversion to a house. Its design is similar to that of the nearby Rehoboth Chapel at Pell Green. The chapel is protected as a Grade II Listed building.
The former Central Methodist Church was until 2018 the main Methodist place of worship in Eastbourne, a town and borough in the English county of East Sussex. The large town-centre building, with attached schoolrooms and ancillary buildings, was the successor to earlier Methodist places of worship in the area. Soldiers brought the denomination to the area in 1803, when an isolated collection of clifftop villages stood where the 19th-century resort town of Eastbourne developed. A society they formed in that year to encourage Methodism's growth and outreach survives. Local Methodist worshipper and historian Carlos Crisford designed the lavish church in 1907, and it has been used for worship ever since—even as several other Methodist churches in the town and surrounding villages have declined and closed. For several years until 2013, it also housed a Baptist congregation displaced from their own church building. Central Methodist Church is a Grade II listed building.
Jarvis Hall is a former Nonconformist chapel in the village of Steyning, in the Horsham district of the English county of West Sussex. Since its construction in 1835, the Classical-style building has been used by four different Nonconformist Christian denominations: the Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion, Wesleyan Methodists, the Salvation Army and Plymouth Brethren. The Brethren occupied it last and for the longest time. After about 150 years of religious use, it was sold for residential conversion. English Heritage has listed the former chapel at Grade II for its architectural and historical importance.
The present Angmering Baptist Church and its predecessor building, known as Church of Christ, are respectively the current and former Baptist places of worship in Angmering, a village in the Arun district of West Sussex, England. Baptist worship in the area can be traced back to 1846, when the "strangely towered" Church of Christ was founded and built. After the Gothic-style chapel became unsuitable for modern requirements, the congregation acquired a nearby barn and converted it into a new church, after which the old building was sold for residential conversion. The church has been designated a Grade II listed building.
Horsham Unitarian Church is a Unitarian chapel in Horsham in the English county of West Sussex. It was founded in 1719 to serve the large Baptist population of the ancient market town of Horsham—home of radical preacher Matthew Caffyn—and the surrounding area. The chapel's congregation moved towards Unitarian beliefs in the 19th century, but the simple brick building continued to serve worshippers drawn from a wide area of Sussex. It is one of several places of worship which continue to represent Horsham's centuries-old tradition of Protestant Nonconformism, and is the town's second oldest surviving religious building—only St Mary's, the parish church, predates it. English Heritage has listed the chapel at Grade II for its architectural and historical importance.
Robertsbridge United Reformed Church is a former United Reformed Church place of worship in Robertsbridge, a village in the district of Rother in the English county of East Sussex. Built for Congregational worshippers in 1881 following their secession from a long-established Wesleyan Methodist chapel, it was the third Nonconformist place of worship in the village, whose nearest parish church was in the neighbouring settlement of Salehurst. Like the former Strict Baptist and Methodist chapels in the village, which have both closed, it no longer serves Robertsbridge as a place of worship. Local architect Thomas Elworthy's distinctive design—a "rich" and highly decorated blend of several styles—has divided opinion amongst architectural historians. English Heritage has listed the church at Grade II for its architectural and historical importance.
John Wills was an architect based in Derby.
Montpelier Place Baptist Church, originally known as the Baptist Tabernacle, is a former Baptist church in the Montpelier area of Brighton, part of the English seaside city of Brighton and Hove. It opened in 1967 to replace a 140-year predecessor on West Street in central Brighton, but was closed in 2012 and demolished over the 2017–2018 Christmas and New Year period. Houses and flats now occupy the site; the development was completed in December 2019.
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