News stories

Intrepid four-year-old twins Ariel and Kylo Wilson-Smith undertook an epic 2.4-mile cycle ride on Ride + Stride day, raising nearly £300 for their local church and the Sussex Historic Churches Trust. The twins, who live in Shoreham, visited four churches in all, escorted by their grandparents Andrew and Rachel Matthews. The children started off on foot, walking from St Mary’s church to the Methodist church, before taking to their bikes and cycling to the Church of the Goo

The Trust was delighted to award £57,000 in its latest round of grants including £15,000 to the 12th-century St Mary the Virgin in Clapham, near Worthing. Grants from the Trust play an invaluable role, countywide, in helping churches carry out essential care and conservation of their historic buildings and the grants are often the ‘make or break’ factor in enabling church repairs to go ahead. To read more about earlier church ‘success stories’, please visit our news page. The

Parishioners put in a superb effort at Christ Church Blacklands and St. Andrew on Ride + Stride day this month – with mammoth cycle rides and lengthy hikes all helping to contribute to a £1,700+ fundraising haul. Church member Mark Norton cycled around 50 miles visiting churches in and around Hastings and Rye while churchwarden Stephen Harvey walked 14 miles visiting local churches and, in the church itself, PCC member Jean Wilson pedalled over six miles on her exercise bik

The 19th-century St Mark’s church in Hadlow Down has just completed an extensive programme of external repairs after receiving a £4,000 grant from the Sussex Historic Churches Trust in April. The Grade II listed building, which was built in 1835–36, is an important historic and community landmark serving the village of Hadlow Down and the surrounding rural area. The 2023 Quinquennial Inspection identified a number of concerning issues including deteriorating external ston

Midhurst vicar Marcus Collie has completed an extraordinary five day motorbike pilgrimage, praying in 100 churches across Sussex and raising vital funds for Ride + Stride and the Sussex Historic Churches Trust. Starting on Monday 24 August at the 12th century parish church of St Mary’s in Rye, Marcus rode his Suzuki V Strom east to west, finishing at Chichester Cathedral after visiting a century of historic churches in just five days. Don’t forget! The 2026 Ride + Stride even

In April, the 12th-century church of St Mary in the West Sussex village of Binsted received a £24,000 grant from the Sussex Historic Churches Trust – the largest single award the Trust has ever made. Four months on and the church’s ambitious programme of repairs is well under way with restoration work to the buttresses and west window now completed. During this process, the contractors Tilley Stonemasons also managed to clean and replace the polycarbonate that’s protecting

One of the longest-serving Ride+ Stride organisers in Sussex is finally passing on the baton after helping to raise funds for St Mary's Storrington and the Sussex Historic Churches Trust for over 20 years. Sheila Ward has been a driving force in helping St Mary's and its legion of sponsored Ride + Stride participants to raise funds for the ancient church. In the last five years alone, St Mary's Ride + Stride participants have raised more than £4,500. St Mary's dates back we

We are delighted that this year marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of the Sussex Historic Churches Trust. During that time, hundreds of thousands of pounds have been awarded in grants to more than 500 churches and places of worship across East and West Sussex. St Peter's, Brighton How we started By the middle of the 20th century, many historic parish churches right across the UK were in a very poor state of repair. This was the result of many social and economic facto

The Ride + Stride fundraiser on September 12 coincides fortuitously with this year’s Heritage Open Day event which sees thousands of buildings nationwide open their doors to the public.

An enterprising and motorbike-mad vicar from Midhurst is embarking on an epic pilgrimage at the end of this month to raise much-needed funds for the Sussex Historic Churches Trust. The Revd Marcus Collie, vicar of Midhurst and Rector of All Hallows, Woolbeding, plans to pray in 100 churches across the Diocese of Chichester – traversing right from one end of Sussex to the other on the back of his newly-acquired Suzuki V-Strom. Marcus’s five-day pilgrimage gets underway on

A record-breaking £24,000 grant will help fund an ambitious programme of repairs and restoration at the 12th-century Church of St Mary in the village of Binsted, near Arundel in West Sussex. The grant, awarded by the Sussex Historic Churches Trust, is the largest single grant ever made by the Trust to a parish church and reflects the scale and urgency of the work facing the Grade II* listed building. Among the most pressing concerns are repairs to the church’s 13th-centur