Churches in Sussex
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Churches in Sussex
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ST. NICHOLAS,
BRAMBER By E.
F. SALMON. THAT which
to-day constitutes the parish church of Bramber is the remnant of a Small cruciform building erected by Will. de Braose I. to serve as the
collegiate church of a small body of
canons. It was built on the same
knoll on which the castle is placed,
but outside the precincts. The castle-ditch, instead of encircling the hill in. its entirety, cuts
across it towards the south, leaving, as it were, a small tail on which the church was built. This would afford
no great menace to the castle, as the
slope downwards is here very steep and
terminates in what was then a marsh. The monks of Fecamp, who held the adjacent Church of S. Andrew, Steyning, with its rights mid
privileges, from the time of the
Confessor, and
confirmed to them by the Conqueror, did not
view this new church built by their
powerful neighbour with Christian charity. 1 In S. Nicholas, Bramber, we have one of the very earliest churches of the Norman epoch, it having). been erected by 1073, 2 and in the grotesque capitals of the piers (a fox and goose, birds fighting may be noted on the remaining complete one), the distinguished antiquary, Mr. J. Romilly Allen, informs us we have one of the only three examples of eleventh century Norman. figure sculpture to be found in the kingdom. 3
The
church consisted originally of a small nave, transepts and central tower with sanctuary; the
space under the tower serving as chancel,
wherein the canons would
say the Daily Offices. This state of affairs did not last long. In 1080 the church was handed over to the newly-founded Priory
of S. Peter at Sele, subject only
to the life interests of the
Canons, one of whom was already dead. 4 As to the cause of its ruinous state in the seventeenth century, there is no evidence, but the appalling state of ruin and decay is well seen in a print published in 1772, taken from a drawing made in 1761. When, in 1783, the Rev. Dr. Green was appointed to the living, finding a dilapidated church with its sanctuary or chancel and most of the tower utterly ruinous, the worthy doctor determined that this state of things should no longer endure. Largely at his own expense, assisted by donations from Magdalen College, the Duke of Rutland, Earl Calthorp, and Mr. Lidbetter, a farmer in the neighbourhood, he set about restoration. 5 The tower was built up, the window in the south wall opened out, the ruined walls of the sanctuary taken down and those of the south transept transformed into buttresses. A new font was provided, and a three-light window inserted in the cast wall. In this window were placed three glazed panels of armorial bearings, being those of Magdalen College, the Duke of Rutland, and Duke of Norfolk. In the so-called "restoration" of 1871, this window, of which the apex of the weather moulding may still be seen outside, was removed, and the present three small windows in the Norman style inserted. What became of the heraldic glass? Enquiries have been made, so far without success. It certainly should have been preserved and placed in one of the other windows. The stencilling on the interior walls was probably done in. 1871. At the same time the west wall was refaced, and so covered up the arch of a former doorway, which Is shown both in the print published before the restoration of 1790 and in Prout's drawing of 1820. A principal object of this paper is to record the recovery of the original ground plan of this interesting church; surely one of the smallest ever built for a collegiate church.
This
has been done during the past summer with the
aid of our fellow member, Arthur B. Packham, whose
excellent plan prefaces these notes. By a most fortunate chance work was
going on at the church under the direction of Mr. W. D. Caroe. As this included
trenching, confirmation of what had been found, first by probing, was obtained,
and walls actually made visible for a short time. On breaking through time west
wall for a new doorway, the old arch was found; this was not destroyed, but had
to be covered up by the new work. The buttresses, of apparently the thirteenth century, at the north-west and south-west, were found to
have been at first angle ones. Although
not part of the structure
when first built, it was thought desirable to show them in the plan. There
is no trace of any Norman buttress of the early shallow type unless one is masked by the existing
central one in the south
wall of nave; nor could any trace of
the usual eleventh century - Norman
windows be detected, although near
the south door is a stone built in
which looks very like the head of one. Besides this early Norman Church of Will. de Braose, there was also the Chapel within the Castle, the Norman undercroft of which was brought to light in 1926, when the residential buildings added in the 14th century were disencumbered of the debris with which they had been hidden for two centuries or more. 1
Authority
for the
dispute between
the
two bodies is to be found in Dr. Rounds Calender
of
Documents Preserved in France,
but
it
is all admirably
summed
up with other matters and the
references
given
in
Mr.
L.
Salzman's
translation
of the
Chartulary
of the
Priory
of S. Peter at
Sele
(Heffer
&
Sons,
Cambridge,
1923).
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