These
White Friars were the poorest in all Sussex; so poor were they that
they failed even to maintain themselves at Sele. In July 1538, when
the Bishop of Dover came to visit the place, he found "neither friar
nor secular, but the doors open ... and none to serve God." Such was
the end of the house William de Braose had built in the first years of
the Conquest. What remains of it will be found in the church of St
Peter in Upper Beeding, an Early English building of no great interest
save that it contains many carved stones from the Priory, a window and
a door also from the same house, upon the site of which the vicarage
now stands.
William de Braose, who made Bramber his chief seat, must have had an
enormous influence upon building in this neighbourhood, which abounds
in Norman churches such as those of Botolphs and Coombes, to say
nothing of those at Shoreham Old and New; but he was by no means the
only renewer of life here.
The most beautiful thing in the still beautiful village of Steyning is
the great church of St Andrew, but with this the Lord of Bramber has
nothing to do; the Benedictine Abbey of Fecamp rebuilt this noble
sanctuary, but its foundation is said to be due to an English saint,
St Cuthman, who, having been a shepherd boy, upon his father's death
came out of the west into Sussex bearing his mother, who was crippled,
in a kind of barrow which he dragged by a cord.
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