A Parish Church at the Centre of the Weald
St Peter ad Vincula stands above Wisborough Green, where the church, green and converging roads formed the centre of a large Wealden parish. For centuries its territory extended from the Arun valley to Loxwood and the Surrey boundary. Farmers, labourers, servants and estate families travelled from scattered settlements to worship, baptise their children, marry, receive pastoral care and bury their dead.
The church belongs to the generation of the Norman Conquest. Domesday Book records two churches at nearby Pulborough. One is associated with the predecessor of St Mary’s at Pulborough; the identity of the second remains uncertain. The late-eleventh-century masonry at Wisborough Green makes it chronologically possible that St Peter ad Vincula was the second church, although the surviving evidence does not establish the identification.
The earliest fabric dates from about 1080-1100. Herringbone masonry and exceptionally thick western walls survive within the nave, and their form has led architectural historians to interpret the first building as a compact tower-nave church. Local sandstone, oak and ironwork were carried across heavy Wealden clay to create a permanent sacred landmark which later generations enlarged around the original core.
From Norman Nave to Medieval Parish Church
During the later twelfth century rounded arcades opened the nave into north and south aisles. The compact early church became a broader building where a larger congregation could gather and processions could move around subsidiary altars. Its Norman core remains visible within the present plan, giving the interior a strong sense of architectural growth rather than replacement.
The thirteenth century brought the most ambitious phase of construction. The west tower rose above the earlier masonry, the chancel was rebuilt and the north aisle acquired much of its present form. These works established the scale and eastward direction of the medieval interior, drawing attention from the nave towards the chancel and high altar.
Wisborough Green also gained an important connection with Chichester Cathedral. Its income had formed part of the prebend of Aldingbourne, and in the early thirteenth century Wisborough became a separate prebend. The arrangement supported a cathedral canon from the greater tithes while a resident vicar served the parish. A stall bearing the name Wisborough remains at Chichester Cathedral, preserving this institutional link between the village, the cathedral chapter and the wider Diocese of Chichester.
In 1227 Henry III granted a weekly Thursday market and an annual fair around the feast of St Peter ad Vincula. Worship and trade therefore met beside the green, and the church, its feast and the fair helped make Wisborough Green the recognised centre of the surrounding parish.
Drungewick and the Bishops of Chichester
The bishops’ presence within the parish became especially important in the thirteenth century. In 1256 Drungewick passed to John de Clymping, Bishop of Chichester, who established a moated residence, chapel and staurum: a managed stock and provisioning estate supplying the episcopal household.
Drungewick combined agriculture with diocesan administration. Its house, chapel, livestock, woods and tenants allowed the bishops to conduct business close to the northern edge of the diocese, while produce from the estate supported their wider household. The manor connected everyday life in Wisborough Green parish directly with the authority of the bishops and with Chichester Cathedral.
Painted Faith and Medieval Worship
Around 1275 painters decorated the wall beside the chancel arch with one of the church’s greatest treasures. The lower scene shows the Crucifixion, with Christ crowned as the King of Glory. One thief is fixed to an extension of the crosspiece, an unusual detail that gives the composition a distinctive character. Above, St James the Great leads pilgrims carrying staffs and scallop-shell badges associated with Santiago de Compostela.
These paintings formed part of an interior experienced through colour, sound, movement and ceremony. Parishioners entered through a porch and used holy water at the doorway before gathering in the nave. A screen and rood marked the approach to the chancel. Candles burned before images and altars, while the bells called people from farms and woodland settlements to Mass, feast days, funerals and parish gatherings.
The font received children into the Christian community. Marriages joined households before neighbours, churching marked a woman’s return after childbirth, and funerals moved from home to church and burial ground. Piscinae in the chancel and south aisle show where sacred vessels were washed after services at the altars. On Sundays the congregation might hear matins, the principal Mass, parish announcements and prayers for the living and the dead; at Rogationtide processions carried prayer into the fields, linking worship with weather, crops and harvest.
The paintings were later concealed as the church interior changed. They returned to view during the nineteenth century and were recorded in connection with Ewan Christian’s restoration of 1867-68. Their survival allows visitors to encounter a vivid fragment of medieval belief in its original architectural setting. St Peter ad Vincula is well worth a visit for these paintings alone, while the surrounding Norman and later medieval fabric gives them still greater meaning.
Lord Bishop Rede and Worship at Loxwood
By the opening of the fifteenth century the northern community at Loxwood faced a demanding three-mile journey to Wisborough Green. The route crossed several miles of clay tracks and woodland and became particularly difficult in winter or when the sick required a priest.
In 1404 Lord Bishop Robert Rede authorised a place of worship at Loxwood. The petition explained that residents had been travelling beyond the Diocese of Chichester to hear Mass at Alfold Church and receive the sacraments. Lord Bishop Rede knew the district through Drungewick, where he held ordinations and conducted diocesan business.
