Places of worship in Burgess Hill

By Stephanie Swaysland and Heather Warne

A variety of churches of different denominations have been built in Burgess Hill since the town got started and the first of them was St. John’s Chapel in Leylands Road, which stands to this day. Nonconformists, of various persuasions living in the Burgess Hill area had mostly attended either of the two chapels in Wivelsfield, or the Ditchling Meeting House and they were keen to have a chapel of their own. The project started in 1828 at the enclosure of the Keymer’s part of the common when they were able to buy a newly enclosed plot. Using 3000 bricks donated by brickmaker William Norman, and other donations of lime, sand and other materials, it was raised in the vernacular style, with tile hanging, by a local builder, William Brooker. He lived just around the corner on Fairplace Hill.  ‘Nonconformity’ – a groundswell, and at first illegal, reaction to methods of ordination and worship in the established Church of England – had been very strong in the artisan classes and the smaller farmers of mid Sussex since the 1600s.

The names of the earlier pastors at the new church are not known, but of great note was William Crick (b. 1845, d. 1931) who had worked in London with William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army.  Over his life time he is said to have preached 7,000 sermons to ordinary folk around Mid Sussex in cottages, barns and in the open air.  We have not discovered which particular form of nonconformity, if any, the early chapel favoured but by the time that William Crick arrived in 1877, it had become Congregational.  He had been encouraged to come to Burgess Hill in 1877 by a solicitor William Stevens, (b.1813, d.1895) who lived in the capacious mansion on the east side of Keymer Road, just outside the town boundary, called Broadhill. He was a benefactor of many Congregational churches. In Burgess Hill William Crick is reputed to have done much good work among the brickmaking families. He was succeeded at the Leylands Road Chapel by Pastor George Millar who was responsible for building the Memorial Hall which was opened in 1924.  It had cost £1720 to build and it was dedicated to the memory of the 24 men from the chapel who had fought and died in the first World War. The chapel has its own early burial ground which is no longer in use. Historian A.H. Gregory remarks, with his wife, Mr. Crick lies buried near the chapel he loved so well.

The chapel seems to have played a more local role once the imposing new congregational church had been built at the top of Junction Road. An International Bible Training Institute was opened a short way north on the road to Anstye in 1947 and established links with the church, which was leased to the Pentecostal church from 1978.  There have since been further structural alterations and additions to the building.  It is now ‘The Centre Church’.

During the life time and the ministry of William Crick and the influence of William Stevens, congregationalism spread across the growing town and up to the hill of Burgess Hill. Its story is taken up in ‘The Progress of the Free Churches’ below, but first we look at how the Church of England mustered its strength in the town.

The following images show: an older view of St Johns Chapel, the war memorial tablet to members lost and a view showing the Memorial Hall

Provision of a parish church for Burgess Hill was the result of long years of campaigning by the Venerable James Garbett, rector of Clayton-cum-Keymer. He was very aware that wherever industry had spawned an urban population, it was the nonconformist chapels, not the established Church of England which had won hearts and minds to their way of thinking. It was a core belief among non-conformists that people could find God without the need for an ordained priest, through reading the Bible. They therefore offered Sunday schooling, together with reading and writing for the workers’ children. The Church of England still had to be convinced that to educate the workers wouldn’t bring riot and unrest. It was down to forward-thinking clerics like the Ven. Garbett and the then Bishop of Chichester, William Otter (founder of Bishop Otter Teacher Training College) to turn that hesitancy into action: which they did.

The Rev. J. C. Marsh, 1950s author of a history of St. John the Evangelist Church remarked, ‘By 1850 the provision of a permanent Church had become pressing’. The Venerable Garbett had founded our first C. of. E. School in the London Road in the 1850s, and having opened it up for use as a proto-church on Sundays – which proved very popular – he and the congregation next campaigned for a permanent site for a proper church. As the Clayton side of St. Johns Common was about to be ‘enclosed’ and converted to building plots, they successfully obtained one of them, a sizeable plot on the corner of Royal George Road and London Road. However, the town had already substantially spread eastwards and many who lived in that direction were influential. They thought that the London Road was too far away for a parish church.  Instead, in 1861, brickmaker William Norman drew up a plan which showed the proposed church on its present site (old common land of Keymer manor) which was coming up for re-sale, then called ‘Hillmans’ Farm’. The sale went ahead and Mr John Archer, a property developer, bought it as the spot for the new parish church. To have its own parish was an exciting new concept for Burgess Hill.  Up to then we were simply an up-country part of the old parishes of Clayton and Keymer.

