Page:Notes on the churches in the counties of Kent, Sussex, and Surrey.djvu/325

Rh Petworth House the chapel of the old mansion was preserved (Horsfield's Suss. II, 178.)

194. .—This is a very interesting church, comprising nave with north and south aisles, chancel and tower. It is kept clean and in good repair, though it has been sadly barbarised. The east end, including the chancel arch and tower, is E.E., but the nave appears somewhat later. The chancel arch is very fine; lofty, with rich, foliated capitals, much resembling those of Stockbury church, Kent (see Gloss. of Archit.). The chancel, which is long, is a good specimen of the style, having three sharp-pointed lancet windows at the east end, and others irregularly placed, at the sides; but, proh pudor ! thirty-five feet are shut off by a most tasteless wooden partition, and left in darkness, all but a small part of one window being bricked up. The stone mullions too have been removed from all the other windows of the church, in which wooden frames have been inserted. In two of the pillars, one on either side of the nave, very small ogée-headed niches have been hollowed out, as if to contain images. The tower is in an unusual position, at the east end of the north aisle, and probably was once higher than at present. Beyond it eastward are vestiges of buildings, part of the original structure, and perhaps forming two separate chapels, communicating, as we may now see, with the chancel by two distinct arches. The exterior remains indicate some peculiarity in the termination of those buildings toward the east. On the south side, at the western end of the chancel, are marks in the exterior wall of a transept, answering to the tower on the north.—(Val. Eccl.) mentions the chantry of Northhyde; which chapel stood in the marshes north-eastward, two miles from Pevensey. It appears in Speede's map A.D. 1610; and in Walker's modern map of Sussex "ruins of Northly chapel" are placed in the above direction from Pevensey, where two inclosures are still called "Great," and "Little, Chapel Fields." The proper name is Northey, probably from its situation. (See Chronicles of Pevensey, 51.)—The hospital of St. John Baptist here is mentioned in the "Customs of Pevensey." (Horsfield's Suss. I, 306.) This must be a confused second account of the almshouse in four tenements, called as above, which he declares to be in the parish of Westham; where see the Note.

Beside the chapel of Northhyde, or Northey, already noticed, there were others in the neighbourhood. There is some allusion to a "free chapel" within the precincts of the castle. Horsey