Page:Notes on the churches in the counties of Kent, Sussex, and Surrey.djvu/370

308 chancel, the latter terminating eastward in an apse. The nave has west and south doors, the latter very small with an ancient wooden porch. The walls are so covered within and without by plaster and whitewash, that their construction is undistinguishable, but that on the northern side of the nave appears, from a difference of the external stringcourse, to have been rebuilt; and the apse has been repaired very largely, beside the addition of some enormous buttresses: in other respects the existing walls seem to be original, and the whole certainly to occupy their pristine position. The exterior of this church is ornamented with the same peculiar kind of ribs, which are found at Corhampton (Hants), Barnack (Northants), and other churches, which are considered to be specimens of Anglo-Saxon architecture, but those at Worth are larger, and more nearly resemble pilasters, than any others, which have fallen within my own observation. At some distance from the ground, perhaps about three-fifths of the total height of the walls, runs a stringcourse of the same dimensions as the ribs, passing round the entire building; and from this, at the angles and down the sides, the ribs are carried to the ground, both stringcourse and ribs remaining perfect in many parts, and vestiges being visible elsewhere, with the exception of the north wall of the nave, where is no appearance of the perpendicular ribs. The doors are plain, perhaps E.E., or a little later. Between the south door and the west end of the building on the exterior are traces of a small round-headed door now filled up. The font is a single square stone rudely carved at the sides, and possibly coeval, or nearly so, with the church, though the base is later. The arches to the transepts are circular, single-soffitted, rude, and formed with large stones. Over the north transept has been erected a wooden belfry with a shingled spire. In the lowest story of this transept is one small window, and another is an E.E. insertion. The chancel arch springs from the massive round piers with cushion capitals (varying somewhat from the common Norm, form so styled) having square abaci. The arch is very lofty, and single, but has another square-edged member above, as a hood moulding, that on the western side being, as usual, the richest, but having been sadly defaced. On the eastern sides of the arch two half-round shafts descend to the pavement. Each of the stones composing this arch extends completely through the wall. In the chancel are a piscina (Dec.?) and a Tudor arch as if for a tomb; also in the north