Church Heritage Record 610071

Nave with south-west porch; chancel with apse and north vostry with organ loft above, south chapel.

By Henry Woodyer (1816-1896). The designs were made in 1869 and the church was consecrated on 18 February 1871. Woodyer was with Butterfield for a short time and all his work was ecclesiastical or domestic. He lived as a country gentleman in Surrey and as a result many of his works are to be found in the home counties, although he only designed one church in London. The estimate for Portfield was £2,000 (though we do not know whether it was exceeded) and the builder was John Ellis of Portfield.

Although a simple building, the church at Portfield has certain characteristics which show that it is the sort of building which the best nineteenth- century church builders could produce even when funds were limited. There are no fussy details and the plan is very straightforward with nave and chancel under one long roof broken only in the middle by a small, sharply pointed shingled bell-cote. The north and south walls of the nave are pierced by tall narrow lancets set above a stringcourse and the chancel has an apse with buttresses at the angles with prominent brick dressings, the windows here being each of two lights with trefoiled honds and an uncusped circle above. Between nave and chancel there are small projections in the position of transepts. They are, however, not treated as transepts but are roofed with a continuation of the overall roof slope of the church, only at a very slightly shallower pitch. That on the south is a chapel for weekday use and therefore has its own entrance door at the west end of the south wall and then two single lancets, with a pair of lancets in the east wall. The projection on the north is similar but has in addition two small gabled buildings lying parallel to the church which are used as a choir vestry and churchyard store. The west wall of the nave has four lancets of equal height above a stringcourse with a blind quatrofoil carved with a cross in relief set between the heads of the two centre lights. The only buttress on the nave is at the south-west corner by the porch and this has, towards the top, an inset square stone inscribed with the sacred monogram IHS and the date 1869. Above the tapered off-set is a cross carved in relief under a trofoiled hood. The south porch has an outer arch of two chamfered orders with simple imposts and a small trefoil headed niche in the wall above. The east and west walls each have four quatrefoils in a row as windows.

The interior is also simple and straightforward. The walls are plastered and whitewashed, with dressings of exposed cream coloured stone round the windows and doorways. There is no chancel arch but instead a structural timber screen with a large plain cross above which turns out to be an adaptation of the collars at the remaining bays of the nave roof by the simple addition of a vertical "king-post" rising from the screen. The roofs are very steeply pitched and the principals also have scissor braces. The alley in the nave is paved with red, black and buff tiles and the pews stand on timber boards. Within the chancel are peculiar galleries on the north and south fitted within the sloping roofs of the vestry and south chapel. That above the south chapel is inaccessible but that on the north, approached by a fine oak spiral staircase from the vestry, holds the small organ. These replaced earlier screens (without lofts) in 1915 and the improvements were carried out by Norman and Burt of Burgess Hill. At the same time the south chapel was furnished by C.E. Kempe and Company (by this time under the direction of Walter Tower). It has a small narthex at the west end which communicates by an arch to the nave and also to the outside doorway. The chapel was given a panelled roof with chevron decoration along moulded beams, a small but comely English altar and glass in all four of its tiny windows from the same firm. The chancel has an aumbry in the north wall fitted with later doors and two Caernarvon-headed sedilia in the south wall on detached shafts with octagonal florets in the spandrels and, nearby, a small piscina with quatrefoil drain and a trefoil arch. The windows round the apse have plainly chamfered arches carried on attached shafts and only the central one if filled with stained glass. Its sill is set higher than the others but the reredos for which this was arranged has been removed.