An oratory was built between 1404 – 1407 and was dedicated to St John the Baptist. The oratory structure survives as Church Cottage, in the centre of the village. In 1447 Bishop Adam Moleyns confirmed the arrangement and authorised a chapel of ease to be built beside the oratory, which then became the priest house.
The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries also completed much of St Peter ad Vincula’s medieval form. The south aisle was enlarged and timber-framed porches were added. By about 1500 the church contained several altars, painted images, a rood and screen, bells, benches and processional space, all created through generations of parish worship and gifts.
Reformation, Registers and Parish Bells
A royal inventory of 1538 records relics associated with St Peter, St James, St Stephen, Thomas Becket, the Holy Sepulchre and the Mount of Olives. It provides a vivid record of the devotional world within the church before the Tudor Reformation reshaped worship through English services, preaching and Communion.
The parish registers begin in the sixteenth century and record generations of baptisms, marriages and burials. They turn the architectural history into a history of named families and households whose lives repeatedly passed through the church.
The seventeenth century added furnishings still associated with worship today. The pulpit incorporates carved panels of the period. John Palmer cast three bells in 1656, and William Eldridge supplied the tenor in 1669. A silver flagon dated 1666 and a later cup served Communion. The bells called people from the surrounding countryside, marked funerals and celebrations and carried warnings across the fields.
A church clock is recorded in 1712. Before watches became common, the tower, clock and bells ordered public time and made the church a practical presence throughout village life.
Grimm, Thornton and the Victorian Restoration
Samuel Hieronymus Grimm painted the church in 1791. His view shows St Peter ad Vincula standing high above the road, with its spire rising over the churchyard and village. It preserves the appearance of the building before nineteenth-century restoration and records the commanding relationship between church, slope and green.
John Thornton became vicar in 1820 and served for forty-six years. His ministry covered the growth of schooling, the first detailed censuses and major changes in poor relief and transport. When he died in 1866, neighbouring clergy, parishioners, schoolchildren and residents of the workhouse attended his funeral, gathering many parts of village society around the church.
Ewan Christian directed the restoration of 1867-68. Roofs, masonry, windows, floors and seating were repaired or renewed, while the medieval paintings, then returning to view, were uncovered and recorded. The campaign shaped much of the interior seen today while preserving the Norman arcades, medieval aisles, porches, font and early benches. Victorian glass and memorial brasses subsequently added the names and gifts of clergy, estate families and parish officers.
The three-light east window, signed by H. Hughes and dated 1877, depicts the Annunciation, Nativity and Ascension. It commemorates John King of Loxwood House and creates a lasting memorial link between St Peter ad Vincula and Loxwood. The King family had been connected with Greathouse, later Loxwood House, and with the administration of the Loxwood chapel endowments for generations.
John Loxwood King, later established a professional architectural career after training in the offices of Henry Woodyer and Alfred Waterhouse. Henry Woodyer was an architect associated with Kirdford Church improvements in 1877. John loxwood King became an Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1882, with Rowland Plumbe among his professional sponsors. Plumbe later designed the new parish church at Loxwood, begun in 1900 and opened in 1901. The east window, the King trusteeship and the later Loxwood church therefore preserve a closely connected history of family patronage, architecture and worship.
In 1873 Loxwood became a separate ecclesiastical parish. The division created a new administrative boundary after centuries within Wisborough Green, while the shared history remained visible in buildings, records and furnishings and later found its clearest material expression in the return of the medieval altar stone.
War, the Saved Altar and the Modern Church
The First World War brought twenty-one local names into the church’s roll of honour. The Reverend William Mainprice lost two sons in naval service: Bernard Paul Mainprice in the explosion of HMS Bulwark in 1914 and Ernest William Loxley Mainprice aboard HMS Invincible at Jutland in 1916. Their memorial stands within the church where their father preached.
The medieval altar stone from Loxwood survived the Reformation. A Napper family account from 1883 records that villagers removed it from the chapel of ease around 1550 and concealed it in the priest house, to save it from destruction. Many years later it was taken to Wisborough Green Vicarage and was used as a garden seat.
Rediscovered in the vicarage garden beneath vegetation in 1936, the great Henley Hill sandstone stone was examined, reconsecrated in 1937 and incorporated into the altar at St Peter ad Vincula in 1938. It carries consecration crosses and medieval tooling and is regarded as one of the finest surviving examples of its kind in the country. The stone now stands inside the church, maintaining a powerful physical link with Loxwood, the oratory and chapel even though the ecclesiastical parish was divided in 1873.
The Second World War created another lasting association. Canadian troops based around Wisborough Green left for the Dieppe Raid of 19 August 1942, where Canadian forces suffered severe losses. Memorial doors and the annual Dieppe service keep that connection active.
The Wisborough tapestry, begun in 1977, adds a modern record of the church, village, farms and occupations. Today St Peter ad Vincula remains a working parish church and a remarkable historical building. Its Norman masonry, medieval paintings, Loxwood altar, bells, glass and memorials reward careful exploration and together preserve a coherent story of faith, community and continuity across more than nine centuries.
