Page:Notes on the churches in the counties of Kent, Sussex, and Surrey.djvu/230

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184
NOTES TO SUSSEX

has long been, that they were boundary marks, probably bearing affinity to those in the Isle of Thanet, in Kent, where several "lynches, balks, or greenswerds" are described by Hasted, resembling the banks above mentioned, as having existed beyond memory, and having been always regarded as dykes to distinguish the limits of districts or estates. The Isle of Thanet, it will be remembered, is an open country, devoid generally of trees and hedges, like the South Downs.

3. Aldingbourne.—The church has a double sedile. The font is square, of black marble, on five pillars. On the north side of the church "a chantry, once at the end of the north aisle, has a groined arch, with the nail-headed moulding; but the north aisle, with its arcade, has been entirely removed" (Horsfield's Sussex, II, 56, from Dallaway's Chichester, 79.) Lydsey, in the southern part of the parish, was a chapelry, which was founded before 1282, but the building has long disappeared. (Horsfield's Sussex, II, 55.) The manor of Aldingbourne was a portion of the endowment of the ancient bishopric of Selsey and the bishops of Chichester possessed a palace here, which was destroyed in the civil wars of the seventeenth century. (Sussex Arch. Collections, I, 182 note 51.) The preceding statement rather militates against the probability, otherwise possibly the "Edingburn" of King Alfred's will (Asser's Alfred by Wise, 77) might mean this place.

4. Aldrington.—Some portion of the outer walls of this church remains in the fields westward from Brighton, beyond Hove, the house at the turnpike-gate and a cottage being all the parish contains. The name is retained in the (Clergy List) as a rectory, but without inhabitants.

5. Alfriston.—This parish possesses a large and imposing cross church, uniform in the plan, and in style late Dec. verging into Perp.; some of the windows being Dec., some Perp. The tower, which terminates in a shingled spire, is low, but of considerable dimensions, with lofty interior arches springing from piers of rather unusual form, being semioctagons, of which the faces of both capitals and shafts are concave. Some other examples of this figure have been mentioned in the Notes upon Kent. In the chancel are a piscina and three sedilia under canopies, which, as all the arches are semicircular, were perhaps preserved from an earlier building, and reinserted here. Opposite to them on the north side is an ogée canopy over a tomb, of which the slab appears to be much older than its accessories. In the