Tortington lies south of Arundel half a mile from the site of a medieval Augustinian priory. Now just two farms, a former mansion used as the English campus of an American college, and a handful of scattered houses, it once had a manor, farms with large agricultural output, and a busy brickworks for several centuries until 1910. The village's tiny 12th century St Mary Magdalene's Church, almost hidden by trees and its surrounding old farm buildings, was declared redundant in 1978 and is today cared for by the Churches Conservation Trust.