It is one of ten extant Baptist church buildings in the city, and is the only one to have been listed by English Heritage in view of its architectural importance.

[2] The Wick estate was first described in print in 1247,[3] and it passed through many owners in the next six centuries; Anthony Stapley, one of the regicides of King Charles I, held it for nearly 50 years.

[1] By the 1860s it had reached its full length, running from the seafront to the original (now closed) Hove station on the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway's line to Portsmouth.

He was trained in medicine and became wealthy by selling an elixir which apparently cured tuberculosis,[6] but he also had a religious calling and planned to establish a new church.

[6] He helped in other ways, however: he sent his brother to preach in his place at the inaugural service and selected the church's first pastor; and one of his sons took this role subsequently.

David Davies, served from 1887 until 1907; on his initiative, Gwydyr Mansions—an "elegant" block of mansion flats in the Flemish Renaissance style—[9] were built opposite the church in 1890.

The Stoneham Road Baptist Church remained open on the same site[13][14] until 2008, but the building was sold and demolished in that year.

[15] In 1957, a deaconess at Holland Road founded a new church on the rapidly developing Hangleton housing estate (the population grew from 109 to 6,158 between 1931 and 1951).

[16] It is now called the Oasis Christian Fellowship Church and is part of both the Baptist Union of Great Britain and the Evangelical Alliance.

[21] The church tower forms a local landmark:[6] it stands slightly forward from the rest of the building, rises in four stages and is topped by a pointed roof in the Rhenish style.

[6][21] The arched entrance door in the base of the tower, flanked by granite memorial tablets laid in 1887,[6] leads to the transept, lit by a series of lancet windows with coloured glass.

Below the hammerbeam roof, a gallery runs round three sides of the church, supported by Corinthian columns made of cast iron.