The tower is early C12.  The south arcade dates from c1200 and the north one from c1300.  The aisles and C13 chancel were rebuilt in the C19.

The village street with brick and tile-hung cottages is one of the prettiest in Sussex.  By the late Middle Ages, the parish was a main centre of the Wealden iron industry.  Bateman’s, where Rudyard Kipling lived, was a C17 ironmaster’s house in the parish.

The church existed by about 1100, the date of the tower.  This has small round-headed windows on two sides in the second stage and accurately renewed double bell-openings, divided by a shaft with a scallop-capital.  The size of the tower suggests a substantial but probably aisleless church.  The south arcade of about 1200, as built, had three bays with pointed heads and pronounced chamfers on both orders.  One pier is round and the other octagonal.  The responds resemble the latter and the arcade and aisle did not reach the west end - the westernmost arch is C19.  Though the chancel was reconstructed in the C19, the three stepped east lancets are as shown on the Burrell Collection drawing (1784) and it is likely that the other ones, which are unusually tall, are also accurate in form - the original south ones may have been re-used.  The originals were probably mid-C13 and the broad chancel arch with corbels on the responds and stops on the outer order still dates from this period. 

The north arcade followed about 1300 and differs markedly, with taller arches, all octagonal piers and rather meagre abaci – there were four arches from the start.  Later C14 alterations are obscured by C19 rebuilding.  A south west angle-buttress and large stone porch were added to the tower.  Though largely rebuilt, its arch resembles the north arcade and is thus C14, as is the plain doorway inside.  The C19 niches and angels on the porch were based what was found (Eccl Dec 1855 p392).  The shingled broach spire is probably C14, like the low tower arch, which has two orders on the head dying into the responds without abaci.  On the evidence of the Burrell drawing and that in the Sharpe Collection (1804), the walls of the aisles with square-headed windows were of this period, so early C14.  However, the east window of the south aisle once incorporated the Pelham family’s badge of the buckle (2 p225) in the head and was late C14 at the earliest.  

After the Reformation, galleries were added in the nave, as the dormers on the Sharpe drawing show.  In 1855 a thorough restoration, in many ways a reconstruction, was undertaken, initially by R C Carpenter (BN 14 p441), though his successor W Slater signed the application to the ICBS.  On the tower, he replaced an internal stair by a stair-turret, opened up the tower arch and rebuilt the west porch.  Both aisles were considerably widened and though intended to be gabled (Eccl ibid), in the event lean-to roofs were retained.  The side-windows remain square-headed, but comparison with the Sharpe and Burrell drawings shows four in the south aisle, not three and the end windows are now pointed.  The chancel was rebuilt, though as well as the south lancets, the doorway may have been re-used.  A cinquefoiled lowside looks all C19, but is said to be based on what was found (SAC 84 (1944-45) p145).  The chancel arch was repaired rather than replaced and all roofs were replaced.  Though Slater restored the tower, there was further work in 1890 (Harrison p40).  

Fittings and monuments

Brass: (South aisle wall) Small and worn figure of a civilian, c1440.
Font: C15 with an octagonal bowl with concave sides (cf Dallington).  Each bears a shield, blank except two bearing the Pelham buckle.
Glass:
1.  (South aisle east window and adjacent) Heaton, Butler and Bayne (attr), c1866-69. (www.stainedglassrecords.org).
2.  (East window) M Travers, 1928 (Warrener and Yelton p321), replacing medallions of glass, made by Ward to the design of J R Clayton, 1855 (BN 14 ibid).
3.  (South aisle, two-light window) J Bell and Son, Bristol, 1955 (DSGW 1958), designed by A W Robinson (Little etc p104).
4.  (South chancel) P W Cole, 1957 (WSRO Fac).
5.  M Lawrence, 2001 (artist's website).  Millennium window of two lights, depicting St Bartholomew and the Parable of the Talents respectively.
Monuments:
1.  (Inner south porch) Obedience Nevitt (d1619) a plain epitaph with a small rounded pediment, worth noting because her first name reveals Puritan sympathies, at least on the part of her parents 
2.  John Polhill (d1689) by T Cartwright (Roscoe p221)
3.  (South west corner of aisle) Rev John Courtail (d1806) by J Flaxman (ibid p452).  Figures of Faith and Hope flank the inscription.
4. William Constable (1810?) by L Parsons (Roscoe p952).
5. Mrs Christian Mackenzie (c1822) by R Blore junior (ibid p120).
Piscina: (Reset in south aisle) Plain pointed and probably C13.
Reredos: 1911, designed by Sir C Nicholson (BN 100 p768).
Squint: (Between aisle and chancel) C19 with a cinquefoiled head, said to be an accurate copy.
Iron tomb-slabs: (South aisle) Jhone Coline.  The Lombardic lettering is C14 in style, so it has been seen as the first in Sussex.  However, the Sussex iron industry only became significant in the early C16 and Willatts suggests that the lettering is anachronistic (SAC 125 (1987) p103).  The phrase ‘ORATE P[RO] ANNEMA [sic], (i e pray for the soul) does,however, show it is pre-Reformation and is thus the oldest slab to bear a name – this may be John Collins, who died in 1537 and owned an iron furnace a couple of miles away.  A misreading of ‘P ANNEMA’ led Dan and Una in Kipling’s Puck of Pook’s Hill to call this part of the church ‘Panama corner’.  Further slabs are dated 1617 and 1770.
War memorial: (Outside the churchyard) More ambitious than many with an open lantern top, it includes the name of Kipling’s son John, killed in 1915, to whom there is also a bronze memorial in the form of a medallion in the church.

Sources

1.  W H Godfrey: Parish Church of St Bartholomew, Burwash, SNQ 11 (Nov 1947) pp167-68
2.  M A Lower: The Buckle: the Badge of the Family of Pelham, SAC 3 (1851) pp211-31
3.  C F Trower: Burwash, SAC 21 (1869) pp108-37

Plan

Measured plan by W H Godfrey in VCH 9 p198

Glass by M Lawrence

My thanks to Nick Wiseman for making available the colour photographs