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A HALF-HOUR's journey westward by railway I will carry the visitor who happens to be staying at Brighton into a retired and secluded country, which will offer him a very pleasant contrast to the eternal bustle and scorching sun of the Marine Parade. Let him take a return ticket either to Shoreham or to Bramber, and allow himself a summer afternoon for a holiday, and he will return to his lodgings at London-superMare without any temptation to cry out, with the Emperor Titus, "perdidi diem."

The river Adur, which rises out of St. Leonard's Forest near Horsham, found its way into the open sea, seven or eight centuries ago, some six or seven miles west of Brighton, at a place which now bears the name of Old Shoreham-the village on the shore. Partly through the gradual receding of the sea, consequent on the alluvial deposits brought down by the Adur, and partly through the growth of a bank of pebbles thrown up across the river's mouth by the action of the tide, the once flourishing port and town has sunk into a tiny rural village, the chief ornament of which is its

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exquisite Norman church, which, small as it is, is known to all Ecclesiologists and Church architects as one of the best specimens of its time. Fifty years ago the place was described by Britton as having dwindled down into a village of about 30 houses, and only 188 inhabitants. In 1861, mainly owing to the influx of hands employed upon the railway, the population had risen to a somewhat larger amount.

Five and twenty years ago a great part of the fabric of the church, including the transepts, lay in ruins; but its fine semi-circular arches and the curious zig-zag mouldings, dating from an early period after the Conquest, attracted the attention of the Cambridge Camden Society, under whose auspices the building was restored by Mr. Ferrey, in excellent taste and in the most substantial manner, about the year 1840. We are not about to inflict on our readers a chapter on Church architecture, so we will beg them, if they desire further information, to pay the church a visit of inspection. They will find the central tower, with its arcade of three arches, and

No. 270.

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wards passed into the hands of the Duke of Norfolk, who levied black mail, like a baron of olden time, by exacting a toll of a half-penny from every passer by, until about a year ago, when the ducal interest was bought up by the Brighton and Horsham Railway Company, and the bridge is now free to all Her Majesty's liege subjects. We give here an illustration of the bridge, in very shortened perspective. At the further end of the bridge, in the parish of Lancing, under the hill side, stands an old inn, the Pad,* well known in former times possibly to smugglers, and certainly to many a respectable bagman who travelled his rounds in those days between Chichester and Worthing and the little watering-place of Brighthelmstone, and who liked to lounge an hour away there while waiting for the ferry-boat. Our vignette shows the inn, as it now stands.

About a third of a mile further south from the east end of the bridge stands what is called New Shoreham, the novelty of which appears somewhat like that of certain middle-aged ladies, as shown by the fact that its magnificent church, of which the chancel and transepts alone are standing, is a fine specimen of early English architecture interspersed with some Norman details. Like the church at Old Shoreham,† it was erected by the family of De Braose.

It appears that soon after the Conquest, the same joint action of the river and the tide which gave birth to the tongue of land on which Great Yarmouth now stands, raised also out of the sea many acres of terra firma between Old Shoreham and the ocean, a part of which was probably chosen by a college of monks as a site for that venerable church which forms so conspicuous a landmark to vessels in the channel, and so pleasing an object of sight from the parade at Brighton. With the exception of the interior of the chancel, which has been restored by the Cambridge Camden

* So called from the custom once so frequent in Cornwall of employing pad horses for commercial and other travellers.

† Mr. Sharpe does not consider that the church of Old Shoreham is at all anterior in date to that of New Shoreham. He supports his argument by the deed of Wm. de Braose, who, in A.D. 1076, gives to the abbot and monks of the church of St. Florence, at Saumur, in Anjou. four churches in the Rape of Bramber, including that of St. Nicholas de Soraham.

See Vol. IX., p. 276.

