All Saints Church, Buncton

Just off of Water Lane near Wiston, is to be the found the small and picturesque All Saints church or chapel. Built in the 11th or 12th century its style and architecture is considered to be partly Saxon and partly Norman in origin. Built from stone and standing at the foot of the Downs, the chief building material of All Saints Church is flint. This is a fact common to many Sussex churches constructed in medieval times, as it was a material that was readily available locally.

The settlement of Buncton, near Steyning existed during the time of the Domesday Book when it was called Bongtune. The book, which is a manuscript of a detailed survey or census, records that around 1086, twentysix households resided in the village. There was once a Medieval manor house situated nearby, which was replaced by a seventeenth century one that is still standing today.

All Saints Church, Buncton is approached through a narrow, wooded hollow, which has a Downland chalk water stream flowing across it. A small footbridge accesses the church and its churchyard across this stream. In late spring the wood is known for its carpet of bluebells, which makes the church’s location one of the most attractive in our area and draws visitors from across Sussex and beyond.

The church itself has some tiles and rubble in its construction dating from Roman times. A Roman road once passed close by and in 1848, excavations discovered that a large Roman villa had once existed in the area. It seems likely that some materials that were once part of that villa were incorporated into the building of the church.

All Saints, Buncton is of a two-room construction with a wide and high chancel that is ambitious for an otherwise small Downland church. The chancel arch once had, among its carved stonework, a rather mysterious carving of person on one of its uprights. This figure though was sadly vandalised in 2004.

It is thought the carved human shape was designed to ward off evil. It may even have been a depiction of Adam at his creation, with a further carving of a plate of bread or possibly pomegranates above representing Eden. The figure was on Caen stone, a material imported from French quarries to construct other churches in the area, so there is the possibility that the carving originated in another building and its stone, like the Roman tiles was reused at All Saints.

The chancel of the church was altered in the 13th century and the church also gained a decorated Gothic window in its East wall around this time. Decorated Norman arches were added, possibly taken from another building such as the Sele Priory, a medieval monastic house in Upper Beeding. It belonged to a Benedictine order founded before 1126. The impoverished monks were known to have had to sell off some of the stonework from their own buildings from time to time in order to get by.

In more recent history, a 19th century bell-cote was added to All Saints and a small amount of renovation work also took place around 1906. The only art in the church is a small 13th or 14th century decorative painting, about which little is known.

In 1323, Buncton Church is recorded as