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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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