Certain it is that until the end of the eighteenth century, there
stood to the south-west of the church a great bell tower, a detached
campanile, now dismantled, whose stones are said to have been used to
build Rye Harbour.
The church, as we have it, is one of the loveliest Decorated buildings
in the county; the Perpendicular porch, however, by which we enter does
not belong to the church but possibly came here from one of the
destroyed churches of Winchelsea, St Giles's or St Leonard's. Within
we find ourselves in a great choir or chancel, with a chapel
on either hand, that on the right dedicated in honour of St
Nicholas and known as the Alard Chantry, that on the left the Lady
Chapel known as the Farncombe Chantry. The arcades which divide these
chapels from the choir are extraordinarily beautiful, as are the
restored sedilia and piscina with their gables and pinnacles and
lovely diaper work. The windows, too, are very noble and fine, and rich
in their tracery, which might seem to be scarcely English.
[Illustration: WINCHELSEA CHURCH]
In the Chapel of St Nicholas, the Alard Chantry, on the south, are the
glorious canopied tombs of Gervase Alard (1300) and Stephen Alard.
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