WELCOME!

I am now well into the second phase of building up this website.  Having produced an entry for each Anglican church in East and West Sussex, I am now both continuing to add new information and to check and improve what I have written.  I have been helped enormously by the comments, corrections and new material that have come in from an increasing number of users.  I am in addition always happy to reply to queries if something is not clear, but it will often be easier to find the answer on the website itself. 

As part of this process, but at a slower pace, I have been revisiting churches, both to check what I have written and to take new and better photographs in colour, though the old black and white ones that I already had, mostly dating from the late 1970s, are sometimes worth retaining, especially if there have been changes since - re-ordering, redundancy or demolition in a few cases.  Even the normal pattern of change over the years can have an effect - at more than one church I have revisited, the surrounding trees and bushes are now so high and so dense that my previous photos of the late 1970s show the church building far more clearly than would be possible today.  Now that there are signs that the long winter is over and the days are lengthening I am intending to resume my travels through the county, though progess is still not as fast as I would like in view of my non-residence there.

Meanwhile, this is offset to a good extent by the comments and additions of those kind enough to send them and in particular I have been helped by people who have kindly provided photos of churches I have not yet revisited (and even some that I have).  In particular, Richard Standing and Josie Campbell have provided much needed strengthening of my images of West Sussex, and Nick Wiseman has taken many expert photographs, almost all of East Sussex churches, to the great advantage of the website.  The addition of such photos in one way reduces the pressure to revisit the remaining churches, but there is still a lot of written material to check out, so I shall be continuing my travels whenever possible.  Besides, I enjoy the visits!

After finishing the first phase, I am able to devote an increased amount of time to research again.  Sometimes this comes in unexpected ways.  Thus, I have just been to a fascinating one-day symposium on Faith Craft, whose work dates from between the 1920s and the mid-1970s.  Though their work is not as well represented in Sussex as in the Greater London area or Essex, there are some examples in the county and in addition to the specialised talks there were some setting the scene for a period that is still insufficiently valued; I learned much from these.  All this in a church in the heart of 'Metroland' (St George, Headstone) full of works by Faith Craft.  The church is, indeed still adding to these, having recently acquired a set of Stations of the Cross and actually realised their design of 1948 for a font-cover.  

As regards architectural history in Sussex itself, the day of publication of the new, revised 'Pevsner' for East Sussex is fast approaching (late May according to the publisher's website).  As I have said elsewhere on this website (see the Sources section), a revision of Sussex is especially needed in view of the difficult circumstances under which the original volume was written and it is good news that preparations have started for the new volume for West Sussex. where perhaps the need for a revision is particularly great, though there is no news of a publication date.  It remains a particular sadness that Nick Antram, the reviser of East Sussex, died in October 2012 and thus did not live to see its publication.  He was labouring under severe health problems for much of the time that he was working on East Sussex, but this was never obvious from the flow of emails that he sent me and doubtless many others.  He will be greatly missed by many people.

Progress has been slow in another, longer lasting area of research, where I have been working my way through Kelly's directories for London.  Initially I was in search of information about makers of stained glass, particularly the smaller and less well known ones.  A long time ago I worked through the directories as far as 1914, researching architects, but at the time I had not focused on stained glass makers.  There is in fact  much of interest, even though the information is generally fairly brief in each case.  After starting,  I realised increasingly how little is known about architects after 1914, so having passed that year, I have been simultaneously looking at the architects recorded there.  I have reached the mid-1940s for glassmakers but only 1924 for architects, though I have clarified quite a few careers.  However, progress is slow because very few of the directories  are available except on microfilm.

A new source that is really only new to me, since it has been been published at regular intervals for about 20 years is the Newsletters of the Friends of Sussex Historic Churches Trust.  I was of course aware of the Trust and had indeed edited a small book on Sussex churches for them in 1984, but I had missed the establishment of the Friends.  Their Newsletters not only contain reports of the usual kind for such bodies, but notes on visits and resumes of talks, often by eminent speakers - these contain a large amount of new material.

No piece of research like this is ever finished, so this website is far from its final form (it probably never will be!).  However, do keep visiting it and let me have your views and suggestions via CONTACT US.

John Allen