page_title: All Saints Church, Buncton
section_title: Architecture
hierarchical_section_title: All Saints Church, Buncton / Architecture
caption_attribution_description: English: Buncton All Saints Chapel, Wiston, West Sussex, England.
context_page_description: All Saints Church is an Anglican church in the hamlet of Buncton in the district of Horsham, one of seven local government districts in the English county of West Sussex. Built in the 11th or 12th century as a small chapel of ease to a nearby parish church, and hardly changed or restored since, the stone chapel stands behind a "delightful ... wooded ravine" beneath the South Downs and has been called "a real piece of hidden Sussex". The chancel arch, between the nave and chancel which made up the simple two-room building, had a bizarre 12th-century carving of a person of indeterminate sex exposing their genitalia—until 2004, when an unknown vandal destroyed it with a chisel. The church is still used for Christian worship, and English Heritage has listed it at Grade I for its architectural and historical importance. The church is also known as Buncton Chapel.
context_section_description: All Saints Church is a small, simple building with a tall, narrow profile.  It is built mostly of flint, in common with many Sussex downland churches; some stone rubble and masonry is also visible, and recycled Roman tiles can be seen.  It has been described as being "a little like a stone barn", and its isolation is enhanced by its position in the middle of a field reached through a tree-lined hollow.
  The outside of the north wall of the chancel incorporates a pair of Romanesque-style Norman-era blocked arches, described as "extraordinary" by Nikolaus Pevsner (who dated them to c. 1160).  One has beakhead shapes, while the other is made up of intersecting arches and has elaborate decoration and mouldings, with some use of ashlar.  The arches serve no apparent structural purpose; their insertion, in the 14th century, was merely decorative.
  The chancel measures 14.5 by 20 feet (4.4 m × 6.1 m): these unusually short proportions are evidence of the work carried out in the 14th century to cut its length back.  It is lower than the nave, which has original Norman doorways in its north and south walls.  The latter is now blocked, and has a crude stone lintel with the remains of a segmental arch above.  The doorway in the north wall survives in good condition, and is flat-arched with voussoirs and wedge-shaped springers.  Three original windows survive in the nave; all are placed very high on the walls.   The chancel's lancet windows, in contrast, were inserted in the 13th century or later.  Its larger east window is in the Decorated Gothic style and dates from the 14th century.
  The chancel arch is large and contemporary with the nave.  Square plinths with decorative moulding support shafts with unusual capitals which have abaci with such extensive chamfering that they are almost circular.  The imposts are carved with a series of characteristic Norman designs such as squares and herringbone patterns— although the mysterious carved figure with exposed genitals no longer exists.  Paintings on the adjacent wall of the nave have mostly been lost as well.  The maximum height of the chancel arch is 14.8 feet (4.5 m).
  Interior fittings include a piscina inserted in the 14th century.  Pevsner observed that it "manages to get a lot of character into tiny dimensions".
caption: Decorative blocked arches on the chancel wall
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