Thread by @friendschurches

Nobody knows how old the chapel in the woods is.

Nestled among ferns and mosses, behind oaks and maples, it has a numinous presence.

In 1994, some render fell off the south wall exposing herringbone masonry.

At last, the chapel at Milland began to reveal its secrets.

#thread

More work uncovered a round-headed window... These discoveries enabled us to place the origins of part of the chapel in the 11-12th century.

The earliest documentary evidence for the chapel is a will of 1532, when Isabel Colpece left “ii shepe to the Church of Tyklyth”.

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Clearly, Isabel’s sheep didn’t go that far and a survey by the Chichester Archdeaconry in 1602 tells us that “the chauncel two windows unglassed and not paved”, it had “an insufficient seate for the minister” and “the desk is but mean for the bible”.

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In November 1610, the chapel warden was ordered to install a pulpit and was excommunicated until he had done so.

Is Chichester Archdeaconry still so tyrannical?!

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By the mid-1800s the chapel was bulging.
A bigger church was needed.
So, a big-boned Victorian one was built on the chapel's doorstep.

Pevsner described the setting of old and new as “a telling contrast between true piety and 19th-century religious advertisement”.
Ouch.

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The old chapel was used as a Sunday School until the 1930s. After that, it fell into disuse… and dereliction.

When Pevsner visited in 1965, he wrote, “the inside keeps its moving simplicity – so hard to achieve consciously – in spite of the rubbish and bird droppings".

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In 1974, we stepped in to haul this ancient place back from the brink. And just in the nick of time too.

Read more about this church in @sdnpa here: friendsoffriendlesschurches.org.uk/milland/

#isolation #howwesavedthischurch #friendlesschurches

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