List of current places of worship in Wealden

Protestant Nonconformism, always strong in Sussex, flourished in the area now covered by the district: many Baptist, Methodist and Congregational chapels were built, and most survive.

Historic England or its predecessor English Heritage have awarded listed status to more than 60 current and former church buildings in Wealden.

[30] Churches largely or wholly of that century—some of which replaced earlier buildings—can be found at Buxted,[31] Chalvington,[32] Chiddingly,[33] Fletching[34] (although Pevnser describes its tower as Norman),[35] Folkington,[36] Framfield (rebuilt in the 16th century after a fire),[37] Lullington[38] and Waldron.

[39] Features from the 13th century also survive at Hooe,[40] Laughton,[41] Ripe,[42] Warbleton,[43] Wartling[44] and Willingdon,[45] which were rebuilt or extended later in the medieval era, and at Ninfield in a church subjected to extensive 19th-century rebuilding.

[49] English Anglican churches wholly of the 17th and 18th centuries are rare, but Withyham (rebuilt in 1680 after the predecessor burnt down)[50] and Crowborough (newly built in 1744 and altered later)[51] are represented in the district.

[60] James Piers St Aubyn designed a chapel of ease at Cross-in-Hand, the main settlement in Waldron parish, in 1863–64.

[65] The wealthy Vicar of Brighton Arthur Wagner, who had a house in Buxted and established a convent there, also paid for the construction of a second church for the village in 1885–86.

Examples include Blackham (1902),[61] Jarvis Brook (1906),[68] Colemans Hatch (1913, by Arthur Blomfield),[69] Heathfield town (1915),[70] Bodle Street Green (1923, replacing a fire-damaged one),[71] Stone Cross (1924; a chapel of ease in Westham parish),[72] Alderbrook (1957),[73] Broad Oak (1959),[70] Lower Willingdon (1962)[74] and Pevensey Bay (1968, replacing one of 1881).

[76] Much of the southern and central part of present-day Wealden was covered by the vast Roman Catholic parish of the Our Lady of Ransom Church, Eastbourne.

[77][note 2] The strength of Protestant Nonconformism in the East Sussex countryside led to anti-Catholic feeling locally, and it was difficult to find suitable premises outside Eastbourne to celebrate Mass for the small number of Catholics in the area.

[78] Eastbourne's parish priest founded a Mass centre in Hailsham in 1917, and numbers of worshippers grew to the extent that the rented premises (the hay-loft of a brewery's stables) were swapped for a purpose-built church in 1922.

[83] St John the Evangelist Church at Heron's Ghyll dates from 1896–97, but a Catholic mission was founded there 30 years earlier by poet Coventry Patmore.

[86][87] In Mayfield, an oratory dedicated to St Thomas of Canterbury in the convent school at the Old Palace was used for public Masses from 1932, although it was not formally registered for worship until 1946[88] and for marriages the following year.

[90] Catholic worship in the Wadhurst area was focused on the chapel at The Mount Novitiate House of Fathers of Charity, originally founded by Rosminians, but they built the present Church of the Sacred Heart in 1929 for use by the general public.

[91] St Catherine's Church was built in 1953 to serve Heathfield, but it has been demolished and local Catholics now worship at the chapel of a Benedictine convent in nearby Cross-in-Hand.

)[106] Sussex, and the east of the county in particular, is "particularly well endowed with wayside chapels" supporting these principles: such buildings are typically "modest in scale, neat ... [and] restrained", with a "quiet and unassuming elegance".

Thomas Dicker, a member of a long-established local family, founded Five Ash Down Independent Chapel in 1784; his son was involved with the Strict Baptist churches at Uckfield and Hailsham.

[110] A member of Zoar left to take up the pastorate at Ebenezer Chapel at Bodle Street Green and changing its doctrines to Strict Baptist.

Other religions named in the census had much lower proportions of followers than in England overall—the corresponding national percentages were 5.02% for Islam, 1.52% for Hinduism, 0.79% for Sikhism, 0.49% for Judaism and 0.45% for Buddhists.

[119] The churches at Alciston, Alfriston, Arlington, Berwick, Chalvington, Folkington, Laughton, Litlington, Lullington, Ripe, Selmeston, West Dean and Wilmington are in the Rural Deanery of Lewes and Seaford.

[122] Three churches in the north of the district—at Forest Row, Hammerwood and Holtye Common (now redundant)—are part of the Rural Deanery of East Grinstead in the Archdeaconry of Horsham.