A HISTORY OF SUSSEX 



At Bignor is a rood-screen with early reticulated tracery and turned shafts, 

 dating from about 1320. Next in order of date are the beautiful parclose 

 screens at Eastbourne, six in number, the earliest dating from about 1310 

 and the latest about 1340. The tracery and moulded shafts are of several 

 patterns, and with the battlemented beams are in very perfect preservation. 

 Midhurst has a small tower screen of about 1320, with elegant trefoil 

 tracery. The Palace Chapel at Chichester retains its ancient narthex 

 screen of about 1340, with interesting tracery on baluster shafts, repaired in a 

 characteristic fashion in the early part of the seventeenth century. Playden 

 and West Thorney, at the opposite extremities of the county, have screens of 

 somewhat similar character and about the same date the tracery at the 

 former being of a fantastic ' flamboyant ' character. The chancel screen at 

 Etchingham also dates from about 1340, while at Sackville College, East 

 Grinstead, and at Ovingdean, Patcham, and Poynings, are screens dating 

 between 1350 and 1370. Newtimber retains a part of its rood-beam, richly 

 coloured (c. 1380), while the following belong to the fifteenth century: 

 Ardingly (rich tracery removed to the tower), Brighton (very elaborate 

 carved rood-loft, and tracery on two planes), Broadwater, Burton (a perfect 

 example, retaining the rood-loft), Cowfold, Fletching, Mayfield, Henfield, 

 Itchingfield (parts only old), Kingston-by-Sea, Playden (a parclose screen), 

 West Tarring (a low boarded screen with doors, but having iron spikes 

 instead of an upper part of tracery), Thakeham, Racton, Rotherfield, Rye, 

 Westham, Warnham, and Wiggonholt. Screens of this period, destroyed 

 within the nineteenth century, existed at Climping, Framfield, West Grin- 

 stead, Horsham, Litlington, Rustington, and Sompting. A fine screen, dated 

 1522, is preserved in Steyning Vicarage. There is a parclose screen of early 

 seventeenth-century date in Warnham church. 



There are remains of the rood-loft at Arundel, to the west of a lofty 

 screen of wrought ironwork (late fourteenth century) which fills the entire 

 eastern arch of the tower. Modern copies have replaced the screens of iron 

 scroll-work (twelfth century) once found in Chichester Cathedral. 



A solid chancel screen of timber and plaster with a door in the middle 

 and a loft on the western face formerly existed at Treyford church (now in 

 ruins) Barnham had a timber-arched framework, of thirteenth- or fourteenth- 

 century date, in the same position. In some cases, as at Henfield, Ifield, 

 Rusper, Warminghurst, and Racton, the head of the chancel arch, or roof 

 space, was filled in with close boarding or tracery as a back-ground for the 

 rood, or for a painted ' doom.' Chapel screens of iron (seventeenth and 

 eighteenth centuries) occur at Ashburnham and Sidlesham. Rood-loft doors 

 and stairs exist in some twenty-five churches, as at Appledram, Ardingly, 

 Battle, Chichester (Franciscan church), Denton, Eastbourne, Ifield, Poling, 

 Rudgwick, Rustington, Salehurst, Singleton, Westbourne, Westham, 

 Willingdon, Winchelsea (Franciscan church), and Yapton. Corbels for the 

 loft occur at Trotton. 



Quire stalls, with traceried canopies and carved misericordes, are 

 found in Chichester Cathedral and St. Mary's Hospital, having graceful 

 ogee-arched canopy work, and beautiful carvings of figure-subjects and 

 foliage on the misericordes, date c. 1290 to 1310. Etchingham has 

 very good stall-work of about the date 1340, while that in the Fitzalan 



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