Cathedrals -- England; England -- Description and travel
The church of Holy Trinity, Bosham, is thus the most important Saxon
work left to us in Sussex, indeed save for the aisles and arcades and
the Norman and Early English additions to the chancel, that glorious
eastern window of five lancets, which in itself is worth a journey to
see, the clerestory, and the furniture we have here really a complete
Saxon work. The font is later Norman and not very interesting; but the
exquisite recessed tomb with the effigy of a girl lying upon it is a
noble work of the thirteenth century, said to mark the grave of
Canute's daughter. The crypt dates also from that time. Near the south
door is another fine canopied tomb, said to be that of Herbert of
Bosham. The windows are Norman in the clerestory and Early English and
Decorated elsewhere throughout the church. The stalls in the chancel
are Perpendicular. But here if anywhere in south-eastern England we
have a church dating from the Dark Age, in which happily we were
persuaded back again within the influence of the Faith and of Rome.
Bosham then for every Englishman is a holy place only second to
Glastonbury and Canterbury: it is a monument of our conversion, of the
re-entry of England into Christendom, of that Easter of ours which saw
us rise from the dead.
A few ruins, mere heaps of stones, mark the site of the college to the
north of the church. Of Earl Godwin's manor-house only the moat remains
near an ancient mill towards the sea; and there, upon the little green
between the grey church and the grey sea, one may best recall the
reverent past of this lovely spot. Little is here for pride, much to
make us humble and exceeding thankful. God was worshipped here between
the sea and the greenwood when our South Saxon forefathers were not
only the merest pagans, but so barbarous that they knew not even how to
fish, when they were so wretched that in companies they would cast
themselves into the sea because there was no light in their hearts and
nothing else to do. Out of that darkness St Wilfrid led them, but even
before he came with the light of Christ and of Rome, in some half
barbarous way in this little place men prayed and Mass was said, and
there was the means of deliverance though men knew it not, being
barbarians.
It is as though at Bosham we were able to catch a glimpse, as it were,
of all that darkness out of which we are come by the guiding of a star.
[Illustration: BOSHAM]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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