The Church at the Ford
St John the Baptist stands where lanes from Kirdford’s farms and former estates converge near the River Kird. The historic parish covered about 12,500 acres, reaching towards Shillinglee, Ebernoe, Balls Cross and Petworth. Farms, cottages and hamlets were scattered across woodland and heavy Wealden clay. For many parishioners, churchgoing meant a journey of several miles along roads that became deeply rutted in winter.
The church gave this dispersed population a shared centre. Kirdford lay in Rotherbridge Hundred within the Rape of Arundel, while its clergy and worship came under the Diocese of Chichester. Several manors divided the land and its obligations. The church gathered their households for worship, baptism, marriage, burial and parish business. Its tower, bells, registers and churchyard served a community whose homes and manorial loyalties were spread across the old parish.
A House of Stone and Sacrament
The oldest surviving fabric belongs to the first half of the twelfth century. Herringbone masonry and the blocked Norman doorway in the south wall reveal the nave of the first stone church. Raising it required local sandstone, roof material, timber, ironwork and organised labour carried across difficult ground. It created a permanent sacred landmark close to the ford.
During the thirteenth century a broad north aisle transformed the church. Three pointed arches replaced the nave’s north wall, and a fourth opened towards the chancel. The aisle almost matched the Norman nave in width, providing room for a larger congregation, subsidiary altars and processions. In 1248-49 two accused housebreakers fled to Kenredeford church and claimed sanctuary, showing the legal authority attached to its consecrated space.
Later generations lengthened the chancel, built the vaulted sacristy and raised the west tower. The sacristy kept books, vestments, vessels and candles near the high altar. Piscinae served the chancel and an aisle altar, while squints gave sight of the principal ceremonies. Carved corbels in the tower mark an intended stone vault that was never completed. By about 1500 the church had acquired the form that still governs it. The medieval west door retains old oak and ironwork, the porch preserves late-medieval timber, and early benches survive in the north aisle.
Arundel and Chichester
Kirdford’s worship was local, while its income connected the parish with Arundel. The church formed part of the endowment of Arundel Priory. In 1353 the benefice was appropriated to the priory, and Bishop Robert de Stratford established a perpetual vicarage the following year. The resident vicar received smaller tithes, offerings, an annual payment and a house with a garden; the priory retained the greater income and responsibility for the chancel.
After the priory was dissolved, its Kirdford interests passed to the College of the Holy Trinity at Arundel. Agricultural produce from the parish supported worship locally and an ecclesiastical institution many miles away. The college connection ended at the Reformation, when its rights passed into lay hands, while the clergy and churchwardens continued the daily work of the parish.
The Bells call to worship
A medieval church day began in sound. Bells called worshippers from the countryside, while the vicar and clerk prepared for morning offices and Mass. Banns, feast days, fasts, collections and parish matters could be announced during worship. Prayers embraced the sick, travellers, benefactors, the dead, peace, weather and harvest. Rogation processions carried prayer into the fields, joining the church year to farming life. Baptism brought children into the Christian community, marriage joined households before neighbours, and funerals moved from home to church and burial ground. Candles, images, music and seasonal decoration repeatedly changed the appearance of the interior.
Sixteenth-century wills describe the church under the dedication of Our Lady or St Mary. Parishioners left money for lights, bells, the rood and repairs. The date when St John the Baptist became the accepted dedication remains uncertain. A bell cast around 1555 still carries a Latin appeal to Holy Mary, preserving the earlier devotion above a church later ordered by the Book of Common Prayer.
The Reformation, Faith Recast, Parish Life Continued
The Reformation altered the interior and the form of worship. Images, side altars and the rood were removed or changed, while English services and preaching gained prominence. Parish registers begin in this new setting: marriages in 1558, baptisms in 1569 and burials in 1595. From then onwards, local families can be followed through the church’s own record of birth, marriage and death.
