Church Heritage Record 610337

Complex. Five-bay aisled nave with west porch, north transept, chancel and flanking organ chamber and vestry, adjacent nave to the south with east and west chapels and south porch. Crypt under the chancel with a large room.

Both naves estimated to be c 23m (75ft) x 8m (26ft).

The first reference to Bexhill is in a charter granted by King Offa of Mercia in 772AD, in which he established a church and religious community there, which may have been on the site of the historic parish church of St Peter. After the Conquest William I gave the manor to Robert, Count of Eu, along with most of the Hastings area.  The manor was given to the Bishops of Chichester in 1148, and it is probable that the first manor house was built by the bishops at this time. The ruins still visible at Manor Gardens in Bexhill Old Town were built about 1250, a short distance north of the church, however there is little chance of archaeological remains at the church site, as the area was always prone to flooding prior to the building of the sea wall in the Victorian period.

The town prospered throughout the medieval period and into the 19th century.  The railway came to Bexhill in 1846, but the town experienced a tourist boom and expansion typical of the south coast towns only from the 1880s following the building of a sea wall.  The Victorian new town was built along the shoreline between 1883 and 1902.

The church was built as part of this expansion in 1891 to a design by Sir Arthur Blomfield, and was conventional with aisled transeptal nave. The south extension was added in 1908-9 with a legacy from Miss Evelyne Clarke, in scale practically another church with Lady chapel at the apsidal east end which opens off the south aisle of the main church.

The chapel of All Souls at the west end of this was designed by Leslie Moore in 1935.  The ceiling of the apsidal chapel at the east end was painted around this time, the chancel was restored with new floor and reredos, the pulpit was elaborated with a tester, and new textiles were commissioned. W H Randoll Blacking may have been involved in this work, which was partly undertaken under the auspices of the Warham Guild and its founder member F C Eeles (then Secretary of the CCC).

The Grade I listed De La Warr Pavilion built in 1935 by Erich Mendelsson is a major feature of the town belonging to the later phase of the town’s development. Following the decline in the tourist industry since the 1970s Bexhill is now more residential in nature, with a considerable population of pensioners.

Following a fire in the north-west corner in November 2005 a plain full height plywood screen was recently inserted just within the southern arcade to separate the two, and the original church has been effectively mothballed.  The smoke damage has been largely removed but there is still scaffolding around the west end.

There is a lot more to this very large church than one would expect from Nairn’s and the statutory listing’s 3-line descriptions, particularly inside, though both the exterior and interior is presently in an unsatisfactory condition after the fire.  It might be noted that there are relatively few listed buildings in Bexhill, and this church is one of the most prominent in the townscape.

The church is designed in the early Gothic style of c 1300, generally in the lancet style but with use of Free Gothic tracery. There are prominent stepped gabled buttresses which provide punctuation to the various parts of the composition.  The west end of the nave has a tall 2-light lancet flanked by two shorter lancets with a vesica with agnus dei above, above a lean-to narthex with a row of small lancets and adjacent doorway.  Short lancets to the aisles and 2-lights to the clearstorey.

The north transept has a 2-light plate tracery window above a small 3-light square-framed window. On the west side of this is a lean-to porch under a cat-slide continuation of the aisle roof, with a shouldered doorway. The chancel has a 5-light Free Gothic tracery east window and 2-light lancets in the side walls. A flat roofed organ chamber with moulded parapet and adjacent lean-to vestry, and a nicely articulated stone double stack rising from the chancel complete a complex vista.

The nave of the south extension, which is almost as big as the old church, has a pointed 5-light Decorated tracery window in the west wall under a small 3-light breather, with alternately 3- and 4-light windows with depressed arch heads the south wall. These have tracery complementing the east window tracery of the “old” church.  There are short pointed 2-lights to the apsidal chancel.  There is a porch on the south side with a stone moulded gable, again depressed, this apparently rarely used; the shouldered entrance is again on the west side, with a row of small lancets in the south wall.

Moving inside through a depressed arch doorway in a lean-to porch at the west end of the south aisle flush with the narthex, within is a vestibule with square-headed doorway on the south side leading into the chapel of All Souls to the south, and pointed doorway previously to a narthex to the north which was burned out during the fire, this entrance now hosts the War Memorial.  Moving into the church through a square doorway, the interior is cavernous. The building has been divided into two following the fire of 2005 with a rough plywood screen running east-west, worship taking place in the All Souls Chapel at the west end of the south “new” church.

The interior is brick-faced with stone bands and dressings.  The floors are of woodblock with some use of tiles and marble. The aisles have octagonal brick piers with stone bases and moulded capitals rising to pointed arcades, as noted already there is an extra arcade, opening onto the nave of the south chapel. The temporary screen is just to the north of this arcade. The responds and chancel arch have tight foliate carving.

To describe the main part of the church first, the nave has been cleared and is an open space, its vastness emphasised by the excellent and very impressive open arch-braced roof of two tiers, the members intricately carved with tracery in the spandrels. Moulded stone corbels. A chancel screen of fine filigree open tracery wraps around the large pulpit with tester. 

Mosaic floor to the chancel between rather good choir stalls with open tracery fronts with lamps, a large arch opens in the north wall behind these containing the organ pipes.  There are more tracery screens defining rooms flanking the sanctuary, containing the vestry to the north and organ console to the south; stairs to the crypt lead down from here. At the east end, Hopton stone steps and floor to the sanctuary and painted and gilded reredos, covered in plastic for protection. Pointed door to the vestry in the north wall, stone sedilia with Early English arcading in the south wall.

The “south nave” also has a splendid arch-braced roof, slightly simpler than that in the old church.  Chairs of the 1930s or later in the nave. There are various shrines (St John Mary Vianny, Lady of Walsingham) around the church with plaster figures. Pointed chancel arch of two orders. 

The Lady chapel is an impressive set-piece in its own right, with a painted ceiling with the Virgin and Child and cherubs against a cloudy sky, with a mural of historic figures (bishops, kings and queens, philosophers) on the cornice underneath, which was done later than the altar.  Filigree wooden tracery chancel screen, the sanctuary with an altar chest with painted tripartite panel, marble floor.

A traceried solid screen at the west end defines the small chapel of All Souls, which appears to have been the part designed by Moore. The chapel has plain panelling all around and wooden piers which branch to support the beamed ceiling.