St Leodegar's Church

St Leodegar's Church is the Anglican parish church of Hunston, a hamlet in the Chichester district of West Sussex, England. The dedication—rare in England and unique in Sussex—has also been spelt St Ledger historically. A ruinous church dating from the 12th century was dismantled and rebuilt by prolific ecclesiastical architect Arthur Blomfield in 1885, but some old features were retained. The building, an Early English Gothic Revival structure of stone, was criticised by architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner but was built on a "generous" budget and has some elaborate structural features such as a double belfry.

Hunston is a large, spread-out village on the coastal plain south of the city of Chichester. "Good wheat-growing land" surrounds the residential development in the 1,013-acre parish. A church has served the village since the 12th century or earlier: in 1105 it was granted by Robert de Haye to Lessay Abbey in Normandy. Its dedication to St Leodegar, the 7th-century bishop of Autun, may derive from this French connection. Bishop Leodegar , sometimes anglicised to Leger or Latinised as Leodegarius, was martyred by having his tongue and eyes pulled out and being beheaded. Boxgrove Priory, a few miles away and also a possession of Lessay Abbey, administered the church until the Reformation in the 16th century.

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