A subscription list was drawn up and managed by Mr Thomas Crunden (d. 1883) of Oak Hall in Keymer Road. He started it off with a large personal donation, after which the money poured in. On Nov. 4^th 1861 a ‘foundation service’ was held in the London Road ‘school church’ by the Ven. Garbett, with Archdeacon Otter (the late Bishop’s son) as preacher. Then a procession set off to the new church site, with the choir singing all the way, and on arrival, the new foundation stone was laid by Dr. Gilbert, the then Bishop of Chichester. The consecration ceremony, once the new church was built, was on June 12^th 1863.

Mr Talbot Bury of London, a former pupil of A. C. Pugin, was appointed as architect and the firm Messrs. Ellis of Chichester was chosen to build the new church.  It was two years after consecration to completion in June of 1863 and a further two years to June 1865 to become an ecclesiastical parish in its own right, dedicated to St John the Evangelist. The fabric is red brick decorated with red and yellow brick banding and it is judged to have ‘a well-preserved Victorian interior. Over the years it received many gifts and embellishments from parishioners – all detailed by historian A. H. Gregory and the St. John’s historian, Rev. E. C. Marsh (see notes). A south aisle and a porch were added in 1875, a Vestry in 1889 and the organ was installed in 1899. This made the old West Gallery redundant, and it was taken down. The old style ‘vernacular’ church music had been played there on fiddles, viols and other traditional instruments.  The first vicarage, in Silverdale Road, was succeeded by the large red brick house in a Queen Anne style in Park Road, opposite the north-east end of the Park. Its shaped gables and shell hood are distinctive features. A smaller, modern vicarage has since been built next door.

In 1885, for ongoing parish work in the late-Victorian streets on the west side of Burgess Hill, a mission room, St Alban’s Hall, was built in Fairfield Road. The Diocesan Fund donated £200 and it was built by W. Downer for £324. Other donations came from parishioners, including Mr Bridge of Wyberlye house in Leylands Road (b.1848, bought Wyberlye 1893, d. 1925). He funded a Reading and Recreation Room in the hall for the working men of that district and he became its first President.  It has now become a public hall called ‘The Cherry Tree’, and is the Age UK centre for the town.

Significantly, Mr Bridge also gave 2½ acres at the west end of Royal George Road as a cemetery. When the Church of England was able to build a daughter church for the west side of town, that land was utilised. The new church was put up in 1939-1940 to a design by John Wells-Thorpe and dedicated to St. Edward the Confessor. The interior is described as a ‘delight’ by the editor of the revised Pevsner architectural guide of W. Sussex. She notes its clever glazing, which filters light into the sanctuary. St. Edward’s was linked to the St. Alban’s Hall while the latter was still a parish centre.

The images below show: First, the new vicarage for St. John the Evangelist, circa 1900, built on land in Park Road, donated by Frederick Crunden, second, St Alban’s Hall in Fairfield Road with the late Ann Ridley, member of Burgess Hill Heritage & History Association and third, the Worlds End Mission ( the bungalow-style building on the right of the image – opposite the end of Janes Lane). It has been in commercial use for many decades.

By 1900 the population of the north-east side of Burgess Hill had risen, due both to the spread of new housing down Junction Road from the hill and in Worlds End where the second railway station serving the town had opened in 1886.   The Church of England’s first response was made with the help of Charles Somers Clarke, lord of Keymer manor,who paid for a ‘mission room’ to be built to serve the eastern part of the town. The land was donated by builder, William Oram. It opened in 1887, near the junction of Valebridge and Leylands roads, and the building is still standing. It is a single-storey detached building in brick, with a tile-hung gable at the front on which a cross used to be depicted in black tiles (ex. info. of the late George Etherington of Worlds End).  Sunday school and Sunday services were held while in the evenings it was a reading room for local working men. In the 1960s and later it was Guy Austin’s Electrical Goods shop. It has since been divided into two retail outlets.

It was originally intended to build a new parish church on the Worlds End Mission Room site, but that did not happen. Instead, the influence of brickmaster, Sampson Copestake came in to play as he wanted a new church nearer to his workers at the Keymer Brick and Tile Co., which lay a bit further south, near the branch line to Lewes. He already owned the former Cants farm there, and as its old farmyard area abutted both Junction Road and a new road recently laid out called Cants Lane, it seemed ideal. He donated it as the site for the new church. He had already built a school room in Cants Lane for the brickyard workers’ children, and another in Folders Lane for those of the Ditchling Potteries on Ditchling Common.

