CHURCHES.
Old Shoreham church was built
before the Conquest and was recorded in 1086. (fn. 81)
William de Braose included the tithes of Erringham
and Shoreham in his grant to the church of St.
Nicholas, Bramber, c. 1073, (fn. 82) and the parish church
of Shoreham (i.e. Old Shoreham) was part of his
grant of 1080 or earlier to the abbey of St. Florent,
Saumur. (fn. 83) The abbey's daughter house, Sele
priory, replaced St. Nicholas's, Bramber, (fn. 84) and had
the advowson of Old Shoreham (fn. 85) with a pension of
5½ marks from the church. The vicar of Shoreham
recorded in 1222 may have been of Old or of New
Shoreham. (fn. 86) In the later 13th century the rectors of
Old Shoreham were sinecurists, (fn. 87) and a vicarage was
endowed in 1309; (fn. 88) in 1400 or 1401 Sele priory
appropriated the rectory, (fn. 89) following licences of
1397 and 1400. (fn. 90) The rectory, together with the
advowson of the vicarage established either in 1309
or at the time of the appropriation, passed with
others of the priory's possessions to Magdalen
College, Oxford. (fn. 91) The vicarage was united with
that of New Shoreham in 1897; (fn. 92) in 1949 the
college transferred the patronage of the combined
vicarages to the bishop. (fn. 93)
Old Shoreham church was valued at £24 in
1291. (fn. 94) The income which the vicar received under
the endowment of 1309 was not taxed in the early
15th century because of its poverty, (fn. 95) and later in
that century he seems to have received a salary of
£6 a year from the prior of Sele. (fn. 96) The vicarage was
worth £7 18s. 6d. a year net in 1535, (fn. 97) and £13 6s. 8d.
(apparently gross) in 1612. (fn. 98) Queen Anne's Bounty
augmented the vicarage with £200 in 1761, (fn. 99) and in
1831 the average net value of the living was £58 a
year. (fn. 1) In 1844 the vicar was awarded a rent-charge
of £155 for the small tithes, Magdalen College
receiving £310 for the great tithes. (fn. 2) In 1873, when
the net annual value of the living was £140, the
vicar received a voluntary augmentation of £150
from the college, which in addition had made a
beneficial lease to him of the rectorial rent-charge. (fn. 3)
The rector's house was mentioned in 1229. (fn. 4) In 1636
there was a small vicarage house, with 1/8 a. which
was the whole vicarial glebe, on the west side of the
village street adjoining the rectorial glebe southeast of the church. (fn. 5) It was presumably enlarged
soon afterwards, for the vicar's house had 9 hearths
in 1662, (fn. 6) but it was apparently not occupied in
1670; (fn. 7) in 1676 the churchwardens presented that
the parsonage (sc. vicarage) had been for many years
totally ruined and fallen down. (fn. 8) The house was
uninhabited from c. 1700 and a new one was built in
1723, (fn. 9) but by 1828 there was no vicarage house. (fn. 10)
William Wheeler, vicar 1843–55, built a large stone
house in the Tudor style close to the New Shoreham
boundary by Mill Lane. That house was used as the
vicarage after the union of the two benefices in
1897 but by 1931 had become a private house called
Shoreham Court, (fn. 11) later converted into flats.
The church at New Shoreham was recorded
c. 1096, when Philip de Braose added it, as the
church of the port, to the possessions which his
father William had granted to the abbey of St.
Florent. (fn. 12) About 1130 the abbey allowed Philip the
right to nominate the chaplain of New Shoreham
chapel, (fn. 13) which in 1146 was recorded as subordinate
to Old Shoreham church. (fn. 14) A grant of c. 1195
referring to the chapels belonging to Old Shoreham
church and witnessed by the chaplain of New
Shoreham may suggest that New Shoreham then
remained a chapelry, but it seems to be named as a
parish of itself c. 1170 and c. 1190, (fn. 15) and by the mid
13th century had become independent; under a
papal licence of 1250 the church, taxed at 15 marks
in 1255, was appropriated to Sele priory which in
1252 made an agreement with the vicar of New
Shoreham for the endowment of his vicarage. The
pope ordained the vicarage, with a slightly more
generous endowment, in 1261. (fn. 16) The rectory and
the advowson of the vicarage passed with those of
Old Shoreham to Magdalen College, Oxford; (fn. 17) as
already mentioned, the vicarages were united in
1897, and the bishop was patron from 1948.
