St Andrew's Church, West Tarring
| St Andrew's Church | |
|---|---|
The church from the northwest
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| Coordinates: 50°49′29″N 0°23′45″W / 50.8247°N 0.3958°W | |
| Location | Church Road, West Tarring, Worthing, West Sussex BN13 1HQ |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Denomination | Church of England |
| Website | Saint Andrew's Parish Church, West Tarring |
| History | |
| Founded | 11th century |
| Founder(s) | Archbishop of Canterbury |
| Dedication | Saint Andrew |
| Dedicated | By 1372 |
| Architecture | |
| Status | Parish church |
| Functional status | Active |
| Heritage designation | Grade II* |
| Designated | 11 October 1949 |
| Style | Perpendicular Gothic |
| Administration | |
| Parish | West Tarring, St Andrew |
| Deanery | Rural Deanery of Worthing |
| Archdeaconry | Chichester |
| Diocese | Chichester |
| Province | Canterbury |
| Clergy | |
| Rector | Rev. Mark Lyon |
St Andrew's Church is the Church of England parish church of Tarring, West Sussex, England. Founded in the 11th century in a then rural parish which had earlier been granted to the Archbishop of Canterbury, the church remained a peculier of Canterbury for many centuries thereafter. It served nearby parishes when their churches fell into disrepair, John Selden was baptised here, and the church became a base for smuggling. The present building is mostly 13th-century, and its tall spire is a landmark in the area. The church is a Grade II* Listed Building.
The parish of West Tarring is now part of the Borough of Worthing, but has ancient origins as a South Downs strip parish of about 1,200 acres (486 ha). It ran for about 3 miles (5 km) from its northern extremity at Bost Hill, on the track to Findon (now the A24 road), to the English Channel coast in the south, and was much narrower apart from a thin strip of land extending westwards. Many coastal parishes in Sussex were this shape: many different soils and varieties of land would be included within the boundaries, from chalky downland in the north to marshy grassland near the coast. Two settlements developed, of which West Tarring was the larger and more central. (The name "Tarring" was, and still is, also used, but the "West" prefix was often used to prevent confusion with Tarring Neville near Lewes.)Salvington, the other settlement in the parish, is high on the slopes of the South Downs.
The first documented description of West Tarring was in about AD 939, when King Athelstan granted the manor of Tarring to Christ Church in Canterbury (now Canterbury Cathedral). At the time of the Domesday Book in 1086 it was still held by the archbishop and had 41 inhabitants. A church is known to have existed at that time; it is likely to have been a wooden building.
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Wikipedia