Our distinguished Tudor panelling adorned a dining room wall of  the Old Priory, the former parsonage, until 1961 when it was installed in the sitting room of the modern vicarage. There it remained until 1983, when the sanctuary was reordered and curtained, and the panelling was installed as the reredos behind the high altar (when it came to be known as the ‘Tudor Screen’). The story of how these historic panels, which were carved in 1522 to commemorate a signifiant royal marriage, came to Steyning was forgotten until Lynda Denyer and colleagues from Steyning Museum researched it. Her resulting newsletter article can be found in context on the Museum website (here and here, or you can download it as a four-page document here). Her explanation of the heraldry is here. 

In 2016, the carvings were moved once again to their current setting on the wall of the north-east chapel. Both the panels, once hidden behind plaster in the old vicarage, and the Victorian reredos they once concealed, are now beautifully illuminated under the 2021 church lighting scheme.