A new project to help restore the 800 hundred year old St. Nicholas Church in Pevensey is underway, as the organisation begins plans to commemorate the anniversary of the completion of the parish church nine centuries ago
Owen Visick, churchwarden of St. Nicolas, tells us that the church is ‘the oldest building in Pevensey still in use for its original purpose’.
Project 16, the foundation theme for the new phase in the history of the church, sees the patronage of the Earl De La Warr, offering his services as patron to the plan, together with a new friends organisation and a web platform (still under construction) that is beginning to detail all the restoration works that are necessary to maintain the fabric of the building.
A first phase of restoration In 2007 and 2008 involved repairs to the ravages of eight hundred years of coastal weather on the tower, roofs and walls of the building. In that time salt laden rain had penetrated the masonry, causing the interior rendering to become loose and to fall.
The new phase will address issues related to damp penetration in the east wall, re-roofing the chancel, and updating the public address system. The biggest element of work, clearing and fencing off 500 sq metres of Church Farm field, carrying out an archaeological dig and recovering and conserving artefacts as well as stabilising, turfing and ‘fencing off the burial ground’, alone, is estimated to cost £100,000.
The ambitious programme of works has already won widespread support within the community. The precursor to English Heritage in 1966 listed the church at Grade I for its ‘architectural and historical importance’. The organisation is to be kept informed of the progress with Project 16.
The church is a complete example of ‘English English Architecture’, a tradition that originated in France in the mid 12th century and rapidly spread to England.
Primary source documentary evidence about building work, people and the nature of worship through the centuries of the centre of the spiritual centre of Pevensey Parish is to feature on the Pevensey Timeline, a project begun in the villages of Pevensey and Pevensey Bay in November 2012.
The timeline will present ’2,000 years of the rich history of Pevensey’ as an online display that is to be made available to every school in the country as well as visitors to the area. The project is seeking a national funding base and hopes to be in a position to begin its work within the next three months.
The project will involve up to fifty villagers working as editors, technical and creative directors telling the story of their own village and learning the skills to piece together the web based tableaux. The timeline will see up to 4,000 different sets of information, in the form of text/image/sound and video ‘sewn together’ and made available to the public.
Talking about a link to the Pevensey Timeline project and the possibility of a strand of the timeline being dedicated to the story of the church, Owen Visick told Bay Life;
“Thank you very much for introducing me to the Pevensey Timeline. I am sure it will be of great interest and value to Pevensey and to many other communities”.
“Thanks also to the association for inviting me to include St Nicolas Church in the work: it has a very long history of association with the people of Pevensey. As soon as they are able to go ahead, I will be happy to meet with one of the editors, especially in view of the church’s forthcoming 800th anniversary”.
The association has already begun research on the documentation of the church and its architectural history. It has turned up a major revelation.
Nikolaus Pevsner. the German-born British scholar on the history of architecture, widely regarded as the most important historian of the subject in the twentieth century, followed in the footsteps of John Ruskin in the nineteenth century by documentating the architecture of the country.
The discovery that Pevsner came to St. Nicholas Church in his travels across England in the nineteen fifties will come as something of a discovery.
The team behind the timeline have discovered that ‘without question’ a personal record of his trip to Pevensey exists and that full documentation of this visit is within an East Sussex library.
This is the second discovery made by the timeline team, who began their researches into the area with evidence that the poet and writer Christina Rossetti can be placed at Pevensey Castle almost forty years before she is believed to have had a known association with the area.
A third line of enquiry, into the possibility that a major work of art hanging in the National Gallery utilised a model who was the daughter of the landlord of what is now the Castle Inn, is also under investigation. If the picture, artist and model can be identified and the information authenticated, it could become a national news story.
A sketch of Project 16, the St. Nicholas Church foundation theme to accompany its work in the lead up to the 2016 celebration of its 800 year history, is already available for the public to view and browse as it develops online.
The framework established for the Pevensey Timeline Association in November 2012 does not have in its foundation a link with the celebrations for the 800 years worship within the church.
Nonetheless the timelines of both projects, taking place simultaneously and working in parallel, with the possibility of the church and its extraordinary history appearing as a key strand in the work of the village teams, is what Doctor Samuel Johnson might have recorded in his Dictionary of the English Language as happenstance.
project 16
pevensey timeline association
IMAGE CREDIT: NIKOLAUS PEVSNER, YALEBOOKS
