Domesday Book records the presence of a church at Carshalton. How long it had been there we don’t really know. There is a good deal of water and, more importantly, an ancient well nearby. This might argue that Carshalton was a pagan site. If it was, it would also be an obvious place to build a church to replace it.

The tower is the oldest part of our present building and it bears all the signs of having been there before the Norman Conquest. What lies to the east and the west of it (the present Lady Chapel and south aisle) is not on the same exact orientation as the tower. From this it is reasonable to deduce that what we see there now is not what was there originally. An ancient window, visible only from within the present ringing chamber, is on the north face and the splay beneath it suggests that that the tower up to that point is probably XI century and possibly earlier.

About 1150 it seems that a nave was built to the west of the tower, together with a north aisle: both of these disappeared in the rebuilding of the two decades before the First World War. In about 1200 three bays of a south aisle were added; these and the lower exterior stonework are visible to-day as the outer south aisle.

At about this time the arches beneath the tower space were altered. A chancel (now the Lady Chapel) was added, and the outline of original simple lancets can still be seen in the south wall. Within two hundred years or so the windows had been filled in and replaced with larger ones, and the late XIV century timber roof was added. It is possible that the chancel was lengthened at the same time.

The jambs of an early mediaeval doorway into the south aisle are very clearly visible from the south churchyard, and the outline of the top of a XIV century window may be seen from inside. The XV century saw the installation of floor brasses, many of them allegedly stolen by workmen in the 1830s, and the Gaynesford table tomb and brasses, which appear to have been moved slightly eastward at some point in the XIX century.

The wall monument to the Reverend W Quelch was installed at some time after 1654 and began a trend that was to continue for the next 250 years. The two most obvious examples also had a considerable effect upon the church fabric. Sir William Scawen was responsible not only for a fine monument but also for raising the roof of the (outer) south aisle to accommodate it. His neighbour Sir John Fellowes did something similar in the former north aisle: but unlike Sir William, who was a founder governor of the Bank of England, Sir John was merely a director of the infamous South Sea Company — notorious for being the Bubble that Burst — and though he managed the height he could not imitate the elaboration. By a pleasant twist, the rebuilding of the 1890s saw the two monuments placed opposite one another at either end of the outer south aisle.

At some stage in the XVIII century a gallery was placed across the west wall, and then along t