Churches of the Arun Valley

The second of these two gems, St Mary the Virgin North Stoke pictured below St Michael Amberley, was belatedly added to the list, and our route diverted, as I sat on the train down to Sussex last Saturday scouring my Pevsner/Nairn. The intention had been to build on our 19-mile Norfolk churches walk with a heady loop from Amberley to Arundel around the glorious South Downs, both ends of which we know from two-day expeditions but not the middle. Churches, Amberley excepted (and possibly St Nicholas Arundel if we got there in time), were not the object of the exercise. The highly critical Nairn’s praise of North Stoke, however, was unusually warm – ‘delightful, outside and in’ – so I worked out a shorter detour around the Downs and a trail that would then take us along the meanders of the river Arun.

Amberley was always going to be our starting point, and a model village it is too, with its ensemble of castle, church and thatched cottages; all needs of the day-tripper helpfully provided with a tea shoppe, pottery, local store – helpful for assembling a a rather odd sort of picnic – and further refreshments in the village hall, where we succumbed to a cuppa and excellent home made cakes after a longer than expected time in the church. One-time inhabitants include Arthur Rackham and Arnold Bennett, visited by John Cowper Powys who walked over from Burpham to see him (later we met an American on the Downs coming from Burpham who might well been purposefully following in Powys’s footsteps).

At the time of Nairn’s writing, the wall paintings on the south side of St Michael's chancel arch had not been revealed, and he is extraordinarily rude about this splendid Norman arch’s ‘tragic’ scale of detail, its ‘finicky zig-zag ornament’. Well, I love that sort of zig-zagging, so my feelings about it are quite the opposite.

The 12th or 13th century paintings crudely yet clearly depict scenes from Christ’s passion.

The eye is drawn to this and the great arch, but probably first, as one enters through the south doorway, to the stained glass in the window of the north directly facing the visitor. It strikes me as a very beautiful combination of the lamentatory and the joyful. The main image of the deposition is taken from a painting by the local artist to whom the window was dedicated in 1919, Edward Stott.

The designer, quite a discovery for me, was Robert Anning Bell, who has framed the central scene with denizens of art and nature – farm animals along the bottom frieze

and what turn out to be characteristic Anning Bell angels around the arch.

There’s also a memorial plaque to ‘dear child’ Joan Mary Stratton by Eric Gill and his assistant Joseph Cribb

and more superior stained glass, this time from the 1930s, by Veronica Whall of St Edith and an angel.

We had to lift off a harvest festival arrangement to reveal the 1424 brass to John Wantele.

Otherwise, and despite a major Victorian restoration - from which time I assume the wacky floor patterns stems (thought-food for Sophie's floorcloth designs?) -

the impression remains resolutely Norman, including the font

and a west window giving out on to the belfry.

Having given a passing glance to the castle, more a retreat-home to bishops of Chichester in the Middle Ages

we retraced our steps along a shady lane

and walked a little along the South Downs Way, looking down on Amberley

before branching off towards Burpham. Clear views towards the south coast opened up, suggesting time for lunch (including an excellent local pork pie) and a steep sheep-filled valley offered a half-hour of total seclusion

after which we reluctantly left the Downs by taking a track down towards North Stoke, with the sea now very much in evidence.

The tucked-away church here has been lovingly, unfussily restored by the Churches Conservation Trust, not deconsecrated but left usable for the odd service throughout the year.

The beauty of St Mary is that it has hardly been changed since the early 14th century, and – apart from the altered east end – its windows range a century of even earlier design, from lancets of c.1200 to the two- and three-lighters introduced about 70 or so years later.

As with all the work of the excellent CCT, the bare interior highlights the basic colours on the stonework – in this case yellow, ochre and pinkish-red. They certainly enhance the pleasure of the cunningly constructed piscine and sedilia, adjusted to the chancel’s different levels.

Details are few but striking, like the hand which serves as a corbel to hold up a niche, and a sheep’s head in the south transept. Cursed be flash for flattening out the impact.

There are also four fragments of medieval glass, both pairs seeming to indicate the coronation of the Virgin (though some say the male figure here is King David, who knows?). The more finely executed of the two is sited in the east window.

The chancel arch in this instance, so the model guide produced by the CCT tells me, is ‘mainly built of chalky clunch’; seen here from the font.

Around it are fragments of medieval wall-painting - this time purely decorative, flowers and birds.

St Mary is shy of revealing herself, at least from our approach, and only as we walked down a field towards South Stoke did she become briefly visible.

We crossed a surprisingly elaborate bridge across a meander of the Arun, restored with gurkhas’ help in 2009

And made a brief detour to another well-hidden church, well away from any proper road, at South Stoke. The tower of this essentially 11^th century building has what Nairn calls a ‘frilly C19 cap to it'.

Otherwise, nothing much to report about the interior. Harvest festival here was clearly not to be the feast of plenty Amberley’s display indicated: in South Stoke's case, cereal packets on the altar and apples lined up beneath the windows, which had a certain piquancy.

We were now tracing the meanders of the Arun, heading towards Burpham

where the church was resolutely shut. It probably would have been anyway after 5, but I took agin the tenor of the notice on the door, which apologized for lockup and alarming owing to recent theft, but gave no hint of where a dedicated visitor might find the key.

And so along the water meadows to Arundel, past a boatwreck which looked like it was grounded in a dried-up Sea of Azof

and with the meanders causing the castle to advance and retreat.

Way too late for an Arundel investigation – we’ll make it the starting point next time - we had a quick drink in an unlovely hotel and then hobbled to the station for the train back to London. The afternoon's sun was now all blurred over in early evening grey skies, and sure enough this was the abrupt end of an Indian summer: on Sunday, originally earmarked for our walk, quite a bit of the country was under water from a month’s worth of rain in a single day.