THE ORIGINAL ST SEPULCHRE’S CHURCH
Colin Hicks writes:
Originally on the site of the graveyard at St Bartholomew’s on the corner of Mount Lane and Westgate, stood a church that was probably built in the 12th century. This was round with a circular apse over the altar, a shape associated with the Knights Templar, so that the church became known as the Temple even though it was never associated with those militant monks. New Fishbourne church was probably a chapelry to St Bartholomew at this time.
Two late C17 engravings by John Dunstall show a round nave and apsidal chancel, which were perhaps C12. These are entitled ‘A Temple by Chichester’. In the early C17 St Sepulchre was known as The Temple and, in a will of 1495, St Bartholomew was called ‘the Round Church’, so all are the same. The name ‘Temple’ presumably derives from the plan, on the analogy of the Temple Church in London. Dunstall shows the church on a mound like the present one, so the site is probably unchanged too. I have been able to find a reproduction of this etching in the publications of local historian Alan Green.
Sadly, this unusual church was destroyed by William Waller’s troops in the Parliamentary siege of Chichester in December 1642 and not a trace of it remains. The present graveyard is thought to be the site of this original church.
George Draper (1796-1861)
After the destruction in 1642, the church was not rebuilt for nearly two hundred years. The long period taken to rebuild such a modest church was caused by money problems, even though the parish had remained in being, the parishioners still used the graveyard, and Parish business was conducted in the Waggon and Lamb Inn on the north side of Westgate.
The Parish was still known as St Bartholomew’s, although rebuilding the church did not start until 1824 and was not finished until 1832 when the architect George Draper was brought in, hot-foot from his work adding a north transept to Fishbourne church.
George Draper (born c.1796 – died after 1861) had established himself in Chichester and designed both classical and Gothic churches as well as other buildings. He built St Bartholomew’s Church in classical style on the site 190 years after it had been destroyed, using stone and galleted flint. It is conservative in design: Draper also designed the local Primitive Methodist Chapel which was situated the west side of Broyle Road.
Draper’s design is a simple classical box with a stone-faced west end. It is a Renaissance building of grey brick with stone dressings and has a low-pitched slate roof, hipped and with large overhanging cornice and deep eaves on long eaves brackets.
Description of the exterior
The west facade of pale brown sandstone has a large round-headed doorway and window, flanked, and divided into 3 bays by pilasters supporting a small pediment over the central bay. The west door and window are emphasised by this pediment, which used to be topped by a stone two-stage Grecian tower, perched rather awkwardly above the west gable, but which has now gone.
The rebuilt St Bartholomew’s Church (WSRO – A vault for the Shippam family was built in the churchyard in 1817)
The pilasters extend over string courses at first and gallery sill level. The central doorway is flanked by statue niches, with above an upper west window flanked by oculi, that is an arched window and two circular windows. These small circular openings above the round-headed niches one each side all have Portland stone frames. The doorway has a 2-leaf door and glazed fanlight with spoke leading and similar glazing to the upper west window. To the left is a badly neglected wooden war memorial from the Great War (see below). If there was one on the right of the doorway it is now missing.
The west end is all ashlar masonry, but the grey sidewalls are of galleted flint stone rubble brought to course with round-headed windows. The north side has large round-headed windows with spoke leading and a bell protected by a small lean-to roof on timber brackets. The south side has two blind windows. The vestry and chancel are in the same style with round-headed openings in Bath stone.
The interior
Late C19 interior of St Bartholomew’s (WSRO)
Inside, Draper created a plain box with tall arched windows that fill it with light. Internally the nave (48 ft. by 28 ft./14.63m by 8.53m) is lit by three circular-headed windows on each side.
- The chancel, which is low and gabled, has been lengthened.
- There is a plain round-headed chancel arch in the east wall.
- A flat plastered ceiling to the nave is decorated with shallow plaster ribs in a lozenge pattern.
- The plan is of a rectangular nave with internal porch and stairs to the west end gallery, which contains the organ, one of only a few pipe organs remaining in the city.
- The chancel is lit by two smaller windows.
- The vestibule is at the west end under the gallery.
A small chancel-like projection, separated from the nave by a plain round-headed arch, was in fact built as a vestry.
Little remains of Draper’s interior, which had provision for galleries if required. Draper was held back by limited funding, so although he designed galleries they were never actually installed.
Victorian improvements, 1878 and 1894
By the time the Victorians came along, the design of this style of galleried church had fallen out of favour and two attempts at improvement are known.
In 1878 the parish finally found some money and a small but delicately decorated chancel was added. An organ loft planned at the west end in 1878 under H E Rumble may not have got beyond tendering – no details are known.
In 1894 G C Vernon-Inkpen and Swinburne remodelled the east end. The vestry was fitted out as a chancel, with a new vestry to the north. After legal problems concerning the ownership of pews, occasioned by the provisions of the Act of Parliament governing the rebuilding, new seating was provided. Despite the unpopularity of galleries, the west one may date from then, the impression now given more of a nonconformist chapel.
The church team in 1900
Leslie Macdonald (Max) Gill (1884-1947)
The last major changes came in 1929. By 1920 Victorian architecture was as out of favour, as Draper’s had been a generation before, and the church was in serious disrepair. With a lack of urgency rivalling even that seen at its original construction in the 1820s, plans by Leslie Macdonald (Max) Gill, brother of the famous artist Eric Gill, were drawn up in 1921, but it was not until 1929 that the most conspicuous change was made by the removal of the two-stage Grecian tower, thereby accentuating the impression of a nonconformist chapel.
The Max Gill painted chancel of 1929.
Gill remodelled the interior and added painted decoration to the flat ceiling of the nave with a characteristic geometric pattern and coved edges, although the wooden strips arranged in these simple geometrical patterns may date from the remodelling of 1894.
