[1] The flint and yellow brick church is set back from Steyning's ancient High Street and is within the village conservation area.

[2] In September of that year, Methodists first began to meet in Steyning,[3] an ancient village whose strategic position made it an important centre of trade.

St Cuthman founded its church in the 8th century; King Æthelwulf of Wessex was later buried there; and George Fox and William Penn were associated with a 17th-century Quaker meeting house.

Henry Northcroft, active in the Worthing and Lancing Methodist churches nearby, gave a plot of land behind Steyning High Street in 1875.

[9] Three dignitaries laid the foundation stone: Henry Northcroft, Sir William McArthur mp and Caroline Spong, wife of the minister of Cliftonville Congregational Church in Hove.

Work was scheduled to continue until October 1877,[9] but Oxley's firm went bankrupt and construction was suspended for five months until the receivers made arrangements with another builder.

Proactive work by ministers and the congregation, including outreach efforts to neighbouring villages and invitations to popular preachers, turned its fortunes around, and membership grew to 27 by 1892.

In 1912, a resident minister was appointed to serve Steyning and administer the nearby Ashington Methodist Church as well; but within weeks, he was called away to another position outside Sussex, and left almost immediately.

[11] Other original fittings included tapestry carpets, stone tablets with the Ten Commandments, a tall curved rostrum with decorative ironwork and a timber communion rail.

[18] The 1968 refurbishment included replacing the organ with one taken from Whitefield's Tabernacle, Moorfields, removing the rostrum in favour of a flat platform with a side pulpit and a communion table in the centre, and mounting a teak cross on the wall above.