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NEWHAVEN |
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chancel arch, sharply pointed, well moulded and resting on clustered responds, four of whose six shafts have carved caps, is a beautiful piece of work.
Meeching was of old a quiet Down village looking over the cliffs at the sea and over the flats at the river mouth to the port of Seaford. When the river altered its course and the harbour was shifted to the foot of the hill on which the village stands (p. 263), it exchanged its ancient name for the commonplace designation of Newhaven. The old Elizabethan house on the hill by the church, which is dated 1599 and was entirely remodelled in the eighteenth century, is still known as Meeching Place. The old part of the church consists of a wide tower and round apse built of rubble flint and several different kinds of stone, including a hard brown conglomerate. The apse has pilaster buttresses and very tiny windows, the tower has the curious peculiarity of turning the more ornate shafted sides of its arches inwards where they can least be seen. The upper stage has little double windows, not quite over those below, and it may be slightly later in date, though the whole is Norman; the original corbel-table now supports a shingled spire. The building greatly resembles the church of Yainville on the Seine. The nave and its aisles are modern and extremely ugly; an Irish sailor is credited with the remark that the church sails stern foremost.
In the churchyard is an obelisk to the crew of H.M.S. Brazen, which "had been ordered to protect this part of the coast from the insolent attacks of the enemy," but was wrecked under the cliff on January 20, 1800, with only one sur- |
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