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260 THE SUSSEX COAST |
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have been pierced for aisles, and on the south the arcade is very interesting late twelfth-century work, resembling that at Telscombe, Rodmell, and St. Mary Westout (Anne), Lewes. One of the two pillars and both responds are round, with little corbels at the corners of the square abaci; some of the corbels are very plain, others are evidently caricatures of people who were doubtless famous, locally at any rate, in their day, but whose memory has otherwise faded away. Mediaeval caricatures cut in the solid stone, by which monks and friars, secular priests and others, poured ridicule on those who seemed to deserve it, were at times little inferior in ingenuity to our modern cartoons, and they were far more enduring. In monastic churches, for instance, we sometimes see a fox robed as friar holding forth to a congregation of geese. The north aisle is a little later, and the chancel is Decorated ; the battlemented tower, built partly of Norman materials, has chequer-work of flint and stone, while its uncusped windows show its date to be probably after 1500. |
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