The village of Yapton in West Sussex has a charming, rustic, sturdy church at its heart. Dedicated to St. Mary the Virgin, the structure we can see today dates from around the start of the 13th century. It’s believed that the site was a place of worship for centuries before even the Conquest and back into Anglo-Saxon times.
This part of Sussex played an important part in the story of the conversion of southern England to Christianity. Although Yapton itself isn’t mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1087, it is believed that the name comes from a priest called Eppa (sometimes Eappa or Eoppa) who might have held land – Eppas’s Tun – in what would become Yapton village.
Eppa himself is mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles for the year 661 AD and is said to have helped convert the people of the Isle of Wight and was left in Sussex by the bishop St Wilfred, who first converted the South Saxons. A church that appears in the Domesday Book in the Hundred of Benestede (Binsted) was reported as held by a priest called Acard. And that is probably a church at Yapton predating the current building.
As with any building its age, features have been updated and added over the years but unlike some similar churches, it has escaped the worst excesses that others have suffered.
Ian Nairn says in the West Sussex edition of The Buildings of England (Pevsner) that it is “nicely unsophisticated; with its enormous lean-to roofs and dormer windows it is what many West Sussex churches were like before restoration.”
Sussex itself is not rich in stone quarries and most of the material that forms the bulk of the building is flint that was gathered locally.
But for other touches, stone from further afield was required including freshwater limestone (sometimes called Sussex Marble), quarr stone from the Isle of Wight and Caen stone from northern France was also employed. The font is worth a look and predates the 13th-century structure. You will also see the traces of ancient wall paintings near the font.
