Cathedrals -- England; England -- Description and travel
Amberley boasts a Castle and stands right in the mouth of one of those
gaps in the Downs as Bramber does, the gap of the Arun, and it might
well be thought that Amberley held this pass. As a fact she did not.
That gap is held by Arundel; the Castle at Amberley was a palace of the
Bishop of Chichester, granted to the Bishop of Selsey long before the
Conquest; it was only castellated in the fourteenth century. It is none
the less an interesting ruin, very picturesque, with remains of a
chapel, while the beautiful house built within the castle walls early
in the sixteenth century is altogether lovely. And as for the church, I
can never hope to tell of all its interest and beauty. Certainly a
Norman church once stood here, of which the nave of that we see was
part, as was the very noble chancel arch; but the chancel itself, the
south aisle, and the tower are of the thirteenth century, while the
south door is very early Decorated, most beautifully carved. There is
not surely in all Sussex a more delightful spot than this lying so
quietly in the meads, with its beautiful church, its ruined castle, and
fine old Elizabethan house, where Arun bends slowly and lazily towards
the Downs and the sea.
It was with real regret that on that May morning I left Amberley,
turning often to look back at it, and last from the great seven-arched
bridge over the Arun, whence one may look down stream upon the wooded
slopes of Arundel Park. Then I went on up the road that winds through the
steep village of Houghton swiftly up on to the Downs, wooded here very
nobly, and so at the top of Rewell Hill I turned to the left and made my
way through the noble park to the little town of Arundel.
Now I cannot say why, but in spite of its seduction, which is full of
splendour, of its noble history and great buildings, I have never been
able to love Arundel. One is there always I feel too much in the shadow
of that mighty Castle which for the most part is not old at all, too
much in the power of that great new church that surely was never built
by English hands, which has altogether blotted out the older
sanctuary, and which, Catholic though it be, has never won my
affection. Arundel itself is all in the shadow of these two things,
each of which is too big for it, too heavy for free laughter and light-
heartedness. So it seems to me.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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