Balcombe, Sussex

St Mary is not without interest but was locked so I have no idea what the interior is like!

Balcombe. Situated in Ashdown Forest and famous for its fine beech trees, a magnificent avenue leads from Lord Cowdray’s estate into the village.

Round the fine village hall is a gallery of paintings by Neville Lytton with scenes of World War I.

The church is tucked away in the corner of the lanes, ringed in by Scots firs and with wonderful views of the forest. It has a sturdy tower and shingled spire, and goes back to the 13th century. The heads of two kings and two queens hold up the chancel arch, and there is a panel of the Crucifixion in old glass. In the chancel are tablets to three rectors who between them held the living for 129 years.

One morning towards the end of the last century a labourer in a Balcombe field known as Stock Croft struck his spade against something hard while levelling for a tennis court. He brought up a 14th-century water-jug with 756 coins of silver and gold which had lain in the earth 500 years, and are now in the British Museum.

From Ardingly, the village is approached by grass-covered ways through the trees, and old houses dotted here and there. It was in the forest of Balcombe and Tilgate that Dr Mantell of Lewes discovered the remains of the Iguanodon. Dr Mantell combined a busy medical practice with the studies of a scientist and antiquary. His collections are now in the British Museum.

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Cuckfield, Sussex

Holy Trinity is fascinating; I had it pegged as a Victorian rebuild but apparently it's C15th, no doubt with later restoration. The vernacular  architecture in Sussex makes me see Victoriana in every church I visit down there - perhaps the Gothic cult emanated from there?

The exterior not so much but a fascinating graveyard and a great interior.

Cuckfield. It stands 400 feet high on the Forest Ridge, and has a park that lives in Harrison Ainsworth’s books. It has a fine 17th-century gateway at the end of an avenue of limes, a charming peep from the road. The house was the home of the Sergisons, one of whom, we read, was an honest man and an M.P. 200 years ago, and now lies in the church beneath a monument by Flaxman showing his portrait and the figure of Truth as a woman with a mirror.

The 17th-century house near the church, Ockenden, was the home of Timothy Burrell, who kept a diary of much curious information from 1683 to 1714. One of his ancestors was vicar here, and another went with Henry the Fifth to France with one ship, 20 men-at-arms, and 40 archers.

The church, in which are monuments by Flaxman and Westacott, is 15th century with a fine 13th  century tower crowned by a tall spire seen in many Sussex pictures. The columns on the south of the nave are from the 13th century church. The roof of the nave and chancel is very unusual, with 80 elaborately painted panels and painted beams supported by angels. The roof is 500 years old and has carved bosses with the badges of the Nevills.

In the church there are two brasses for one man, Henry Bower, who died in the year of the Armada (1588), and in both brasses he wears armour. In one his wife is kneeling with their five children.

The font has been here about 600 years. The chancel has some ancient woodwork, and there is a neatly carved modern pulpit.

On the wall of the tower is still hanging a printed card headed WATERLO0, which reads something like this:

A collection will be made in the church on Sunday 30th July after morning service for the benefit of the families of the brave men killed and the wounded sufferers of the British Army under the command of the Duke of Wellington in the signal victory of Waterloo, when the very smallest contribution will be acceptable.

From the churchyard is a magnificent view of the Downs with two famous windmills centred on the skyline, Jack and Jill of Clayton. A monument nine feet high commemorates Henry Kingsley, Charles Kingsley’s younger brother who was also a novelist best known for his book Ravenshoe about the Crimean campaign.

About the year 1490 Andrew Boorde was born in the pleasant country round the village of Cuckfield. He was a very intelligent lad, was brought up at Oxford, and persuaded the Carthusian monks to admit him into their order before he had reached the regulation age. In 1521 he was invited to become Suffragan Bishop of Chichester but he declined, and seven years later, after 20 years under the hard rule of the monks, he secured his freedom from his vows.

Andrew then spent two years travelling from university to university in Europe learning all he could about medicine. He came back to cure the Duke of Norfolk, who introduced him to Henry the Eighth.

After another journey abroad he returned home to find his royal master in full fury against his old Order. He followed his prior’s example, refused to bow to the King’s will, and was sent to the Tower with him; but a few days later he submitted, and looked to Thomas Cromwell as his patron. Cromwell made use of him, sending him abroad to test the opinion of Europe on his king’s actions. He wrote home that only the French King favoured him. On this journey he sent from Spain the first seeds of rhubarb to come here, with directions for their cultivation. But not for another 200 years was rhubarb grown in this country.

