St Peter's Church, Shoreham-by-Sea

The settlement of Old Shoreham developed inland from the English Channel and next to the east bank of the River Adur. Its focus was the 10th-century St Nicolas' Church. Later development filled the gap between the village and the sea, and the growth of trade from its harbour in the 18th and 19th centuries brought prosperity to what was by then a small town. By the mid-19th century, two large Anglican churches were supported—St Nicolas' Church had been joined by the substantial St Mary de Haura Church The land on which this stood had been acquired in the 1860s by the former Vicar of Shoreham, Reverend William Wheeler. He had left the Church of England and was received into the Roman Catholic…

Charles Buckler used the Decorated Gothic style, imitative of 13th- and 14th-century churches, for his design for St Peter's Church. The structure is of cobbled flint dressed with ashlar. It lacks a spire or tower, but there is a bell-tower at the west end of the roof, which is tiled and gabled. There are four large lancet windows in the north and south walls, separated by buttresses; until the building's conversion from a nursing home into flats, these had elaborate tracery. As originally built, the church had a four-bay nave and two further bays in the chancel, which also had a transept. A porch led into the nave on the west side. Inside, below the roof trusses, there was a gallery at the…