A Bit Of A Wander Around Shoreham

The River Adur at Lancing.

Walk over the 18th century footbridge- which used to be the toll bridge- and you come to



The village of Old Shoreham.

Here's a picture of that church from the othe side



 This is St Nicholas, old Shoreham.

Familiar story of the English coastline. Sometimes the sea advances and swallows up the land and sometimes it retreats and-as here- leaves a seaport high and dry. In the case of Shoreham they built a new town about three quarters of a mile down river. Both Shorehams- old and new- have remarkable Romanesque churches. St Mary de Haura in the New Town looks like this...



That's a picture I took a couple of years ago. St Mary's is considerably bigger but St Nick's is just as beautiful. Here are some pictures of the interior-







The vicar came in while I was taking pictures. He had a purple stole in his hand which I assumed meant there was a funeral in the offing. Odd how apologetic the clergy are these days. This guy smiled and smirked as if I were doing him a favour by letting him into his own building.

Ailz was waiting on the far side of the footbridge, sitting in the car, reading her Kindle. Here's a shot of the bridge from the Shoreham side. That important looking collection of buildings is Lancing College- my old school. Since I was there- fifty years ago- someone has built a great, blocky, white wharehouse on the river bank which comes elbowing into the view and rather spoils it.

Two Churches On The Steyning Road

Coombes is a settlement on the road that goes from Lancing to Steyning. There's a farm and a church and not much else. You have to cross farmland to reach the church. As is sometimes the case with very small, isolated churches no-one remembers which saint it was dedicated to.





This is the field I had to come through. Our car is just visible in the car park at the bottom of the hill. That's a cement works, I think, on the far side of the valley.

The church is a shoe-box with windows in it. A thousand year-old shoebox. It's glory is its wall paintings-  which are12th century- and probably the work of monks from Lewes Priory. They're fragmentary but very well-preserved in patches.





This is the lion of St Mark



And this little chap is supporting the weight of the chancel arch

A little further down the same road is Botolphs- another settlement that's hardly a village- with one or two buildings and yet another Romanesque church.





It's another shoebox- and in this instance the paintings have all but disappeared. You can see traces of them over the chancel arch. I imagine the monks from Lewes working their way through the County. "Right, that's another one finished. Where to next?"