Several very curious balusters of Caen stone were found among the ruins ([Fig. 213]). They appear from their freshness to have been always internal, and, I fancy, formed parts of a screen under the western arch of the tower, of which some foundations apparently remain. Externally, the quoins are partly of Roman brick and partly of long and short work, with very large stones. This is, perhaps, the most nearly complete of all our pre-Norman churches. There is no clue to its date. Some call it a British church: some say that it was built by Eadbald, the son of Ethelbert, about 640, and others that it is of a much later period, to which opinion I confess that I incline.[7]
Fig. 214.—Worth Church, Sussex.
Fig. 215.—Plan, Worth Church.
Another nearly complete church is that at Worth, in Sussex ([Fig. 214]). The plan may be said to be that of the Dover Church, omitting the central tower and adding an apse. The transepts, like those at Dover, are small, and their arches low and narrow; while the chancel arch assumes almost majestic proportions. The transept arches (now much mutilated) had the pilaster strip, both to jambs and arch, with a double square impost of massive proportions ([Fig. 216]). The chancel arch is more artistic in its treatment, having a large demi-column in either jamb, 2 ft. 6 in. in diameter, with a regularly formed, though plain, capital; while instead of the pilaster, a smaller semi-column is placed against the face of the wall on either side, and indirectly carried round the arch in the form of a square projection ([Fig. 217]). The arch itself is square in section, and runs without break, through the thickness of the wall. No doorway nor window of the original date remains. The walls of the nave are about 25 ft. high, and are divided at mid-height by a large string-course, above which the windows were probably placed. The angles have pilaster strips in long and short work, and similar strips are placed at intervals along the walls reaching up to the mid-height string-course, all of them standing on a continuous base of two massive courses of stone. The half-height string-course of the nave is continued round the transepts, as are the eaves courses, and run across their gable ends. The chancel was externally dealt with much as the nave, though a little less in height. This church had no tower, and, as a curious commentary on the fashionable opinion that the Anglo-Saxons nearly always built of timber and their successors in after-times of stone, we find a timber tower of the fifteenth century added to the stone church of Saxon date![8]
