ARCHITECTURE 



ECCLESIASTICAL ARCHITECTURE 



IN fixing his attention upon the churches of Sussex, the student will do 

 well at the outset to disabuse his mind of a prejudice due to the ill- 

 informed and unsympathetic dicta of the older generations of county 

 historians and compilers of guide-books. One such writer has sweep- 

 ingly described them as ' rude and mis-shapen buildings, humble in their 

 pretensions' ; and the Rev. Edmund Cartwright's verdict upon his own 

 picturesque old church (Lyminster) is that it was ' of the coarse parochial 

 architecture ' * ; while, more recently, a writer, who might be expected to 

 speak more sympathetically, curtly dismisses the very interesting little church 

 of Ford containing specimens of seven periods of architecture, from pre- 

 Conquest to Caroline with the words, ' an insignificant place, with a church 

 to match.' Such harsh criticisms, whether from the archaeological or the 

 architectural point of view, are quite undeserved. Many of the churches, 

 as might be expected in a purely agricultural county, possessing but little 

 building stone, and whose notoriously bad roads must have made the carriage 

 of materials peculiarly difficult, are of the plainest design, and often built of 

 the humblest materials ; many also are on a very small scale, such as the 

 churches of Binsted, Burton, Eartham, Tortington, and Selham ; but there is 

 always grace of outline and proportion, and not seldom considerable beauty 

 and refinement in the sparing ornamentation. And if we can say this much in 

 vindication of the rank and file, it is waste of time to attempt a defence of 

 such universally recognized masterpieces as the Cathedral and Greyfriars' 

 church at Chichester, and the great churches of Boxgrove, New Shoreham, 

 Steyning, and Winchelsea. 



Its maritime character, and the convenience of its coast and harbours for 

 trading with the Continent, have had a marked effect on the architecture 

 of the county, rendering it peculiarly open to foreign influence. One 

 result of the constant intercourse with Normandy (which, it should be 

 remembered, was for centuries a province of the English Crown) was the 

 importation of the finest building stone from the famous quarries around Caen, 

 in exchange for cargoes of wheat, which were returned in the flat-bottomed 

 barges that brought the stone. 



It may be doubted whether this foreign influence did not, especially 

 during the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, outweigh that of the 

 neighbouring counties. Along the western boundary particularly where the 

 chalk downs afforded good marl or clunch the masons who wrought some 

 of the marvellously delicate work of the late twelfth century seem to have 



1 The Rev. Edmund Cartwright, joint-author of Dallaway and Cartwright's Hist, of Suss, was vicar of 

 Lyminster from 1824 to 1834. 



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