My Favourite Church

As you can imagine I have many conversations about building conservation building methods and building history. When the conversation turns to churches, I found myself referring many times to this beautiful church nestled in the West Sussex countryside that formed the subject of the surveying module of my MSc in building conservation as it contains many notable features and has an interesting history. Our brief was to record the inside of the building and write a conservation management plan with conservation methodologies for each historic feature within.

Saint Richard's at Burton Park, Dunton, West Sussex, is a small 2 cell grade I listed church located in the Parkland that surrounds Burton Park house a stunning Georgian building designed by Henry Bassett in 1828 for the Biddulph family.

 This church stands far from residential areas, with the present village now served by two Victorian churches. It is likely that a former village surrounded the church but was removed when Giacomo Leoni built the original button park in 1739. The map shows the area was once industrial, featuring places like a brick field, dye house, lime kilns, and Burton mill. Like many small rural two-cell churches, the exact construction date is unknown, though features such as herringbone brickwork on the chancel’s eastern wall suggest Saxon origins.

Among the more notable events in its history is the works that were carried out in 1636 by Bishop Juxon later to become the Archbishop of Canterbury. Juxon was born in Chichester and later became confident of Charles the 1st in fact Bishop Juxon accompanied Charles the 1st on the scaffold at his execution.  It is no surprise then to find huge coat of arms of Charles the 1st painted on the south wall.

Interesting to note the image of the Unicorn on the right of the crest is depicted with canine teeth!

Although the church was heavily restored by the Victorians in 1851 after the roof fell, in it still retains many of its original features such as the stunning painted rood screen and wall paintings

The outer walls contain a mixture of materials and comprise of ironstone, sandstone, flint, and Sussex tufa (sourced very locally, Sussex Tufa is  a whitish highly porous limestone formed by the precipitation of calcium carbonate form water passing through calcareous rocks)

The real jewel in this church however for me is the afore mentioned rood screen and a particular painting that can be found in the window reveal of the north wall

The rood screen includes a small loft and contains several features that indicate it may have originated elsewhere such as redundant mortices and sawn edges. Records suggest the original Burton Park building included a chapel, and following a devastating fire in 1826 the rood screen may have been relocated to its current position in St Richard’s, supportive of this is the two-18th century ledger stones the rood screen is sited upon.

The oak screen shows many traces of early paintwork, such as small gold stars beneath the loft and red paint detailing on the wood moulding. Conservation efforts have included the use of wood hardener, and while the lower panels seem to date from a later period, the hand-carved tracery in the upper panels is notably distinct and happily diverts the attention away from the modern interventions

The painting in the window reveal in the north wall depicts an inverted crucifixion. The interpretation in the church pamphlet indicates that this is Saint Wilgefortis (also known as St. Kummernis or St. Uncumber). She was the daughter of a Portuguese King who had promised her hand in marriage to a Moorish king. This was very much against her wishes and to thwart her fathers plans she prayed that God would make her repulsive and in answer to this she consequently sprouted a beard!

My first reaction to this was that the individual in the image does not have a beard and this sent me down a deep rabbit hole of research, one which, I think, eventually came to a satisfactory conclusion!

Several requests of Google Scholar later revealed a lack of depictions of Saint Wilgerfortis being crucified upside down. All images depicted her on either a Latin cross or a Tau cross. The cross in the image in the church is in saltire (diagonal) again there's no record of St Wigerfortis being crucified on saltire cross.

These two facts; the inverted crucifixion and the saltire cross were however two factors involved with the crucifixion of Saint Andrew.

Saint Andrew did not think he was worthy enough to be crucified in the same way as Christ, he therefore suffered an inverted crucifixion and of course the Saint Andrews cross is in saltire (as in the Scottish flag).

Further factors taken into consideration included:

The image in the church shows the person being tied to the cross and not nailed (as in the 6^th century texts such as the Acts of Andrew know to Gregory of Tours)

The cross displays branch stumps that have been roughly hewn off (as in the St Andrews cross)

The person in image has long hair. (St Andrew historically is often depicted with long hair)

All these factors taken into consideration, in my opinion, on the balance of probabilities is Saint Andrew and it’s possible the church may at one time I've been dedicated to him.

There are many other treasures to be found in this church I've highlighted two, but I thought I’d leave you the reader to discover the rest for yourself if you are in the area and have the time. I promise it will not be a wasted visit and perhaps while you are there you could pop a few coopers in the collect to help preserve the stunning gem in the Sussex countryside.