There are three churches with a lot of medieval paintings in the West Sussex villages of
Hardham, Coombes, and Clayton.
The survival of these wonderful paintings is serendipitous. Their fate hangs by three conjoined threads of fortuitous circumstance:
1. The artist was adept at using true fresco technique, which bonds together pigment in fresh plaster to make a much more durable painting medium than can be achieved by simply putting paint onto a dry wall. An ancient technique that remained common among Byzantine artists, before the time of the Sussex muralist there had been no paintings in Britain made in this way since the Roman occupation. The frescos of St Mary’s Church, Houghton-on-the-Hill (Norfolk) and St Mary's Church, Kempley (Gloucestershire) are of a similar age, but the wall paintings at St Botolph’s, Hardham (West Sussex) are the most extensive medieval frescos in Britain.
2. Hidden by whitewash for centuries, the Sussex frescos were not casualties of the Protestant Reformation: they had been covered up long before the Tudor purge of ecclesiastical art. These strange paintings may have been on view for only a few decades in the 1100's before they were whitewashed. The artist may even have lived to see their work obliterated in the second half of the twelfth century. Lime wash seems to have been intended to erase any memory of the original community and its beliefs and practices. Ironically, historical censorship has acted to conserve the paintings and the beliefs which they embody, in ways the defacer cannot have either imagined or intended. Now revealed, these 'difficult' paintings ask questions of the modern viewer, as challenging today as they were for the haters who just wanted them to disappear.
3. When the unusual paintings were revealed, the vicars of Hardham, Clayton and Coombes intervened, perhaps contrary to expectations, to ensure that they were preserved.
Not every incumbent, finding themselves curator of such an unexpected legacy, shared this antiquarian desire for conservation. Until the 1860’s there used to be more painted churches in the area. The chancel wall of St Martin’s Westmeston was once covered with an extensive fresco scheme, now known only from a rough sketch made before the original artwork was chipped off the wall during the restoration work of 1862-3; St Cosmas and St Damian, Keymer, lost its murals when the church was rebuilt in 1866; although the frescos on both sides of the chancel wall at St Michael’s Plumpton were destroyed in the 1860’s, enough remains of the scheme in the nave to see strong similarities with the Clayton murals. It would be easy to regret the current poor state of conservation of some of the surviving frescos, particularly the badly damaged paintings at Hardham. I have learned to be thankful that these murals have survived at all, and continue to charm and intrigue visitors to the South Downs.
How do I get there?
It’s about 20 miles by road from Hardham to Clayton, taking in the little church at Coombes on the way. The painted churches are sited on a route which roughly follows a path running east-west between Lewes towards Hardham. This was once an old trackway associated with the Roman iron processing in the Weald, known today mostly as a line on a map given the name The Sussex Greensand Way. You can make a relaxed road trip which traces this route by car, visiting all three churches in a day, or it would make a great picnic day out on the bike in nice weather, if you start early either from Pulborough or Hassocks stations. You can plot a cycle route that is mostly quite quiet, not too strenuous, sometimes off-road, and usually very beautiful, but do take care on the busier roads!
If you can’t get to West Sussex, Roy Reed’s 360-degree interactive images of Hardham and Clayton churches at 360cities.net make a perfect armchair introduction to the frescos.
Hardham
https://www.360cities.net/image/the-nave-hardham-church-west-sussex-england
Clayton
https://www.360cities.net/image/clayton-church-west-sussex-england
