The restoration has been carried out with taste and care
and the whole is worth seeing. The nuns of Easebourne would seem to
have been "difficult females," for a Bishop of Chichester in 1441 was
obliged to call the Prioress to order for wearing sumptuous clothes
with fur trimmings and for using too many horses when travelling, the
penance being a restriction to four. The nuns were spoken of by a
contemporary writer as "wild females of high family put at Easebourne
to keep them quiet."
The church, besides the tomb of the first Viscount Montague, removed
from Midhurst, contains a figure of Sir David Owen (1540); also a
Transitional font.
CHAPTER VIII
GOODWOOD AND BOGNOR
We now leave the Rother, turn south by the Chichester road and passing
over Cocking causeway reach, in three miles, that little village at the
foot of the pass through the Downs to Singleton, or better still, by
taking a rather longer route through West Lavington we may see the
church in which Manning preached his last sermon as a member of the
Anglican communion. The church and accompanying buildings date from
1850 and were designed by Butterfield; they are a good example of
nineteenth-century Gothic and are placed in a fine situation.
Pages:
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157