Zoar Strict Baptist Chapel

The name Dicker originally described a large area of land near the River Cuckmere and South Downs, several miles inland from the English Channel. No reference to Dicker was made in the Domesday Book of 1086, and much of the area was unenclosed common land. It was crossed by a highway (the present A22), south of which was a major religious house, Michelham Priory. This gradually declined and was abandoned at the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536. The scattered settlements at Lower Dicker and Upper Dicker developed slowly and only gained their present names in the 18th century. Lower Dicker is now a linear settlement along the A22, but in the early 19th century little existed at the…

s and an open pediment.]] Strict Baptist chapels are characteristically "modest in scale, neat in complexion and restrained" architecturally, but Zoar Chapel is unusually "large and impressive" for the denomination. Set back from the main road in a large graveyard, behind a low hedgerow and with some formally placed yew trees, it has "an atmosphere of grandeur". The building is Classical in style with some Georgian elements. The front is rendered and has a gabled roof with an open pediment in which a recessed circular plaque is inset. This gives the dates of construction (1837) and enlargement (1874). Also on the façade are pilasters and an entrance porch. All of this work dates from the…

The Biblical city of Zoar, now rendered Zoara, gives its name to the chapel and to others in neighbouring West Sussex: at Handcross (founded 1775; still Strict Baptist) and Wisborough Green (founded 1753; now Evangelical). Former chapels of that name, neither of which survived the 19th century, were at Brighton (Windsor Street) and Hastings in East Sussex. There are several others elsewhere in England.