ECCLESIASTICAL ARCHITECTURE 



late fourteenth-century work, the cloisters (of the latter period), the spire of 

 the central tower, and the detached bell-tower the last two being still in 

 progress during the early years of the fifteenth century. Bishop Sher- 

 born's great altar-screen of oak, now happily replaced, brings us into the 

 opening years of the sixteenth century. 



Chichester Cathedral is specially valuable for its late twelfth-century 

 architecture, for the studies in several different kinds of early vaulting, and 

 for' the woodwork of the quire stalls, c. 130030. 



Of course, directly and indirectly, the influence exercised by the mother- 

 church upon the ecclesiastical architecture of the county was very considerable, 

 and we constantly come across features, in the churches of West Sussex 

 especially, which owe their inspiration to the cathedral. Amberley (chancel, 

 arch, &c.), Boxgrove (quire arcades), Aldingbourne (south chapel), Burpham 

 (chancel vaulting), and Climping churches are cases in point. 



The bishop and the cathedral body had the patronage of more than 

 thirty livings, and the bishops had manor houses or palaces at Selsey and 

 Bexhill, besides a castle at Amberley. 



Another influence to be reckoned with is that of the archbishops of 

 Canterbury, who had manors and palaces at Mayfield, Mailing, Tarring, 

 Slindon, and Pagham, and the right of presentation to some seventeen livings. 

 The thirteenth-century chancels at South Bersted, Tangmere, Patching, and 

 Edburton, and the beautiful fourteenth-century work in the chancels of Isfield 

 and Buxted, are probably due to them. Not only so, but the clergy whom they 

 would appoint to these and other ' peculiars ' would often be Kentish men, 

 who would naturally import Kentish masons to rebuild their churches. 



The two important livings of Winchelsea and Rye belonged from an 

 early date to the Crown, and we may suppose Edward I to have interested 

 himself in the building of the former church. 



As to the sites of churches, it is interesting to record that St. Nicholas, 

 Brighton, stands within a Druidical inclosure, and that Arlington, Ford, and 

 Iping, as well as St. Olave's and St. Andrew's, Chichester, are built upon 

 Roman or older sites the last-named upon a Roman pavement. Climping and 

 Etchingham stand within a moat probably chiefly meant to keep them dry. 



We have next to consider the materials used in the construction of 

 Sussex churches ; and in this connexion what is written will apply equally 

 to other classes of buildings. Sussex, like Surrey, is not a stone county, and 

 such building stones as it possesses are not of first-rate quality, either for 

 durability or for high-class masonry ; from which it follows that the county 

 has never boasted a flourishing native school of stone-craft, such as must have 

 existed in the neighbourhood of the great quarries of the Midlands. Its 

 masons must often have been imported, like the best of its building stones 

 Caen many of them at first from Normandy, but afterwards from other 

 parts of England. 



For the ordinary walling of most of the sea-board churches, and inland 

 also in the western and central parts of the county, seashore flints, and flints 

 dug from the chalk or taken from the fields, are commonly employed. They 

 are equally the usual material in domestic and castellated buildings. The use 

 of flints for the walling makes a marked contrast with the sandstones employed 

 in eastern Sussex and the chalk rag of the north-west corner. 



333 