In I538 Andrew Boorde set out for the Holy Sepulchre, and on his way back settled at Montpelier to devote himself to the work by which he lives. There he wrote books on Health, but, most remarkable of all, he wrote the first printed guidebook to Europe. He called it the First Book of the Introduction of Knowledge, and in verse and prose tried to teach the languages, customs, and coinages of 39 countries. The first printed example of gipsy language is in this book. Shakespeare knew of it, and the lines in King John which end:

Nought shall make us rue

If England to itself do rest but true

echo Boorde’s description of Englishmen as bold, strong and mighty, who if they were true within themselves need not to fear although all nations were set against them.

The rest of his life was spent in Winchester and London practising medicine and writing. He wrote a book on astronomy and another travel book, this time on England. But these books did not suffice as outlets for his sparkling vivacity, and so this merry Andrew compiled those Merry Tales of the Mad Men of Gotham which have delighted young and old to this day.

For some sad and forgotten offence Merry Andrew was put in the Fleet Prison, where he died in 1549.

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Hurstpierpoint, Sussex

I tried to visit Holy Trinity in April, as mentioned in my Albourne entry, but was thwarted by a wedding; this time it was closed due to refurbishment.

The exterior is not to my taste, but was built by Sir Charles Barry in 1834-5 so that might be a bit churlish, it's the interior It's the interior furnishings I'm interested in. Hopefully better luck next time.

Hurstpierpoint. The church built by Sir Charles Barry 1834-5 has a spire which can be seen for miles and the fine views stretch from Devil’s Dyke to Ditchling Beacon. At Wolstonbury Hill is an ancient camp.

In the church is a Norman font, two old figures on 14th-century tombs; and one of the east windows has some 15th-century medallions. One of the battered figures on the tombs is a 13th-century knight with shield and sword; the other, in armour with a lion at his feet, is Simon de Pierpoint, who was with Richard the First at the Siege of Acre.

There is a brass with a lifelike portrait of Bishop Hannington, born in the village and curate here for seven years.

In 1882 he headed a party of six missionaries to Uganda and at the age of 37 he was consecrated Bishop in charge of the Church Missionary Society’s Churches in Eastern Equatorial Africa. In October 1885 he was murdered by the natives when leading an expedition to open up a shorter route to Lake Victoria Nyanza.

At Hurstpierpoint lived Elizabeth Hitchener, a schoolmistress, who enters into the tempestuous career of Percy Bysshe Shelley. He became acquainted with her in 1811 when he paid a visit to his uncle, Captain Pilford, at Cuckfield.

With his habit of idealising his acquaintances, Shelley saw in Elizabeth a paragon of virtue, wisdom, and exalted genius, and embarked on an ecstatic year’s correspondence with her, which, opening on a high philosophical note, quickly centred about the personality of Elizabeth herself. She was 29 and Shelley was 19 and he was busy writing and talking about ‘the Necessity of Atheism and reform of society in general and his parents in particular. She was steeped in the stilted convention of the novels of the period.

From his “Dear Madam” she progresses rapidly to the dear friend, the dearest friend, and the “soul’s sister” of the poet, with whom he must share his fortune, once he attains it. She, he says, having raised herself from poverty to intellectual eminence, is his superior, and he sets himself the breathless task of emulating the simple splendour of her life.

The letters begin in June of I811; within two months Shelley has taken pity on the sorrows of pretty Harriet Westbrook, his sister’s schoolfellow, and has married her, a girl of 16; two months later he writes to Elizabeth the one full account we have of the unhappy marriage that was to drive Harriet to suicide. It does not make gallant reading.

Shelley has no secrets from Elizabeth; he discusses with her his family, his friends, his politics, and tells her the full story of the treachery of Hogg, who had been the brother of his soul. The letters grow in fervour and frequency; it is Elizabeth and not Harriet who has the bridegroom’s heart. Elizabeth, at ease in the diction of the current fiction, on reading of the baseness of Hogg, finds her blood frozen and is prompted “to forswear her kindred with mankind.”

The upshot of the correspondence is that Elizabeth must forsake her school and join the Shelley household, now including Harriet’s sister. This impossible group held together for five months and then was split by insatiable jealousies and by Shelley’s discovery that his goddess of wisdom was a very ordinary fallible creature, daily contact with whom dispels illusions and turns idolatry into indifference and indifference into hate.

The inevitable parting came, Elizabeth being compensated with a promise of £100 a year to make good the loss of her school. Shelley now transferred his affections to Mary Godwin. He was drowned in 1822, and in that year Elizabeth, then 40, published a poem on the Weald of Kent, which reflects her political opinions and fondly commemorates her friendship with the poet. Soon afterwards she married an Austrian officer, deposited Shelley’s letters and copies of her own with a solicitor, and vanished from knowledge in the country of her husband.

