Church Heritage Record 610553

nave with west bell- cote Autre , south aisle and north vestry; chancel.

The church was built in the twelfth century, and certainly existed by 1214. A south aisle was added in the thirteenth century, then taken down, and once more rebuilt in c.1860. The bell turret was renewed in 1904, incorporating as many old fragments as possible, under the direction of Philip Johnston.

Tortington church was built by the nearby Priory to serve a small rural hamlet in which lived the tenants of the Priory; one of its chief merits is that (save for the minor additions of a narrow south aisle in the thirteenth century and a north vestry in the nineteenth), it retains its original plan with remarkable completeness. Tucked away behind farm buildings, the initial impression is typical of Sussex, the low flint-faced walls with roughly squared quoins rising to a sweep of red tiled roof capped near the west gable by a humble weatherboarded bell-cote painted shining white.

The south doorway is the most notable feature of the exterior; it has been moved at least three times since it was first south aisle was built, back again when the aisle became ruinous and once more brought forward when the aisle was reconstructed during the latter part of the last century. There are two orders of zig- zag round the arch, the outermost with a bunch of grapes in each angle, and there is a single nook-shaft each side of the opening. The arch is outlined by a hoodmoulding with a four-leaved decoration incised on the soffit. The scalloped capitals of the shafts have been somewhat injured but are original. The doorway is placed under a small cross gable in order to provide enough wall surface to frame it.

The walls are all faced with flint, with squared quoins at the corners, but no buttresses whatever. Each wall surface has a single window placed centrally save for the north wall of the nave where there are two windows. All these are single lights, rather large for Norman windows, set within deep splays internally and some, such as the west window, were renewed in the thirteenth century. The north vestry, under a pent roof which continues the line of the north nave roof, has a neo-Norman window and a Caernarvon-headed doorway in the north wall. In the north-west quoin of the nave is a piece of late Norman moulding, built in at some repair; it has been part of an arch and bears remains of a cone-like ornament.

The interior of the church is quite dark as a result of the unenlarged windows, but of an almost unaltered Normand building. The rere-arches of the windows are outlined by white stone surrounds, and the walls are washed with a pale buff colour which is restful to the eye. Entrance is by the south doorway (the door itself nineteenth-century with strong scrolling iron hinges). This leads into the south aisle, separated from the nave by a two-bay Early English arcade of double chamfered arches resting on simple tapered corbels at the east and west and a round pillar centrally. The arches are quite wide for the proportions of the building, and are constructed of chalk with Caen stone for the responds and low central column. The base and capital of the column, as well as the upper moulding of the corbels, is of sandstone of a darker tone than the Caen stone, perhaps representing an early and crude attempt at constructional polychromy. The base of the column has angle spurs.

The most striking feature of the church is the chancel arch, of the same date as the south doorway but rather more extrovert in detail. It is also executed in Caen stone, so pale as to be easily mistaken for chalk. It is of two order, the inner plain and square-edged, and the citing outer composed of a row of beakheads alternating with grotesque semi human faces or masks with sprays of foliage, hair or feathers growing out of their heads. There is nothing else quite like this curious arch in Sussex, and indeed it is the only instance of beakhead in the county. In the centre of the arch is a keystone engraved on the west face with a shield in low relief with the arms of the Leeves family and on the east face the inscription "W.F. Leeves 1750" . The beakhead above the stone on the west side is evidently an insertion of the same date, so that it seems that the arch had parted outwards and was repaired by the insertion of these stones by Mr. Leeves. Traces of colour (such as black in the holes drilled for eyes in the grotesque masks) show that the arch was originally all polychrome.

The east wall of the nave is divided horizontally by a stringcourse formed by the continuation of the impost mouldings returned to the north and south. The nave roof is of oak, almost black in colour, black and probably of the same age as the walls. The rafters are "laid flat" and the space is spanned by four tie-beams, one against the east wall, one against the west wall and two intermediately. The construction of the chancel roof is similar. The floors are tiled.