The Parish Church Of St Mary The Virgin

The Parish Church of St Mary the Virgin

This church was built in 1826 by George Draper, a Chichester architect, and extensively remodelled in 1935 by W.H. Randoll Blacker, a Fellow of the RIBA. It is constructed of red brick in English bond with stone dressings.

The building consists of a five-bay aisled nave, a western tower flanked by two vestibules, north and south transepts, and a chancel with an apse. Vestry rooms are situated to the south of the chancel, and a large twentieth-century extension was added to the north, abutting the church at its north-east corner.

Externally, a simple brick stringcourse runs along the parapet throughout. Window and door surrounds are of stone. The nave and transept windows are diamond-leaded lights with tall pointed arches and Y-tracery, with broad transoms carved with shields at their base. The transept, vestry and parish room windows are rectangular. The apse is five-sided with intersecting tracery windows.

The tower contains the principal visible fragment of the 1826 church. Its west face features a large curvilinear tracery window within a moulded pointed arch, sitting above a small three-light mullioned window with stained glass. The tower has a battlemented top and clock faces on the north, west and south sides. The belfry windows are mullioned. Two vestibules flanking the tower have canted corners with double doors set in segmental-headed moulded stone surrounds.

Internally, the church presents the impression of an eighteenth-century building. Walls are whitewashed with the stone nave arcade, chancel arch and apsidal arch left exposed. Abundant natural daylight enters through windows mostly containing clear glass.

Two identical vestibules with segmental-headed doorways lead from the west end corners into the nave aisles and the base of the tower. The original early nineteenth-century flagstone floor survives here alongside burial markers with legible inscriptions. A mid-nineteenth-century stone font of marble columns and carved cherubs and fleur-de-lis, surmounted by a wooden cover, stands in this space.

The nave is divided by a pointed-arched stone arcade marking five bays. A 1930s wooden gallery runs across three sides of the nave and into the transepts, supported by wooden Doric columns. Access is provided by stairs in both transepts and each vestibule at the west end, with stairs featuring robust square newel posts and distinctive splat balusters in a waved design. Simple turned balusters line the gallery. Pews have been removed from the nave but survive in the gallery. A large organ with a late eighteenth-century case from St Paul's Church in Bristol occupies the west gallery. Wall monuments dating to the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries are displayed in the north and south galleries.

The south transept contains a stained-glass two-light mullioned window of 1897. A wooden pulpit with steps and sounding board is situated in the nave. A rood screen supported by a tie beam and a chancel screen from the 1950s separate the chancel and crossing. Early twentieth-century choir stalls are positioned in the crossing. The apse windows contain figures of Christ, a Madonna and saints from nineteenth-century stained glass reset in clear glass.

A medieval church occupied this site until 1826, when a faculty was granted for a new building. Early photographs show that George Draper's original church had a three-bay nave with a tower in Georgian 'gothick' style featuring pointed-arched windows and pinnacles. A chancel was added in 1889. In 1934, W.H. Randoll Blacker transformed the church's appearance by remodelling the interior, re-clading the external walls, rebuilding the chancel, and adding transepts and vestibules to each side of the tower at the west end. A large extension was added to the north in the post-war period.

The medieval font originally in the church has been moved to St James's Church on Arundel Road.