St Mary and St Peter's Church

St Mary and St Peter's Church is in the village of Wilmington, East Sussex, England. It is an active Anglican parish church on the deanery of Lewes and Seaford, the archdeaconry of Lewes and Hastings, and the diocese of Chichester. Founded in the late 11th century to serve villagers in a rural area at the foot of the South Downs, it also functioned as a priory church for the monks from the adjacent Wilmington Priory, to which it was physically connected. The building has "benefited from sympathetic restoration" over the centuries—including a series of works by prominent architects Paley and Austin in the Victorian era, and internal renovation after a fire in the early 21st century. The church is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade I listed building.
After the Norman Conquest in 1066, monks from Grestain Abbey, a Benedictine monastery in Normandy, took possession of the land around the village of Wilmington. They founded Wilmington Priory to administer their territory, and two or three monks lived there. It was never a large community, and no separate abbey church was ever built; the monks instead shared the chancel of village church. This was in existence by 1100 and served the farmers and villagers of Winelton, as it was known at the time. The church was connected to the priory by a cloister. In common with other alien priories in England, Wilmington Priory was suppressed by King Henry V in 1414 and fell into ruins. Thereafter, the church functioned solely as a parish church. A vast yew tree in the churchyard, scientifically dated as 1,600 years old and with a girth of 23 feet , suggests that the site was considered sacred to pre-Christian people. The existence of a "strange ... gargoyle-like" figure known as the Wilmington Madonna—originally on the outside wall but now preserved in the chancel—may also be evidence of pagan worship in the area.

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