on Pett Level an unusual building was purchased and reused. The Admiralty installed a Lifesaving Rocket Apparatus Station on the beach; in 1935 it was converted into the tiny St Nicholas' Church. After the English Reformation, Roman Catholic worship was illegal in England for nearly 250 years until 1791, and it grew slowly thereafter in comparison to West Sussex, where many large estates were owned by gentry who secretly kept the faith over many generations. Ill-feeling towards Catholics apparently persisted well into the 19th century in Battle, where the 1886 Church of Our Lady Immaculate and St Michael was set well back from the street (in the garden of its presbytery) and does not have an ecclesiastical appearance. In the early 20th century, bolder architectural statements were made with the Gothic Revival church at Bexhill-on-Sea and the elaborate Italian Romanesque-style church at Rye, both of which are listed buildings. Most of the other Roman Catholic churches in Rother district are simple mid-20th-century buildings, sometimes with distinguishing architectural features such as a modernistic portico-style entrance at the former church at Sidley, dalle de verre glass at Burwash and a Mediterranean-style blank-arcaded tower at Little Common. Of the various Protestant Nonconformist denominations, Methodism has been especially prominent since the 18th century. Chapels built for Wesleyan Methodists are particularly numerous and can be found in many villages, although many have closed (Methodist worship has been in decline nationwide since the early 20th century). John Wesley himself was a frequent visitor to the area, and the church he founded at Rye in 1789 was the administrative base of a vast Circuit covering much of Sussex and Kent. His last ever outdoor sermon was preached beneath a tree near Winchelsea Methodist Chapel. The Methodist Statistical Returns published in 1947 recorded the existence of two chapels of Wesleyan origin in Northiam and one each at Battle, Beckley, Bexhill, Broad Oak, Burwash Weald, Catsfield, Crowhurst, Dallington, Etchingham, Hurst Green, Iden, Little Common, Mountfield, Peasmarsh, Robertsbridge, Rye, Staplecross, Ticehurst, Udimore, Wadhurst and Whatlington in addition to the Winchelsea chapel. There were also United Methodist (originally Bible Christian) chapels at Icklesham, Pett, Three Oaks and Westfield and a single Primitive Methodist chapel, Christ Church, at Bexhill. Almost all of these buildings still stand, but only the chapels at Broad Oak, Little Common, Pett and Rye remain in religious use by Methodists, along with the two at Bexhill and a