There is one letter of poor Harriet’s, written to Elizabeth from Dublin in 1812, which is curious enough to quote:

“I believe I have mentioned a new acquaintance of ours, a Mrs Nugent, who is sitting in the room now and talking to Percy about Virtue, while the poor of the city are drinking whiskey because they cannot afford bread and being hanged for stealing 13:4d.”

Hurstpierpoint has one of the three schools founded by Nathaniel Woodard, sister to those at Lancing and Ardingly. The huge east window in the panelled chapel has seven large lights with about 100 figures and there are six other stained-glass windows. There are benches with poppy heads and carved arm rests, a screen with a rich cornice and a pulpit with carved angels under canopies.

Intriguing, no?

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Highwood, Essex

St Paul was missed by both Mee & Pevsner which in many ways is fair enough - it's a template Victorian build (for example Cornish Hall End, Essex) and both are hideous and I suspect are from the same architect.

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Fryerning, Essex

St Mary the Virgin purports to be open but was locked when I visited. I met another visitor who'd been before and found it locked; also the high tech locks seem to indicate this is a shutdown church.

ST MARY. Small, with early C16 brick tower, with blue brick diapering, stepped battlements on a pointed-arched corbel frieze and brick pinnacles. Nave of coursed pudding-stone and Roman bricks, Early Norman, with four original windows and plain N and S doorways. - FONT. With big square bowl decorated with large scrolls, leaves etc; c. 1200. - STAINED GLASS. E window by Willement, in the Gothic style, but not the Pugin variety. - PLATE. Cup and Cover of 1700; Flagon and Alms dish of 1716. - BRASS in the vestry. Palimpsest. Woman of c. 1460 on one side, Mary Gedge, Elizabethan period, on the other.

FRYERNING. A little apart from the Roman road between London and Chelmsford, it has a sight not soon forgotten, a magnificent red tower standing out above a churchyard rich in pines and yews. It is a noble piece of 15th century brickwork, with handsome pinnacles, shapely windows and buttresses, stepped battlements, and tiny corbelled arches, a perfect tower of its age. There are red tiles on the church roofs, Roman tiles in the walls of the Norman nave and chancel, and wide-splayed Norman windows, some reshaped by a later age. The attractive little priest’s doorway is 15th century, but the people’s doorways are Norman, and one has a consecration cross. A striking Norman font is richly patterned with many designs. In the vestry is one of the best palimpsest brasses we have seen, mounted to show both sides. Its original engraving was of a 15th century lady in a horned headdress; but a little of the headdress is cut away to accommodate the plump face of Mary Berners, on the other side; she is wearing a handsome Tudor robe. There is a tablet to Captain Gordon Elton who died in the Great War after winning the DSO. It has these noble lines written 2500 years ago by the Greek poet Simonides:

Yet being dead they die not; in the grave
Though they be lying
These be the souls to whom high~valour gave
Glory undying.

By the church is Fryerning Hall, a house with timbers almost as old as the church tower.

Buttsbury, Essex

Heading off from Ingatestone to Stock I ran out of road, literally - the road to Stock was shut while the Man dug it up and installed something; so I backtracked to Buttsbury.

St Mary is not far from Ingatestone (I'd guess 2 miles maybe 3) is utterly isolated and yet is open - go figure.

A beautiful location is matched by a sublime church.

ST MARY. Small and alone. Short nave of two bays with two aisles, that is wider than it is long. Date CI4. Chancel of the C18 with C19 E window. Small W tower of timber, weather-boarded. The nave arcades are typical Late Perp, composite with the centre parts to the nave carried on into the arches without capitals and the side parts concave-sided semi-octagonal. Two original traceried windows were found during a restoration in 1927. - DOORS. The N and S doors are both old, that on the N more interesting. Some of the metalwork is C13, some later. - PLATE. Cup of 1563 and Paten of 1567, both with bands of ornament.

BUTTSBURY. Its small church stands lonely among elms and limes; by the path is a gravestone carved with a cherub fading away after 200 years. In a table tomb in the churchyard lies Thomas Tyrell of Charles Stuart’s day. Two doors and two windows are the fine possessions here. Both doors have ornamental ironwork, one with hinges of the 13th century and tendril-like bands of great beauty forged in the 14th. The windows, long embedded in plaster, now admit the morning sunlight down each aisle. Their tracery has the graceful curves in which our 14th century architects delighted. In two later windows are fragments of medieval glass, and a bell of the 15th century rings from a last century tower. A local craftsman of great skill has given the fine candlesticks and oak panelling.

