St Andrew's Church, West Tarring

St Andrew's Church is the ancient parish church of West Tarring, now part of the town of Worthing, in West Sussex. Founded in the eleventh century in what was then a rural parish belonging to the Archbishop of Canterbury, it remained for many centuries a "peculier" of Canterbury — exempt from the local bishop and answerable directly to the archbishop — and its tall, shingled spire has long been a landmark across the surrounding country. A largely thirteenth-century building of knapped flint, unusually large for its area, it is rich in history: it gave sanctuary to a saint, witnessed the baptism of one of England's greatest scholars, and even served, in less reputable days, as a hiding place for smugglers. It is listed at Grade II* for its architectural and historical importance.

The manor of Tarring was granted to Christ Church, Canterbury, by King Athelstan in about 939, and at the time of the Domesday Book in 1086 it was still held by the archbishop. A church — probably a wooden one — already stood here then, but the present flint-and-stone building began to take shape in the mid-thirteenth century. It was at this time that the church played its part in one of the great stories of Sussex sainthood: the rector, Simon of Tarring, gave sanctuary to Richard of Wych, the newly elected Bishop of Chichester, who had been barred from his own palace by King Henry III. From his base at Tarring, Richard travelled throughout Sussex, taking services and, it was said, performing miracles, and after his death he was canonised in 1262 as St Richard of Chichester, one of the best-loved of English saints.

The dedication to St Andrew was first recorded in 1372, and in the fifteenth century the chancel and tower were rebuilt under the influence of Canterbury, with the rood screen dating from the same period. Though never a wealthy church, it was a lively one: "church ales" — fundraising drinking sessions held in the church itself, with food, beer and entertainers — were popular throughout the sixteenth century. The church's bells were cast nearby at the foundry of the Tapsel family, who for some two hundred years cast bells for churches across Sussex and who also gave their name to the distinctive "Tapsel gate" found in some Sussex churchyards. As the neighbouring churches of Durrington and Heene fell into ruin in the seventeenth century, their parishioners came to worship at St Andrew's instead.

The church was thoroughly restored in the mid-nineteenth century. In 1845 it ceased at last to be a peculier of Canterbury and was placed under the Diocese of Chichester, and in 1853 the vicar instigated a major restoration, raising most of the £2,200 cost himself; the work, which overhauled the interior, added a vestry and recast the bells, was completed in time for Holy Week 1854. In 1885 colourful mosaics depicting the Twelve Apostles, designed by the celebrated Gothic Revival architect William Butterfield, were installed by Italian craftsmen in the aisles and around the tower arch.

The church preserves several remarkable stories within its fabric. Its medieval font was carried off to Australia by the Henty family, prosperous merino-sheep farmers of West Tarring, who emigrated from the parish: Thomas Henty sent three of his sons and 150 sheep to Western Australia in 1829, and his son Edward became the first European settler in Victoria, a pioneer of the Australian wool industry — the family later giving the old font to a cathedral in Melbourne. In a very different vein, smuggling was rife along the Worthing coast in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and one of the leading local smugglers, William Cowerson, who was employed on restoration work at the church, regularly used the table tombs in the churchyard to hide smuggled spirits and contraband.

Architecturally, St Andrew's is an Early English Gothic building with later Perpendicular elements, built of knapped flint with stone dressings. The five-bay nave, with its aisles, clerestory and lancet windows, survives entire from the thirteenth century, while the chancel and tower were rebuilt in the Perpendicular style in the fifteenth, and the tall octagonal shingled spire was added in the sixteenth. The east window of the chancel is unusually ornate, and within the church are five pointed arches on each side of the nave, the fifteenth-century chancel screen, six misericords, and Butterfield's mosaics of the Apostles. Among the memorials are tablets and windows to the Henty family and to the poet Robert Southey, whose son-in-law restored the church, while modern windows of 1958 depict St Thomas of Canterbury and St Richard of Chichester.

The church's most celebrated son is the jurist and legal scholar John Selden, one of the most learned Englishmen of his age, who was baptised here in 1584 and is remembered with a memorial and plaque. Today St Andrew's continues as a living Anglican parish church, listed at Grade II* since 1949, serving a parish that, though smaller than the great medieval one, still stretches up towards Salvington on the slopes of the South Downs.

The church stands in the old village heart of West Tarring, now a conservation area within the town of Worthing, on the West Sussex coast. The seafront, pier and beaches of Worthing, the South Downs National Park and the chalk hills above the town, the historic medieval streets of Tarring with their timber-framed houses, and the wider Sussex coast and countryside, with the cathedral city of Chichester within reach, are all close at hand.

From its origins as a church of the Archbishop of Canterbury, through the sanctuary it gave to St Richard of Chichester, its centuries as a peculier of Canterbury, the baptism of John Selden and its colourful tales of bell-founders and smugglers, to its Victorian restoration and its life today, St Andrew's Church, West Tarring, gathers many centuries of Sussex history into one building. A Grade II* listed medieval church with its landmark spire, it remains a living parish church at the heart of old Tarring.