A HISTORY OF SURREY 



have been a low side window : its sill has been lately 

 raised. Further east is a wide lancet with pointed 

 head, and at the angle a good example of a late 12th- 

 century buttress with a string-course of semi-octagon 

 shape, which also appears beneath the east window. 

 The latter, which has replaced the original early 

 lancets, is an interesting design in flowing tracery of 

 three lights, worked in clunch. 153 The gable has a 

 moulded barge-board. The east window of the 

 Witley Manor Chapel, also of three lights, is a resto- 

 ration on the old lines of a reticulated pattern tracery. 

 The windows in the north wall are also new, but 

 perhaps restorations, and the north transept, porch, 

 aisle, and vestry are modern. 



Coming to the interior, we find few features of 

 antiquity in the nave, which has a new oak-panelled 

 roof and seating. The internal opening of the south 

 doorway has been enlarged and otherwise altered. 

 The character of the tower arches and the south 

 transept has been noted above. In the chancel are 

 handsome modern alabaster sedilia and other fittings, 

 but the curious piscina with thirteen foliations to the 

 drain and the aumbry above it are of about 1350. 

 The face of the latter is sloped back, so as to keep the 

 door automatically closed ; adjacent to this are the 

 remains of the earlier semi-octagonal string found also 

 on the outside. 



The arches between the two chancels appear to 

 have been pierced at a later date than that of either 

 chancel, and originally there was probably a wall 

 between the two with a door in it. The western 

 arch is wide, of two plain chamfered orders, and the 

 other quite narrow, of 15th-century date, with a 

 plain tomb standing in it which was used as an 

 Easter sepulchre. Eastward of this, on the chapel 

 side under a pointed arch and credence shelf, is a 

 piscina in Sussex marble, bearing curious ornamenta- 

 tion of wavy lines. This bowl was probably 

 transferred here from the main chancel when the later 

 piscina there was made and the chapel built. 



The original oak roof (c. 1 1 90) remains over the 

 south transept. It is of braced collar-beam construc- 

 tion, with fine massive timbers. The corresponding 

 north transept roof was preserved when the walls 

 supporting it were removed to extend the area, and 

 a noteworthy detail of this is the billet ornament 

 upon the wall plates, a feature rarely found in wood- 

 work. 1 " 



The handsome screen between this transept and 

 the north chapel is of the 1 5th century. On the 

 south wall of the nave, high up, is a painting of 

 12th-century date in two tiers. It measures about 

 1 6 ft. in length, by about 9 ft. in height, but is 

 obviously a fragment of a scheme which probably 

 covered the entire nave ; the colours used are red, 

 pink, yellow, and white, and the whole composition 

 and treatment recall the early Lewes school as 

 represented in Hardham, Clayton, and other Sussex 

 churches. The subjects are uncertain, but the upper 

 tier seems to contain scenes connected with the 

 Nativity, and the lower legendary incidents in the 

 lives of saints. One nimbed figure in the lower tier 

 bears a T-headed staff. In the background is some 

 architecture of arcaded towers and domed roofs with 

 scale-shaped tiles. On the east wall of the south 



transept and elsewhere are further slight remains of 

 colour decoration, chiefly in red. 



Some good 15th-century heraldic glass (among 

 which are the arms of France and England quarterly, 

 and France impaling France and England) remains 

 in the windows of the Witley Manor Chapel, but it 

 has been shifted and releaded within the last 

 century, and not all of it is ancient. One fragment 

 on which was depicted the hawthorn bush and crown, 

 with the initials H. E. in black letter beneath it, 

 formerly marked the connexion of the manor with 

 Henry VII. It and the remaining old glass are con- 

 jectured to have been placed in the windows by 

 Sir Reginald Bray (temp. Henry VII). The font dates 

 from about 1250. Its octagonal bowl, which has 

 been renewed or recut, rests upon a central drum and 

 eight small shafts with moulded bases, standing upon 

 a circular plinth. 



Some ancient seats belonging to the first half of 

 the 1 4th century, which may have originally stood 

 in the nave, have been placed in the same chapel. 

 The sanctuary is bordered with a dado of modern 

 marble. 



A fragmentary inscription in black letter, cut in 

 a piece of stone let into the north wall of the chancel, 

 bears the date 1468, and records the fact that the 

 manor of Witley was held by the ill-fated Duke of 

 Clarence, brother of Edward IV. It reads : 

 ' Georgii Ducis Clarence et Dns (sic) de Wytle, ac 

 fratris Edwardi quarti, regis Anglic et Franc . . .' 

 This accounts, probably, for the heraldic glass in the 

 windows. 



The Easter sepulchre contains a brass to Thomas 

 Jones, Jane his wife, and their six children, 'which 

 Thorn's was one of the Servers of the Chamber to our 

 Souverayne lorde Kinge Henry VIII.' 



A brass in the north wall of the manorial chapel 

 bears the date 1634, and commemorates Henry Bell, 

 ' Clarke Controwler of the Household to our late 

 Soveraigne Lord King James of Blessed Memorie.' 



There are also tablets in the chancel and north 

 chapel to the wife of a 17th-century vicar of Witley 

 (in which her virtues are likened to those of Sarah, 

 Rebecca, Rachel, and Ruth) ; and to Anthony Smith, 

 ' Pentioner ' to Charles I and II, with a curious Latin 

 couplet containing allusions to his gift of a bell to the 

 church, and his benefactions to the poor of Witley. 



An ancient almsbox of enamelled iron, with 1 4th 

 or 15th-century tracery on the front, stands by the 

 south door. Although an undoubted antiquity, it 

 has been presented to the church in recent years. 



The registers date from 1558. 



There are eight bells in the tower, the treble and 

 third by Bryan Eldridge, 1648 ; the second bears 

 Richard Eldridge's initials and the legend, ' Our Lord 

 our hope, 1604.' The fourth is by William Eldridge, 

 1670. 



Among the church plate are chalices of the years 

 1638 and 1639, the second being an ancient piece 

 imported from Yorkshire, the gift of Mr. John Har- 

 rison Foster, of Witley. There is also a paten of the 

 date 1717, and an old pewter tankard of a poor type. 



The church of St. John the Evangelist, Milford, 

 was built in 1844. It is of Bargate stone, which 

 is found in the neighbourhood, in 14th-century 



158 Illustrated in V.C.H. Sam ii, 456 ; 

 cf. the eat window! of Woking, Dork- 



ing, and Mickleham the last two de- 

 stroyed. 



68 



154 A 12th-century beam in the nave of 

 Old Shoreham Church, Sussex, is one of 

 the few instances of its occurrence. 