When the vicarage was endowed in 1261 it
received a house, all the tithes of some produce, and
a third of other tithes and offerings, of which a
division was to be made each Saturday. (fn. 18) The
rectory was taxed at £10 in 1291 and the vicarage at
£5; (fn. 19) excluding great tithes the income of the
vicarage was put at £13 13s. 5d. in 1341 compared
with £8 15s. 4d. for the rectory. (fn. 20) Apparently with
the decline of the prosperity of the port the value of
the living fell: in 1374 the rectory was said to be
worth £4, (fn. 21) and the vicarage may have been
correspondingly reduced, for in 1405 New Shoreham
was one of seven churches in the diocese exempted
from payment of the clerical tenth. (fn. 22) Although the
vicarage was assessed at £6 in 1535 (fn. 23) it was said in
1548 not to exceed 5 marks a year. (fn. 24) During the
Interregnum the minister of New Shoreham
received an augmentation of his living, (fn. 25) the
poverty of which is likely to have been the reason
for the failure to fill it and for its sequestration from
c. 1662 to 1713. (fn. 26) In 1713 the Crown presented by
lapse a vicar who was induced to accept the living
by the promise of annual payments from the
parishioners. (fn. 27) After six augmentations by Queen
Anne's Bounty between 1777 and 1819 the vicarage
was worth on average £127 a year net c. 1830. (fn. 28)
From 1851 the vicar received a rent-charge of £30
in place of his tithes; it was then said that no tithes
of grain, wood, or hay had been paid to the titheowner, allegedly the duke of Norfolk, since 1828
or earlier. (fn. 29) The gross annual value of the vicarage
was £120 in 1851, excluding a voluntary payment
from Magdalen College as patron and impropriator, (fn. 30) which in 1873 added £380 a year to the
net annual income of £100. (fn. 31)
The house of the vicar of New Shoreham recorded
in 1261 (fn. 32) may have been on the site of no. 25 Church
Street, opposite the south-west corner of the
churchyard, where the vicar's house appears to have
been in 1636 (fn. 33) and was in the late 18th century. (fn. 34)
The name Manor House given to the 18th-century
building there has no historical justification. St.
Mary's House, an 18th-century house opposite the
north-east corner of the churchyard, was the
property of Nathaniel Woodard, curate of New
Shoreham, who kept a boarding school there from
1848 until 1857, when he moved it to new buildings
at Lancing; (fn. 35) by 1873 the house had replaced that in
Church Street as the vicarage, and by 1931 was used
as the vicarage for the united benefice. (fn. 36) St. Mary's
House ceased to be the vicarage when a house in
Church Street was acquired in 1947. (fn. 37)
Whether Old Shoreham was served in the 14th
century by its rectors, its vicars, or chaplains is
uncertain. (fn. 38) The rector recorded in 1355, (fn. 39) who is
not known to have been non-resident, remained
until he exchanged the living c. 30 years later. (fn. 40) In
the second quarter of the 16th century apparently (fn. 41)
and in 1563 there was a resident vicar, (fn. 42) but in 1577
the vicar, Richard Sisson, was presented also to New
Shoreham, where he was buried in 1607. (fn. 43)
In 1636 Old Shoreham was served by a curate. (fn. 44)
In 1662 the vicar was the same as in 1642, (fn. 45) but his
successor seems to have lived on his rectory of
Keymer (fn. 46) and neglected Old Shoreham. (fn. 47) In 1686
the vicar, Simon Winch, was said to be absent and
totally negligent of the cure; he seems to have
disappeared. (fn. 48) The living was sequestrated, (fn. 49) like
New Shoreham, and from 1695 the sequestrator of
both livings was John Gray, rector of Southwick. (fn. 50)
Old Shoreham remained in Gray's care until 1751
and, though vicars were instituted, (fn. 51) continued to be
served by curates until 1828; from then it shared an
incumbent with New Shoreham until the Puseyite
vicar William Wheeler became a Roman Catholic
in 1855. (fn. 52) In 1851 Old Shoreham had two Sunday
services with adult congregations of 44 and 68 on
Census Sunday. (fn. 53) Wheeler's successor at Old
Shoreham was J. B. Mozley, a Tractarian who was
later Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford. (fn. 54) The
two parishes had separate vicars until the union
of the benefices in 1897. (fn. 55)
At New Shoreham the vicars in the 14th century
were assisted by chaplains, (fn. 56) and in 1348 an otherwise unknown chapel of St. John the Baptist was
recorded, (fn. 57) perhaps a successor of the Hospitallers'
chapel or alternatively a misnaming of it. In 1374
