Description

This list entry was subject to a Minor Amendment on 24/04/2020

TQ 1304 SW
753/15/59

West Tarring
CHURCH ROAD (South side)
Church of St Andrew

(Formerly listed as West Tarring Church (St Andrew's))

GV
II*
Church. Late C13, C15, and C16; mid-C19 restoration and alterations; 1885 scheme of mosaic decoration, designed by William Butterfield and installed by itinerant Italian mosaicists employed by Burke & Co. Knapped flint, re-set mid-C19, with stone dressings. Graduated Horsham slate to chancel and porch roofs; wood shingles to spire; 1950s plain-tile roofs to nave and aisles.

Plan: C13 five-bay aisled nave with clerestorey and central north and south porches (mid-C19); lower C15 two-bay chancel; C15 west tower with C16 spire. In Early English, Decorated and Perpendicular styles, having: quoins to angles; buttresses with ashlar off-sets; quoined pointed-arched openings, principal ones with hoodmoulds; corbelled raised verges with ashlar copings and gable crosses; off-set stepped ashlar copings to embattled four-stage tower. Nave: four small windows to clerestorey and aisles; taller aisle east- and west-end windows, the former of two cusped lights with quatrefoil over.

Tower: west end: large angle buttresses; door in moulded surround with hoodmould; replacement panel tracery to window over door; narrow trefoil-headed light above, and two-light window to upper stage with reticulated tracery. North side: windows to third and fourth stages similar. South side: similar third-stage light; fouth stage has window of paired cusped lights with wooden lattice. Similar window to east side, below clock face and with oculus on south side. Vice at south-east angle has small rectangular chamfered lights. Octagonal spire with weather-cock.

Chancel: offset plinth. Central buttress. Two-light windows with renewed tracery; restored five-light east window with cusped tracery to head. Late-C20 semi-subterranean vestry attached to south side of nave.

Interior: nave: pointed-arched arcades with simply-moulded bases and capitals to circular columns; continuous hoodmoulds with carved pendants. Double piscina in south-east corner has moulded, cusped, architrave and bowls in the form of a trefoil and a quatrefoil. Mid-C19 chancel arch, crown-post roof, pulpit, lectern and some surviving floor tiles. 1885 mosaics above aisle arcades and tower arch depicting the twelve apostles set above the apostles creed and portraits of the patriarchs. Tower: arch carried on attached semi-octagonal columns; pointed-arched vice door; early-C18 Stiles family wall monument comprising aedicule with coat-of-arms over; flanking oval memorial tablets; C19 font.

Chancel: C15 screen with perpendicular-style tracery, metal spikes, six misericords on east side carved with heads and foliage and the decorative panelling returning along chancel north and south walls (part-restored) with contemporary choir-stall fronts and fleur-de-lis finials. Jacobean altar-rail with turned balusters, stylised floral motif to frieze, and acorn finials. Matching contemporary altar table.

North porch: commemorative brasses record the installation of the mosaics and their cleaning (1913). Red and black floor tiles. Inner door has moulded pointed arch with leaf terminals on attached columns. Plainer south doorway opposite.

Listing NGR: TQ1309704017

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• St Andrew's Church, West Tarring at Wikipedia
• St Andrew's Church, West Tarring official website
• Wikidata Q7592376

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Dorset (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Surrey (The Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Building Small Projects (New Best of Fine Woodworking)
• 
  Bristol (Pevsner Architectural Guides: City Guides)
• 
  Oxfordshire: North and West (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Berkshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)