West Sussex house price inflation is a myth: in July 2013, Woodmancote Place was on the market for £8m; now, in July 2015, Woodmancote Place is on the market for £8m.
[Cartographical note: the thick red line shows the route of the four lane rat underpass that is being built to connect Brooklands Pleasure Park to Bolney.]
Today 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.
The gardens at Newtimber Place will be open as part of the NGS (National Gardens Scheme) on Sunday 19th April between 2pm and 5.30pm. The gardens are lovely at this time of year with stunning daffodils and beautiful fritillaries. Beautiful Grade I listed C16/C17 moated house (not open). Gardens and woods full of bulbs and wild flowers in spring. Herbaceous border and lawns. Moat flanked by water plants. Mature trees. Wild garden, ducks, chickens and fish. Tea and home made cakesin aid of the church. There are ducks, chickens and guinea fowl wandering around so dogs need to be kept on a lead. Admission £4.00, children free.
St. Andrew’s is the oldest building in the parish and the only one to be Grade I listed. Its history is also better documented than the farms and cottages that it has served. Over the following months there will be a series of posts about the history of the church and its rectors. We begin today with three that deal with the building itself: a report by F.A. Howe on the installation of the Keith Memorial Window written in 1951; an essay by Hugh B. Simeon (Rector of Edburton from 1928 until 1936) entitled Saxon Relics — Mass-Clocks (the church has four of these ancient time-keepers); and a very welcome guest post by John Allen, author and editor of Sussex Parish Churches which surveys the known Architectural History of the building.
An aisleless C13 church with a C14 tower. The north chapel is earlier C14 and there is an early C13 lead font.
Edburton was the westernmost parish in the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Deanery of Malling, to which it appears to have been attached in 1150 (Dunkin p28). The main settlement in the parish is at Fulking, which is in the Rape of Lewes and until 1974 in East Sussex. The church stands on a knoll under the Downs with only a few houses nearby.
Although in the greensand belt, the material used is flint. Nothing identifiably earlier than the C13 remains, though traces of a tall and narrow blocked north doorway could suggest the walling of the nave, unusually long in the absence of aisles, was earlier, possibly C11. Rebuilding usually began at the east end, but here the nave has the earliest features, including plain lancets and a large south porch with a Horsham slab roof and a double-chamfered arch, like the doorway inside.
The chancel lancets are larger, with a small lowside each side, both nearer to the ground than usual. That on the north side is not in its original condition, for a mass dial on its jamb (see below) is upside-down and out of reach of the sun. The presumption that the chancel is later than the nave derives from the chancel arch. Its semi-hexagonal responds, continued above the abaci, and the two chamfered orders of the head merging into them are seldom found before the end of the C13; the arch from the nave into the north chapel is similar.
William de Northo founded a chantry to St Katherine here in 1320-21 (Godfrey p53), but both arches may be a little earlier. As built, the chapel had east and west gables and was parallel with the nave (ibid), but it was later rebuilt with a north gable, placing it at right-angles to the nave — the date of this work is uncertain. Its plain west lancet was clearly taken from the nave. Typically early C14 are the broad cinquefoiled east lancet and the north window of cusped Y-tracery.
Corbels at the west end of the nave on either side would have supported a belfry, incorporated in the roof, before the plain tower was added. This has diagonal buttresses, tiny pointed bell-openings, a low pyramid spire behind a parapet and an arch with semi-octagonal responds and a double-chamfered head. Though the whole might look early C14, the west window, the most ambitious feature, resembles tracery at Poynings, which can be dated to c1375. At Edburton the window has only two lights, but the combination of panelling and ogees is distinctive.
There is evidence of work carried out between the C16 and the C19, particularly a stone over the south doorway dated 1732, and the Burrell Collection drawing (c1780) shows plain three light east window with transom. This is certainly post-Reformation, though the drawing is not ideally clear and it appears to be set in an opening with a very depressed head which might come from a C16 window of which nothing now remains. The chancel was restored in the 1830s (Hudson p52), though its present traceried east window dates from about 1868 (ibid). The main restoration was in 1877-78 by R.N. Shaw, though not completed until 1880 (The Builder 39, p558); his fine nave roof with castellated beams is actually dated 1881. He probably also designed the two-light north window with a quatrefoil head and the boarded chancel roof. The neo-Jacobean chancel fittings, derived from the C17 pulpit and communion rails, reflect Shaw’s interest in styles other than gothic. Though the work is extensive, it is said to have cost only £1573 (Kelly’s Directory for Sussex 1899, p326).
