Our Church Building - ever changing

St. Mary’s Church, Ticehurst is a Grade II* Listed Building and situated in the Ticehurst Conservation Area.

The building, although on an earlier foundation, is typical of the churches of the larger High Weald parishes of East Sussex in having been rebuilt in the C14th with a spacious Nave and dominant west Tower. It occupies a prominent position within its large churchyard on the edge of the centre of the village.

The earliest parts of the existing building are the west walls of the North and South Aisles which date from the C13th and contain the original simple ogeeval windows. The aisles were widened and the junction between the original and later work is clearly visible externally.

The main feature of the building is the prominant C14th Tower with its big west doorway and characteristic C14th mouldings with heads of a King and Bishop as end stops to the hood mould. Above this is a large west window in Decorated style which internally compliments the impressive arch between Tower and Nave. The Tower is capped by a short cedar shingled broached spire. The main elements of the building (Nave, Aisles, North Porch, North and South Chapels and Chancel) date from the C14th but have been altered and restored on various occasions. There is a rare Parvise (meeting chamber) at first floor level over the North Porch which also contains a reused C13th entrance arch at ground level. The windows are in the late Decorated or early Perpendicular styles.

The C14th arcades between the Nave and Aisles and the Chancel and Chapels contain octagonal piers with double-chamfered arches. A good idea of the appearance of the building in the late C18th in its pre-battlemented days can be had looking at the watercolour view by S.H. Grim of 1785. The South Aisle door shown is understood to have been relocated in the south wall of the South Chapel (Vestry).

A major restoration was carried out in 1856 by William Slater, the partner of R.C. Carpenter. This was an important early Victorian church architectural practice (i.e. Lancing College Chapel). Slater’s most obvious contribution was the provision of the large clerestorey windows in Decorated style with arch shapes and big circles in a variety of flowing tracery forms. He also renewed the aisle windows, apparently without change, with segmental arches and ogee shaped tracery. Slater is also responsible for the fine Chancel east window in Perpendicular style. In 1901 the battlemented parapets to the North and South Aisles with gargoyle embellishments were added by Milne and Hall of London, possibly picking up the theme already laid down by the parapet of the North Porch.

The church contains a fine set of Victorian glass including the east window by Margaret Holgate Foster of 1879. The central light of this window gained first prize at the Paris Exhibition of 1878. The glazing of the North Chancel window is reconstructed from a medieval doom-window. Other features of the building include the iron and brass monuments (i.e. John Wybarne, 1490), a splendid C16th octagonal carved oak font cover, the six Tower bells cast in 1771 (Thomas Janaway of Chelsea), the 1856 pulpit, the Norman and Beard organ of 1909 and the fine reredos by Martin Travers of 1947.

The new extension on the south side of the building by John D Clarke architects of Eastbourne provides a meeting room, kitchen and accessible WC. It was opened by the Bishop of Chichester on 21st March 2010. The extension received a Sussex Heritage Trust Award in 2010 and the judges said “well considered and conceived-excellent execution respecting existing setting and structure, absolute fit for purpose and we strongly recommend an award”. The building also received a separate Craftsmanship Award for the stonework by T E Tilley Ltd.

Words contributed by Richard Crook RIBA of John D Clarke Chartered Architects