Tuxlith Chapel, also known as Milland Old Church, is a redundant Anglican church in the village of

Milland Milland is a village and civil parish in the Chichester district of West Sussex, England. It is situated north of the A272 road on the border with Hampshire. In the 2001 census the parish covered and had 332 households with a total population ...

West Sussex West Sussex is a county in South East England on the English Channel coast. The ceremonial county comprises the shire districts of Adur, Arun, Chichester, Horsham, and Mid Sussex, and the boroughs of Crawley and Worthing. Covering an ...

, England (). It is recorded in the

National Heritage List for England The National Heritage List for England (NHLE) is England's official database of protected heritage assets. It includes details of all English listed buildings, scheduled monuments, register of historic parks and gardens, protected shipwrecks, a ...

as a designated Grade II

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

, and is under the care of the

Friends of Friendless Churches Friends of Friendless Churches is a registered charity formed in 1957, active in England and Wales, which campaigns for and rescues redundant historic places of worship threatened by demolition, decay, or inappropriate conversion. As of April ...

History

It has been stated that the church was built as a chapel of ease to St George, Trotton, in the 16th century. However, there must have been an earlier building on the site because during conservation work a blocked window dating from the 12th century, and herringbone masonry in the north wall in

Norman Norman or Normans may refer to: Ethnic and cultural identity * The Normans, a people partly descended from Norse Vikings who settled in the territory of Normandy in France in the 10th and 11th centuries ** People or things connected with the Norm ...

style were found. The earliest surviving documentary evidence relating to the church is a bequest in a will dated 1532 to "the Church of Tyklyth". The

parish register A parish register in an ecclesiastical parish is a handwritten volume, normally kept in the parish church in which certain details of religious ceremonies marking major events such as baptisms (together with the dates and names of the parents), ma ...

s go back to 1581. In the 17th century a gallery was added, approached by steps from outside the church. During the following century a north

transept A transept (with two semitransepts) is a transverse part of any building, which lies across the main body of the building. In cruciform churches, a transept is an area set crosswise to the nave in a cruciform ("cross-shaped") building wi ...

was built. However, during the 19th century, due to growth of the local population, the building became too small for the size of the congregation, and a new church dedicated to St Luke was built to the west of it in 1879. The old church was used as a Sunday school until the 1930s, when it became unused and its fabric deteriorated. It was listed as Grade II listed building in 1959, at which time it was described as being "disused and neglected". The church was declared redundant in 1974. It was one of the first churches to be owned by the

charity Charity may refer to: Giving * Charitable organization or charity, a non-profit organization whose primary objectives are philanthropy and social well-being of persons * Charity (practice), the practice of being benevolent, giving and sharing * C ...

, the Friends of Friendless Churches. At that time the charity was only a pressure group, but its constitution was changed so that it could instigate repair and renovation of the churches in its possession. The charity holds a 99-year

lease A lease is a contractual arrangement calling for the user (referred to as the ''lessee'') to pay the owner (referred to as the ''lessor'') for the use of an asset. Property, buildings and vehicles are common assets that are leased. Industrial ...

with effect from 1 January 1974. After its acquisition the building was immediately made waterproof. Money has since been raised for further restoration work, helped by the Friends of Tuxlith Chapel, a group founded in 1993. It is now used as a community centre, and it hosts concerts and meetings. Improvements to the furniture of the church have been undertaken, including restoration of the pulpit in 1993, and a new altar designed by Sir Hubert Bennett.

Architecture

Tuxlith Chapel is constructed in plastered stone

rubble Rubble is broken stone, of irregular size, shape and texture; undressed especially as a filling-in. Rubble naturally found in the soil is known also as 'brash' (compare cornbrash)."Rubble" def. 2., "Brash n. 2. def. 1. ''Oxford English Dictionar ...

with ashlar dressings and has a tiled roof. Its plan is L-shaped, consisting of a

chancel In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar, including the choir and the sanctuary (sometimes called the presbytery), at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may terminate in an apse. Ov ...

with a north transept and a north porch, and a

nave The nave () is the central part of a church, stretching from the (normally western) main entrance or rear wall, to the transepts, or in a church without transepts, to the chancel. When a church contains side aisles, as in a basilica-type ...

with a south porch. On the south wall are stone steps which led up to the former gallery. On the west

gable A gable is the generally triangular portion of a wall between the edges of intersecting roof pitches. The shape of the gable and how it is detailed depends on the structural system used, which reflects climate, material availability, and aesth ...

is a

bellcote A bellcote, bell-cote or bell-cot is a small framework and shelter for one or more bells. Bellcotes are most common in church architecture but are also seen on institutions such as schools. The bellcote may be carried on brackets projecting from ...

. On the sides of the east window are Commandment Boards containing the Creed and the

Lord's Prayer The Lord's Prayer, also called the Our Father or Pater Noster, is a central Christian prayer which Jesus taught as the way to pray. Two versions of this prayer are recorded in the gospels: a longer form within the Sermon on the Mount in the Gosp ...

. Contrasting it favourably with St Luke's Church, its 19th-century replacement, architectural historian

Nikolaus Pevsner Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner (30 January 1902 – 18 August 1983) was a German-British art historian and architectural historian best known for his monumental 46-volume series of county-by-county guides, ''The Buildings of England'' (1 ...

described it as making "a very telling contrast between true piety and 19th-century religious advertisement".

References

{{Reflist, 33em 18th-century Church of England church buildings Grade II listed churches in West Sussex Churches preserved by the Friends of Friendless Churches English Gothic architecture in West Sussex

History

Architecture

See also

References