Society, very little has been done at present towards repairing the signs of decay which time has marked upon the outward appearance of these walls; but even in its present state the edifice is sound and substantial, and looks as if it were destined to defy the lapse of ages to undermine it. Britton says that the nave is destroyed, and points in proof of his assertion to the "confused masses of walls" which stand in the churchyard guarding the western doorway; and Mr. Mackenzie Walcot, no mean authority on such a subject, confirms his opinion. But we all know that it was the custom of the time to build these stately edifices by instalments, and so far as we can learn there is no reliable local tradition which asserts that the nave, though certainly begun, was ever completed. Mr. Britton, in his "Beauties of England and Wales," thus describes the building :—

*

"The lofty square tower rising from the centre of the transepts consists of two stories, the first entirely Saxon, having two arched recesses with columns, and within each recess an arched window. At the sides, and between each recess, are breaks, and columns at the angle of the tower. The second story also has two recesses with columus, having arches of the pointed form; two windows again occur, but their arches are circular, and their openings are divided into three small lights, by columns which support small circular arches. These lights and columns, as an antiquary has observed, give the strongest warrant for supposing that they were some of the early hints towards forming the system of mullion-work, which constituted the invariable ornament of windows in subsequent ages. The east front is a beautiful elevation, and in good condition. It consists of three tiers: in the first are three circular-arched recesses with columns; and in the centre recess is a circular-headed window. On the right and left are the fronts of the side aisles with one circular recess, and a window of the same kind to each; above these are other circular recesses and breaks at the angles. The second, or principal tier, wholly in the pointed style, presents three grand windows incorporated as it were into one, divided by clusters of columns with rich capitals, having pointed heads to the arches and architraves of many mouldings. The third tier has one large

central circular window with several small recesses of various forms and dimensions on each side. The front finishes with a pediment. The details of the interior are remarkable for their elegance, richness, and diversity; so that this edifice altogether may be said to

* Gentleman's Magazine, 1807.

present an excellent school for the study of exports of timber and imports of coals, corn, our ancient architecture."

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The groined roof of the church is very fine, being adorned with moulded groin ribs, triple vaulting shafts, and floriated capitals with deep round impost mouldings, all bearing testimony to the period to which they belong. The old font is a fine specimen of Norman work. Mr. Edmund Sharpe, in his Monograph upon the church, implies that nothing certain is known about the demolition of the nave. The clerestory is lofty and well-proportioned, and the larger member of the cruciform structure being gone, the whole fabric looks higher and therefore more imposing than it really is. Mr. Sharpe supposes that the choir was built in A.D. 1130, the original fabric being entirely Norman, and that originally it had an apsidal termination to the choir, which appears to have been an afterthought. The tower, he thinks, was surmounted by a square lantern, capped by a low pyramidical spire, like many specimens of the kind still to be seen in Normandy. One great feature of the building is the heavy solid vertical buttress which simplex munditiis carries the flying buttresses which support the vaulting of the choir. The east end is of great beauty, but its chief merits consist in the fine rose window in the third or gable story, and in the manner in which the upper work of the Lancet period has been adapted to the work of the Transitional period below.

It is strange that in Dugdale's "Monasticon " no record remains of the foundation to which New Shoreham Church belonged. He mentions it merely incidentally in a grant of certain property to a foreign abbey by one of the Lords of Bramber.

With the exception of a second little chapel in the main street, now turned into a granary, the town of Shoreham has few attractions to present to the antiquary; this building was once either a priory of Carmelites or White Friars, or else a hospital dedicated to St. James.

Shoreham has a tidal harbour, the entrance to which has long been, and still is, dangerous, on account of the frequent shifting of the shingle and sand,* and the existence of a bar of mud and a low flat rock outside the entrance, which is nearly visible at low water. At spring tides the flood rises about eighteen feet, and twelve at common tides. The principal occupation of the town is ship-building, in which about 500 hands are employed, and vessels of 800 tons have been launched there. The shipping trade of the port consists of

It is said that the mouth of the Adur is now three miles to the east of its former débouché.

and Irish provisions. Shoreham is also a port for warehousing produce, French, Dutch, Russian, West Indian, African, and Mediterranean; 1000 ships, of 90,000 tons, and employing 5000 seamen, enter the harbour annually, according to Mr. Walcot. At some seasons of the year, also, there is a brisk business carried on in the sea fisheries, and more particularly in oyster dredging, and the trade in this article is all the more lively on account of the proximity of the Brighton and London markets.

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1199, immediately after the death of Richard Coeur de Lion; his re-embarkation there in the following June to hold a conference with the King of France; and the embarkation of Charles II. from its shores, Oct. 15, 1651, in his flight to the Continent after the battle of Worcester.

