Monumental Brasses

Margaret Camoys, Trotton

The craft of engraving a memorial into a sheet of brass and letting it into a stone slab began in the early 13th century and reached its zenith in the 14th, when the classic brasses of knights in armour and ladies in wimples were produced.

Lord and Lady Camoys, Trotton

The brass to Margaret Camoys in Trotton church is exactly what we think a brass should look like. She died in 1310 and her memorial is the first full-size brass, and the first to a woman. Wearing a wimple and flowing garments, her feet rest on a dog. Originally, enamelled shields were set on her dress. The portrait is simple, bold and moving.

Close by is a huge and superb brass to Lord and Lady Camoys, dating from a century later, showing the couple rather charmingly holding hands.

John Wantele,
Amberley

Few brasses were as large as the Camoys'. John Wantele in Amberley, for example, died in 1424, and his brass is only a couple of feet tall. It shows him in armour and surcoat, his sword by his side and his dog beneath his feet. It still has traces of the enamel that originally picked out his coat of arms.

In medieval times memorial brasses were a surprisingly large industry, dominated by several workshops in London. All the metal, an alloy of copper and zinc, was imported from Germany, which had the monopoly, so it was often referred to as latten (old German for plate) or cullen (from Cologne).

Warminghurst

In the 16th century, brasses were taken up by the middle classes. The plate got thinner and the engraving got shallower and fussier. Whole families are often portrayed, the husband and all the sons lined up on one side and the wife and daughters on the other – there is an excellent example at Warminghurst.

Henry Wilsha, Storrington

The 1591 brass to Henry Wilsha, vicar of Storrington shows him in academic dress, but the lines are barely visible after centuries of Brasso. Shortly thereafter, brasses ceased to be made until a remarkable revival in Victorian times. Arundel church even has a fine brass to the Duke of Norfolk in his Garter robes, made in 1979.

Holy Sepulchre, Warminghurst

Most churches are the result of centuries of getting the builders in, adding aisles, rebuilding chancels, replacing the roof and so on, but Warminghurst has only been altered once since it was built in the 13th century, in the reign of Queen Anne. Even the Victorians, who ruined many a fine church by over-restoration, left Warminghurst alone.

From the outside, it looks like a simple one-room church from about 1220, with lancet windows and a little spire at the west end.
Step inside and you are instantly taken forward to about 1700, when James Butler, the local landowner, refurnished the interior in a simple but elegant English baroque style.
Overhead, the medieval single-frame roof extends from one end to the other, creating an illusion of length. It must have seemed even longer  before the 18th century carpenters inserted the wooden chancel screen with three arches on slim columns.The semicircular space under the roof, called a tympanum, is exuberantly painted with the arms of Queen Anne, with drapery swirling about. In the chancel, the communion rails were given elegant barley-twist balusters.

In front of the screen stands the plain panelled pulpit with the clerk's seat below. The clerk must have been a big man in every sense - the seat has enough room for two normal-size clerks. All the box pews with their doors still survive, showing by their size and position the social status of the occupants.
The 18th century update even went as far as the font, which is a simple bulbous eight-sided stem.
Warminghurst sits in the middle of the South Downs with only a farmhouse for company, and is now cared for by the Churches Conservation Trust. The upside of this is that nobody will now be tempted to meddle with this magical building.

Hatchments in Sussex

Tortington

In these days when half the congregation at a funeral won't be wearing a suit, let alone a black tie, the way our ancestors carried on seems somewhat bizarre. Death was a serious business involving processions of black-clad mutes, horse-drawn hearses with black plumes, miles of black crepe and months of formal mourning.

Aldingbourne

Many churches still have reminders of old funeral practices hanging on the walls in the form of hatchments, the diamond-shaped painted panels with the coats of arms of local families.

Warminghurst

Hatchments were erected over the main entrance of the home of the deceased, remaining there for a year after which they were transferred to the church and the family could finally put their deep black mourning clothes back in the wardrobe until next time.
The word hatchment is a corruption of achievement, the technical term for the full heraldic works of shield, helmet, crest, supporters, and any coronets or other items depending on rank.

Warminghurst

Coats of arms usually come in two halves, the arms of the holder on the dexter side and those of his wife on the sinister side. "Dexter" means right and "sinister" means left, of course, but because they are relative to the person holding the shield, for the viewer dexter is on the left and sinister on the right of a hatchment. Conventionally, if the husband died but the wife was still living, the dexter background would be painted black and the sinister white, and vice-versa. Hatchments of people with no 'other half', that is, the unmarried and widowed, were all black.

Warminghurst

Hatchments appeared in the British Isles, Belgium and the Netherlands in the 17th century and continued into Victorian times.They were painted on wood or canvas in a wood frame, usually by the same itinerant craftsmen that did pub signs.
The tiny church at Burton Park has two hatchments for male members of the Biddulph family that lived in the big house next door. One has the shield surrounded by ribbons – the ribbons were often knotted for the arms of women.
Other fine examples are at Tortington, Warminghurst and Aldingbourne, the last having been beautifully restored recently.

Burton