Bilsham Chapel

Bilsham, a hamlet within the parish of Yapton on the West Sussex coastal plain, is 3/4 mi southwest of the village centre and its parish church. Evidence of Anglo-Saxon settlement has been found around the single-street settlement, which has grown northwards towards Yapton in the 20th century. The manor of Bilsham, one of several in Yapton parish, was mentioned in the Domesday survey of 1086. (or, by Nikolaus Pevsner, specifically to the 1260s). The chapel was never dedicated to any saint. During the religious upheaval of the 16th century, rural chapels of ease were usually either upgraded to full parochial status or taken out of religious use. This defines it as a "nationally important"…

The small rectangular building was always a single-cell chapel with no internal division. It has two storeys and walls of flint and sandstone with red-brick quoins and window dressings. The oldest structural features are the two lancet windows in the north wall, which have -tracery in a style typical of the early 14th century. The pointed-arched lancet in the east wall has two lights and is either 14th- or 15th-century. Two pairs of single-light lancets with red-brick surrounds were added in the south wall during the 1878 renovations, which also added a timber roof with tie-beams. The two simple windows in the west wall may have been inserted then as well. A pair of dormers on the south…