New Shoreham, five or six centuries ago, had grown so important a place that Edward I. erected it into a Parliamentary borough, and it continued to return two members to St. Stephen's till about a century ago, when the inquiries of a Parliamentary Committee brought to light a scene of the most shameful corruption. "It appeared," says Mr. Britton, "that a majority of the electors had formed themselves into a society, under the denomination of the 'Christian Club'; the ostensible object of which was the promotion of charity and benevolence, and the accomplishment of such other purposes as corresponded with the character which the members had assumed. Under this cloak they made a traffic of their oaths and consciences, selling their borough to the highest bidder, while the rest of the inhabitants were deprived of every legal benefit from their votes. To prevent any similar combination, the Parliament passed an act to disfranchise every member of the Christian Society, and to extend the votes for Shoreham to the whole Rape of Bramber."

We will ask the reader now to turn his back on Old and New Shoreham, and to accompany us along the road or railway, as he pleases, some three miles up the valley of the Adur, to Bramber, the village from which the Rape or Hundred takes its name. The river which runs by it was once navigable thus far or even farther for small vessels. Together with the adjoining village of Steyning (which is remarkable for one of the handsomest churches in the county of Sussex), Bramber returned a member to Parliament down to the time of the Reform Act of 1832; and the Court Room, in which the "loyal and independent" burgesses, some twenty or thirty in number, we believe, used to meet as free Englishmen to elect their representative (who was really the nominee of the Duke of Rutland and Lord Calthorpe), is still in existence, forming the public room of the village inn.* It is worthy of a visit for the sake of the quaint portraits and other pictures of local interest which adorn its walls, though in a somewhat dilapidated condition.

"Ichabod" is the only inscription that

*The remembrance of the fun which was afforded to the inhabitants by the chairing of the members is not forgotten. An old woman told us, when we visited Bramber, that the member was preceded by flags and bands of music, and a procession of girls all dressed in white: but these merrymakings were put an end to by the ruthless Reform Act.

we should care to see written beneath them, consistently with our respect for historic truth and bona fide popular representation.

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The village of Bramber consists of one long straggling street, and at the north-west end of it, close to the railway station, is the little village church, dedicated to St. Nicholas,* rather its nave, a most picturesque old building, nestling, as it were for protection, in the ample fosse close beneath the stern and ivyclad walls of the old castle, erected on a site which belonged at the Conqueror's survey to William de Braose. His descendants in the 12th century obtained the king's permission to erect a castle here, and they chose for its site a hill which rose steeply on all sides, and which by the aid of art was rendered nearly impreg nable. Its walls surround the top of this eminence, enclosing a space of some fifteen acres, and the scanty remnants of those which are still left standing show that it must have been originally a fortress of very great strength. The most curious point connected with the castle is, that history is silent alike as to its birth and its death. We know neither the precise date of its erection, nor of its destruction. History does not tell us that it ever stood a siege, and accordingly many antiquaries are of Grose's opinion, viz. That, taking into account the vast thickness of its walls and the small effect of time upon the remaining fragments, the noble fortress was purposely demolished by gunpowder, in all probability for the sake of the materials. Mr. Walcot solves the question very simply, by supposing that the sour soldiers of Cromwell were quartered here, and that they blew up the building with gunpowder. It is strange that, if this be the true solution, no tradition of the fact is to be found on the spot. The castle was strengthened on the outside by a triple trench, which is now overgrown with thick bushes and underwood, forming a very pleas ing contrast to the grey ruins by which they are crowned.

The following is the sad story which tradition has handed down respecting the former lords of this castle :—

"In the year 1208, King John, suspecting

The dedication of the church to St. Nicholas, by itself, goes far to prove that vessels once sailed up to the walls of Bramber. Mr. M. Walcot adds that they came up even as far as Steyning, and that the inland termination of the harbour there was called St. Cuthman's Port. "The commodiousness of the haven, by reason of bankes and of barres of sand cast up at the river's mouth, is quite gone," says Camden; whereas, in foregoing times, it was wont to carry ships with full saile as far as to Brember, which is now a good waye from the sea."-Holland's "Camden," p. 313. It should be added that in Bramber church are the remains of four arches and piers which originally carried the tower, of veritable early Norman work; these were probably part of the original church built by the Lord of Bramber within nine years after the Conquest, and conveyed by him to the monks at Saumur.

