St Paul, Elsted

The survival of Elsted’s pretty church is a fable of the triumph of humility over pride.
In the 19^th century, the living of the combined parishes of Didling, Elsted and Treyford was in the gift of an aristocratic lady, who installed her clerical husband as rector. She regarded the three ancient but tiny churches as unsuitable, and built instead an imposing ‘Cathedral of the Downs’ with a tall spire on a prominent hill at the centre of the parish. It was completed in 1849.
The old churches were left to rot. Elsted lost its north aisle, and in a storm in1893 a tree fell through the nave roof. By the middle of the twentieth century little remained but the north wall and the chancel.
But the monster Victorian church had not reached its centenary before it was found to be structurally unsound and, with its builder long dead, no money was available for repairs. In 1947 it was torn down and no trace of it remains, though the graveyard is still in use and immaculately maintained.
So worship returned to Elsted church, which was sensitively restored by architect J.E.M. Macgregor. He pulled off a difficult trick: building the new parts in an unashamedly modern style but in harmony with the old. It is fascinating to see how the building has evolved through the ups and downs of its long history.
The original Saxon church was a simple rectangular box of spectacular herringbone masonry, best seen from the outside of the north wall.

Here you can see exactly how the Norman masons set about extending the church in the 12^th century, when a north aisle and the chancel were added.
Holes would have been punched through the walls and the stone arches inserted one by one, so as not to weaken the wall and risk collapse. When the north aisle was removed the arches were filled in again, the aisle windows being reused in the new wall.

Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Singleton

One look at the massive tower of Singleton church betrays its great age. The crude cornerstones and the small arched windows show it was built a thousand years ago in Saxon times.
The rest of the church looks 15th century from the outside. The tracery in the windows has the plain vertical bars and flat arches characteristic of the Perpendicular style. So it comes as something of a surprise go in and find a Saxon nave even older than the tower – an incredibly tall room lit only by a tiny window at the top of the east end and the light filtering in from the later aisles.
It is believed that the nave may originally have had an upper room to house the priests serving the other churches in Singleton Hundred, and a doorway in the west end, now stranded close to the roof, supports this idea. The doorway itself has a typically crude Saxon arch made simply by cutting a couple of stone blocks in triangular shapes.
The columns and arches of the aisles were punched through the Saxon walls in 13^th century, and the chancel arch was rebuilt at that time.

Arthur Mee, author of The King’s England guidebooks, was shocked to see “when the chancel arch was about 400 years old, some lout passed by and carved his name on it.” He clearly did not read the graffiti, for the names are those of notable local families like the Courts and one, James Sicklemore, was the vicar!
Sicklemore served at Singleton in the Civil War, changing sides half way through when he paid the local blacksmith to make swords for the Parliamentary army. At the Restoration, he left the living to become a founder of the Baptist church in Chichester.
Another great local character was Thomas Johnson, the Duke of Richmond’s huntsman. The Duke erected a huge monument for him when he died in 1744 “as a reward to the deceased and an incitement to the living”. Below the eulogy is the poignant verse:

Here JOHNSON lies.
What Hunter can deny
Old, honest TOM the Tribute of a Sigh
Deaf is that ear,
which caught the op’ning Sound
Dumb is that Tongue,
which chear’d the Hills around
Unpleasing Truth –
Death hunts us from our Birth
In view; and Men, like Foxes, take to Earth.

Even more touching, however, is a tablet close to the north porch. Without sentiment it records that in the space of three weeks in 1831 a local infantry officer lost to illness both his young wife and their three year old daughter.