The area now covered by the town of Burgess Hill was, until the mid-19th century, rural common land that straddled the boundary of the parishes of Clayton and Keymer.

The line passed through the area of St John's Common and the company opened Burgess Hill railway station on the same day.

[3] The railway stimulated residential development and the Keymer Brick and Tile Works, already well-established as Burgess Hill's main industry, was able to expand its sales.

A group of landowners in Clayton parish was so angry at the proposal to move the church away from the site set by the inclosure act award that they took out a newspaper advertisement in July 1861 protesting against any change to this plan.

The Bishop of Chichester, Ashurst Turner Gilbert, laid the foundation stone on 4 November 1861, and building work continued until June 1863, when the church was consecrated.

[10] Late in the 20th century the north transept and aisle were separated by a screen from the rest of the church, to allow alternative use of the space; this was formalised by the Diocese of Chichester in 1989.

[12] The growth of the town in the late 19th century — particularly to the northeast and west, some way from the church — prompted the opening of two mission chapels in the 1880s.

[13][14] Two years later Somers Clarke gave money for the building of a second mission hall to serve the northeastern part of the town, which had developed quickly after Wivelsfield railway station was reopened on a new site in 1886.

It was consecrated on 30 November 1908 in an incomplete state: the liturgical east end was eventually completed in 1924, and the planned tower was never built.

[14] St Andrew's Church, designed by Lacy W. Ridge, is a Gothic Revival red brick building with some exterior stonework.

[8][13][17][18] St Edward the Confessor Church is at the west end of the town, in Burgess Hill's main cemetery.

[19] A small Perpendicular Gothic-style stone cemetery chapel was built in the early 20th century; this later was made a place of Sunday worship run from St John the Evangelist's.

[20] An oak-carved pulpit commemorates Simeon Norman, one of Burgess Hill's prominent 19th-century residents, who built the Grade II-listed Providence Strict Baptist Chapel.

The Franz Mayer & Co. stained glass company designed some of the windows,[9] and another commemorates a local doctor who had donated the organ.

[24] St John's had employed Mytton despite his having been forced to leave a parish in Uckfield in 1981 because he was convicted of committing two acts of gross indecency with a 12-year-old boy.

[23] When arrested for the offences he committed at St John's, Mytton told Sussex Police "I like boys.