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156 THE SUSSEX COAST
stone slab-covered roof, but within a plain arch connects the chancel with the nave ; each of them has a low side window, and that of the chancel is remarkable—a round opening with iron bars under a Perpendicular window. The timber-framed porch is of Tudor times, and the woodwork of the inner door has a little grating with sliding shutter as if the person who opened it from within wished to see whom he admitted.
Neither the railway nor the huge Sussex Portland Cement Company's Works across the river seriously interfere with the quiet peace of these old-world villages, though they do somewhat mar their outlook. The main road to Steyning from the sea passes the cement works, and issuing from the lane that leads past the silent, lonely villages on to the Brighton road is like going into another age in which the prophecy of Nahum is most literally fulfilled: " The chariots shall rage in the streets, they shall justle one against another in the broad ways: they shall seem like torches, they shall run like the lightnings."
High on the Downs above this spot stands Lancing College, one of the Woodard schools. Its buildings, mostly of flint, begun in 1854, are crushed into almost utter insignificance by the enormous chapel, a vast structure of ten bays with five-sided apse (two sides straight), vaulted throughout with shafts, illuminated principally by great four-light windows in the clearstory and with little double trefoil arcades in each bay of the triforium over the lancet arches that open to the narrow aisles. All the windows have shafts, all capitals throughout are moulded. The bases of the pillars rise with the steps to the altar. Its immense height and purity of detail make this building as impres- |
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