Church Of St Leonard

The Church of St Leonard is a parish church located in Newhaven, dating from the 13th century, with possible earlier work. It was embellished and had an east window added in the 14th century, underwent reroofing, restoration, and the addition of a vestry in the mid to late 19th century, and a porch was added in the early 20th century. The church is constructed of knapped flint with stone dressings and features angle buttresses at the south corner of the chancel. It has a tiled roof and a weather-boarded bell-turret.

The layout includes an undivided nave and chancel, with a bell-turret at the west end and a south porch. The west end has a three-light window with the bell-turret above it. The south front features a medieval lancet window and a timber-framed porch with a mid-20th century door. There are two-light windows with rendered surrounds flanking a 20th-century wooden-framed arch-headed window, along with a rood-stair projection that has a stair-light adjoining it. The east window is a four-light Decorated style, while the north front includes a two-light window and a vestry with a late 20th-century door on the east front, a two-light Tudor arch-headed window, a four-light window on the west front, and a two-light window beside a blocked north door with a lancet beyond.

Inside, the church has a rendered interior with an open king-post roof featuring boarded soffits in the chancel. The nave and chancel are undivided, and there is a depressed four-centred arch opening to the rood-stair opening above, with the stair still extant. The window opening has a deep splay with a 20th-century wooden-framed window inserted to the east of the rood stair. There is an ogee-headed sedilia with a quatrefoil-headed piscina topped with a gable. A 19th to 20th-century doorway leads to the vestry, accompanied by a lancet window beside it.

Notably, the church houses a fine Norman font, said to be identical to one found in St Anne's, Lewes, featuring a basket weave body with rosettes between narrow bands above and plaited strips below. The church also contains 19th-century fittings and stained glass in the east window by Kempe, dated 1897, which was given in memory of Miss Catt, the principal landowner in Denton who also built the local school.