Page:The Victoria History of the County of Surrey Volume 3.djvu/108

 A HISTORY OF SURREY

��have been a low side window : its sill has been lately raised. Further east is a wide lancet with pointed head, and at the angle a good example of a late 12th- century buttress with a string-course of semi-octagon shape, which also appears beneath the east window. The latter, which has replaced the original early lancets, is an interesting design in flowing tracery of three lights, worked in clunch. 153 The gable has a moulded barge-board. The east window of the Witley Manor Chapel, also of three lights, is a resto- ration on the old lines of a reticulated pattern tracery. The windows in the north wall are also new, but perhaps restorations, and the north transept, porch, aisle, and vestry are modern.

Coming to the interior, we find few features of antiquity in the nave, which has a new oak-panelled roof and seating. The internal opening of the south doorway has been enlarged and otherwise altered. The character of the tower arches and the south transept has been noted above. In the chancel are handsome modern alabaster sedilia and other fittings, but the curious piscina with thirteen foliations to the drain and the aumbry above it are of about 1350. The face of the latter is sloped back, so as to keep the door automatically closed ; adjacent to this are the remains of the earlier semi-octagonal string found also on the outside.

The arches between the two chancels appear to have been pierced at a later date than that of either chancel, and originally there was probably a wall between the two with a door in it. The western arch is wide, of two plain chamfered orders, and the other quite narrow, of 15th-century date, with a plain tomb standing in it which was used as an Easter sepulchre. Eastward of this, on the chapel side under a pointed arch and credence shelf, is a piscina in Sussex marble, bearing curious ornamenta- tion of wavy lines. This bowl was probably transferred here from the main chancel when the later piscina there was made and the chapel built.

The original oak roof (c. 1 1 90) remains over the south transept. It is of braced collar-beam construc- tion, with fine massive timbers. The corresponding north transept roof was preserved when the walls supporting it were removed to extend the area, and a noteworthy detail of this is the billet ornament upon the wall plates, a feature rarely found in wood- work. 1 "

The handsome screen between this transept and the north chapel is of the 1 5th century. On the south wall of the nave, high up, is a painting of 12th-century date in two tiers. It measures about 1 6 ft. in length, by about 9 ft. in height, but is obviously a fragment of a scheme which probably covered the entire nave ; the colours used are red, pink, yellow, and white, and the whole composition and treatment recall the early Lewes school as represented in Hardham, Clayton, and other Sussex churches. The subjects are uncertain, but the upper tier seems to contain scenes connected with the Nativity, and the lower legendary incidents in the lives of saints. One nimbed figure in the lower tier bears a T-headed staff. In the background is some architecture of arcaded towers and domed roofs with scale-shaped tiles. On the east wall of the south

��transept and elsewhere are further slight remains of colour decoration, chiefly in red.

Some good 15th-century heraldic glass (among which are the arms of France and England quarterly, and France impaling France and England) remains in the windows of the Witley Manor Chapel, but it has been shifted and releaded within the last century, and not all of it is ancient. One fragment on which was depicted the hawthorn bush and crown, with the initials H. E. in black letter beneath it, formerly marked the connexion of the manor with Henry VII. It and the remaining old glass are con- jectured to have been placed in the windows by Sir Reginald Bray (temp. Henry VII). The font dates from about 1250. Its octagonal bowl, which has been renewed or recut, rests upon a central drum and eight small shafts with moulded bases, standing upon a circular plinth.

Some ancient seats belonging to the first half of the 1 4th century, which may have originally stood in the nave, have been placed in the same chapel. The sanctuary is bordered with a dado of modern marble.

A fragmentary inscription in black letter, cut in a piece of stone let into the north wall of the chancel, bears the date 1468, and records the fact that the manor of Witley was held by the ill-fated Duke of Clarence, brother of Edward IV. It reads : ' Georgii Ducis Clarence et Dns (sic) de Wytle, ac fratris Edwardi quarti, regis Anglic et Franc. . .' This accounts, probably, for the heraldic glass in the windows.

The Easter sepulchre contains a brass to Thomas Jones, Jane his wife, and their six children, 'which Thorn's was one of the Servers of the Chamber to our Souverayne lorde Kinge Henry VIII.'

A brass in the north wall of the manorial chapel bears the date 1634, and commemorates Henry Bell, ' Clarke Controwler of the Household to our late Soveraigne Lord King James of Blessed Memorie.'

There are also tablets in the chancel and north chapel to the wife of a 17th-century vicar of Witley (in which her virtues are likened to those of Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Ruth) ; and to Anthony Smith, ' Pentioner ' to Charles I and II, with a curious Latin couplet containing allusions to his gift of a bell to the church, and his benefactions to the poor of Witley.

An ancient almsbox of enamelled iron, with 1 4th or 15th-century tracery on the front, stands by the south door. Although an undoubted antiquity, it has been presented to the church in recent years.

The registers date from 1558.

There are eight bells in the tower, the treble and third by Bryan Eldridge, 1648 ; the second bears Richard Eldridge's initials and the legend, ' Our Lord our hope, 1604.' The fourth is by William Eldridge, 1670.

Among the church plate are chalices of the years 1638 and 1639, the second being an ancient piece imported from Yorkshire, the gift of Mr. John Har- rison Foster, of Witley. There is also a paten of the date 1717, and an old pewter tankard of a poor type.

The church of St. John the Evangelist, Milford, was built in 1844. It is of Bargate stone, which is found in the neighbourhood, in 14th-century

��158 Illustrated in V.C.H. Sam ii, 456 ; cf. the eat window! of Woking, Dork-

��ing, and Mickleham the last two de- stroyed.

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��154 A 12th-century beam in the nave of Old Shoreham Church, Sussex, is one of the few instances of its occurrence.

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