Broadwater is now a suburb of Worthing. Here is a very interesting
Transitional-Norman cruciform church, at one time magnificent in its
appurtenances, no fewer than six chantry chapels being attached; the
remains of these were done away with in the early nineteenth century.
Note the old altar stone in the floor of the chancel, also on the
exterior north wall a dedication cross in flints. In the chancel is a
brass to John Mapleton, 1432, chancellor of Joan of Navarre, and there
are two fine tombs, one of Thomas Lord de la Warre (1526) and the other
of the ninth of that line (1554). John Bunnett, interred in 1734, aged
109, had six wives, three of whom he married and buried after he was
100! The church has a modern association which will be of interest to
all lovers of wild nature; here in 1887 Richard Jeffries was buried.
One cannot but think that the great naturalist would have been more
fittingly laid to rest in one of the lonely little God's-acres which
nestle in the Downs he loved so well.
[Illustration: BROADWATER.]
Worthing until the end of the eighteenth century was a mere suburb of
Broadwater; its actual beginnings as a watering place were nearly
contemporary with those of Brighton.
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