Ss Peter & Paul, West Wittering

News has just come in of the visit made recently by Dom Anselm to the Church of Ss Peter & Paul, West Wittering in the Anglican Diocese of Chichester.  Once a Catholic Church, its early history is related on the parish website:

The church building, dedicated to St.Peter and St.Paul, who were the two great leaders of the Christian Church in its early years, is either the third or fourth church on this site. Shortly after St.Wilfrid started converting the South Saxons (from whom Sussex takes its name) to Christianity, a small wooden church was built here around 770AD. It is possible that after a couple of hundred years or so, that building was replaced by another, which may have been of wood or stone. What we do know is that between 950 and 1010 AD, the church was destroyed by fire during a raid by Vikings from the Isle of Wight.

During the reign of King Canute (who reigned 1016-1035) the villagers rebuilt their church in stone. It lasted not much more than 100 years, because when the Normans took over following the Battle of Hastings in 1066, they set about rebuilding almost every church they came across. They knocked down the Saxon church, and re-using some of the old material they built a new one, the present building, in about 1150.

If you stand at the west end of the church and look about you, you can see evidence of over a thousand years of the history of the building. After just thirty years, in 1180, it was extended by piercing the south wall and supporting it with pillars and arches, to provide a south aisle. Alternate pillars are circular and octagonal in cross-section, and their tops are decorated with delicate carving, now very much eroded.