Prominent local examples of this included several members of the Blunt family, the wealthy owners of the Crabbet Park estate just outside Crawley.

[10] He became richer and more influential through the 18th century, despite the decline of the local iron industry, and on his death in 1750 Crabbet Park passed to his youngest daughter Sarah, who by then had married into the Blunt family.

They stayed at her house on the Horsham Road (in the present-day Gossops Green neighbourhood) and celebrated Mass in its coach-house, which was reordered to make a chapel and dedicated to St Philip.

[5] Soon afterwards, Mary Scawen Blunt died; she asked her sons to found a permanent Roman Catholic church to serve Crawley and the surrounding area and a friary for the Capuchins.

[6] In 1860, Francis bought 3 acres (1.2 ha) of land near Crawley railway station and the town centre and arranged the design and construction of a friary and adjoining church; the builder was recorded as a Mr Ockendon.

[6] The church was one of the earliest Roman Catholic places of worship in Sussex, and it served a large area in its early years—as far as the villages of Rudgwick and Nuthurst to the west, Copthorne in the northeast and Lindfield in the southeast.

[5] The friars became an important and well-respected part of the Crawley community:[14] they undertook missionary work locally and in other countries, and were often seen around the town in their simple brown robes.

Father Elzear of Risca (Daniel Clement Hanley) founded the Guild of St Anthony of Padua at the church, which became its world headquarters on the instruction of Pope Pius X.

The Guardian of the friary established the guild on the 700th anniversary of Anthony of Padua's birth after a portrait in the church was identified as a 15th-century depiction of the saint.

It had formed part of Mrs Montgomery's bequest to the church and friary,[16] which included an ornate altar of marble and alabaster and an accompanying altarpiece, both of which came from a chapel in her Italian villa.

[5] On 14 June 1958, the 119th anniversary of Francis Scawen Blunt's birthday, the foundation stone was placed, and two days later demolition of the old church began.

As well as structural work and improved disabled access, a mural of Pope Benedict XVI's coat of arms was added.

[24] Harry Stuart Goodhart-Rendel was an "eclectic, imaginative and inventive" architect whose designs were rational rather than whimsical, but still had decorative touches and variety.

[26] The cruciform structure is a large but low-set building[26] of dark greyish brick with some intricately detailed red-brick courses.

[20] The main entrance, a round-arched doorway in a slightly recessed bay, sits below five tall, narrow windows with elaborate tracery; the brickwork surrounding these is diapered.

[24] The Friary Church was listed at Grade II by English Heritage on 25 October 2007;[20] this defines it as a "nationally important" building of "special interest".

[31] The development of the Gossops Green neighbourhood on the southwestern side prompted the construction of St Theodore of Canterbury's Church in 1971; the cruck-framed, brick-walled structure with tall brick buttresses has a stone carving of the saint on the exterior.