The vestry was added in the same style on the north-east corner. The small chancel of 1929 has a canted boarded roof divided into panels by painted moulded ribs and is painted with flowers and stars. There is also a timber-panelled reredos with a painted cover and a cresting of gilded lilies.
The tower was removed on structural grounds.
Remaining Fittings
Some of these have been removed, but there is one bell dated 1832, by Thomas Mears, which the nuns used to ring for vespers.
The church plate is no doubt in a safe place somewhere else but consists of a silver chalice with hallmark 1900; a silver paten with hallmark 1897; a silver flagon with hallmark 1897; a chalice, paten and alms dish of Sheffield plate dated 1832.
The font was inventoried as “showy octagonal” with marble shafts and foliage capitals, it had been variously dated as 1885 or c.1883. The octagonal stone bowl was decorated with carving on a marble stem with marble shafts with stiff-leaf capitals. It has now been removed.
View of the interior from the 1940s (Photo Tony Keating)
The west end gallery is late C19 – early C20 on timber posts, the front of the gallery broken forward in the centre. The early C20 benches with panelled backs and shouldered ends with round-headed panelling have since been removed. The painted ceiling and chancel remain as designed by Gill, the reredos still vibrant – tall, gilded and painted.
After the use of the church for religious services ceased it was leased by the Chichester College for use as a rehearsal space. It is now in private ownership as a dance school.
THE ORGAN OF ST BARTHOLOMEW’S CHURCH
A chance encounter with Alan Thurlow, retired organist of Chichester Cathedral, has enabled us to do some more research into the pipe organ which may still be seen inside St Bartholomew’s church (Colin Hicks)
Details of the St Bartholomew’s organ can be found under Survey E00701 on the National Pipe Organ Register (NPOR), which is operated by the British Institute of Organ Studies. The British Institute of Organ Studies (BIOS) owns the NPOR, and also the Historic Organ Sound Archive (HOSA), the Directory of British Organ Builders (DBOB) and the British Organ Archive (BOA). The content of the NPOR is managed under an agreement with the Royal College of Organists (RCO) and the server is located in Emmanuel College Cambridge.
The interior looking West during the time the Chichester College students used the church
The organ in St Bartholomew’s is installed in the gallery situated over the West door. It was surveyed by BIOS in 2000 as “playable” and situated in the by now redundant C of E church, then in use as the chapel of the Servants of the Cross religious community and by 2004 up for sale (2016).
St Bartholomew’s was consecrated on 14 July 1832 and on 4 December Philip Armes, then organist of the Cathedral, gave the opening recital of a new “finger organ” which replaced “the old Grinder” (presumably a barrel organ).
The new organ – which is in fact the present instrument – was built and installed in 1832 at a cost of £100 by T.C. Bates & Son of 6 Ludgate Hill, London.
The commercial label of Bates, builders of the 1832 pipe organ
This was a period when many chamber organs were being built for churches. Sadly, Bates’ original nameplate on the organ in St Bartholomew’s has been removed at some stage by a souvenir hunter. It was perhaps similar to the one above which was originally attached to one of their barrel organs, for they made those too!
This instrument is one of few pipe organs remaining in Chichester. A pipe organ is the name for the kind of organ we are used to seeing in our churches and city halls:
“A pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by driving pressurized air (called wind) through pipes selected via a keyboard. Because each organ pipe produces a single pitch, the pipes are provided in sets called ranks, each of which has a common timbre and volume throughout the keyboard compass. Most organs have multiple ranks of pipes of differing timbre, pitch and volume that the player can employ singly or in combination through the use of controls called stops”. (Wikipedia)”
Part of our history
The organ is therefore an important part of the history of the church. In 1932 the organ was cleaned by Hele of Plymouth (the firm who had rebuilt the Cathedral organ in 1904) and around 1938 an electric blower was added. Around 1975 it was extensively altered by organ builder Martin Cross who operates from Grays, West Thurrock in Essex. Alan Thurlow says that although it is a long time ago since he last saw the organ, his memory is that it was not that much altered.
In 1974 Martin Cross restored the historic c.1780 Hurdis Chamber Organ that stands in the Retrochoir of Chichester Cathedral and is used to accompany services that take place at the Shrine of St Richard. The firm is still in existence today and, at least up until the time of Alan’s retirement in 2008, and probably still now, tunes and maintains that organ together with the Walker Chamber Organ in the Lady Chapel of the Cathedral.
Although it is single keyboard and, to some extent, the “old English” pedal-board imposes limitations on the player, the organ was still working well in 1986 and was giving good service to the parish and the Theological College.
A future for the organ
Alan says that his 1986 assessment of the Bates organ, from which a lot of the material for this article has been taken, would be much the same as written then, but the report was obviously commissioned from the point of view of the vibrant institution that the Theological College was in those days, and the bright future that it seemed to have. As many local residents will remember, it was a thriving place and financially viable too, embarking on their new building project, until the politics of the Church of England interfered and forced its closure.
We are grateful to Alan Thurlow for his collaboration in the writing of this piece. Alan Thurlow is Organist Emeritus, Chichester Cathedral. He was Organist & Master of the Choristers, Chichester Cathedral (1980-2008) and is Chairman of The British Institute of Organ Studies (a registered charity).
Richard Brownfield 2025
Sources
- The Organ of St Bartholomew’s Church. Colin Hicks. 20th March 2016
- Wikipedia
- The British Institute of Organ Studies
- Chichester Theological College, a report on the organ, Alan Thurlow 1986. Report about the St Bartholomew’s organ for the then Principal of the Theological College, John Hind (later Bishop of Chichester).