PO18 9HB
/// baguette.highbrow.panic
A beautiful downland church dating from the 12th century, very much at the heart of the small and active rural village of Compton in the South Downs National Park. The church stands on a wooded slope on the eastern edge of the village. The well-maintained churchyard is a quiet place to relax and think.
Our beautiful village of Compton is almost certainly the village of “Cumton”, bequeathed by King Alfred to Aethelm in the later part of the ninth century. There was probably a church here as early as the tenth century but the first documentary evidence of a Church in Compton is found in the Domesday Survey of 1086. The original Church would have comprised a single chancel and nave. A North aisle was added about 1190, but later removed, and the chancel arch dates from about the same time. Need for more space resulted in the construction of the South aisle in the 13th century.
By 1848 the Church was too small for the parish and was in serious need of repair. The Lord of the Manor, Admiral Sir Phipps Hornby, lead the campaign to enlarge the church with the aid of voluntary subscriptions.
The windows are mainly nineteenth century reproductions of the original mediaeval work. The mediaeval east window was built in the Decorated style with reticulated tracery c.1300-1350. The only ancient window is now in the north wall of the chancel vestry.
A Baptistry was erected to the memory of Diana Mary Lambton, the wife of the Earl of Durham who died in 1924. In 2001 the font was returned to its 1848 position in the South Aisle and the Baptistry adapted for use as a vestry and choir robing room.