Chapter Eight

St James Church

Old postcard showing Heyshott Church - click image for enlargements

A chapel in Heyshott is first mentioned in a charter of Alan Fitzeudo, Lord of Petworth, granting a number of churches, amongst them Stedham ' with the chapel of Hescheta belonging to it', to the Priory of Saint Pancras in Lewes. The original charter is lost but a confirmation of it by Bishop Seffrid of Chichester (1125-1146) survives.
But why Stedham and not one of the closer villages? We may never know, but Fitzeudo owned the Manor of Stedham as well as that of Heyshott and he may well have had good reason to link them.
 
Village knowledge has it that coffins were carries from Heyshott to Stedham along a footpath which, as it approached Stedham, went diagonally across the field that is now Kerry Packer's polo ground. It may be that there was no consecrated ground at Heyshott until the 17th century - the earliest gravestone in the churchyard is dated 1693.
 
Robert Colby, Rector of Stedham cum Heyshott in the 1440s, regularly came here to steal sheaves of corn, pigs, sheep and other things. Looking at his actions charitably, it may well be he was only collecting his tithes by force because he could not get them any other way. Apart from being fined, at least twice, at Midhurst Quarter Sessions, he seems to have got away with it.
 
In the next century the Prior of Saint Pancras continued to draw a pension of 40 shillings a year from the chapel at Heyshott until the suppression of the monastries by Henry VIII in 1537. At this time the whole Priory building was destroyed, including its beautiful church, because it could not be converted into 'pigstyes or cow byres'.
 
In 1545 an Act for the Suppression of Chantries was passed by Parliament but Henry VIII died within two years and the law died with him.