Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon was born in 1707 and embraced the ideas of the then newly emerging Methodist movement. In the 1740s, she became influenced by the Calvinistic doctrines espoused by George Whitefield, who became her personal chaplain, and in the 1760s she founded a series of chapels, the first of which was in the grounds of the house in Brighton where she was living at the time. The Connexion which bears her name was formally established in 1783 and remains, Evangelical and "rigidly Calvinistic".[1]
In 1763 the Countess moved a few miles north of Brighton to the village of Wivelsfield, where she took on the lease of Great Ote Hall, a small country house with 16th-century origins.[2][3] In 1778 she started holding services there in a room which was converted into a chapel,[4] and two years later she arranged for a purpose-built chapel to be constructed[5] on a site about 1⁄4 mile (0.40 km) to the northeast.[3] A manse was built on the south side around the same time.[6] A Sunday school was started at the chapel in 1887.[7]
In the early 20th century the chapel was administered as part of the Congregational Church. In 1907 it was reported that it was being operated as a branch of the Congregational chapel at Haywards Heath,[8] and five years later the minister in charge of the Congregational chapel at Plumpton was said to be looking after Ote Hall Chapel.[9] It was still described as Congregational in 1940.[4]
Ote Hall Chapel was listed at Grade II by English Heritage on 20 August 1965.[2] Such buildings are defined as "nationally important and of special interest".[10] As of February 2001, it was one of 1,162 Grade II listed buildings and 1,250 listed buildings of all grades in the district of Lewes, the local government district in which Wivelsfield is located.[11] It is the second oldest Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion chapel to survive in religious use:[12][note 1] it was a daughter church of the Connexion's original chapel in Brighton,[14] which opened in 1761 behind the house where the Countess was then living.[15]
Architecture
Ote Hall Chapel has been described as resembling "a small box".[3] The walls of the chapel are of dark grey glazed bricks with some red-brick dressings. The façade, which faces west and is quite broad, has two arched windows with glazing bars. The original entrance, also arched, was set between these windows but is now blocked; a new entrance, set in a gabled porch, was built on the north side in the late 19th century. The back (east) wall also has two arched windows. The roof is hipped and laid with tiles;[12][2][5] below it is a cornice supported on modillions.[2] A manse, built around the same time as the chapel, originally adjoined at the south end, but in 1956 it was demolished and replaced with the present church hall.[6]
^The Countess built a house and chapel in Bath in 1765; the chapel is still standing but passed out of religious use in the early 1980s. The Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion congregation which used it had declined by the early 20th century and decided to unite with a group of Presbyterians in 1922. The combined congregation joined the United Reformed Church upon the formation of that denomination in 1972 and moved to another chapel in 1981.[13]
^Scruton, Ian (January 2022). Davis, Matt (ed.). "Were John and Charles Wesley at George Hastings' Funeral?". Chapels Society Newsletter. No. 79. The Chapels Society. p. 17. ISSN1357-3276.
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