J.L. Denman carried out repairs in two phases in 1958-59 and 1961-63 (Incorporated Church Building Society 13610 Folios ff. 1-22).
Fittings and monuments
Font: Early C13 (i.e., the earliest datable object in the church). Lead and closely related to that at Pyecombe, though the delicate scrolling and trefoiled arcading around the top of the bowl suggest it is slightly later.
Glass:
1. (East window) Munich Royal Bavarian Manufactory, 1868 (Church guide). It shows a highly pictorial version of the Resurrection, set in plain glass.
2. (South nave, second window) H. Hendrie, 1928 (www.stainedglassrecords.org retrieved on 22/2/2013). St Francis.
3. (North chancel, first window, north chapel, north window and north nave, second window) J. Powell and Sons, 1855-64 (Order and Cash books).
Piscinae:
1. (South chancel) Late C13 trefoil-headed.
2. (South nave wall) C13 square-headed.
3. (North chapel) C14 pointed and moulded.
4. (Loose on floor) Broken bowl, which has been assigned to an early date, but is unlikely to be older than the church.
Pulpit: Early C17.
Communion rails: C17 with widely spaced balusters, said to date from 1635 (Gell p207).
Monument: (Nave) William Hippisley (d1657) Wall monument, re-assembled from fragments in 1957-58 (Hudson p52).
Stoup: (By south doorway) Broken and C13 or C14.
Mass dials:
1. (North chancel lowside) Reset – see above.
2. (East angle of south porch) Two, with a further one at the west corner.
Sources
[Originally published at Sussex Parish Churches on 21st September 2008 and republished here in a slightly modified form by kind permission of the author.
Text copyright © John Allen, 2015.]
Currently popular local history posts:
[The essay that follows was written by the Reverend Hugh B. Simeon who was Rector of Edburton from 1928 until 1936.]
There are four mass-clocks on the Church, three on the South side, and one on the North side. A mass-clock is a sun-dial cut vertically on an outside wall of the Church. It is a circle made by one line, or sometimes two lines, with a hole in the centre. In some this hole has been filled up with cement, projecting from which there was once a metal rod, called a gnomon or style, the shadow of which cast by the sun passing across the sky rested upon lines cut on the dial. In Saxon and Norman times, when there were no clocks and watches, these mass-clocks or sun-dials were used for marking the times of services, and also for secular purposes. They are to be found on Saxon, Norman and early English churches.
The existing church at Edburton, with exception of the tower which is of late fourteenth century work, was built in what is called the transition period, when Norman architecture was beginning to give way to early English, about the end of the twelfth century. The year 1180 has been given as the date; it was, however, probably twenty or thirty years later than that. But on the site of the Church there had stood a Saxon church, built about 930 or 940, by the Princess Eadburh, daughter of King Eadward the Elder, who succeeded to the throne of England in 901, upon the death of his father, King Alfred the Great. She converted to Christianity the Pagan Saxons living here and built a church for them and gave her name to the place, Edburhton.
If these mass-clocks are Saxon, they must be about 1,000 years old, and they have all suffered in various degrees from the ravages of time. The best preserved one on the South side is on an outside comer stone of the East wall of the porch, facing South, and about six feet from the ground. The metal gnomon has long since disappeared, and there is not a single original gnomon existing in situ in the country. The hole has been filled in with cement. The double circle of incised lines and little holes can be clearly seen, and the lower half of the dial is divided into two equal parts by the line which marks the hour of noon, each part being divided by five lines into six equal parts, the whole dial thus showing twelve hours from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. The lines on the Western (or left) ide of the noon line mark the morning hours, and those on the Eastern (or right) ide the afternoon hours. At the end of the upper Western line is clearly seen a cross.
On June 21st (the longest day of the year) the sun rises a little before 4 a.m. (Greenwich time, not Summer time) considerably North of East, and as it cannot cast a shadow round the comer of the church, the first shadow that can be cast is at (approximately) 6 a.m., as about two hours elapse before the sun is due East. As the Midsummer Mass was in ancient days one of the chief services of the year to which everyone went, and was held soon after daybreak, this hour was marked with a cross known as a “rnaes-dael”, which means “mass time”.