The seventeenth century added the Communion cup of 1601, paten of 1622 and Sussex marble font of 1620. The font carries the initials of churchwardens Henry Strudwick and Richard Penfold. Bells cast in 1607, 1642 and 1649 carried the tower through the Civil War years. An oak Communion table and rails gave the chancel a new Anglican order while medieval features remained around them. The names placed on plate and font show how churchwardens carried responsibility for money, repairs, furnishings and worship on behalf of their neighbours.
The registers record about 230 burials between 1638 and 1640, a severe crisis felt across the farms and households of the parish. The 1647 inventory of the vicar Thomas Holland opens the vicarage during the same unsettled period. It contained a hall, study, kitchen, buttery, bakehouse, brewhouse, upper chambers, a substantial library and virginals, presenting the rural clergyman as priest, scholar, administrator and householder. The deaths disrupted labour, inheritance and tenancy as funeral processions came to Kirdford from distant parts of the parish.
Sammuel Grimm’s Church and the Lost Gallery – 1791
By the eighteenth century galleries and box pews had changed worship. A gallery inside the tower served the ringers, while another occupied the west end of the north aisle. Samuel Hieronymus Grimm visited Kirdford in 1791 and painted the church from the north-west. His watercolour shows an external staircase climbing the north wall to a high doorway near the aisle’s west end, almost certainly the direct entrance to the congregational gallery.
Grimm also recorded a small rectangular window high in the aisle’s west wall. Henry Petrie’s drawing of 1805 shows the same mullioned opening. Together the images preserve a Georgian arrangement that has disappeared and explain the contrast with the present tall pointed window.
The Victorian Chancel and the Opened Aisle
Henry Woodyer directed the principal restoration of 1877-78, costing about £1,050. Much of the Norman nave’s south wall was rebuilt, external stonework was renewed, two south windows received plate tracery, the north aisle’s west window was renewed, the chancel and roof were repaired, and the medieval squints reopened. Work around the chancel arch was extensive. Woodyer retained the timber porch and the ringers’ gallery, while adding the alabaster and marble reredos and the stone pulpit. The campaign combined repair with a Victorian vision of medieval worship, directing attention towards choir and altar. Landowners made substantial gifts, while farmers, tradespeople, parish collections and entertainments widened the support.
The north-aisle gallery and external stair survived Woodyer’s work. The gallery was removed in 1897, when Powell and Sons supplied memorial glass for George Ford, the parish clerk. The present two-light pointed window probably acquired its final form then. The exact division between the 1878 renewal and the 1897 enlargement remains unresolved, although a substantial part of the west wall was clearly rebuilt.
Choir, Glass and Parish Memory
A new organ by S. J. Jones opened at Easter 1883, bringing regular rehearsals and a surpliced choir. Sunday-school children processed behind the Kirdford Fife and Drum Band, friendly societies marched with banners, and harvest thanksgiving filled the church with produce. Memorial windows by Kempe, Powell and Sons, and Henry Holiday added colour while commemorating clergy, estate families and the parish clerk George Ford. The organ required an organist, rehearsals and a regular body of singers, giving church music a social organisation of its own. The restored interior became a setting for worship, education, procession and village celebration.
War brought another form of gathering. The bells were muffled in 1914, and the memorial brass gave families a local place to remember men buried overseas or recorded among the missing. In 1944 a Rogation procession carried prayer into fields vital to wartime food production. The vicar Edward Sidebotham lost his son Peter in naval operations near Antwerp, then reused a Waterloo sermon in 1945 to address a new generation of bereaved households. In August 1945 the old text joined the aftermath of Waterloo with losses still raw in Kirdford and Plaistow.
The memorial lychgate, dedicated in 1950, placed the names of the dead from Kirdford and Plaistow at the churchyard entrance. Later campaigns repaired roofs, tower and bells. St John the Baptist endures through this accumulated care: Norman masonry, medieval arches, the Marian bell, Stuart furnishings, Victorian glass and modern memorials remain parts of one parish story whenever the bells sound and the doors open.
