CHIDDINGLY PARISH CHURCH GUIDE Page 2 of
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THE TOWER is sixty feet high and the walls are 4ft 6ins thick to take the immense weight of the spire which rises to a total height of 130ft. A print of Richard Lower’s of 1823 and a drawing by James Lambert dated 1768 show the apex of the spire to be more elongated than it is at present. Unless this is artist's licence, one would infer that either a few feet have been lost from the top of the spire or that there was formerly a long wooden cap on which the weather vane was mounted. It is shaped as a pennant pierced by two sets of initials, H. M. and W. L., the latter probably of William Lashmar, Overseer in 1774 and Churchwarden 1803. He lived in the Vicarage House.
The date 1897 appears on the vane which suggests that when the steeple was struck by lightning, this catastrophe was recorded during restoration. This is one of the three remaining ancient stone spires of East Sussex, the others being at Dallington and Northiam, both in the Weald. The typical Sussex spire is of shingles on a wooden frame, as may be seen at Alfriston, although there are numerous stone spires adorning Victorian churches in the coastal resorts. The spire is octagonal in shape, and flanked at the junction of the tower by four polygonal pinnacles.
During the years the tower has decayed in places, and one can see how repairs have been made in brickwork. In 1897 the tower was struck by lightning. This happened in daylight to the consternation of the children in the old Church School by the church. There was a deafening crash and they rushed out to find the churchyard littered with fragments of stone from the stricken tower. When the repairs were completed a large admiralty anchor chain was slung round the base of the spire to check any outward movement and various iron cramps inserted in the masonry. The chain was removed in 1985 when further tower restoration work was completed.
An early photograph of the church shows the tower mantled in ivy, a sight to delight the poet and enrage the architect. The ivy is no more but a small amount of herbage defied eradication during the last restoration and lurks at the base of one of the pinnacles. The tower is in four stages, the ground floor which since 1989 houses the meeting room cum vestry, the ringing chamber, a 'silence chamber' containing the clock, made in 1912, and the belfry with a ring of eight bells. The weights of the bells and their founders are displayed at the tower arch but an additional note on the bells may be of interest to visiting campanologists. We are indebted for these details to Mr George Elphick's "Sussex Bells and Belfries".
ENTRANCES There are three ways into the Church; by the west door of the tower with its Buckle badges, by a south door or more usually through the north door and porch. One or two features of the porch are of interest. It is covered with Horsham stone slabs which were used on all the roofs until the 1864 restoration. Under the hood-mould of the porch is a stone bearing the date 1657, which may commemorate some enlargement of the porch. The date is not without interest as it is in the period of the Commonwealth when church building was virtually at a standstill. It is not impossible that there may be a connection with the activities of Robert Baker, Vicar of Chiddingly from 1652 to 1677, who defied the law forbidding marriages in church and conducted nearly seventy weddings in three years until the ban was lifted in 1657. The details of Mr Baker's defiance are in C. Robertson's "Hailsham and its Environs" under the entry for 1653. The entrance arch of the porch is of greensand, a stone formerly quarried at Eastbourne and at Godstone in Surrey. What appears to be a filled-in window on the East wall of the porch is believed to be a holy-water stoup. The grave slab on the floor is that of John Herring, an 18th Century Vicar, who is commemorated by a mural tablet on the west wall.
SOUTH TRANSEPT A defaced corbal to the right of the pulpit may have shown the crowned head of the King in whose reign the arcade was built, either Henry III or Edward I, in the 13th - 14th Centuries.
At the beginning of the 17th Century the south Transept was built to house the large monument erected in 1612. The present square window with transom was built in the east wall to give additional light to the monument, and the 15th Century window which it replaced moved to high on the west wall.