This is a tall, cruciform, essentially eleventh century building, which has undergone some twelfth and thirteenth century remodelling and the conversion of its S. transept into a tower in the second half of the fourteenth century, by raising on top a bell-stage with a pyramidal roof.  (See the photograph above, taken from the southeast.)  Whether the original work was executed before or after the Conquest is difficult to tell but perhaps most likely dates from the reign of Edward the Confessor (1042-66), for he first introduced aspects of Norman art and architecture into England after he and his retinue returned from exile in France.  Features at Stoughton still consistent with Saxon construction include quoins resembling long-and-short work (albeit of a rather megalithic nature) at the corners of the nave in particular, the double-splayed W. window in each transept (see the S. transept W. window, illustrated below left), and the 28" thickness of the walls (as recorded by Ian Nairn in The Buildings of England: Sussex, London, Penguin, 1965, p. 344), which contrasts with the 36" or more of Norman walls in general.  However, the round-headed chancel windows are better matched with the Norman style, and the flint laid herringbone-wise in patches in the external walls, although 'used occasionally in the Saxon period... is more commonly distinctive of late eleventh-century building' (Sir Arthur Clapham, English Romanesque Architecture: After the Conquest, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1934, p. 115).  (A section of the nave W. wall is shown below right.) The early(?) fourteenth century belfry with two-light, trefoil-cusped bell-openings is readily distinguished from the remains of the S. transept below by a very marked change in the masonry admixture.  The attractive little porch in English-bonded brick (illustrated at the foot of the page, on the left) is probably Stuart in date (i.e. seventeenth century), to judge from the two little round-headed blank arches above the outer doorway, and the very flattened, segmental-arched (admittedly now renewed) doorway itself.

 

 

Inside the building, the tall round-headed chancel arch is difficult to call for while its shape and roll mouldings are consistent with the Norman style, certain idiosyncrasies (including the precise form of the capitals) provide reasons for doubt.  The round-headed chancel E. window and the presumably once very similar windows to the north and south, now with their heads truncated beneath the eaves, boast an order of shafts in shaft-rings against their splays, of Early English appearance.  Perhaps these are contemporary with the pointed transept arches bearing a roll moulding and a chamfer above semicircular shafts with capitals decorated with leaf carving reminiscent of narrow water leaf.  Alternatively, the transept arches could be a decade or two later and coeval with the lancet windows in the N. transept and chancel, and with the little trefoil-cusped piscina decorated with dog-tooth, in the E. wall of the N. transept.  The two-light W. window to the nave with cinquefoil-cusped lights and a dagger above, looks like an insertion of c. 1300.  The square font at the W. end of the nave is probably Norman in origin but may have been re-cut since the round-headed blank arches on the west, north and east sides seem exceptionally crisp, in which case the rather undistinguished leaf scroll pattern on the remaining (south) side, may once have continued all the way around.  (The photograph, below right, shows the font from the southeast.)