Jireh Chapel, Lewes

The ancient market town of Lewes has a well-established history of Protestant Nonconformism. Many chapels were established in the 18th and 19th centuries in the town itself and in its suburbs of Southover and Cliffe. One such place of worship was the Jireh chapel. In or around 1805 a dispute arose between Jenkin Jenkins, the minister at Cliffe's Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion chapel, and its congregation. He was dismissed by the Countess's Trustees and arranged for a new chapel to be built for him nearby. (The Countess of Huntingdon chapel, which opened in 1775, survived until the 1880s but has been demolished.) Jireh Chapel was placed in the hands of trustees about 1807. Prior to that time it had been the personal property of Jenkin Jenkins. The Trust Deed states that the chapel is a place of Christian worship to be "frequented and enjoyed by a congregation of Protestant Dissenters of the Calvinistic persuasion professing ..". A list of certain Articles of Faith, extracted from the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England, follows. that hung in the chapel Jenkins enlisted William Huntington to open the church, which was completed in 1805. An example of his eccentricity was his reference to Jenkins as "W.A." (the "Welsh Ambassador") and himself as "S.S." ("Sinner Saved"); the "W.A." epithet featured on a tablet below the chapel's gabled roof which commemorated its opening. It reads . Huntington died in 1813 and was buried in a tomb in the small graveyard behind the chapel. The chapel proved popular, and was extended in 1826 to give a capacity of about 1,000. The denomination was founded by Ian Paisley on 17 March 1951 in Crossgar, a village in County Down, Northern Ireland.{{cite web|url=http://www.freepresbyterian.org/history/|title=Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster – History ==Architecture==

Although externally clad in red brick and tiles, the chapel is completely timber-framed. Above this, three evenly spaced sash windows, an oculus and the stone tablet sit below the gable. A chimney breast extends up the west wall. The roof is covered with slate tiles and has a small boxlike louvred projection, topped with a pyramid-style cap, in the middle. There are four pairs of sash windows in the north and south walls, which are faced with mathematical tiles and slates respectively. Inside, wood predominates: the barrel-vaulted timber roof is supported on wooden columns attached to the gallery which runs around all four sides of the interior. The galleries are in turn held up with five timber columns on the north and south sides. Wooden staircases leading to the galleries are situated in all four corners. An octagonal pulpit stands at the west end. Original pine box-pews remain in the galleries and the main body of the chapel. ==The church today==

Since December, 2024, the chapel has been used for worship by the Strict Baptist church formed at Galeed Chapel, Brighton, in 1869. Two Sunday services and evening meetings on Wednesday and Friday take place each week. The church was designated a Grade I Listed building on 25 February 1952. ==See also==