This is another church situated at the foot of the South Downs where a heavily restored exterior does not do justice to the more rewarding interior.  The building (shown, above left, from the southeast, and above right, from the northeast) is of typical Wealden appearance, formed of a short W. tower with a pyramidal roof, a nave with a N. transept, S. aisle and S. porch, and a chancel. The tower roof is relatively steep and clad in shingles, and the aisle is of lean-to construction, demarcated from the nave at roof level, only by a slight change of pitch.  The aisle walls and porch have been largely rebuilt in brick by the Victorian restorers, but the chancel windows to north and south (two on each side) and the N. window to the transept, are two-light and trefoil-cusped with quatrefoils above, and although only the jambs and internal splays are now original, there seems little reason to doubt the authenticity of the design, which probably dates these parts of the building to the early fourteenth century.  The chancel E. window has been entirely renewed but may also preserve its Decorated form, composed of three trefoil-cusped ogee lights, with subarcuated outer lights and a wheel of six quatrefoils (three major and three minor) above and between.  The transept E. window is a square-headed Perpendicular insertion, and high up in the transept gable to the north, there is now another window, formed of two equal, uncusped, three-centred lights, unlikely to be earlier than the late fifteenth century.  The tower rises in two stages supported by angle buttresses but has few features to assist its dating unless the little one-light trefoiled bell-openings are judged sufficient.  These might suggest a date around 1300.  The W. doorway is two-centred with a roll around the angle, and the window above is wholly Victorian, so little help is furnished here.  As for the nave, the herringbone masonry visible to the north, which Ian Nairn believed to imply an eleventh century date (The Buildings of England: Sussex, London, Penguin, 1965, p. 346), looks of doubtful authenticity, but his dating may be reasonable nevertheless, as becomes apparent inside.  There is only one window in the N. wall of the nave, which is Perpendicular and square-headed.

 

 

In fact, it is only inside the church that its true architectural interest is revealed, and the most important feature contributing to that is the aisle arcade (illustrated above left, looking southeast from the nave), composed of two principal bays with a much narrower arch at each end.  Thus three piers are needed to support it, of which the westernmost and narrow arch beyond, are of nineteenth century date.  However, the two main arches, the narrow arch to the east, and the two piers supporting them, are Norman-Transitional work of c. 1200, and reminiscent of the western half of the arcade at St. Mary’s, Prittlewell (Southend-on-Sea), which likewise consists of thick pointed arches bearing the narrowest of chamfers, supported on comparatively slender piers (octagonal at Prittlewell but circular here at Sutton), and for like reason - that both are almost certainly the result of cutting through an earlier, pre-existing wall, which here at Sutton, may justify Ian Nairn’s eleventh century dating.  The two Transitional piers are not identical though, for the easternmost is wider and the leaf volutes (if they justify the term) at the corners of the square capitals, are less well formed, most probably as the result of simple incompetence.  Nor are the crude double-flat-chamfered arches from the nave to the transept and chancel (seen above right, in the internal view of the church looking northeast), any better constructed, to judge by the haphazard and asymmetrical way the mouldings die into the walls.  These arches can probably be ascribed to the early fourteenth century by association with the Decorated transept and chancel windows.  The tower arch bears two very wide flat chamfers that continue down the jambs without intervening capitals, and is of little help in offering a confident date for the tower itself, although neither does it contradict what little other evidence exists.

 

Finally, the church contains few furnishings of note.  The sedilia recessed in the chancel S. wall, consists of three equal bays carrying hollow chamfers and rolls in shallow relief around the arches, and there is an ogee-pointed piscina beyond which does not seem to be part of this scheme.  The only carpentry in the building requiring mention is probably the chancel roof, of braced collar beam construction like so many in this area, suggesting a firm of itinerant joiners was at work at some period.