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Ingatestone, Essex

SS Edmund & Mary was the big disappointment of the day. Situated in the middle of Ingatestone, which was extraordinarily busy, the church was firmly locked - sometimes I think these locked churches are asking to be vandalised. I have no idea what sort of town Ingatestone is but to me it felt like a nice place and I'm bewildered as to why the church was locked - this, as the following shows, seems to be a shame.

ST EDMUND AND ST MARY. A truly magnificent W tower of red brick with black diapers. Tall, with angle buttresses, a three-light brick W window with Perp panel tracery, and two-light windows in two tiers above it. Stepped battlements on a corbel frieze. Behind the tower the small and shortish N wall of the nave, obviously Norman, with walls of puddingstone and Roman brick. The projecting N chancel chapel is C17 brick. S aisle and S chancel chapel C15 to early C16. The S chapel is of brick and was built by the Petre family. Three-light E window with a transome and two- and three-light S windows. Inside, the impression is somewhat disappointing after the glory of the tower. Three-bay S arcade with short piers of the well known Perp four-shaft-four-hollow section, and double-chamfered arches. Three-bay brick arcade to the Petre Chapel, with octagonal piers and triple-chamfered arches. Nave roof with tie-beams, octagonal king-posts with capitals and four-way struts. - FONT. Perp, octagonal with quatrefoil panels bordered by friezes of small quatrefoil panels. - HOUR GLASS of iron, early C18, fixed to the pulpit. - PLATE. Cup of 1675; Paten and two Flagons of 1725; two Cups and covers of 1728. - Three HELMS of c. 1570. - MONUMENTS. Between chancel and S chancel the alabaster tomb-chest of Sir William Petre, Secretary of State to Henry VIII, Edward VI and Mary, and Privy Councillor, d. 1572, and wife, with recumbent effigies on rolled-up mats. Very fine quality. The tomb-chest with shell-headed panels separated by columns. - In the chapel itself Robert Petre d. 1593, monument with the usual kneeling figure; between columns of touch. - Also John Troughton d. 1621, with an outstandingly good portrait bust in an oval niche. Relief, in an informal demi-profile. - In the N chapel John, Lord Petre d. 1613 and wife. Standing wall monument of triptych composition with two kneeling figures in the wings, and two kneeling figures on a higher step in the centre. These are under a coffered arch. The parts are separated by black columns. The whole is straight-topped with obelisks and achievements. On the base in relief nice figures of kneeling children.

 

INGATESTONE. A landmark for 200 years, its windmill is still at work crushing oats and beans with stones turned by wooden cog-wheels, the wooden cap swinging round to the wind on a massive brick tower. The red-roofed houses of the old town crowd on the narrow road, and behind them looms another landmark, the 15th century church tower of black and red bricks and white-capped pinnacles, which dwarfs the little nave and the three gabled roofs. There are Roman bricks set in the walls by Norman builders.

Under the arch between the chancel and the chapel he built, Sir William Petre lies on his tomb with his wife, a stately alabaster figure in armour, looking up at the coat-of-arms suspended above him. Delicate ironwork rails off this ornate pillared tomb, a fine example of Elizabethan craftsmanship.

Sir William lived through 67 years of the 16th century, serving Henry the Eighth and his three children on the throne. He grew rich as one of the destroyers of the monasteries, and it is said that his reward was as much as 36,000 acres. Yet he is remembered as a man of great moderation, and one of the stories told of him is that of a French oflicial at Boulogne in 1550 who said, “Ah! we could have gained the last 200,000 crowns without hostages had it not been for that man who said nothing.”

Sir William’s youngest brother Robert appears as a kneeling figure on a wall in the chapel, and a portrait in relief shows Captain John Troughton wearing a sash across his richly ornamented armour.

A brass tablet tells us of a distinguished soldier of three centuries later, Algernon Wood, who went through the Boer War and the first Gallipoli campaign, and was shot dead in a Gallipoli trench within a fortnight of being awarded the DSO.

The noblest of all the monuments here is one raised by the second Lord Petre to his wife and parents; it is a masterpiece in black and white, almost filling the west wall of a chapel built for it. Three generations are here, the grandparents (the first Lord Petre and his wife) kneeling opposite each other in the central bay, both in rich fur-lined cloaks, the grandchildren carved in relief along the base, eight boys and four prim girls in full skirts and fashionable Stuart hats, and their father, a very dignified figure in one of the side bays, looking towards the wife whose death started the building of this superb monument.

Their old home, Ingatestone Hall, with its many delightful stepped gables, was altered in the 18th century but has still a pleasant look of Elizabethan days about it, and is now a Roman Catholic retreat.

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