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some of his nobility, sent to demand hostages for their fidelity. Among the rest, his messengers required of William de Braose the surrender of his children. To this demand the wife of that nobleman, according to Matthew Paris, returned for answer, that she would never trust her children with the king, who had so basely murdered his own nephew, Prince Arthur, whom he was in honour bound to protect. This reply was reported to the monarch, whom it highly incensed; and he secretly despatched his soldiers to seize the whole family but, having received intimation of his design, they fled to Ireland, where, in the year 1210, he contrived to get them into his hands, sent them over to England, and closely confining them in Windsor Castle, caused them to be starved to death. Stowe informs us that William de Braose himself escaped to France, but did not long survive this catastrophe. John, having seized the estates of his unfortunate victim, gave this castle and manor to his second son, Richard, Earl of Cornwall; but shortly before his death he restored part of these possessions to Reginald, son of the former owner, who, on the accession of Henry III. procured of that prince the restitution of the whole. The last of the family of Braose who held this castle, having married his daughter to John, son and heir of Roger de Mowbray, made a special settlement of the honour and estate upon them and their heirs.

Mowbray forfeited both, together with his life, by joining the Earl of Lancaster, and other nobles, against the Despensers, the favorites of Edward II. ; but his possessions were restored by Edward III. to his son, who attended that monarch in two expeditions to France. When the French threatened in their turn to invade the English coasts, he was directed to remain in this castle, whence he might sally forth and annoy the enemy. In this family it remained till the reign of Henry VII. when, on the death of John de Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, who fell at the battle of Bosworth, his estates escheated to the Crown; and this castle and manor, with several other lordships in the county, were conferred on Thomas, Lord de la War.”

There is a romantic legend attached to two monuments in the chancel of Bramber church; one was that of a lady, the other of a knight, with a crescent on his helmet. Eustace de Braose, affianced to Alice de Bouverie, and a crusader, while in the Holy Land became enamoured of Zulma, a beautiful Syrian girl. In the Battle of Ascalon he slew her brother Azim, the most redoubtable warrior of Saladin's army, and her love was turned into bitter revenge. Dissembling her anger, she swore him to

observe her commands, and to return to claim his English bride. Loth and sorrowful he came back to Bramber, and espoused that lady; but on his wedding night Zulma stood before them, and commanded him to die, giving him a poisoned dagger. Wild shrieks rang through the castle, the hall was emptied of the wassailers, and the bower women who flew to the chamber of Alice, found her a maniac gazing with wild eyes on two lifeless forms that lay upon the floor, the false Eustace and his unhappy Zulma.

If the visitor have time while at Steyning and Bramber, we should recommend him to pay a visit to the College of St. Nicholas at Lancing, a handsome new Gothic building, from which he will get a fine view of the whole valley of the Adur, with both the Shorehams at his feet; and to Wiston House, the seat of the Gorings, celebrated for its great hall, which is 40 feet in height, length, and breadth, and is surmounted by a handsome ceiling of the Caroline era. It is a fine old English gentleman's mansion, situated on the edge of the downs. It was built, according to Mr. Walcot, by Sir Thomas Shirley, one of three brothers who went as wanderers to the East, and whose adventures formed the plot of a play which was acted on the stage in its day. One of the brothers married a relative of the Shah of Persia.

The evenings are closing in fast, or else we would recommend our tourist friend, in his way home to Brighton, to call in upon the peaceful-shall we say parsonage or hermitage? of the Rev. Charles Townsend, at Kingstonon-the-Sea, close to the mouth of Shoreham Harbour. We can only say that if he is fortunate enough to come to his wicket-gate provided with the " open sesame " of an introduction, he will see one of the most charming cottage residences in England, and make the acquaintance of an elderly clergyman, one quite of the old school, at once a poet, a scholar, and a divine; the quondam friend of Samuel Rogers, and Wordsworth, and Wm. Stuart Rose, with whom he lived on terms of intimacy, and about whom he is full of pleasant and cheerful anecdote, though he has long since passed his threescore years and ten. You will find the old man reading Virgil in his summer house; or indoors with his pocket Horace, and Cowley, and Herrick open on the table before him; and we should be much surprised if you were to escape from those hospitable Lares without tasting a glass of old Falernian or Cocuban wine, and some delicious garden fruit, which, instead of being grown in that little classic Hortus of the

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