Just below the mass-clock is another, which is much more weather worn, but the lines of the circle and the lines on each side of the noon- line can be seen. These are more distinct on a sunny morning in summer. In this case each quarter of the lower half of the dial appears to be divided into four parts by three lines.
On the corresponding comer stone on the West side of the porch can be seen another mass-clock. The gnomon hole has not been filled up, and the remains of the old metal gnomon can be seen about a quarter of an inch deep in the hole. The best place from which to see this mass-clock is the junction of the church path with the path to the new part of the churchyard to the West.
The fourth, and perhaps the most interesting of the four mass-clocks, is to be seen on the North side of the church, on the lowest stone on the right, or western side, of the low chancel window. It is on the wrong side of the church, where no sun ray can reach it. It is also upside down, and one-half of the stone has been cut away to fit the other stones, so that there is only two left of what should be the afternoon lines. This seems to show that the stone is part of the old Saxon church, and that the builder who placed it in its present position did not know what it was. If this supposition is correct, it would seem to show that all the outside stones of the present church other than (perhaps) the flints or any stone subsequently used for repairs, formed part of the old Saxon church.
It is also interesting to note that the arch of this particular window, and also the arch of the corresponding window on the South side, is of one stone, and is not composed of two stones placed together, probably therefore it is a stone of an earlier period. This mass-clock is the best preserved of all the four. The lines are very clear, and the space between the lines are of different widths. The spaces between the lines do not represent hours but periods of time, which would probably have nothing to do with church services.
It was probably the business of one man to ring the church bell when the shadow of the gnomon touched each Iine. In those ancient days, when there were but few means of artificial light, other than rushes dipped in fat, the rustic people would rise at daybreak and go to bed at sunset. The two lower divisions mark the time of rising and morning work. At Lady Day and at Midsummer, and at Michaelmas, the first shadow that could be cast is about 6 a.m., and at Christmas about 8 a.m. The bell would be rung according to the season, for the people to rise, and have breakfast, and go out to work. The third division represents by measurement sixty minutes, and the bell rung when the shadow touched the third line would call them in to dinner, and sixty minutes later, when the shadow touched the next line, would send them out to work again. The very narrow division next the central or noon line represents by measurement seven minutes. This is the mid-day Angelus, and all work would instantly cease when the bell rang. The men and women would stand (or in dry weather kneel) together and say the Angelus prayers, until at the end of the seven minutes the bell would ring to close the Angelus, when they would resume their work. Probably the central or noon line would signify nothing to them. It is noticeable that the third, or dinner, line is exactly half the whole space between the first line and the noon line. This is the likely meaning of these divisions.
Hugh B. Simeon
There was a ceremony at Littlehampton in 1951 at which the Society for the Promotion of the Gospel presented St. Andrew’s with a painted glass copy of its first seal, in order that it might be displayed in the church as a token of the connection of the parish with the Society through the Reverend George Keith, first missionary of the society and afterwards Rector of Edburton. The then Rector, Norman Charles Hony, lost no time in arranging for it to be mounted in a window of the church so that it could be in position in time for the visit of the Bishop of Lewes to preach at the harvest thanksgiving.
So it came about that, at the beginning of the evening service on Sunday 16th September 1951, in the presence of a very large congregation, the window was dedicated. Grouped round the window were the Bishop vested in his scarlet rochet, surrounded by the rector and servers carrying the processional cross and lights, a bright and colourful little scene. The Bishop recited prayers to bless the window and in memory of, and thanksgiving for, George Keith, priest. A1l the aspects of the ceremony were indeed summed up in the well-worn formula with which his lordship concluded: “Let us bless the Lord: Thanks be to God: May the Souls of the faithful, through the mercy of God, rest in peace”.
The window is near the pulpit and replaced a very ugly plain glass one. A photograph of the central section of the window appears above. The clear background is relieved by patches of faintly tinted glass and in the midst the coloured glass circle of the seal gleams like a jewel. The translation of the inscription round the edge is “The Seal of the Society for the spread of the Gospel in regions beyond the seas”. The words over the people on the cliff are taken from Acts XVI, verse 9, in the Latin Bible (Vulgate): “Come over and help us”· The reference to Newfoundland was added to the panel for some occasion for which it was not used. An admirably worded explanatory inscription by the rector [Norman Charles Hony] is placed beneath and can be seen below.
[This post comprises a somewhat edited version of a report by F.A. Howe that originally appeared in the October 1951 issue of St. Andrews Quarterly.]
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