Providence Strict Baptist Chapel, Burgess Hill

Burgess Hill—now a town of about 30,000 people—did not exist until the mid-19th century, when the London and Brighton Railway built a railway line across St John's Common, an area of common land divided between the parishes of Clayton and Keymer. The line and Burgess Hill railway station opened in 1841, and rapid population growth led to the building of an Anglican church, St John the Evangelist's, in the early 1860s and the creation of an ecclesiastical parish in 1863. One of the most important early residents was Frederick Hoadley. In 1857 he founded a department store on a prominent site near the railway station; it was so successful that other branches were opened elsewhere in Sussex.…

The chapel was built in a style described as either Classical or Neoclassical. The two-storey structure has three equally spaced round-headed windows on the upper floor of the façade, and two square-headed windows flanking the entrance door below. Between these are four Doric pilasters which are topped with a pediment. Originally faced with cement, it is now stuccoed.