By the time William's commissioners visited this part of Sussex just twenty years later to sit in the shire court and evaluate property for the great Domesday Survey, there were 8 households in the settlement.

[5] From these early foundations until the 20th century, the history of the parish is closely linked to those of the church, the priory, the manor and the Earls of Arundel.

[7] The ancient parish of St. Mary Magdalene, Tortington was united with those of St. Nicholas's, Arundel and St. Leonard's, South Stoke in 1929, though declared redundant in 1978.

As a manor in the Rape of Arundel, an ancient administrative unit of land-holding unique to Sussex, Tortington was part of the reward from William the Conqueror to Earl Roger de Montgomery for loyal service.

Then, around 1105, Henry ennobled William d'Aubigny as 1st Earl of Arundel and gave him Robert's Sussex lands, including the manor of Tortington.

Meanwhile, ownership of the Tortington manor during the d'Aubigny and FitzAlan over-lordships in the Rape of Arundel was conveyed first to Pharamus de Tracey and his descendants, certainly by 1216, and later to William of Bracklesham.

On Ellis's death in 1327 his son and his widow Joan inherited the land, the latter selling her portion to Eleanor of Lancaster, niece of king Edward I and wife of Richard FitzAlan, now 3rd Earl of Arundel.

However, in 1415 on the death of Thomas FitzAlan, the 5th Earl, Tortington manor was bequeathed to Holy Trinity Hospital, Arundel and there it remained until the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536 when once again it became the property of the Crown.

Although the Arundel Estate retained woodland in Tortington, by the early 20th century those tenants had purchased their respective farms, thus bringing to an end almost one thousand years of manorial tenure.

For the 'Black Canons' who lived there it was a small establishment, not unlike other Augustinian priories founded nearby at Pyneham (de Calceto) just to the east of Arundel and at Hardham, further up the Arun valley.

His vision of conserving this and an enclosing wall of a courtyard and incorporating them in a private residence was realised in an award-winning building project carried out in 2001 by Neil Holland Architects of Arundel.

The vestry was added in 1892 and the bellcote was rebuilt once again in 1904 by Philip Mainwaring Johnston, the architect and historian, to whose scholarship we owe much of our knowledge of this and other local churches.

Inside the church and west of the doorway there is an unusual chalice-shaped Caen stone font, which, like the chancel arch, dates from the mid-12th century.

Adorned on the west side by grotesque 'beakhead' carvings, some bird-like, one certainly a rabbit, many topped with feathers, foliage or tentacles, these forms owe more to a Scandinavian or pagan tradition than to a Norman or Christian one.

The east window, featuring the Lamb of God, roundels depicting the Four Evangelists and other religious and heraldic symbols has been attributed to Thomas Willement and dated to 1867.

[6] Other notable fittings and artefacts include an early 15th-century bench, now in the south aisle; a 17th-century oak pulpit; a pair of 18th-century funeral hatchments of the Leeves family above the chancel arch; several personal and family memorials and a framed Roll of Honour and War Memorial to those Tortington men who served and died in the Great War 1914–18.

The other document, headed by an image of the Crucifixion in a military cemetery, begins ‘From this parish the following gave their lives for King and Country during the war 1914 to …’.

Hand-written and clearly maintained over the course of the war, these historic documents are a record of the commitment and ultimate sacrifice of local men at a time of national emergency.

They also bear witness to the strength and solidarity of the women on the home front who prayed as a community for the safe return of their husbands, sons and brothers.

Officially recognised in 2008 as a War Memorial, two professionally reproduced facsimiles now hang in the south aisle of the church as a reminder of an almost forgotten rural Sussex community and its sacrifice.

[16] It is here that one will find some rare and some endangered species such as the dormouse, the nightingale, the bee fly, the birds-nest orchid and the purple emperor butterfly.

Tortington has a wide variety of habitats - woodland, open farmland, water meadows, river banks, ponds - and all have some wildlife classed as rare or even as endangered species.

[17] Before the 15th century Tortington Common was an area of heathland which was then planted with mainly broad-leaved deciduous trees - oak, beech, elm, ash, and later with some conifers in the northern woods.