The Rev. William Roffe Tindall Atkinson was a curate at Ditchling at this time and had become a close friend of Sampson Copestake, who was keen on having him as minister for his new church. And so, in 1898, Rev. Atkinson became a curate of St. John the Evangelist in order to minister to the new ‘mission’ district on the east of the Town. His first services in that district were held the same year in the Cant’s Lane schoolroom. In 1899 a second-hand corrugated iron building from Bromley-by-Bow was bought and erected by Copestake and services and other church activities took place there. It came to be known as the Iron Church – or ‘Tin Oven’ – because it was so hot inside in the summer.

Copestake and the Rev Atkinson could not move forward with their plans for a ‘proper’ church until approval was gained from the Church Commissioners. This was granted in 1902 and fund-raising began, Copestake leading the way with a donation of £1000.  Sufficient money for a substantial church was raised, but not enough for the rather ambitious plans by the Diocesan architect, Lacy W. Ridge, which had included a substantial tower. A plan showing the proposed tower, topped by a spire, was published in 2011 by the BH Local History Society (see end notes). The open, barn-like design, without aisles and with intricate rafters aloft, is in red brick with stone dressings, The lower walls are lined in stunning red terracotta. It was built over the next five years in materials from Norman’s brick yard and from the firm of Norman and Burt and consecrated on 30^th November 1908 (St Andrew’s Day).  The particular features of its construction have created the best acoustics in Burgess Hill and for several decades now it has hosted the separate performances of Burgess Hill’s Symphony Orchestra and Choral Society.  The church is always packed out. It’s not just that the performers are good, but that the director and conductor Michael Stephan Wood,  a life-time former music teacher at Oakmeeds School (BH Academy), has built up a large loyal following .

After St. Andrew’s Church had opened, the ‘tin church’ became the church hall until it was destroyed by fire in 1959. It has been commemorated in the name of a new road built in recent housing development in the old brickyard and pits.

The following images show: First, the pioneering Tin Church, second, St. Andrew’s Church its red brick supplied by local brickyards and last, the second St. Andrews vicarage at the top of Junction Road, since replaced by one adjacent to the church.

Roman Catholicism became an illegal form of worship in England at King Henry VIIIth’s Reformation in 1538. The only refuge it found was in the households and the private chapels of various wealthy families up and down the land, who were able to pay large fines for practising their faith. In this part of Sussex there was only the Gage family of Glynde Place, east of Lewes, who kept the old faith but they had no active connection with our area. Catholicism was much stronger in West Sussex especially at Arundel where the Dukes of Norfolk gave the lead. Like the other ‘non-conformists’, Catholics were not allowed to be teachers or to hold any public office, until their ‘emancipation’ in 1829.  In West Sussex, under the Dukes’ patronage, catholic schools and churches then began to be built in great numbers. Their Church of St. Philip and St. Howard at Arundel, which dominates the town’s sky line, was built in 1869-1873 in French Gothic style. In 1965 it became the Sussex R.C. cathedral.

It was not until St. George’s Retreat was built in 1870 at the north end of Ditchling Common and a Roman Catholic chapel was opened there, that local Catholics had anywhere to worship. Older residents have recalled that the chapel attracted people from all around; and that to get there, Catholics from far and wide. Those from Hurstpierpoint walked from Malthouse Lane, across St. John’s Common and the ‘Bumpy Bridge’, up Cants Lane and down to the Retreat via what they called ‘Golden Hill’, because of all the gorse in bloom.  The name is now commemorated as the road name of the houses now built there. The existence of this chapel will perhaps have led the stone carver Eric Gill and his family to move into a house adjoining the common at the far end of Folders Lane in Ditchling, within easy walking distance of St George’s Retreat. Various elderly locals have remembered him striding over the common to get to Mass. One of his local artistic creations was a large and visible crucifix which he set up on a triangle of waste land by the railway at the very end of Folders Lane (see notes).

In 1921 Gill and his apprentice Joseph Cribb, and a handful of fellow artist/craftsmen, founded the Guild of St. Joseph and St. Dominic a short distance away on the south side of Folders Lane, in Burgess Hill.  As well as the various workshops there was a chapel there, built from 1919 to 1921 and completed in time for the opening of the Guild. Being created on the model of the medieval craft guilds it did not at first admit women. However, this rule was overturned in 1927. It flourished for the next 50 years as a hub for the creative art. It was closed down in 1987 and the site was redeveloped for housing.

