St Symphorian's Church is an Anglican church in the Durrington area of the borough of Worthing, one of seven local government districts in the English county of West Sussex. The original 13th-century chapelry declined and fell into ruins in the 17th century, partly due to damage caused by the English Civil War. Anglican worship was re-established in a tin tabernacle in 1890 as the former village grew into a suburb of Worthing, and during World War I a permanent church was built. It was extended during World War II. English Heritage has listed the building at Grade II for its architectural and historical importance.
History
Durrington was first recorded in 934 as a Saxon estate. In that year, King Athelstan granted some of the land to one of his thegns. By the time of the Domesday survey in 1086, Robert le Sauvage—Lord of the Manor of nearby Broadwater—held the land. The civil and ecclesiastical parish was smaller than the Saxon estate: it extended for about from north to south and from east to west.
The Domesday survey recorded that Durrington had "a church, eight acres of meadow and a wood of ten hogs". The church had existed since Saxon times, no later than the 11th century, but little is known of it: the structure was probably built of plaster, wattle and daub and thatch, in common with other churches of the era. The new design, a simple two-cell building, had a nave and a chancel separated by a rood screen, above which was a crucifix. There was also a wall-mounted stone pulpit, a stone altar, a series of tall, pointed windows high in the walls, an unadorned stone font and a short wooden steeple—little more than an extended belfry—extending from the nave roof. The new church was still a chapelry of St Andrew's Church at nearby West Tarring: this meant that it was served and administered by clergy from that church, and most of the parish's tithes were paid to St Andrew's. It was not an independent parish church. The same applied to the nearby St Botolph's Church at Heene. Until agreement was reached in 1254, there was a long-running dispute between the rector of St Andrew's Church and Sele Priory over the division of the tithes. A small proportion of tithes were reserved for Sele Priory under arrangements made by Robert le Sauvage in the 12th century. When the priory was dissolved in 1459, the Bishop of Winchester William Waynflete acquired the patronage and made the tithes payable to Magdalen College, Oxford, which he had recently founded.
The church was wrecked during skirmishes linked to the English Civil War in the 1640s. In 1638, Reverend William Stanley became the rector of Tarring, which still had ecclesiastical responsibility for Durrington and Heene. His politics were strongly Royalist, but the villagers of Durrington were almost all Parliamentarian in outlook. He joined King Charles I's army when war broke out in 1641, angering his parishioners. The villagers' dislike of the rector was also prompted by his "unintelligible preaching", his failure to carry out parochial duties and his prosecution of some parishioners for non-payment of tithes. Their anger erupted in 1643 when, during a period of military action in Sussex, they partly demolished the church. He was removed from his role as rector in April 1645, but was restored 15 months later. Thereafter, he served the parishioners of Durrington infrequently, and reputedly threatened and spoke unpleasantly to them.
By 1677, the church was in such poor structural condition that the Dean of Chichester convened a consistory court with three parishioners and asked them why repairs had not been carried out. When they explained that it had been ruined during the Civil War, that Reverend Stanley had failed to serve them appropriately and that the parishioners could not afford its upkeep, the court accepted this. The parish was soon the subject of court action again, when the Dean found that the church bell had been sold without permission. After conflicting accounts were given, the churchwarden eventually admitted to selling it to raise funds for poor people in the parish. At the same time, he submitted an estimate for repairs to the church, stating again that the villagers could not afford them and asking for permission to abandon the building and worship at St Andrew's in West Tarring instead. This was agreed on 24 January 1680. The structure decayed further, and some of the masonry was used to build houses in the village. Nevertheless, the church was used occasionally until 1752, according to parish registers—mainly for baptisms, marriages and funerals, but a few services were held as well.