Church Heritage Record 610481

Chancel with north vestry, nave without aisles, north porch and west tower with spire.

Nave roughly 15m (50ft) x 6m (20 ft).

The building has a complicated history. It was built in 1839, designed by Decimus Burton, commissioned by a group of men including Richard Palliser, the squire of Seacox Heath, who had a squire’s pew with (empty) vault beneath in the north-west corner of the nave. The spire was added to the tower in 1873 by Slater & Carpenter, the chancel and vestry completed by Carpenter & Inglelow in 1877.  The present east window seems to belong to this phase, but the side windows were single lancets as in the nave.

The chancel and vestry were rebuilt with new side windows, mural and mosaic decorations in the chancel (over an earlier Victorian scheme shown in pre-1916 photographs in the CCC collection) and a rood screen, added by 2nd Viscount Goschen (Viceroy of India 1929-31, the son of the 1st Viscount George Goschen of Seacox Heath, the famous politician, economist and administrator) after 1916 as a memorial to his son who had been killed in the Great War. The lead rainwater goods date to this renovation.  The artist responsible for the rood screen, decoration and the monuments relating to it may have been George Fellowes Prynne.

The fine vicarage nearby is also of c 1839 and probably designed by Decimus Burton (this was sold in 1965). Both buildings are clearly designed as complimentary features in the landscape.  Burton was a prolific architect and garden designer, and a prominent public figure in the middle half of the 19th century. He initially trained in the building practice run by his father, and then worked with John Nash and others. He worked at Regents Park, Hyde Park, London Zoo and Kew, and was commissioned to design the major new developments at Fleetwood, St Leonards-on-Sea and Tunbridge Wells.  He also designed several churches including Goring-by-Sea St Mary and Tunbridge Wells Holy Trinity in Sussex, the latter his magnum opus in this genre but now converted into a theatre.

The Sussex Weald had been exploited for its wood and iron ores since at least the Iron Age. This was developed into an industry under the Romans, and later reached another peak in the 16th and 17th centuries serving the armaments industry, with a local centre at nearby Wadhurst.  The church is surrounded by what is left of the woods which fuelled this industry.  The Historic Environment Record should therefore be consulted before any development of the site is proposed.

Flimwell has had its share of ill fate. In 1264 Henry III’s army is said to have camped there during the second Barons’ rebellion and following a murder supposedly beheaded 300 local people. More recently in 1944 a stray doodlebug (V1 missile) destroyed the village school, which was never replaced. This blast also killed at least two people and blew out the stained glass windows on the south side of the church.

This is an impressive and surprisingly large church by this famous architect, away from any sizeable centre of population. It is designed in the Early English style, with the (for this period) typical “schoolroom” aisleless nave kept very simple with paired plain lancets to each bay between slender buttresses with one set-off, which then continue up as pilasters to join a plain corbel table.  The gabled porch is located in the middle bay of the nave, and has a moulded pointed doorway. The roof carries through over the chancel.

The west tower is clearly Burton’s design, of three stages, angle buttresses with weatherings to each stage, the stages recessed within these and upwards, with deeply recessed round windows to the lower stage, paired lancets to the middle stage and 2-light louvred openings with plate tracery to the belfry. There is a west doorway, pointed with continuously moulded surround and hoodmould with mask stops.  The broached shingled spire is as tall as the tower and gives the church considerable vertical emphasis, balancing its length.

The 2-bay chancel is treated differently, with 2-light cusped pointed lights within square frames to the side walls (the western in the south wall is longer), and a 3-light plate tracery east window.  The north vestry is cleverly articulated against the chancel, taking up the west bay, the chancel roof is carried down as a cat slide, partly hidden behind a parapet and copings to the sloping sides. A tall chimney rises from the east angle of vestry and chancel. There is a round window with quatrefoils within above a pointed doorway in the west wall, with a 2-light within a square frame adjacent in 14th-century style, ie perhaps intended to suggest an archaeological development. Similar single light in the north wall.  There are two plain buttresses to the corners of the north wall. An extra, indented block to the east of this with boiler house underneath has two similar 2-lights in the east wall.

The exterior is quite impressive if austere, and one receives a surprise on entering and looking east to the chancel. Before doing this, let us note that the nave walls are whitewashed, reflecting the light from the mostly clear glazed windows of the nave.  The nave is fully pewed with light-stained pine benches with panelled backs and moulded ends, an attractive set. The complexity of the fine dark-stained hammer-beam roof with crown posts, arch-braces and turned pendant finials attracts one’s attention, as does the west gallery, which is quite unusual, a balcony rail with thin turned balusters within a tall pointed continuously moulded tower arch, above a blank wall pierced by a simple pointed entrance. Nice light-stained panelling around the wooden font in the south-west nave.  York stone flags and quarry tiles form the floor. So far, everything is still austere.

Now turning east, the atmosphere changes, the eye caught by the richly carved and gilded 7-bay oak rood screen with near life-size painted rood in the place of a chancel arch. Beyond this the mural paintings, stencilled surfaces and texts, mosaics and encaustic tiles of the richly decorated chancel can be glimpsed, a full decorative scheme which covers the floor, wall surfaces and panelled ceiling, the dominant colours being red, green and gold, creating a sumptuous effect. Unfortunately there is some damage caused by water infiltration, particularly to the stencilled patterns on the side walls at the east end. An aumbry and piscina are integral to the design.

The organ in its chamber opens off the north wall within a wooden tracery arch.  This, the stained glass of the east window and the fine suspended brass lamp are also part of this scheme.  The three lancets of the east window have been blocked, with a curtain across behind the altar. 

This richly decorated chancel is rather at odds with the noble austerity of the rest of the building. It is, as noted above, a memorial to George Joachim Goschen, who died in 1916. Indeed, with the prominent memorials to this man and to others of the parish who fell in World War I (the list headed by the above) on the north wall, the church has something of the character of a family memorial chapel. Stained glass windows at the east end of the nave in memory of the Goschens emphasises this impression.