Yapton and District Cottage Gardeners Society.

YaptonGardeners History image page: The Church of St. Mary’s at Yapton.

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Early History

Yapton Parish Church is dedicated, like many of the churches in the neighbouring villages, to St Mary’s the Virgin, the whole structure is still much the same as it was when it was completed in about 1230, although there is some later and some earlier work. The West door to the nave and the porch were added towards the end of the 17th century and there are various other later minor additions and repairs. There are traces of pre-Conquest work.

Early Building

The pre-conquest, or Saxon, period of Sussex Ecclesiastical Architecture covers nearly four centuries and dates from the conversion of the south Saxons by St. Wilfrid in 681 until the Norman Conquest in 1066 and it was during this time that the first Saxon Church which stood on this site must have been built. The Tower which is Transitional-Norman was built between 1180 and 1230. It was built against part of the west and south walls of the older nave without bonding in, which proves that the nave walls are earlier, and the lower part of the north wall of the tower is still the south wall of the Saxon church. The tower is about 11 degrees out of perpendicular and is supported by massive buttresses.

In the graveyard there is a magnificent Magnolia Grandiflora, possibly ‘Goliath’.

Sussex is not a county of stone quarries, though there were some in the weald, but the sea shore provided ample buildings material in the shape of the large flints thrown up by the waves, and the walling of Yapton Church, like most of the churches between the downs and the sea, is built of these flints.

The continuous slope of the roof over nave and aisles is typical Sussex feature.

For some of the work stone - was - essential and in South West Sussex in pre-Conquest times fresh-water limestone formed duing the Eocene age - an immensely old formation - was largely employed. This stone has many small holes and its texture is unsuitable for delicate work and carving, for which Quarr stone from the Isle of Wight, or the excellent Caen stone of close texture was used. It was easier in those days to bring this stone across the sea than it would have been to procure any from distant parts of England.