Coombes, where medieval paint still hangs in drips and swirls

Where is Coombes Church?

It’s on Coombes Road, adjacent to Lancing College on the River Adur, about a mile inland from the Shoreham flyover interchange on the A27. Although now a secluded hamlet, from the time before the arrival of the Romans until the time church was built Coombes and the River Adur remained at the heart of great activity. 

Coombes Church 

Shoreham Cement Works is in the distance, on the other side of the river

Decrescendo to pianissimo

The River Arun, which surrounds Hardham Church about 16 miles west of Coombes, today flows south to meet the sea at Littlehampton. Since Roman times until the period of our frescos, however, the Arun had turned east to join the River Adur (AY-DER) at Bramber, a town which the artist knew as a thriving sea port, and which had recently received a boost under the new Norman administration of William de Braose. Coombes Church was built next to a working river that was navigable by the larger boats of the day, even as far up as the town of Steyning. In the muralist’s mind map, their fresco cycles at Hardham and Coombes were, in effect, connected by the same busy tidal river. As early as the mid-1300’s, however, the Adur's sea window was starting to close. The upstream towns were beginning to see their fortune turn, going into decline as their population and activity were greatly reduced by drifting shingle, and the steady silting up of the estuary. The Arun changed its allegiance, shifting its course several times before establishing its modern outlet at Littlehampton around 1500. Coombes Church remained part of a small village into the late 1600’s. It now stands isolated on a hillside, next to Coombes Farm.

A picture of the Downs

The church is considerably shorter now than in it used to be in its heyday. It seems a tower had been added at some time to the west end, perhaps at the same time that alterations were being made to the church during the later middle ages. By this stage, our dramatic paintings were seen only in the collective memory, already long hidden by whitewash. A map with Coombes Church in 1677 shows a tower similar to one attached to the nearby church at Botolphs, known then as 'St Peter of Old Bridge' (i.e. not the Hardham church). This tower was added in the thirteenth century, and topped with a pyramid-shaped roof, like the one we see in the old drawing of Coombes. However the encroaching slope on which Coombes Church stands was gradually making its tower unstable. By 1602 the structure was found to be 'a little faltie', before in 1724 a surveyor was called in to assess the damage caused by the 'Tower and part of the church lately falln'. The reassuring and uplifting view these towers gave of activity on the river, observing the ships that sailed up the river with the tide from Pende harbour (somewhere near Lancing) towards the ports at Bramber, Botolphs and Steyning, would have been quite different to the quiet, constrained existence of the Adur today.

Coombes Church seen in a map of 1677, 

when its west tower was still standing

The modern, post-industrial vista from the church is dominated by the quarry, chimneys, silos and mills of The Shoreham Cement Works. Disused since 1991, this state-of-the-art postwar plant had its roots in early small-scale mineral excavations which burned chalk in brick kilns to produce fine lime plaster, a local industry probably since the Roman occupation. Inside the church, we’re surrounded by the same high-quality lime paste which had attracted The Portland Cement Company to Shoreham in the 1870’s, plaster which is the sine qua non for fresco painting. Deployed by the Sussex muralist as a bonding medium for their locally sourced paints, Sussex lime plaster combines with local earth pigments in murals which are, quite literally, a picture of the Downs.

A map of the area (1725) shows the Erlingham Chalkpits 

on the other side of the river to Coombes

The site is currently occupied by Shoreham Cement Works. 

The postcard looks across the river towards Coombes Church

Craters, drips and swirls

Coombes is the smallest and most damaged of the three surviving medieval art ensembles. Gothic windows and modern funerary monuments, smashed through what appeared at the time to be blank walls, made large craters in many of the fresco scenes while the paintings were still concealed. The pictorial narrative scheme also vanishes as it approaches the place at the west end where the wall was rebuilt, after the faulty tower was demolished. In compensation, you’ll be treated to a really close-up view of what remains of the medieval artwork which, unlike Hardham, is very well conserved. Some of the paint on the chancel arch still hangs in swirls and drips, as if the artist has dabbed the wall, put down their brush, and stepped outside for a break. To see this sort of thing in an art gallery would be wonderful, but to walk into such an art ensemble, finding yourself surrounded by pictorial narrative which still talks to us after nine hundred years, is truly transcendental.

A design on the chancel arch representing Heaven's starry canopy

showing the crispness of the preserved brush strokes

Don’t just visit for the wonderful paintings

Strolling down to the Adur, we can perhaps imagine the river’s more expansive presence at the time of the Domesday Book, when Coombes was a sizeable village, and hogs foraged in the woods. Steam rises gently from boiling hearths tended by the ecclesiastical slaves of Coombes Church, evaporating brine drawn from the river's tidal flats: some eighteen large saltern mounds, the accumulated waste heaps of medieval salt production, were found next to Coombes Church and farm alone. The village grew in importance as it played its part in a lucrative network which brought together local specialities, the production of food staples which were essential not just to villagers, but had a signifiant role in the area's development of maritime trade. Locally produced pork, freshly caught herring and mackerel from Shoreham boats, bream, mullet, pike and eels from weirs and fish traps would have more than satisfied local demand, allowing a surplus to be prepared, brined or smoked, and packed into casks brimming with salt to be sold in Bramber and Steyning. Barrels of the Adur's salt and preserved foods might be taken on board, stowed as ship's meat on freshly-victualled vessels which sailed by the church, on their way back out to the English Channel. The prosperous, international years of Coombes and its river were good, while they lasted.

