Author: LocHist

Concert with string ensemble and strawberry tea

Newtimber harp strawberry tea
On Sunday July 5th in Newtimber Place gardens in aid of the church at Newtimber. Tickets from Shirley Murrell (shirleymurrell@btinternet.com, 01273-858353) or Lucy Dalrymple (lucy@arboreaters.co.uk, 01273-831877).

The Midsummer String Octet will be giving a concert at Newtimber Church on Sunday July 5th 2015 at 2:30pm. The professional musicians will perform a classical music programme, lasting one and a half hours with a short interval. We will then walk or take our cars to Newtimber Place for a strawberry teas and punch. We will enjoy the lovely gardens and moat, finishing about 5:30pm.

Tickets at £20 for adults, £10 for children will include refreshments, and are available from Shirley Murrell 01273 857353 or shirleymurrell@btinternet.com, with a cheque and s.a.e. to Rectory Cottage, Church Lane, Newtimber, Hassocks, BN6 9BT, and Lucy Dalrymple 01273 832009 or lucy@arboreaters.co.uk for credit card payment, and Gill Keith Tel. 01273 835013 or gillian.bedlam@googlemail.com Cheques to be made out to “Newtimber PCC” please.

There will be free parking in an adjacent field at both venues, and please bring your own folding chairs or blankets for the garden. There will probably be some seats available for those who arrive on the day.

Walking distance

Steyning Butchers, Millbrook, Horn Lane, Woodmancote
Steyning Butchers have opened a new branch at Millbrook in Horn Lane (immediately adjacent to Woods Mill). Initial opening hours are 9:00-17:00 on Thursdays and Fridays, 9:00-15:00 on Saturdays (but they expect this to increase over the next six months). Visited today, they had a good range of both meat (including rabbit) and poultry (including guinea fowl). It all looked very appetising. Responding to a compliment on the appearance of the chicken, the butcher noted that their chicken contain no water beyond what the hen chose to consume during its lifetime. They stock free range eggs (and bacon, of course) and will supply veg boxes to order. ‘Walking distance’ may be a bit of a stretch for some readers — but Horn Lane is much closer than Steyning. Your intrepid reporter (who drove there) purchased a 14oz T-bone steak (£8) for consumption this evening.

Lancing the boil

Lancing Parish Hall mapE.ON encourages local people to come along to a drop-in exhibition that the company is holding to provide details of the final design and construction plans for the Rampion wind farm. Members of the project team will be available to answer questions. Following the election, the project was given the green light last month. Construction and preparatory work for the onshore cable route, which will take power from landfall at Brooklands Pleasure Park in Lancing to the onshore substation at Twineham, is now beginning. Initial work will include ‘ecological mitigation’, prior to construction beginning on the underground cable route from late July. The event will be held at Jubilee Hall, Lancing Parish Hall, 96 South Street, Lancing BN15 8AJ on Tuesday 16 June 2015 from 2:00pm to 8:00pm. Parking is available behind the hall, accessible via Chester Avenue. Press release.

St. Andrew’s Edburton

Carlo Crivelli's portrait of St. KatherineToday sees the continuation of our series of posts on the history of St. Andrew’s. You can read F.A. Howe’s 1949 essay on St. Katherine’s Chapel and its rather gruesome link to a popular firework; Lindsay Fleming’s 1958 article on the Hippisley Memorial, whose restoration he supervised, and the wording of the no longer legible verse that appears on it; and the results of Chris Comber’s recent work on the identities of those former residents of Fulking and Edburton whose names appear on one or both of the two War Memorials.

St. Andrew’s: St. Katherine’s Chapel

St. Katherine's Chapel Edburton interior
The north chapel of Edburton church, whose entrance arch groups so beautifully with the chancel arch and breaks the monotony of the long north wall of the nave, is a century or more later in date than the main building and is dedicated to St. Katherine of Alexandria.

St. Katherine's Chapel Edburton from East

We owe its existence to the family of de Northo who were established in the parish in the centuries after the Conquest. It was William de Northo who, in 1292, with his wife Olive, purchased lands in Edburton and neighbouring parishes, and again in 1325 when he purchased land from Robert de Frankeleyne, parson of Edburton, and another. Part of his wealth he devoted to building and endowing the chapel, for by a deed made at Bramber on 13th July 1319, he founded a chantry in the church and endowed it with one messuage, one virgate of land and fifty shillings of rent in the parishes of Edburton, Southwick, New Shoreham and Woodmancote, to provide a priest to pray for the souls of the “aforesaid William de Northo, his late wife Olive, and his present wife Christina, and all his ancestors”.

St. Katherine's Chapel Edburton from North

But why St. Katherine? The date of the founding of the chantry chapel gives the answer. The Crusades had opened communications with the near East, and the Eastern Church and its saints were acquiring a new interest in the West. There had grown up a great cult of St. Katherine of Alexandria virgin and martyr. Numerous churches were dedicated in her honour and her feast was kept with great solemnity. It will be remembered that she was one of St. Joan of Arc’s “voices”. The story is well known of her persecution as a Christian in which the attempt to martyr her on a spiked “catherine wheel” failed because it miraculously burst asunder. She is reputed to have been born about 310AD and by her learning is said to have confounded pagan philosophers, so that she came to be regarded as the patron saint of Christian philosophers. It is now admitted, however, that it is impossible to produce confirmatory evidence of the legends of her life and martyrdom (by beheading).

Two angels prepare to take the body of St. Katherine to Mount Sinai

Two angels prepare to take the body of St. Katherine
to Mount Sinai following her beheading.
Her feast day is 25th November.

F. A. Howe.

[This note was originally published in St. Andrews Quarterly 4, pages 21-22 (1949).]

St. Katherine with her hand resting on the eponymous wheel

St. Katherine with her hand resting on the eponymous wheel