Church Of St Swithun

The Church of St Swithun

The church was rebuilt from 1789 by James Wyatt. The tower was completed in 1812 to designs of 1811 by J T Groves, executed after Groves's death by H W and W Inwood. A restoration was carried out in 1874-6 by J M Hooker.

The church is built of local Sussex sandstone of varying hues. It comprises a nave, short chancel, north and south aisles, south porch, and west tower.

The church is an impressive, unified piece of late 18th-century and very early 19th-century Gothic Revival building in the Perpendicular style. The west tower is a landmark in the town and rises to a tall belfry stage with four-light transomed windows set within sunken panels. There is Y-tracery to the lower stage. The buttresses are of angle type and rise up to terminate in four large, crocketed pinnacles. The top of the tower is, like the rest of the constituent parts of the building, battlemented. The six bays of the nave and aisles are demarcated by buttresses which terminate above the parapets in gable heads. The buttresses on the aisles have very low off-sets. The tracery throughout has panelling and, in the three-light aisle windows, is cusped only to the main lights and the upper quatrefoil. In the east wall of the nave there is a blind traceried window. The clerestory of roundels is visible only from the interior.

The south porch preserves its 18th-century flat plaster ceiling. In the body of the church the walls are mostly of bare stone, Wyatt's plaster covering having been removed at the 1874-6 restoration. The east wall of the nave and the sanctuary walls are painted white. The nave has five-bay arcades with very tall concave-sided octagonal piers with concave mouldings to the capitals and hollow-chambered arches. The 1874-6 roof has a crown post and tie-beam trusses with arched-braces carried on short stone shafts on moulded corbels. The aisles roofs are flat, the cross beams being carried on moulded corbels. There is a substantial two-bay painted hammerbeam roof, presumably of 1874-6, to the sanctuary with open tracery decoration to the spandrels and diagonal boarding behind the rafters. The chancel, now lengthened to the west, is defined by a screen.

The most prominent feature is the rood screen of 1919 by Sir Arthur Blomfield and Sons, which has a gabled central opening and rich tracery to each of the eight lights: the rood is by Sir Ninian Comper, 1961. Lower screens divide the eastern chapels from the nave and chancel. The west end singers' gallery has a canted panelled front on timber posts and has been adapted to take organ pipes. The late 19th-century polygonal pulpit has carved scenes under depressed ogee arches and rests on a stone stem with marble shafts. The font is octagonal, has traceried panels and was painted in the 20th century. The pyramidal cover is of 1908. The nave and aisle seating dates from the 1874-6 scheme and has shouldered ends with diagonal boarding. There is an early 20th-century crested timber reredos with large rustic carved figures of saints under gabled canopies. The mosaic floor of the sanctuary was made by Constance Kent during her detention for murder; the teenage Kent was the main suspect in the infamous Road Hill House murder case of 1860, and female felons in Woking Gaol were also responsible for the mosaic floor around the Duke of Wellington's tomb in St Paul's Cathedral at this same time. There are many monuments including cast-iron slabs of the 16th and 17th centuries, 16th-century brasses and 18th-century wall tablets. The stained glass includes the east window, and a window by Hardman in the south aisle, a circa 1900 memorial window by Kempe in the north aisle, and glass in the clerestory windows dating partly from the late 19th century and partly 1989. In the north aisle a 1933 window commemorating Sussex churchmen including figures of Keble, Dean Rose, Nathaniel Woodard, John Mason Neale (who is buried in the churchyard) and Walter Farquhar.

South of the porch is a cast-iron gateway (separately listed). This has square-section openwork piers with zig-zag ornament, crowned with anthemia. The overthrow has a later lamp bracket attached. In the south-east corner of the churchyard is the chest tomb of J M Neale, designed by G E Street. It is a Gothic-style chest tomb with a floriated cross and a bible and chalice on the lid. A centenary plaque stands behind the chest tomb.

This is a bold and relatively rare example of late 18th-century Gothic church-building by one of the best-known architects of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. There was previously a medieval church on the site and it seems to have been principally of the 14th and 15th centuries. It was struck by lightning in 1772 and the tower collapsed in 1785 (this had already been rebuilt in 1684 following a lightning strike). A church brief in 1788 raised £516 towards rebuilding and work began the following year. Further funding was secured from loans and the church rates (apparently the last repayment was finally made in 1876). The tower was the last part to be completed in 1811-13: the architect responsible was J T Groves, no doubt largely working to Wyatt's design: after Groves's death the work was finished under H W and W Inwood. The major Victorian restoration took place in 1874-6 involving, most significantly, removal of the plaster from the walls, the introduction of open roofs, and a complete refurnishing in line with up-to-date taste.

James Wyatt (1746-1813) is one of the best-known architects of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Still in his twenties, he achieved fame with his design for the Pantheon in London, an early palace of entertainment. In 1776 he became surveyor to Westminster Abbey, in 1782 architect to the Board of Ordnance, and in 1796 surveyor-general and comptroller of the Office of Works. The royal favour to which Wyatt owed the last appointment was no doubt due to his having rebuilt Frogmore House for Queen Charlotte. His practice was extensive and diverse and he became especially famous for his work in Gothic. However, as a restorer and 'improver' of cathedrals his activities were, even in his own day, controversial and involved sweeping changes that would never be countenanced today. He is nonetheless buried in Westminster Abbey.

John Thomas Groves (circa 1761-1811) designed a number of elegant late Georgian houses but his most original work is an unusual pierced obelisk at Garbally in Ireland.

William Inwood (circa 1771-1843) and his son Henry William Inwood (1794-1843) were well-known architects in early 19th-century London. Their most famous work is St Pancras New Church, designed in 1819 and drawing upon H W Inwood's studies of ancient architecture in Athens on which he was to publish a book in 1827. His career was brought to a premature end when he was lost at sea in March 1843 while sailing to Spain.

John Marshall Hooker was a London architect with an office in the Strand and was active 1868-81.