In Burgess Hill itself, historian A. H. Gregory observed in 1933 that local catholics were currently using the Grove Road Schoolroom (formerly used by the Congregationalists) and were …living in a period of hopefulness and expectancy…. that they would get their own church soon. Their optimism was well founded for Burgess Hill’s own Catholic church was built in Station Road by John P. Mendham in 1939-40.  Members of the Guild of St Joseph and St. Dominic were very involved with the project and created the ‘lovable furnishings’ recorded by Elizabeth Williamson in her recent revision of the ‘Pevsner’ Architectural Guide for West Sussex (see End Notes).  These included Frank Brangwyn’s framed lithographs of the Stations of the Cross in 1934. There was also a local community of Franciscan sisters who opened a school for catholic children in 1937 in Wynnstay, the large house on the hill, erected by brick master Sampson Copestake (junction of Keymer Parade and Keymer Road, now flats of the same name) until St. Wilfred’s School was built around 30 years later.

Violet Eade, now deceased, a past member of our former Local History Society, in reflecting on her years as a 2^nd World War child evacuee from the London parish of Bermondsey, recollected that they all came to this part of Sussex.  She was sent to Ditchling because she was C. of E., whereas the Catholic children were sent to Burgess Hill because it had a Catholic church.

The following images show: First, St. George’s Retreat. Second, the Guild Workshops in Folder’s Lane. Third, St Wilfred’s in Station Road.

Nonconformists living on the east side of town began meeting in a small building in Grove Road in 1858. They included Congregationalists, Episcopalians (who supported having bishops), Baptists and others and the building was known as the ‘Union chapel’. Early leaders were Pastor Woolgar and the Rev. Dr. Tapper who was pastor till 1872.  In that year, by the gift of W. V. Doubleday they gained a plot of land, part of Anchor farm, on Prospect Place at the top of Junction Road to build a new Congregational Church. This vision was achieved with the financial backing of William Stevens of Broadhill mansion, an ardent Congregationalist. First, they obtained an ‘iron church’ to put on the land until the proper church could be built – a similar progression to that of St. Andrew’s (above).  The Grove Road premises then became their school room and lecture room.  A neo-classical plain Tuscan style of architecture was chosen by the architect, Mr. E. J. Hamilton of Brighton, and Simeon Norman was the builder. The foundation stone was laid in October 1881 and it was built in only a year and opened in June 1882 at a cost of £2,000. It had seating capacity for 350 persons, an organ (as a donation) and a hall at the rear.  Known as the Congregational Church into the early 20^th century, it is now the United Reformed Church, a prominent landmark at the top of Junction Road. For a photograph of this church in the second world war, see the end of this page (For further on this and the other free churches in Burgess Hill, see end notes, Matt Davis).

The 18^th-century Bethel Chapel at the north end of Ditchling Common used to be the local place of worship for the strict Baptists of this area. It still stands, north of Janes Lane and north of the sharp bend where the Royal Oak pub used to be, now a small housing complex. Some of the older Burgess Hill families continued to attend it through the 19^th and in to the 20^th century.  However, Burgess Hill obtained its own Baptist ‘Tabernacle’ in 1870, in what had been a commercial school room in Church Road. Ephraim Standing, formerly of Albourne, came to preach here and remained for the whole of his ministry until 1915 – without thought of salary or reward – to induce people to lead better lives, as historian A. H. Godfrey observed. By 1895 a purpose-built church in brick with stone dressings had been erected on the site. Designed by E. J. Hamilton of Brighton and built by W. Oram, it stood on what is now Church Walk and it was demolished to make room in 1964 for what was our first (tiny by today’s standards) Tesco ‘supermarket’. The Baptist Church then moved to its present site in Station Road.

For the Strict Baptists, the Providence Strict Baptist Chapel was built in 1875. It still stands opposite St. John’s Park in Park Road but is now a private residence. It was built by Simeon Norman in 1875 in a neo-classical style to the design of architect E. J. Hamilton. It has a rendered finish in stucco, with a three-bay façade of large pilasters topped off with an imposing pediment. Its first pastor, Eli Ashdown lived in the nearby, Chapel House.

The following images show: First, the new Congregational, now ‘United Reformed’ church at the top of Junction Road, second, the Baptist Chapel in Church Walk, built by W. Oram, and third the Strict Baptist church opposite St. John’s Park.

