St James, Southwick

St James Without the Priory Gate is a Grade I parish church on the High Street at Southwick, Hampshire, in the Diocese of Portsmouth, standing just outside the former Augustinian priory.

Overview

Historic England notes that an Augustinian priory was established at Southwick about 1150, though the church probably existed before that. After the Dissolution, John Whyte was granted the priory in 1539 with the offices of lay prior, ordinary, patron and rector of the peculiar. He virtually rebuilt the church in 1566, reusing priory materials. Walls are flint and stone rubble with extensive roughcast; the lower tower is stone and flint chequerwork, the upper tower flint, under a tile roof. The plan comprises a nave with medieval south wall, chancel, north chapel and north aisle of the Tudor restoration, a south porch, and a west tower set within the west end of the nave.

Arcades have flattened Tudor arches on octagonal piers. Furnishings are exceptional: an eighteenth-century wooden reredos with coupled Doric pilasters painted to imitate marble; an Elizabethan altar table and Jacobean communion rail; box pews including the squire’s pew; a three-decker pulpit of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century panelling; and a late seventeenth-century west gallery on four twisted oak pillars. The font is twelfth-century on a late nineteenth-century Gothic base. The Whyte monument combines a fifteenth-century table tomb with a classical canopy of 1566. The church is usually open daily.

Further Information

• Historic England list entry 1167160
• British Listed Buildings: Church of St James Without the Priory Gate