[2] His diary records that "I passed into Sussex and lodged near Horsham where there was a great meeting, and many convinced" (i.e.

[3][7] The cause grew quickly, though: by 1668, Horsham was one of 13 locations in Sussex recorded as having permanent Quaker meetings.

[1] In Horsham, regular meetings were taking place in private houses from 1668; these became weekly in 1687, by which time both George Fox and influential Quaker William Penn had visited the town; and in 1693 a permanent meeting house was built on land acquired on Worthing Road.

[10] The buildings were dilapidated by the late 18th century, so they were cleared in 1785–86 and a replacement meeting house was built further forward, closer to the road, in 1786.

[5] The first change to the building took place in 1939, when architect Hubert Lidbetter built an extension to the rear, providing kitchens and a classroom at a cost of £400.

[9] This firm had recently completed a substantial renovation of the Grade I-listed Ifield Friends Meeting House.

[5] The original Sussex edition of the Buildings of England series by Ian Nairn and Nikolaus Pevsner state that it dates from 1834,[20] as does the subsequent (2004) Sussex Extensive Urban Survey,[21] but other sources agree that the meeting house does date from 1786.

[22][23] The burial ground, at the front (east side) of the meeting house, is no longer in use and has been turned into a garden.

The only surviving headstones, both of which have been laid down to form paving slabs,[9] are of the local palaeontologist George Bax Holmes (d. 1887) and his wife, who predeceased him, and another for members of the Saunders family who also died in the late 19th century.