United States or Portugal ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Other and competent judges have felt the charm of this old Seagate and one Algernon Charles Swinburne has immortalized it in his glowing lines "On the South Coast": "Shoreham, clad with the sunset glad and grave with glory that death reveres." Shoreham church is second only to the Cathedral at Chichester and Boxgrove Priory in interest.
As it stands, it is plainly modern; the great round pillars are hollow; but the design is one which we can hardly fancy coming into anybody's head, unless it reproduced something older. It is something like Boxgrove, something like some German churches, but not exactly.
I did not sleep in Arundel, but, though it was already afternoon, I set out westward once more through the great park, and just before sunset I came to the great church of Boxgrove, which stands between the road I had followed from Arundel and the Roman Stane Street, where they approach to enter the East Gate of Chichester together at last.
At the distance of a mile south of Halnaker, Stane Street is reached at a point about four miles from Chichester. There are, however, still some interesting places to be seen before, for almost the last time, we turn west. These include Boxgrove, which must on no account be missed. Eartham is a beautifully situated village about two miles directly east of Halnaker.
I love the Sussex downs, I like the Sussex faces, and I admire the Sussex church spires tall and pointed, covered with lichened shingles. We stopped at Boxgrove, too, a church adored by architects; and as we went our way to Goodwood the sea was a torn sheet of silver seen behind great downs which the afternoon sun was gilding. Oh, the Lebanon cedars and the views of Goodwood!
Ficks, "Joe" Hesketh, Matthew Fircombe, Lord Boxgrove, old Tommy Lawson, "Bill", Mr. Compton, Mr. Mannering, his son, Mr. William Mannering, and his nephew Mr. Muntzer, Mr. Eartham, dear, courteous, old-world Squire Howle, and that prime favourite, Lord Mann. "Sambo" Courthorpe, Ring, the Coffee-cooler, and Harry Sark, with all the Forfarshire lot, also fell under my eye, as did Maxwell, Mr. Gam
But all was changed when Robert de Haza, to whom Henry I. had granted the honour of Halnaker, in 1105 bestowed the church upon the Abbey of Lessay, which sent hither its Benedictines and built for them a new sanctuary. Boxgrove was thus an alien priory from 1108 till in 1339. Richard II. affirmed its independence, and this was confirmed by the Pope in 1402.
The triforium and clerestory have been wholly reconstructed, or so thoroughly disguised that the old work does not appear. This nave is one of those buildings which, in the infancy of vaulting, their builders found it convenient to vault with one bay of vaulting over two bays of arcade, as in the choir of Boxgrove in the next century.
I saw, however, the empty tomb, very fine and splendid, of the Earl de la Warr, who begged Boxgrove of Thomas Cromwell unsuccessfully; and then I went out and marched on into Chichester, the East Gate of which I entered not long after dark. The mere plan of Chichester proclaims its Roman origin.
I had often read of the unique vaulting of the choir of Boxgrove Priory, but the twilight was so deep in the church, for it was already evening, that I could not see it.
Word Of The Day