St Andrew's Church, West Tarring

The parish of West Tarring is now part of the Borough of Worthing, but has ancient origins as a South Downs strip parish of about 1200 acre. It ran for about 3 mi from its northern extremity at Bost Hill, on the track to Findon (now the A24 road), to the English Channel coast in the south, and was much narrower apart from a thin strip of land extending westwards. Many coastal parishes in Sussex were this shape: many different soils and varieties of land would be included within the boundaries, from chalky downland in the north to marshy grassland near the coast. Salvington, the other settlement in the parish, is high on the slopes of the South Downs. At the time of the Domesday Book in 1086…

St Andrew's Church is an Early English Gothic building with some Perpendicular Gothic elements. Inside, there are five pointed arches on each side of the nave, with round columns topped by capitals. The mosaic decoration, depicting the Twelve Apostles, runs between and above them, and extends to the tower arch with its octagonal columns. was baptised here in 1584 and has a memorial and a plaque.

St Andrew's Parish Church has been a Grade II* Listed Building since 11 October 1949. As of February 2001 it was one of eight Grade II* listed buildings in the borough of Worthing. Today the ecclesiastical parish is smaller than the ancient parish, but the northern part up to Salvington is retained. The other boundaries are the railway line to the south, The Boulevard in the west and a line west of Loxwood Avenue to the east.