Winchelsea Parish
Church
THE EARLY YEARS
Our Parish Church is named for St. Thomas the Martyr, Archbishop of Canterbury, who was murdered in his own Cathedral in 1170. The first recorded mention of the church of St. Thomas in Old Winchelsea came in 1215. The town was then a flourishing seaport on the shingle, but in 1250 it was battered by a phenomenally high tide which ‘flowed twice without ebbing with a horrible roaring and a glint as of fire on the waves.’ Thirty-seven years later further floods virtually destroyed the town and changed the course of the River Rother,
So important was Winchelsea as a seaport that King Edward I wasted no time in finding a new and safer site on the hilltop of Iham, where the present town and its church still stand. The town was planned on the gridiron pattern with the church occupying a dominant two-acre site near the centre. It was planned on a grand scale and work started in 1288 to erect a magnificent Gothic edifice, with a chancel and choir, two side chapels, a central tower, transepts and a great nave.
PLAN OF SITE HERE IF POSSIBLE (See Church Guide p8)
Building stone came from Caen in Normandy, marble from the west of Sussex and timber rafters made of sound Sussex oak. Highly skilled stonemasons worked on the carvings and several handsome sedilias in the chancery and side chapel.. Three effigies of polished marble - once though to have been rescued from the church in Old Winchelsea - were placed on the north side in memory of an unknown warrior, his wife and son, possibly the Godfrey family.
The first of the two chantries on the south side was endowed in 1312 by Stephen Alard to contain a tomb of supreme workmanship in memory of Gervase Alard, Admiral of the Western Fleet, probably Stephen’s father. The stone effigy is in full armour with raised hands to enclose a heart and a lion crouching at the feet. Two large angels supported the double cushion on which the head rests. A marginal inscription promises fifty days of pardon for those who pray for his soul. The delicately carved arch of the recessed canopy spring from the heads of King Edward and his second wife, Margaret. The tomb provided the background for Sir John Millais’ painting ’L’Enfant du Regiment.’
The second monument is of a later date, with the arch springing from the heads of Edward II and Queen Isabella, sometimes known as ‘the she-wolf of France.’ It is reputed to be the tomb of Stephen Alard himself, who became Admiral of the Cinque Ports and the Western Fleet.
The centre of each canopy is surmounted by the head of a Green Man, a prominent pagan figure, associated with tree worship from at least as early as 500BC.
THE FRENCH RAIDS
Winchelsea flourished as a major seaport for only a few years before disaster struck. In 1337 in one of the first skirmishes of the Hundred Years War the new town of Winchelsea was attacked and taken in a French raid, leaving a trail of devastation behind them.
Eleven years later the town was decimated by the Black Death which carried off among many others the then Rector of St. Thomas’s, John Glynde.
Then in 1359 the French returned with a force of some three thousand men, gaining entrance one Sunday morning through the New Gate, then on the sea shore about three quarters of a mile to the west of the church. There was little resistance, the men of the town being absent on a similar mission in France, the women and children huddled for shelter in St. Giles’s Church, on the opposite side of the town. Many were butchered according to a local historian ‘without regard to age, sex, degree or order.’
The French were back the following year, and twenty years later a Castilian fleet of powerful galleys came with a force of French and Castilian troops to ‘fire Winchelsea and the approaches of London.’ Historians believe it was in this raid that the nave of St. Thomas’s was burnt to the ground, and the tower and transepts destroyed, the remains of which are still visible, although the remains of the nave have now almost disappeared..
The church was hurriedly patched up, but with Winchelsea losing its former prominence there was little money to spare for any major restoration.
THE LATER MIDDLE AGES
During the 16th Century Reformation Winchelsea’s Dominican and Franciscan endowments were confiscated and later pulled down, including the hospitals.
On the accession of Queen Mary in 1547 Peter Danyell, the then rector was deprived of his living and replaced by the Catholic Robert Jordan. Danyell was reinstated on the accession of Queen Elizabeth in 1559.
During these turbulent years the interior of the church fell into a deplorable state of repair, made worse by the decline of the trade due to the silting up of the town’s harbour and, possibly, by Puritan iconoclasts. By the 1660s the diarist John Evelyn wrote of the ‘forlorn ruins’ he found in Winchelsea.
THE MODERN ERA
By the eighteenth century John Wesley, who came to preach here, wrote of ‘that poor skeleton of Ancient Winchelsea with its large church now in ruins.’ The long serving rector at the time was the formidable Drake Hollingberry who held the living from 1767 to 1822. During his incumbency a large Georgian rectory was built on the site of the old St. Giles, with many of its stones going to build a new harbour wall at Winchelsea Beach. An ancient Saxon tower which stood in the churchyard was also demolished for this purpose.
During the Napoleonic Wars several different regiments were barracked at Winchelsea‘s Barrack Square. The Church Register records that 72 soldiers belonging to various regiments were buried in the churchyard during the Peninsular War (1808-14)
In the early years of the nineteenth century the church had become so dilapidated it was declared ‘almost unfit for public worship’, but in 1850 the perilous condition of the fabric was finally realised and extensive repairs carried out, since when a constant watch has been kept on the state of the fabric, both inside and outside the church.
THE CHURCH TODAY
After the Great War the magnificent stained glass windows were installed as a war memorial dedicated to ’the men of the Cinque Ports and the ancient towns of Rye and Winchelsea, who whether on sea, land or in the air, gave their lives in the War, 1914- 1918, and in thanksgiving for those who returned safe to their homes.’ The three windows in the south aisle are dedicated to the themes of Land, Air and Fire, and Sea. The work of Dr Douglas Strachan (1875-1950) they are regarded as some of the finest stained glass of the modern era. They were presented to the church as a gift from Lord Blanesborough of Greyfriars and dedicated in 1933 by the Archbishop of Canterbury in the presence of representatives of the Cinque Portrs and the Ancient Towns.
The altar and retable in the Lady Chapel were also presented by Lord Blanesborough at this time as was the splendid organ above the west porch.
The the windows on the south aisle were also designed and installed by Dr Strachan, including the beautiful east window which dominates the view of the church when entering through the west porch. The unusual window over the sedilia in the south wall commemorates the heroism of the crew of the Rye lifeboat The Mary Sanford who lost their lives while going to the rescue of another ship during a great storm in November 1928.
The clock on the north side of the tower was overhauled in Jubilee Year 1977 and again in 1998/9 when the beautiful dial was repainted. The cost was partly born by the Friends of Winchelsea Church a voluntary organisation started in 1966 to raise money to help maintain the fabric of this beautiful church and to whom the parish owes a great debt of gratitude for the maintenance work that has been carried out in recent years. .
(See Friends Site for further details)