When we meet
| Second Sunday | Holy CommunionCommon Worship, with a robed choir and an anthem. | 11.00am |
| Fourth Sunday | Choral Evensong | 6.00pm |
| Occasionally | Family ServiceRefreshments and craft from 10am. | 10.30am |
A few times a year, when a month has a fifth Sunday, the whole benefice gathers for one Communion, taking turns to host. See the whole month.
Gallery
More pictures from all six churches are in the benefice gallery.
About the church
St Mary's was built between about 1320 and 1330, in the Decorated style and of knapped flint, on the site of a much older church. It keeps the cruciform plan it was given then, with only modest alteration over the last century and a half.
In more detail
The building, part by part
The chancel, the central tower and the south transept are the only complete parts of the old church, and all three date from about 1320 to 1330. The nave's main walls are of the same period, but much was rebuilt in 1866, when new windows were put in and the north transept reconstructed.
The chancel has a fourteenth-century east window of three trefoiled lights, with smaller foils added to the centre light. The piscina has an octagonal basin, a chamfered shelf and a drain shaped like a rose.
The Paulets
Five marble slabs to the Paulet family lie within the chancel rails, with more seventeenth-century slabs in the floor. A tablet remembers the fifteenth Marquess of Winchester, killed at Magersfontein in 1899 during the Boer War.
The south transept holds a carved chair dated 1688 and a little seventeenth-century Flemish glass carrying the Paulet motto, Aymez Loyaulte.
The bells
A ring of six. The treble is of 1895 by Mears and Stainbank; the others were cast in 1717, 1703, 1686 and 1662, the last by William Purdue of Salisbury.
Patronage from Chichester
Richard le Poor, Bishop of Chichester between 1215 and 1217, acquired the church of Amport and appropriated it to his cathedral chapter, which has presented the vicar here ever since.
Architectural and historical detail on this page is drawn from A History of the County of Hampshire, volume 4, edited by William Page and published in 1911, through British History Online. Please send us more details or corrections if you have them.
Who to ask
- TreasurerMr Neville Geake
- SecretaryJulie Davis
- OrganistMaureen Peck01264 772658
The choir rehearses here on Thursdays from 7 to 8pm, and sings in churches all around the benefice. New members are always welcome. Ring Julie Davis.