It used to be on the downs, a little walk away from Brighton. A quiet hamlet
with a flint church built by the late Saxons or early Norman and refashioned
some 700 years ago.
The east window has good figures of
St.Helena crowned, St.Nicholas mitred, and Christ with the Crown of Thorns.
In the 13th century chancel is what has been called the mystery monument,
a featureless and nameless family of father, mother, and nine children in
Elizabethan dress but sculptured in another age.
The church has a Norman nave with flint herringbone work, and an early English
chancel and west tower. The grey marble tombstone with mosaic work in the
south side of the churchyard was erected by public subscription to Dr. Kenealy,
counsel for the claimant in the famous Tichborne case, who died in 1880 a
few years after he was disbarred by Gray's Inn for the libellous character
of his newspaper 'Englishman' which supported the claimant.
The Ornate Tombstone of Dr. Kenealy
On a frieze are carved the Ten Commandments, a motto accompanying them written
with the help of only one vowel:
Persevere, ye perfect men,
Ever keep these precepts ten.
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