In the Domesday Book 1½ hides at Berth here were held by William de Warenne perhaps part of the manor of Hurstpierpoint, West Sussex.
In the 18th and early 19th centuries Wivelsfield was the focus of a small group of local dissenters (Particular Baptists) who in 1763 broke from the larger Ditchling General Baptist community and formed a new meeting with a surviving 1780 chapel under Henry Booker.