History of the Church
The first church in Saltwood was probably built of wood by the Saxons who were better carpenters than masons, though few churches of that period remain. The church certainly did not possess glass for its windows, but simply shutters which could be closed at night or during a storm. It would have been cold and draughty and poorly lit with oil lamps or resin torches.

Built by the Normans the oldest part of the present Saltwood Church dates from about 1100 and the tower, which originally had a gabled top, from about 1200.

The first Rector was Walter De Gray, who was Chancellor of England under King John in 1207 and also Archbishop of York.

Saltwood was, for most of the millennium, an important Manor. The somewhat grander church of Hythe remained a chapel of Saltwood until 1844. The earliest part of the present building dates from between 1100 and 1150AD. Although the beautiful porch and the lychgate are modern restorations. Lych is the old Saxon word for a corpse, a significant name for the churchyard gate.

The first Norman church at Saltwood simply consisted of the present nave or body of the church and a small square chancel, which only extended as far as the priest’s door on the south side and to the east end of the organ chamber on the north. On the exterior of the north and south walls of the chancel, the joint in the masonry can be seen near the top of the wall where the old chancel ended.

The remains of one of the original Norman windows of the nave (now blocked up) can be seen on the right side of the porch, rather high up. It was narrow and round- headed. Larger gothic pointed or segmented-headed windows in the fifteenth and sixteenth century superseded the earlier Norman ones.
The original church had no tower. The fine Norman doorway in the vestry with its elaborate dogtooth mouldings was evidently the original West door to the church. Some of the stonework has been restored and that of the plainer Norman door in the south porch has been entirely renewed.

The tower dates from 1200AD. A sketch of it in the vestry, dated 1806, shows that it originally had a gabled top, rather uncommon in England, and narrow pointed windows. The two copies of the Norman windows in the base of the tower, which is now the vestry, and that in the ringing chamber are quite modern and out of place in a tower which is early thirteenth century Gothic. In the tower are hung six bells, four cast in 1772 and the tenor in 1773 by John Waylett, an itinerant bell founder. The last was added in 1912, as a gift of Mr Lawrence Hardy of Sandling Park.

In the church the arches which separate the nave from the north aisle are pointed and date, like the tower, from about the year 1200. These indicate where the north wall of the nave was cut through and this arcade and north aisle built.