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Old Books - Other Counties (London & Kent shown elsewhere)
Essentials for Local Historians, Genealogists & Family Historians

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Worth Church, Sussex

AUTHOR: Rev. A. Bridge
FIRST PUB.: 1911
THIS EDITION: 2010

CD-ROM £10.00
 

Re-worked from the edition first published in 1911.

30 page booklet with ten photographic illustrations of the church interior and exterior, plus a line-drawing ground plan of the church.

Supplied as a PDF document on CD-ROM.

EXTRACT:

LEAVING Three Bridges station on the London, Brighton, and South Coast line of railway, a beautiful country footpath leads across the fields to the old Parish Church of Worth, romantically situated upon a knoll embosomed in trees. At the entrance stands the ancient lych-gate, as time-worn and picturesque as any in the kingdom.

Passing thence down an avenue of limes, we come upon the venerable edifice itself, which, though centuries have rolled away, still retains its pre-Norman form and features. Indeed, Worth Church is perhaps one of the most remarkable in England, both from its peculiarity of form and great antiquity, exhibiting the earliest example of the purely English cruciform churches, which afterwards became so general throughout the country, attaining their highest development and beauty in the stately Gothic cathedrals that adorn our land.

Its claim of "very ancient" is beyond dispute, either by reason of the pronounced style of its architecture, everywhere apparent to the practised eye of the student in ecclesiology, or the actual historical evidence of its existence at and before the coming of the Norman Conqueror to our shores, when it and the lands around found an owner in William de Warren, the choleric son-in-law to whom the king, soon after his settlement on the throne, made a grant in perpetuity. Earl de Warren possessed forty-three lordships or manors in Sussex alone. Long, however, before the Conquest the church had probably been in the possession of Saxon kings for many generations; for it is supposed that Worth Church passed, with the Manor of Worth, under the will of Alfred the Great to his third son, Ethelward, if the Wyrth mentioned in Saxon is the Worth of modern English; or it may be that Ethelward received it by deed of gift, for we know Worth was a Royal manor in the reign of Edward the Confessor; and being royal, a church probably existed in Alfred's time. We also ...