East Grinstead

St. Swithun’s is an open and friendly church in the town of East Grinstead in West Sussex, within the Diocese of Chichester. the building is 18th-century rebuilt in medieval style, with interesting round windows in the clerestory.

There has been a church on the site since the 11th century. It was struck by lightening in 1772 and after re-building it was opened in 1789.

Historical Background
This hill-top site where several tracks met would have been the obvious place to build a church when our area began to be settled in the late tenth century: and one of the most popular saints of that time, St Swithun (Bishop of Winchester, 852-862), was the unsurprising choice for its patron. We can only speculate about the original building and how it developed but pictures from the late eighteenth century show that a church of largely fourteenth and fifteenth century style stood here until 1785 when the collapse of its tower (poorly rebuilt in 1684 after being struck by lightning) made the present building necessary.

A national appeal for funds (a ‘brief’) raised £516 in 1788. Building began the next year but funds ran out when little more than the walls had been constructed. An Act of Parliament was therefore obtained authorising trustees to levy rates and raise loans. By 1793 the church was in use but in 1811 a further Act was necessary to pay off loans of £4000 and to raise as much again to build the tower, a task completed the following year. By the time the final loan repayments were made, in 1876, the church had cost some £30,000.

The local gentry and tradesmen responsible for all this were originally led by Gibbs Crawfurd, M.P., whose house Saint Hill was being built at the same time. It was probably he who secured one of the leading architects of the day, James Wyatt, to design the church, which is still structurally as he planned it, except for the tower, modified by William Inwood, a protégé of Charles Abbot, Speaker of the House of Commons, who settled at Kidbrooke, Forest Row, in 1805 and soon came to the fore in the rebuilding work.

Normally at this date such a church would be in classical style on basilican plan or an open hall without aisles or dividing columns. It would be roofed by a plaster decorated barrel vault. However, here Wyatt combined the requirements of the Church at the time with a respect for the earlier traditional mediaeval church on the site, displaying remarkable sensitivity a generation before the establishment of the Gothic Revival. Thus, for example, his pillars are very like those in the previous church and he provided a small structural chancel.

A programme of restoration in 1874 inaugurated the present appearance of the interior by removing Wyatt’s plastered paneling from the walls, taking down his flat ceiling, converting one bay of the nave into a choir and installing the present seating. In 1876 the present roof was put in. Stained glass began to be inserted in the windows at about the same time. Since then chapels have been formed either side of the choir, east windows have been inserted in them, an organ has been built in the gallery intended for singers and instrumentalists, and numerous furnishings and decorations have been installed.

Source: St. Swithun’s