The Baptist Church

About

Uckfield Baptist Church is a Baptist congregation based in the town of Uckfield in East Sussex, England. Although services now take place in a school, the cause—founded in 1785 by seceders from the nearby Five Ash Down Independent Chapel—had its own chapel from 1789 until 2005, when the building closed and was sold for residential conversion. The "simple brick chapel" was rebuilt in 1874 and has been listed at Grade II for its architectural and historical importance.

The church was formed as a result of doctrinal differences which split the congregation at Five Ash Down a year after the church there was founded. Believers in particular redemption and closed communion left that church, which in common with many Nonconformist churches in this part of Sussex had been founded along Independent Calvinist lines, and formed a separate church at a farm in Uckfield in 1785. Four years later the present chapel was built.

Another split occurred in the 1920s as the church realigned itself with General Baptist theology, causing Strict Baptist members to secede once more and form a new church which still meets elsewhere in Uckfield.