Situated outside Bailiffscourt—a mock-medieval mansion built in 1935 by Lord Moyne on the site of an ancient manor house—on the only stretch of open seafront land for miles in each direction, the chapel is now used principally for wedding and civil ceremony blessings.

The parish of Climping, sometimes spelt Clymping, covers a large coastal area next to the English Channel and the River Arun in West Sussex.

The land, a combination of silty brickearth and alluvium, is prone to erosion, and large parts of the parish have been lost to the sea since the Middle Ages.

[1] Bailiffscourt Manor was subjected to rebuilding and remodelling several times, and the role of the chapel changed: by 1728 it may have been used as accommodation for servants, and it was later used as a dairy[1] and a storage shed.

[3] Before this, though, it was apparently used as a "hamlet chapel" by the remaining villagers of Atherington, whose original church had been destroyed by the sea in the late 17th century along with most of its houses.

Of the old buildings, only the chapel was retained, and between 1928 and 1935 the architect Amyas Phillips built a new manor house in a faithful interpretation of the 15th-century style.

[3] The ashes of Lord Moyne and his wife Lady Evelyn were originally interred in the chapel, but they are now in a tomb in St Mary's Church, Climping.