St Mary's Church

St Mary's Church is the Grade I listed Anglican parish church of West Chiltington, a village in the Horsham district of West Sussex, England. The 12th-century building, described as a "showpiece" and "the most attractive part" of the Wealden village, retains many features of historical and architectural interest. These include an exceptionally long hagioscope or squint from the south aisle into the chancel, a porch which may be Sussex's oldest, and a well preserved and extensive scheme of wall paintings. In the Sussex volume of The Buildings of England, Ian Nairn says that the appearance of the church gives "a very happy, unexpected effect, like a French village church".
The Domesday Book of 1086 records a church in the village then called Cilletone. It is uncertain whether any part of this earlier building was incorporated into the present church, which is believed to date from the first half of the 12th century; but Ian Nairn suggested that the walls of the nave and chancel are "probably 11th-century", and the Saxon-era building almost certainly occupied the same site. The three-bay south aisle was added around 1200, and the chancel arch is of a similar age. A chantry chapel was added in the early 13th century, and another chapel on the south side of the chancel was built a century later. A spire was built in 1602.

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