Share page |
The church was restored in 1865 and during this work the most interesting discovery was made of the traditional burial place of Knut's daughter. How often has a local tradition, accepted as fact by the peasant, but looked upon as an idle tale by his educated superior, proved to have more than a grain of truth in it and sometimes to be a very circumstantial record of actualities, and fully supported by antiquarian research. The exact position of the grave is shown by the figure of a Danish raven painted upon a tile, and a stone slab with an inscription upon it placed by the children of Bosham in 1906.
One of the ancient bells was stolen by Danish pirates; the story goes that when half way to the open sea a storm arose which swamped the boat in consequence of the great weight of the metal on board. On high festivals of the Church, a Bosham man will tell you, its sound can be heard from the waves mingling with the chimes of the modern bells of the tower. As a matter of fact the echo of the peal, thrown back by the woods of West Itchenor, is, in certain favourable conditions of the atmosphere, distinctly like a second chime, and might deceive a stranger into thinking that another church lay across the water.
|
||
|
||