Church Of St Mary And All Saints

The Church of St Mary and All Saints is a parish church dating to around 1270-1290, with a 15th-century bellcote and spire, and a 19th-century restoration. It is constructed of bargate stone rubble and blocks, with ironstone galletting, and has plain tiled roofs with Horsham slabs to the north and south eaves, and wood shingles to the bellcote and spire. The building follows a cruciform plan, featuring a bellcote and spire to the west end, a south porch, and chancel vestries. The west-facing tower has offset buttresses, two louvred, trefoil-headed openings on each face, and a squat, broach spire topped with an acorn finial, and decorative bands of fishscale shingles. An early 14th-century window contains intersecting and cusped tracery. Most windows are original, featuring trefoil cusping and a circle above the chancel windows, containing a pointed trefoil within a pointed enclosing arch. South windows are of a similar design. The east windows of the transepts are smaller and plainer, with two trefoil lights and a quatrefoil above a chamfered surround. The east window was raised in 1882 and incorporates three trefoil lights with three cinquefoil roundels above a moulded arch. The early south porch has trefoiled bargeboards on the gable and a curious half-joint at the gable apex. A 16th-century 4-centre planked and studded door, with Tudor roses in the spandrels of the entrance arch, is set within the porch, which retains remains of floral painting on the underside of its roof. A blocked priests’ door in the south wall of the chancel has renewed jamb-shafts under corbel capitals and a hood moulding. Internally, the chancel roof has been renewed. Continuous sill moulding runs around the nave and chancel. A fine bellcage is located in the west end. A free-standing pier in the south transept, together with the beginnings of an arch, indicate the original intention to add a south aisle. A 19th-century chancel arch and transept arches have doubly hollow chamfers, with a hood moulding over the chancel arch. Octagonal half-pier responds to the transepts, with deeply coved capitals. The chancel walls were once rendered and painted. Fittings include a triple sedilia and piscina in the chancel, featuring four arches with undercut hood mouldings dying into a circular string-course, with a wave moulding order to the arches and a fine hollow inner trefoil order. Capitals and bases are of Sussex marble. A credence shelf is located to the piscina, and incorporates a bowl and two circular basins. Each transept has a further piscina. A 19th-century panelled pulpit, with tracery patterning, stands within the church. A round bowl font sits on a central stem, accompanied by a turreted cover. Rare 13th-century pews have bench ends rising to two knobs with a deep down-pointing cusp between. A hatchment of Arms of George IV, dated 1828, is also present. The church is an unusually complete example of a single build village church. Some visual evidence suggests it may have been built by Royal Masons.