Selham

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	Dedication : St James Simon Jenkins: Excluded Principal Features: Unspoiled Anglo-Saxon Church

On a long church crawl through Sussex in 2018 Selham was our first port of call. The first and one of the very best of a carefully chosen roster.

The north door is gloriously Anglo-Saxon: rude, tall – its imposts are six feet high - and narrow. The walls are as large a mass of herringbone masonry as any church you are likely to visit: again it screams “Anglo-Saxon”. At twenty three inches, the walls are thinner than Norman masonry. As Pevsner says – eleventh century at the latest and one would assume “Saxon” (and in the old Kingdom of Sussex – of the South Saxons – we do mean specifically Saxon rather than Anglian). Yet the quoins are not the long and short work that we would expect to see of a purely Saxon church. Pevsner, no less, sees traces of both Anglo-Saxon and Norman styles and on that basis proposes the possibility that the church is “Saxo-Norman”. That is, of Saxon style post-Conquest.

The most notable feature of this church – its chancel arch – muddies the waters still further. The arch itself is round headed with simple roll mouldings. Pevsner sees this as Norman and it also looks so to my less expert eyes. Yet the Church Guide talks of the use of a three pronged implement on its east side, an Anglo-Saxon feature. It is the capitals that are of great interest. More accurately, each side of the arch has an unusual arrangement of capital, abacus and impost and each has carved decoration. Representations of serpents on the south side are unequivocally in the Nordic tradition.

Interlace work is of similarly unimpeachable Saxon origin. Other decoration is seen by both Pevsner and the Church Guide as being more of Norman style. We can add to the confusion different types of mortar that may bespeak of reordering and reconstruction. Most peculiarly of all, perhaps, is that the feet of the two columns are of different design. Moreover the imposts are of unequal size.

Put all this together and we have an insoluble mystery. Pevsner suggests Saxon work in the early post-Conquest period. The unassailably authoritative “Anglo-Saxon Architecture” by H.M. and Joan Taylor (an absolute gem in three volumes but now very hard to find) is clear that it is an Anglo-Saxon church, remarking of the chancel arch: “...the detailed treatment is different from side to side, in a way which gives a strong impression that the work was executed without a comprehensive design and using such materials that were to hand from some earlier building”. Like Pevsner they suspect that the left hand impost was recycled from Roman string course or architrave.

This is, however, all totally academic. I might say (forgive the crude colloquialism) a bit “anal”. Who the heck cares? This is an Anglo-Saxon church as most of us would understand it and do we really care whether it dates from 1050 or 1070?

This brings to a head the inadequacy of such terminology as “Anglo-Saxon” and “Norman”. Do we mean to denote two different architectural styles or do we mean “pre-Conquest” and “post-Conquest” chronologically? As I constantly reiterate on these pages, new styles depended on any given mason having the knowledge, the skill and the will to adopt them. This did not happen everywhere overnight. Nor is it the case that pre-Conquest England was utterly ignorant of architectural fashions in the rest of Europe before the arrival of William. Can we be sure that the church was not built by Saxon masons who had a little avant-garde knowledge of what was happening across the English Channel?

After that distraction, let us turn to the rest of the church! It is tall and narrow – I need hardly say of Anglo-Saxon proportions. It still has its two original cells of nave and chancel but acquired a lean-to south aisle in the fourteenth century and its accompanying hagioscope (squint). It was rebuilt in the nineteenth century. The font is a commonplace Norman tub which, the Church Guide points out, was carved using a five-pointed tool, drawing the distinction with the chancel arch. This was not a church, then, that was completely overlooked by the Normans, no matter when it originated.

There is no tower; just a simple bell cote. Indeed west towers are conspicuously rare in the village churches of West Sussex. Doubtless a dearth of suitable stone had a large part to play.

Finally, we have to mention the Rev Robert Blackburn, rector here for a remarkable fifty-seven years from 1842 to 1899. He married Eliza Jane Clutterbuck who by various intermarriages was descended from Thomas Plantagenet, a son of Edward I. Mr Blackburn threw himself into her genealogy with messianic zeal going far beyond Edward I to such as Charlemagne, Alfred the Great and William the Conqueror. Having taken this vicarious pleasure in his antecedents by marriage he proceeded to show them off through new stained glass for the west and south aisle windows. It was, when you think about it, an act of remarkable hubris and Rev Blackburn’s long rectorship evidently gave him notions of ownership! Nevertheless, there he is, a mere commoner, immortalised – even celebrated - in a one thousand year old church until such time as some sort of upheaval leads to their replacement. England, for sure, is a funny old country.






	Left: The superb Anglo-Saxon north door. Unfortunately we cannot know whether it ever had a counterpart on the south side because of the south aisle that was added subsequently. The door is 2’10” wide and a whopping 8’5” tall - magnificently lanky Anglo-Saxon dimensions. Centre: The chancel arch looking through to the Early English east window. Right: The view to the west. This picture is taken from beneath the chancel arch and with a wide angle lens that actually exaggerates the internal dimensions of the diminutive church.

Both sides of the chancel arch have a rather clumsy looking - but glorious - arrangement of capital (at the bottom), abacus and impost (at the top). I often lazily ignore the distinction between capital and abacus but here we must be more precise The south side (left) is the more exuberant. An elaborate serpent is curled on the capital. He is not alone: on the west side of the impost is another. The mason has clearly had some difficulty in making the interlaced chain decoration on the impost fit its space! The abacus has a palmette design with interlocking stems such as are also found at nearby Sompting. Note carefully that the capital is round at the bottom to match the half-pillar and square at the top to match the abacus above. The use of the serpent’s head to disguise the transition is typically Anglo-Saxon. The northern composition is more precise and restrained. Palmette appears again on the impost and is suspected as having Roman origins. The interlace work on the abacus is far more precisely executed than the ring decoration on the south side. The volutes on the capital are also well carved and make a strange classical counterpoint to the interlace work of the abacus. It is hard to believe that the two sides were carved by the same man and they certainly bear out Taylor & Taylor’s accusation that there is no overall plan.

Left: The small serpent on the south side impost. Right: The possibly Roman palmette on the north side impost.

Left: Another view of the north side. Note the impost is plain apart from the west face. In all of these pictures it is worth noting the changes in mortarwork. Right: The serpent on the north side capital.

Left: Looking along the church towards the east. The perspective has been grossly distorted by the wide angle lens. Note the squint or hagioscope to the right of the chancel arch. Right: The south aisle. It’s a rather mean structure: narrow with a roof sloping down steeply and leaving room only for the smallest of window spaces.

Left: The Norman tub font. Right: First World War funerary tablets are common enough in English churches but this one caught my attention because of the pre-rapahaelite picture.

Left: One of the Rev Blackburn’s windows. The top panel is of Fulk V, King of Jerusalem in 1131 (amongst other things). Then working from the left downwards we have Egbert, King of England in AD 827 and forebear of Edward I; Edward I; William the Conqueror; The French Capetian dynasty. Then working down the right hand side we get: Counts of Angouleme - one of whom was grandmother to Edward I; Kingdom of Castille; Dukedom of Aquitaine; Dukedom of Burgundy. Life is too short to list how all these came to be in the Blackburn family tree but you will find out readily enough on the internet. The excellent Church Guide has a very good account from which I have lifted this bare-bones description. Centre: The squint from the south aisle to the chancel. Right: The church from the north east.

Left: The church from the south east showing the steep lean-to aisle. Note the reworking of the masonry on both sides of the chancel. Right: The church from the south.