Often administered in connection with other churches in the rural area of West Sussex in which it was built–churches at nearby Steyning, Ashington and Thakeham were all involved with it at various times–its congregations declined and closure came first in the 1920s and then for good in 1979, when it was declared redundant.

[7] Early in its history it was, like its mother church at Steyning, owned by the Benedictine abbey at Fécamp in Normandy, to which tithes were payable.

[1][7] The three-light east window, containing plain glass and with quatrefoils at the top,[11] dates from the 14th century[10][12] (possibly as early as 1300)[11] and is in the Decorated Gothic style.

[10] Such seats were "complete anathema to 19th-century restorers"; the church remained untouched at that time, making its set of pews the most notable in Sussex according to one source.

[1] More damage, this time associated with the Second World War and declining congregations,[1][3] led to the only full-scale restoration in the church's history:[9][10] John Leopold Denman of the firm Denman & Sons carried out a "very sensitive" series of works ("beautifully done" according to Nikolaus Pevsner)[9] in 1959–60, in which all parts of the building were inspected and structural defects corrected, the east window was improved and the ceiling was stripped down to reveal its original timbers.

[1] The declining number of worshippers made it unviable, though, and on 1 April 1979 the Diocese of Chichester declared the Church of the Holy Sepulchre redundant.

[16] After that date, it was no longer used for religious services,[7] and by 1984 a Sussex writer observed that "it looks as if nobody loves it any more" and feared potential demolition.

It consists of a long, low single cell containing nave and chancel, a porch on the south side (now blocked, and containing the original entrance door), a vestry (formerly a private chapel) on the north side, an entrance in the liturgical west end and a bell-turret topped with a broach spire on the roof at the liturgical east end.

[20] The best feature, with no rival in Sussex for completeness and structural condition,[15] is the late 18th-century pine box pews with Gothic Revival-style tracery at the ends.

[11] The pine screen between the nave and chancel has a "splendid"[11] and "wonderfully naïve"[19] painted plasterwork Royal Arms in its tympanum, repainted in 1845.

[1] One family member, Edward Shelley (died 1554), is commemorated by a small brass memorial in a Perpendicular Gothic-style wall recess, depicting his wife and ten children kneeling in front of him.

[26] Other memorials include two large "Baroque-style"[27] 18th-century tablets decorated with the heads of putti, and three hanging monuments in marble—a style which became popular in Sussex in the 17th and 18th centuries.