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CHICHESTER AND VICINITY 49
of the city, and on the tidal arm called Chichester Channel is the picturesque old Dell Quay, whither come sailing ships from the North bringing coal, fetching ballast.* Hard by is the home of the apple-tree, Appledram, where among peaceful meadows is a little Early English Church with Norman fragments. The lancets have some beautiful arcading, two are low-side windows; part of the rood-stair may still be seen on the north. Not far off is Ryman's Tower, a structure twenty feet by twenty-seven, forming part of a pleasant home. Its date and materials are the same as those of the Cathedral bell-tower, and it seems that when Ryman knew that the king saw no occasion for his building a fortress in this quiet spot he devoted the stones he had collected for that purpose to the better one of supporting the bells that should summon the faithful to pray in their mother church (p. 33).
A short distance to the south-east is Donning-ton, whose little church has an Early English chancel and a Tudor tower, some open benches with poppy-heads remain in the inside. By this village is a bridge that horses hate, carrying the road over the canal that once connected Chichester with Arundel, and so with the water-ways of all the land (p. 118). This canal, dug in the eighteenth century, is now grass-grown—all but a long straight reach that extends up to the Basin within the ancient limits of Stockbridge. Communication is thus kept up between the city and the Channel, but water-lilies and graceful swans are much more in evidence than shipping.
* Dug from the gravels of the Bracklesham Beds that underlie the plain (p. 75). Large pits are at Portfield, an eastern suburb of the city.
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