The chauntry, or free chapel, dedicated to St. Bartholomew, was erected on a piece of land granted by the lord of the manor of Brighthelmston, to the Priory of St. Pancras, at Southover, Lewes, under a quit rent of 3d a-year. It was built to the south-west of the knappe or knab, originally called by the Saxon settlers, _cnæp_, (the summit or crown of a hill) from its elevated position. It is now generally known by the name of Brighton place. Attached to the chauntry was a dwelling for the two or three monks who officiated there. The chauntry was destroyed by the fire which devastated the town, on the landing of the French, under Primauget, and it never after recovered its accustomed use and influence. The almshouses, which were afterwards built on the site, were sold to the parish in 1733, for the sum of £17, and the dwelling of the monks, called the Prior’s Lodge, became the residence of the vicar of Brighthelmston, after the Reformation. “Magna Britannia” mentions, “that there was a church near the middle of the town, and it was burnt down some years ago by the French.” This probably refers to the chapel or chauntry of St. Bartholomew. The Prior’s Lodge was pulled down by the Rev. Thomas Hudson, in 1790, the year he was collated to the rectory of Blatchington and vicarage of Brighthelmston. From the style of the architecture, and the decayed state of the timbers, there was ample room for supposing the building to have been erected not later than the close of the thirteenth century. In 1665 the Bartholomews is mentioned as a parcel of pasture. The parish workhouse, demolished in 1823, was erected on its site, and the rest of the space continued nearly plain ground till, in 1774, the market place was built, where the present Town Hall stands. The original market-place, that possessed by the town under the charter of Edward II., was on the cliff, where it had continued from the year 1313 till the close of the seventeenth, or the beginning of the last century; when, that part being sapped by the waves, the building was demolished. The vicarage house, which was substituted for the Prior’s Lodge, by the Rev. T. Hudson, was vacated by the present vicar, the Rev. Henry Michell Wagner, in 1835, and pulled down in 1837. The old vicarage garden was about a quarter of an acre in extent. The first stone of the present vicarage was laid on the 24th day of June, 1834, and in the following year the structure was completed, and accepted by the Bishop of the Diocese, on the unanimous recommendation of six commissioners, namely, three laymen and three clergymen, to the effect that the exchange would be, in every respect, beneficial. It stands in a garden of exactly two measured acres; and was built by Messrs. George Cheesman and Son.