
The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland

East Sussex (now)
Parish church
Pyecombe is a village in the Mid-Sussex district of West Sussex, 7 miles N or Brighton. The church is in the centre of the village and is faced with roughcast. It has a single nave with a N porch, a 3-bay chancel with N vestry and a W tower.
Parish church
Lewes was the county town of Sussex before the county was divided in 1974, and is now the county town of East Sussex. It stands on the River Ouse, 6 miles NE of Brighton. The ruins of the priory are in Southover, on the SE edge of the town and the former hospitium of the priory, at the W end of the precinct, was turned into the parish church of St John the Baptist in the 13thc. The original arrangement had two parts of unequal widths, separated by an arcade, perhaps to divide the sexes. The wider N section became the nave and the S section the aisle. The nave was apparently curtailed for the building of a W tower at an unknown date (although the tower arch appears to be 14thc work). The nave is now 5 bays long on the N wall with a 4 bay S aisle. The original tower collapsed in 1698 and its replacement, of brick, dates from the 18thc. The chancel is of 2 bays, of the 15thc extended in the 19thc. At the E end of the S nave aisle is the chapel of William of Warenne and Gundrada, added in 1845 by J. L. Parsons of Lewes under the guidance of Benjamin Ferrey. It contains two lead coffins discovered during the excavations of 1845-47 carried out when the railway line to Brighton was built across the priory site. They contained bones assumed to be those of the founders, which were interred beneath the beautifully carved Tournai marble slab to Gundrada (d.1085) that had been brought from Isfield church in 1775. Romanesque work recorded here consists of part of the nave arcade, Gundrada's tomb slab and the plain font.
Parish church
Southease church has a circular W tower with a shingle spire, a nave with a blocked 12thc. window on the N side, a S porch, and a chancel with a blocked S arch. The nave is separated from the chancel by a half-timbered wall with a wide arch.
Parish church
The church is largely 19thc. and comprises a W tower, a nave with N and
S aisles, a chancel flanked by a vestry (N) and chapel (S). When the church was substantially
rebuilt in 1878, the nave arcades were retained.
Parish church
Wivelsfield church comprises a nave (probablyc.1100, extended to
the W in 14thc.) with N and S aisles (1869, and 13thc. rebuiltc.1500,
respectively), a tower at the W end of the S aisle (c.1500), a S chapel
(c.1300) and square chancel (13thc., lengthened
in 1869). The N doorway is reset.
Parish church
Seaford church has a W tower, an aisled nave with two-bay
arcades and a S porch, a non-projecting transept, a large chancel with a polygonal end and a N chapel. The Perp tower
seems to have been erected within the W bay of a Norman
nave, but the W doorway is neo-Norman rather than Norman. Herringbone masonry suggests that the N aisle is of Norman
origin, but the present two-bay nave arcades, clerestoreys and corbel
tables appear to date from the early 13thc. One capital in the S
arcade is historiated, with the Baptism of Christ, the
Harrowing of Hell, Daniel in the Lion's Den, the Massacre of the Innocents, and
the Crucifixion. The mid-Victorian 'transepts' and chancel were designed by John Billing and erected in
1861-62.
Parish church
The Anglo-Saxon origins of Bishopstone church are visible in the long
and short quoining of the nave and S porticus, and two windows in the W wall of
the nave. A scratch dial set over the S doorway is also thought to be
Anglo-Saxon. It is inscribed: +EADRIC.In the 12thc. the porticus was converted into a porch by punching a doorway through the S wall, and a
doorless W tower was added. Around the same time the Anglo-Saxon nave was
extended eastwards, providing a chancel of the same
dimensions as the nave. The N aisle, on the evidence of its arcade, seems to date fromc.1200, but there are four
small Norman-style windows in its N wall. The aisle has a catslide roof and
continues E, alongside the chancel. The chancel arch is Early English, ofc.1200. The
single-bay presbytery at the E end of the
chancel has waterleaf capitals and probably dates from
c.1175. Although a vault was intended from the outset, the present
rib vault dates from 1849. Further restorations were
carried out in 1885.
Parish church
This is an unusually large parish church, with a W tower, an aisled nave
with five-bay
arcades, and an
aisled choir with three-bay
arcades. The W bay of the nave is
clearly a later addition, possibly built with the tower,c.1300. The
aisles have an alternating system of round and octagonal piers, with slightly pointed arches carved with complex
mouldings (including chevron, fillets, hollows and keel
mouldings), and capitals displaying a wide variety of motifs including upright
and wind-blown stiff-leaf, and crockets. With the
exception of the chevron, this repertoire is Early
English in character rather than Romanesque. The presence of the
chevron makes it 'Transitional'.
Parish church
The font, which incorporates a 12thc. fragment, stands in an extension of the nave dating from 1961; there is no other Romanesque sculpture in the building.
Parish church
The church is of local brown sandstone. The W tower is medieval, but the rest is Victorian (1856) with some medieval fixtures and fittings. These include a blocked Norman window with an arched lintel at the E end of the N aisle, and a Norman pillar piscina.