Bilsham Chapel
| Bilsham Chapel | |
|
Sussex | |
|---|---|
.JPG) The former chapel from the southeast | |
| Type: | Former chapel |
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | SU97220208 |
| Location: | 50°48’36"N, 0°37’17"W |
| Village: | Bilsham |
| History | |
| Built 13th century | |
| Former chapel | |
| Information | |
Bilsham Chapel is a small, flint-built deconsecrated former chapel in the hamlet of Bilsham in Sussex It was founded in the 13th century as a chapel of ease to the parish church of Yapton, the nearest village, but it fell out of religious use around the time of the Reformation. It has subsequently been used for storage and as labourers' cottages, and since 1972 it has been a single residential property. It is today a Grade II listed building because of its architectural and historical importance.[1]
History
Bilsham is a hamlet within the parish of Yapton a little inland from the sea coast and three quarters of a mile from Yapton's village centre and its parish church.[2][3] Evidence of Saxon settlement has been found around the single-street settlement, which has grown northwards towards Yapton in the 20th century. The manor of Bilsham, one of several in Yapton parish, was mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086.[3]
No place of worship existed at Bilsham until the 13th century. The earliest surviving features of the present building, on the north side of Bilsham Lane, are a pair of windows which have been dated to the 13th century[4] (or, by Nikolaus Pevsner, specifically to the 1260s).[2] Other sources suggest they may be 14th-century,[3][1] contemporary with the pointed-arched east window.[3][5]
During the reorganisation of the Church of England in the 16th century Reformation, rural chapels of ease were usually either upgraded to full parochial status or closed,[4] as happened at Bilsham: the chapel was closed in around 1551.[3][5] Nothing is known about the building's use for the next three centuries, but a study of Sussex churches in 1860 noted that it had been "converted into two tenements" for workers.[4] This may have happened in around 1840. One wall was rebuilt in brick at this time,[3] and more structural alterations were carried out in 1878.[4] The pair of cottages were converted into a shed before 1965,[2] but the building became residential again when it was turned into a single house, described as a "homely dwelling",[5] in 1972.[3][4]
Architecture
.JPG)
The chapel is a small, rectangular building,[5] which when a chapel was always a single-cell chapel with no internal division.[2][3] It has two storeys and walls of flint and sandstone with red-brick quoins and window dressings.[3][1] The oldest structural features are the two lancet windows in the north wall,[2] which have Y-tracery in a style typical of the early 14th century.[4] The pointed-arched lancet in the east wall has two lights and is either 14th-[2] or 15th-century.[1] Two pairs of single-light lancets with red-brick surrounds were added in the south wall during the 1878 renovations, which also added a timber roof with tie-beams. The two simple windows in the west wall may have been inserted then as well. A pair of dormers on the south side date from the 1972 conversion into a house.[4] A survey in 1860 noted that the original arched entrance on the north side was blocked, and described the "three solid stone buttresses" on that side. At that time, markings in the adjacent field (then part of Bilsham Farm) still identified the limits of the former churchyard, which was said to be large.
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 National Heritage List 1222544: The Chapel, Bilsham Lane, Yapton (Grade II listing)
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 Nairn & Pevsner 1965, p. 104
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 A History of the County of Sussex Volume 5 Part 1 pp 245-261: Yapton
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 Bilsham Chapel: Sussex Parish Churches
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 Vincent 2005, p. 13.
- Gibbon, Charles (1860). "Dedications of Churches and Chapels in West Sussex". Sussex Archaeological Collections (London: John Russell Smith (for the Sussex Archaeological Society)) 12.
- Nikolaus Pevsner: The Buildings of England: Sussex, 1965 Penguin Books ISBN 978-0-300-09677-4
- Vincent, Alex (2005). The Lost Churches and Chapels of Sussex. Seaford: S.B. Publications. ISBN 1-85770-303-0. Catalogue
