Baptist Church

Southwick Baptist Church stands on Wynsome Street in Southwick. Built in 1815 with extensions in the late 19th and late 20th centuries, it is understood to have undergone alterations in the 1840s and 1870s.

The walls are of red brick laid in Flemish bond with stone dressings. The pyramidal roof is clad in Welsh slate, and the south-west wall is rendered. The church is square in plan with the entrance in the north-west front, positioned at right-angles to the road. Windows in two tiers light the main hall and gallery.

The north-west front comprises three bays with the doorway placed centrally. Three lozenges of burnt headers mark the bays and separate the upper and lower windows. Double panelled doors sit within a moulded stone architrave with dropped keystone and flat stone hood on moulded brackets. The segmental-headed sash windows have stone frames with keystones and imposts. Nikolaus Pevsner observed that the windows appear considerably earlier than 1815, and it is possible they have been reused from another building. In the front and street elevations, the upper windows sit on a stone sill band. On the south-west and north-east sides, two bays of windows are positioned close together towards the centre of each elevation.

Attached to the east of the church is a single-storey building that provided a vestry and schoolroom, accessed via a side porch and two openings in the south-east wall. A structure existed in this position by 1846 but was substantially rebuilt in the 1870s. The schoolroom annexe is of red brick with stone dressings; to the north-east is a tripartite window of one large arched opening flanked by smaller arched openings. A late 20th-century extension to the south-west links with this annexe but is not of special interest.

The interior hall is surrounded on three sides by a gallery lit by the upper windows, accessed by paired wooden staircases from the entrance lobby. The gallery is supported on slender cast-iron columns. At the time of survey in 2010, the gallery was undergoing repair with pews being removed from the north-west section; pews remained in the south-west and north-east sections. The original ground-floor furnishings have been removed. The hall features moulded dado panelling, with similar panelling to the gallery fronts. A sunken baptistery set into the floor at the south-east end remains in use but is covered by a panel. A memorial tablet on the north-east wall commemorates Reverend William Doel, minister from 1878 to 1893 and historian of Baptist nonconformity in western Wiltshire, and his wife, who died in 1943.

Southwick was one of the earliest and largest centres of the Baptist movement in Wiltshire, giving rise to many other Particular Baptist communities in the area. The community was active by the mid-17th century; at the Western Baptist Assembly Meeting of 1655, Southwick representatives were said to be numerous and influential. The Baptist church remained strong throughout the reigns of Charles II and James II, when dissenters were prevented from worshipping freely. Congregations of up to 2000 met at various times in a hollow at nearby Witch Pit Wood, in a field, and in a meeting house known as Pig Hill Barn. The Southwick Baptists were encouraged by the preacher Andrew Gifford, who kept Baptism alive in the West Country at this time and ministered to the group in Witch Pit Wood. In 1672, Thomas Collier, a renowned itinerant Baptist preacher, was licensed as a teacher at Southwick and North Bradley. In 1676 it was recorded that 340 of the 440 inhabitants of Southwick and Bradley were nonconformists, with many Baptists from other parishes coming to worship at Southwick. After 1689 and throughout the 18th century, Baptist congregations were established in neighbouring parishes, several as branches of the Southwick church.

The first Baptist chapel at Southwick was built in 1709 within the site now occupied by the car park to the north-west of the present church. The foundation stone of the present church was laid on 15 May 1815, and the building was dedicated on 31 October that same year. In the late 19th century, a vestry and schoolroom were attached to the church. In 1861, a second Baptist chapel, the Providence Baptist Chapel, was established in Southwick by a former pastor of what was then known as the Old Baptist Chapel; the old church retained a diminished but loyal following, which revived during the later years of the century. The formalisation of the open-air baptistery in 1937, on the site of a historic baptismal pool a short distance to the north-west of the church, demonstrated the continuing support of the congregation, though the baptistery is no longer in use as of 2010. Today the church serves an active Baptist community.

The church has group value with the Grade II listed railings, gates, and gate piers which stand outside it, and with the listed external baptistery which lies approximately 100 metres to the north-west.