| dbo:abstract |
In the district of Chichester, a large rural area in the English county of West Sussex, there are more than 50 former churches, chapels and other places of worship that still stand but that are no longer in religious use. Many are in the ancient city of Chichester, the district's largest centre of population: many medieval and Victorian Anglican churches were built there to serve tiny parishes (sometimes covering only a few streets) that were later combined with others, and chapels serving various Nonconformist denominations were closed after their congregations declined. Elsewhere, in the villages and scattered farming communities that characterise the rest of the district, churches and chapels were superseded by new buildings, closed due to declining attendance or shifts in population, or rendered unusable because of structural problems. A few former places of worship are now ruinous but still survive in derelict or fragmentary form. Many others are fully usable and have been converted to new uses – residential, commercial, educational, social and others. Some former churches stand empty awaiting a new function. Of the 54 former places of worship in the district as of 2022, 21 have been listed by English Heritage for their architectural and historical importance. A building is defined as "listed" when it is placed on a statutory register of buildings of "special architectural or historic interest" in accordance with the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport, a Government department, is responsible for this; English Heritage, a non-departmental public body, acts as an agency of the department to administer the process and advise the department on relevant issues. There are three grades of listing status: Grade I, the highest, is defined as being of "exceptional interest"; Grade II* is used for "particularly important buildings of more than special interest"; and Grade II, the lowest, is used for buildings of "special interest". As of February 2001, there were 80 buildings with Grade I status, 114 with Grade II* status and 3,057 with Grade II status in the district. (en) |
| rdfs:comment |
In the district of Chichester, a large rural area in the English county of West Sussex, there are more than 50 former churches, chapels and other places of worship that still stand but that are no longer in religious use. Many are in the ancient city of Chichester, the district's largest centre of population: many medieval and Victorian Anglican churches were built there to serve tiny parishes (sometimes covering only a few streets) that were later combined with others, and chapels serving various Nonconformist denominations were closed after their congregations declined. Elsewhere, in the villages and scattered farming communities that characterise the rest of the district, churches and chapels were superseded by new buildings, closed due to declining attendance or shifts in population, o (en) |