Back in the church, look out for the holes and grooves in the wooden floor slat under the arch where a screen once separated the nave from the sanctuary. While you’re down there, notice that you’ve been walking on original terracotta floor tiles. Look out too for the incised Nestorian cross, its four equal-arms flaring towards the tip and mounted on a pedestal, carved in the stone of the chancel arch. Side lighting from the flashlight on your mobile also reveals many small graffitoed crosses, scratched and gouged around the entrance door. The simple oak door itself, with its speculatorium (peephole with a sliding cover), is original. Did the muralist close this same door, casting a backwards glance through the hatch, as they left for the last time nearly nine hundred years ago? 

Crosses scratched around the entrance door

The original 12th-century oak door still has its slatted 
speculatorium, or peep hole

Clayton, and its breathtaking Apocalypse frescos

 Where is St John-the-Baptist Church, Clayton?

Underhill Lane is a sharp turn on a bend in the Brighton Road A273 as it leaves Hassocks, before it climbs Clayton Hill over the South Downs. You may know the Jack and Jill windmills, the local landmarks of Clayton Gap which are visible for miles around. Clayton Church is at the foot of that hill. It is by far the grandest of the three early twelfth-century painted churches of West Sussex featured in my blog. 

Roman Clayton

Clayton village lies on the Sussex Greensand Way, a Roman track identified by Ivan Margary that once joined up the garrison of Hardham in the west with a similar station at Barcombe, near Lewes (currently the subject of investigation as The Culver Archaeological Project https://www.culverproject.co.uk). A large Roman cemetery, in use mostly during the third century, was found about a half a mile from the church, adjacent to the Stonepound Crossroads. It speaks of a significant Roman presence at this road junction across the South Downs, presumably associated with the exploitation of Sussex minerals and the extraction of iron around modern Crawley. The remains of a Roman villa, with bath and mosaics, were discovered in the grounds of Clayton Old Rectory on Spring Lane, but were reburied and are no longer visible. 

Margary's map (1919), showing the location of Hardham, Coombes and Clayton relative to 

the Sussex Greensand Way, and the Roman garrisons at Hardham and Barcombe

Chasm and Bridge

The twelfth-century Sussex muralist not only had a very good feel for composition, filling the available wall space with imaginative designs which express a keen interest in rhythm and symmetry: they had an equal interest in emptiness. Doorways, arches and architectural space become more than just functional gaps in the structure, bringing an artistic and spiritual dimension to the void as an organic and exciting part of the fresco composition. While the idea of the chasm also finds its expression in the paintings at Hardham and Coombes, the high walls and grand scale of Clayton church gave the artist an opportunity for their most exquisite and dramatic expression of emptiness and fulfilment, an exposition on the theme of chasm and bridge.

Christ in Majesty, flanked by the Apostles

Clayton chancel arch

The centrepiece of the Clayton cycle of frescos is a magnificent ensemble on the chancel wall, with Christ in Majesty as the keystone above the arch, flanked by the Twelve Apostles. Raising his hands in blessing, Christ sits on a cushion atop the arches of an astonishing four-tiered bridge, a feat of engineering usually associated with Roman architects, such as the Segovia or Milagros aqueducts in Spain, or reminiscent of the 9th-century medieval aqueducts of Salerno, but unlike anything ever seen in Britain. Balanced above the chasm of the chancel arch, Christ makes a magisterial bridge between the two dramatic processional friezes along the north and south walls which talk to each other across the nave. 

Christ the Bridge

Sat on a four-tiered structure which spans the chasm of the arch,

Christ unites the two long friezes of the nave 

At the other end of the church, it seems the artist intentionally cut short the narrative of the long friezes in the nave. The paintings stop abruptly before the west wall, so that Christ’s glorious uniting presence in the eastern dawn looks down towards… well, towards nothing, a sepulchral void of chaos and disruption in the nocturnal west. We’ll return to look in detail at the fascinating narrative of the Clayton Apocalypse and its historical background in future posts.

After the intimacy of Coombes, the grandeur and drama of Clayton’s Apocalypse frescos is stunning. The height of the walls does mean that much of the artwork is over five metres above our heads, so some bright binoculars come in handy to pick out the detail in the faces and clothing which you'll otherwise miss. The lights installed to view the frescos are mixed blessing: some features are clearer, but the vertical beam also emphasises the irregularity of the plaster and casts distracting shadows. It benefits just to acclimatise your eyes and visit on a sunny day. With binoculars.

Fade to white

Photos from 1947 still show some of the clarity and crispness conservators had discovered beneath the layers of whitewash. Even some fifty years before Gernsheim’s photos in 1899, however, restorer Philip Mainwaring Johnston had begun to notice significant fading and deterioration since the paintings were first uncovered. Over a century on from Johnston’s warning, and the frescos continue to fade under pressure from the harmful effects of atmospheric exposure, damp conditions, light, and even bat urine. The ‘preservative treatment’, advocated by Johnston and ruinously deployed at Hardham, was mercifully not applied to the Clayton murals. Enhanced protection measures and modern conservation, including a thorough digital archive of these unique paintings, are nevertheless overdue.

Helmut Gernsheim's photo, 1947

July 2024

The academic neglect of these unique frescos is an indication of the extent to which this artist’s unusual and challenging work, much loved by walkers and non-expert visitors, has nonetheless been allowed to fall off the map of sites of scholarly interest. There has been no fresh study to reappraise the artwork in all three churches since the 1980’s. The destruction of unorthodox communities didn’t always require whitewash, fires and hammers: sometimes simple studious neglect would do.

Don’t miss

If you have time, it’s worth following the bridlepath up to the top of the hill and the Clayton windmills, where the view towards the North Downs and Surrey Hills is spectacular even on a stormy day. So much a part of the landscape in medieval Sussex, windmill sails may have turned with the steady, year-round breeze at Clayton Gap even before the murals were created.

View from Clayton Hill, near the windmills.

The red tiles of the church tower are just visible 

in the centre of the photo, above the gatepost.