Page:Notes on the churches in the counties of Kent, Sussex, and Surrey.djvu/335

Rh living, A.D. 1849, considerable remains of the chapel were standing but only a small fragment is now visible, forming an angle of a large barn on the northern side of the residence, and not sufficing for any opinion as to the style of architecture of the late building. The foundations are stated to extend into the adjoining stackyard.

210. .—The church is small, and part at least seems to be Norm. (Horsfield's Suss. II, 92.)—"Tanner says, 'Henry Hoese the elder, before the year 1169" (Hosatus, Hoese, or Hussey, A.D. 1160, Old Mag. Brit. 556, quoted in Horsfield's Sussex) "built and endowed here" (at Dureford) "an abbey of Premonstratensian canons from Welbeck, &c.'" (Monast. VI, 936.) The confirmatory charters by K. Henry III and Hilary, Bp. of Chichester, are given (ut sup. 938); where also will be seen the grant to the abbey of Rogate church by Henry Hoese, apparently the son of the founder, but without date.—A portion of the abbey is now converted into a residence. There are no remains of the chapel. (Horsfield.)—"Near (Habenbridge, about half a mile south of the village) upon an eminence above the Arun, are the vestiges of a castle or tower, within a foss, and foundations of buildings within its circuit." (Horsfield's Suss. II, 92.)

211. .—"Parcus est ibi—There is a park" (D.B.); identical, we may reasonably presume, with the existing park of Eridge, which is now in Frant, that being a parish severed from the very extensive one of Rotherfield. (D.B.) states, that Rotherfield was held in domain by King William of the fee of the Bishop of Bayeux, who had fallen into disgrace with his brother a few years previous to the Domesday Survey, having been imprisoned in A.D. 1082. "In this year the king apprehended Bishop Odo." (Gibs. Chron. Sax. 184.)

A church was erected in this place before the end of the eighth century, when the owner of the property, "the ealdorman Berhtwald of Sussex with the confirmation of the king," Offa, gave the church of Rotherfield, together with his ports of Hastings and Pevensey, to the abbey of St. Denis near Paris, the date of his charter being A.D. 792. (Du Chesne; and Monast. Angl. t. VI, 1077, cited by Lappenberg, Thorpe's, I, 232.) The following extracts contain the words of the charter, so far as concerns our present subject. "Ecclesiam ædificavi in sede meâ, in villâ vocabulo Ridrefelda, quæ a progenitoribus meis jure haereditario mihi relicta fuerat ... Ego ... per hanc scripturæ