Calvinistic methodism came to mid-Sussex in the mid-18^th century when its advocate, Selina, Countess of Huntingdon (1707-1791) came to Wivelsfield and preached at Great Ote Hall, off Janes Lane, just east of the Burgess Hill boundary. After founding her first chapel in Brighton, her second was the Otehall Chapel, built in 1778. It attracted a congregation from the local area including Burgess Hill. William Gravett, a potter at Ditchling Potteries became a lay preacher there and was later the pastor, retiring in 1853. Before his death in 1872 he purchased William Shaw’s brickworks in Burgess Hill (now referred to as Gravett’s), which his son worked for many years. The Chapel stands today on the Ditchling to Haywards Heath Road, just south of the mini-roundabout at Wivelsfield.

The Methodist Church in Burgess Hill is part of the Wesleyan Methodist tradition, founded by John Wesley (b.1703, d.1791).  He had started out as a Church of England preacher, but his developing philosophy on life and religion gradually brought him into conflict with the established Church, mainly as to how its essential rites should be administered. From the 1840s on he had built up a following by preaching all around Great Britain and he is reputed to have come to Burgess Hill and preached under the Gospel Tree outside the old Barclays Bank.  The first Wesleyan Methodist church in this part of Sussex was built in Brighton in 1856, and more locally, in Sussex Road Haywards Heath in 1877.  More research could perhaps be done as to whether Burgess Hill had any practising Methodists at that time during the 19^th century; or whether loyalties to the Otehall Chapel were still running strong.

By 1899, however, Wesleyan Methodist church services were being held in Burgess Hill in a tent pitched on land on the corner of Gloucester Road and Fairfield Road. The foundation stone for a new building, now a reading room, was laid in 1900. Kelly’s Directory in 1919 refers to this as the ‘Wesleyan Methodist London Road Sussex Mission’.  This stood on part of the plot of land, fronting to the London Road, which was originally allocated, but disregarded, for the new C. of E. parish church of St. John the Evangelist.  Luckily enough land was still available in that plot in 1957-8 to provide a proper new Methodist church. This was built plainly in red brick with stone dressings and the an entrance was from Gloucester Road.  As Matt Davis remarks, (see notes), the prominence of the site perhaps merited a building with a bit more ‘presence’.  The earlier church became the church hall.

The following images show: First, Otehall chapel, second, the older Methodist church in London Road, and third the new Methodist Church.

The Salvation Army opened a small hall in Mill Road in 1898. By 1906 they had moved to their present site in Cyprus Road and it was free of debt 2 years later.  Christian Brethren meetings were originally held in a house in Mill Road. By 1903 a new meeting house was in place in Lower Church Road. It later became a Red Cross Hall and the Burgess Hill Community Mosque was established there in 2007.  Additional faith groups now meet in Burgess Hill, some in their own buildings some in schools or community buildings. Sheddingdean Baptist Church meet in the school building, The King’s Church have a centre in Victoria Road, the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses is also in Victoria Road.

For a better, more-detailed look at the modern scene, see Matt Davis, cited in the notes below.

The following images show: First, the Salvation Army citadel Cyprus Road. Second, the Congregational Church at the top Junction Road, with World War 2 refugees. Third former Christian Brethren Chapel in lower Church road.

This article is principally drawn from:

F. Avery, Occasional Papers No. 3: A history of the Keymer Tile Works (BHLHS, 2011); Matt Davis, An architectural tour of Burgess Hill’s Places of Worship, The Chapels Society Newsletter 78 (2021); ); Peter Durrant, The parish Church of Burgess Hill: a short history, (Locally produced pamphlet, c. 1983); D. R. Elleray, The Victorian Churches of Sussex (Phillimore, 1981); A. H. Gregory, The Story of Burgess Hill, pp. 39-47; (Clarke, Haywards Heath), 1933; Rev. E. C. Marsh, The Story of Burgess Hill Parish Church (St. John’s Vicarage), 1950, 1951 and 1952 (3 soft-back booklets). Brian Short (ed.), cap. 7.3 Religious activities in Burgess Hill, A very Improving Neighbourhood: Burgess Hill 1840-1914 ((Sussex Univ.1984); H. Warne (ed.) Chapel and Church 1672-1858, Wivelsfield: the history of a Wealden Parish, (Wiv. Hist. Study Group,1994); Elizabeth Williamson (ed.), The buildings of England: Sussex, West: Burgess Hill (alphabetical arrangement by parish) (Yale, 2019);

To read more on earlier religious activity at St. John’s Common,  go to: Chapel and Church.