the prior of Sele as impropriate rector was said to be
bound to find a chaplain to celebrate daily in the
church of New Shoreham. (fn. 58) Vicars did not stay
long: there were eight in the years 1381–92 and
three in the years 1439–41. (fn. 59) In the second quarter
of the 16th century the vicar seems to have been
resident. (fn. 60) In 1548 the vicar, aged 70, who had also
served as priest of the chantry of St. Mary founded
at an unknown date, was granted because of the
smallness of the vicarage a pension of £4 a year,
6s. 8d. less than the income of the chantry. (fn. 61) The
vicarage was vacant and the cure unserved in
1563. (fn. 62) In 1577 the vicar of Old Shoreham was
presented also to New Shoreham. (fn. 63) A later vicar,
William Nicholson, bible scholar of Magdalen
College and later bishop of Gloucester, was
succeeded in 1615 after only one year by a former
demy of Magdalen, William Greenhill, who
remained until 1633 and was later prominent as a
nonconformist. (fn. 64) Evidence of puritanism in New
Shoreham may be seen in the use of the forename
Repentance and in the connexions of seamen
involved in Charles II's escape in 1651. (fn. 65) In 1636
the vicar was resident. (fn. 66) Thomas Hallett, vicar in
1651, became a nonconformist minister after the
Restoration, (fn. 67) and for 50 years the living was
unfilled and served by curates mostly with benefices
near by. (fn. 68) The vicar presented in 1713 later went to
law with some of his parishioners: he alleged that
they had failed in their undertaking to augment his
living, they that he had not kept his promise to
preach twice each Sunday, and a witness said that
whereas until 1722 there were two daily services and
communion once a month, thereafter the vicar
served two neighbouring parishes and no-one
preached at Shoreham. (fn. 69) Later in the 18th century
New Shoreham was usually held in plurality with
Washington. (fn. 70) In 1828 one man was presented to
Old and New Shoreham, and that arrangement was
continued in 1843 on the admission as vicar of
William Wheeler, (fn. 71) who became a Roman Catholic
in 1855. Meanwhile he had given charge of New
Shoreham in 1846 to his curate Nathaniel Woodard,
the High Church founder of the Woodard schools.
Woodard's educational activities appear to have
diverted him very soon from the cure, (fn. 72) but by
1850 many people had seceded from the parish
church because of the Puseyism there. (fn. 73) Similar
motives may have influenced the character of the
Protestant Grammar School which in 1851 belonged
to G. H. Hooper, (fn. 74) a relation of an earlier vicar of
New Shoreham. (fn. 75) In 1851 there were three Sunday
services with adult congregations of 311, 138, and
273 on Census Sunday. (fn. 76) New Shoreham was held
separately until the union of the benefices in 1897. (fn. 77)
In 1976 the vicar had an assistant and other
additional clergy.
At Old Erringham the remains of a chapel of ease
suggest that it was built in the 11th century. There
are no certain documentary references to the
chapel; (fn. 78) the chapels belonging to Old Shoreham
church c. 1195 (fn. 79) may have included Old Erringham
or New Shoreham church, or the supposed former
chapel next to Court Farm in Old Shoreham in
1616. (fn. 80) The chapel at Old Erringham is likely to
have gone out of use either when the hamlet was
depopulated in the later Middle Ages or at the
Reformation. Part of Old Shoreham parish went to
form the new parish assigned to St. Giles's church,
built in 1906 in Kingston. (fn. 81)
The church of ST. NICOLAS, Old Shoreham,
so called c. 1080, (fn. 82) is of rubble with dressings of
freestone and has a chancel with two north vestries,
central tower with transepts, and nave. The
north and west walls of the nave, and perhaps parts
of the south wall also, survive from a small preConquest church which seems to have had a chancel,
nave, and west tower. (fn. 83) In the mid 12th century the
chancel was replaced by a tower, which was flanked
by transepts with eastern chapels, and a new
apsidal-ended chancel was added. The upper
stage of the former west tower was removed and the
south wall of that tower and the nave were reconstructed on a single alignment as part of a westward
extension of the nave. An early doorway in the north
wall of the tower was blocked at that time and a new
doorway opened in the north wall of the nave, but
the principal entrance was by an enriched doorway
in the west wall of the south transept. Further
architectural ornament occurs on the crossing arches
and on the external arcading of the tower.
