St. George's Church, St George’s Road, Worthing

More than any other church in Worthing, St George keeps its evangelical appearance and character.  Designed by G Truefitt (B 25 p99), it was built in 1867-68 on an oblong plan with an apse.  Two small transepts were intended, of which only one was subsequently added.  This looks like a small chapel, as it too is apsidal.  A tower was planned but never built, so the exterior lacks any vertical beyond a small turret with a steeply pointed top over the transept and the immediately noticeable feature is the large roof.   As engraved in The Builder (ibid p540), the tower was intended to stand north of the nave and would have had long bell openings extended upwards into the base of a stone broach spire.  As it stands, the big traceried windows show the function of the building beyond doubt, though the hipped roof of the west end, immediately above a row of six rectangular windows, is unconventional.

The interior is a single space and thus ideal for preaching.  As the exterior walls suggest, it is low, with oddly squashed double arcades to the transepts (the south one remains blocked) and dark, curved roof timbers on carved corbels.  There is an open traceried screen which is now placed near the west end of the church, but probably originally marked the entry to the chancel.  Surprisingly in a church of evangelical leanings, it looks original.  The remaining fittings are unremarkable except for a stone pulpit and decoration is limited to biblical texts on the wall.

Truefitt added a lower west narthex in 1875 (B 33 p807) and this probably explains the £400 recorded in PP125 as expended on restoration, on top of the £3500 spent on the building.  It has a cinquefoiled doorway with a carved tympanum.  It is not known when the transept was added, save that it was before 1884 (VCH 6(1) p121).