The chancel was rebuilt, longer and wider, in the
earlier 14th century, and a north chapel replaced the
former apse to the transept. The south apse may
also have been removed at that time. The most
notable medieval fitting is a timber screen of c. 1300
which is now below the chancel arch. (fn. 84) A tie-beam
which has been ascribed to the 12th century is
probably of the 16th century or early 17th. The
farmer of Erringham was presented in 1605 for not
repairing the chancel aisle belonging to Erringham; (fn. 85) that may have been either the north chapel
or the north transept or both: by 1769 the north
chapel had largely fallen down and the north
transept was roofless. (fn. 86) The repair and restoration
of the church were begun in 1840 to designs by
J. M. Neale and J. C. Buckler. Shortage of funds and
bad weather delayed work, which was still in
progress in 1844. (fn. 87) The transepts were restored and
reopened to the crossing, and two north vestries
were built on the site of the north chapel.
Monuments in the church include those to
members of the Poole, Blaker, Monke, Bridger, and
Head families. There were two bells in 1724, (fn. 88) but in
1976 the single bell was of 1800. The oldest plate is
of the 18th century. (fn. 89) The registers begin in 1566
but there are gaps in the late 16th century and mid
17th. (fn. 90)
The church of St. Mary De Haura, (fn. 91) New
Shoreham, had that name c. 1096. (fn. 92) It is faced with
flints and has dressings of ashlar. The surviving
building is the eastern end of a large cruciform
church and has an aisled and clerestoried nave
(formerly the chancel) which incorporates a
sanctuary, west tower with transepts, and west
porch. Construction of the original church probably
began in the late 11th century at the eastern end. It
had a chancel with an apse whose footings are
below the present third bay, north and south
chapels of uncertain plan, a short crossing tower
with transepts, and an aisled nave of six bays. There
is a structural break between tower and nave, and
the latter may not have been completed until the
mid 12th century. A new chancel (later the nave) of
five bays was begun in the later 12th century and not
completed until the early 13th. During that time
there were several changes in its architectural
design and decorative style but the overall design
was retained. It provided for low vaulted aisles and a
spacious vaulted central area with triforium and
clerestory. At a late stage in its construction,
probably at or soon after the building of the vault,
two flying buttresses were added to each side and
they are supported by massive additional buttresses.
The two upper stages of the tower are contemporary with the new chancel. The scale of the
building has given rise to the suggestion that it was
planned as a collegiate church, (fn. 93) and although no
evidence survives of such an intention, the new
chancel was built at about the time when New
Shoreham won ecclesiastical independence from
Old Shoreham and was near the height of its
importance as a port.
Later medieval additions included a large porch
on the south side of the nave, several new windows,
and a rood-screen with an altar on the loft, against
the nave arch. The church is shown as complete in a
rough representation of it made after 1605, but in
1686 when the chancel floor was unpaved and the
bells out of use the passage into the body of the
church was described as utterly ruinate. (fn. 94) Perhaps
the already neglected nave was put beyond repair
by the storm of 1703 which greatly damaged the
town. (fn. 95) A brief for repairs to damage to the sum of
£2,203 was issued in 1714, (fn. 96) and it was presumably
between then and 1720 that the eastern bay of the
nave, aisleless, was converted into a west porch, a
fragment of the former west wall being the only
other part of the nave to remain above ground. (fn. 97)
Some work was done on the church c. 1830, (fn. 98) but
it was not until 1876 that there was a thorough
restoration, under Arthur Loader, who put new
windows into the aisles and opened up the north
transept, clerestory, and tower arcades. (fn. 99) The north
transept was dedicated in 1947 as a war memorial
chapel. There are nine monuments of between 1832
and 1943 to members of the Hooper family. The
font is of the late 12th century, and incised marks of
perhaps the same period on the columns of the
arcades are thought to be masons' marks, Templars'
crosses, and crusaders' crosses. The plate includes
pewter vessels of the 17th century. The four bells
of 1686 (fn. 1) had been increased to five by 1724, (fn. 2) and
were replaced by six in 1767. One was removed, four
were recast in 1896, and two more were added to
make up the eight in 1897. The registers begin in
1566 and are virtually complete. (fn. 3)