Holy Trinity Church is a

Grade I listed 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 ...

Anglican Anglicanism is a Western Christian tradition that has developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the context of the Protestant Reformation in Europe. It is one of th ...

church, a parish church in

Bosham Bosham is a coastal village and civil parish in the Chichester District of West Sussex, England, centred about west of Chichester with its clustered developed part west of this. Its land forms a broad peninsula projecting into natural Chiche ...

, West Sussex. There was a church on this site in Saxon times, and the oldest parts of the building date from that time.

History

Background

Bede Bede ( ; ang, Bǣda , ; 672/326 May 735), also known as Saint Bede, The Venerable Bede, and Bede the Venerable ( la, Beda Venerabilis), was an English monk at the monastery of St Peter and its companion monastery of St Paul in the Kingdom o ...

wrote that Bishop Wilfrid, visiting Bosham in 681, found a small monastery with five or six brethren led by Dicul, an Irish monk. The building may have been on or near the site of the present church.Church History
boshamchurch.org.uk. Retrieved 25 July 2018.Holy Trinity, Bosham, Sussex
The Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture in Britain and Ireland. Retrieved 25 July 2018. Before the Norman Conquest, Bosham Church and its estate were given by King

Edward the Confessor Edward the Confessor ; la, Eduardus Confessor , ; ( 1003 – 5 January 1066) was one of the last Anglo-Saxon English kings. Usually considered the last king of the House of Wessex, he ruled from 1042 to 1066. Edward was the son of Æth ...

to his Norman chaplain Osbern FitzOsbern. Osbern retained these after the Conquest; he became

Bishop of Exeter The Bishop of Exeter is the ordinary of the Church of England Diocese of Exeter in the Province of Canterbury. Since 30 April 2014 the ordinary has been Robert Atwell.

in 1072 and attached these holdings to the bishopric. Succeeding Bishops of Exeter continued to hold the church and estate of Bosham until the Dissolution of the Monasteries."Bosham"
''A History of the County of Sussex: Volume 4, the Rape of Chichester'', ed. L F Salzman (London, 1953), pp. 182–188. British History Online. Retrieved 25 July 2018.

The building

Roman remains have been found in Bosham, and it is thought the church may be on the site of a Roman basilica. The church is built of rubble with

ashlar Ashlar () is finely dressed (cut, worked) stone, either an individual stone that has been worked until squared, or a structure built from such stones. Ashlar is the finest stone masonry unit, generally rectangular cuboid, mentioned by Vitruv ...

dressing; it has a tiled roof and a shingled spire. The lower part of the tower of the church, the chancel arch, and the tower arch, are Saxon. The chancel was extended to the east in the 12th century, and again in the 13th century when a

sacristy A sacristy, also known as a vestry or preparation room, is a room in Christian churches for the keeping of vestments (such as the alb and chasuble) and other church furnishings, sacred vessels, and parish records. The sacristy is usually located ...

was added on the north side; about this time aisles were added to the nave. The top storey of the tower is of the 15th century. The font is of the late 12th century; it is an octagonal block with two shallow arches carved on each side, supported by a thick central shaft and four slender shafts. The south porch is of the 16th or 17th century.

King Canute's daughter

There is a tradition that a daughter of King Canute drowned in a nearby millstream and was buried in the church. A small stone coffin was found near the chancel arch in 1865, but it is not known if there is any connection.

King Harold

Bosham was the principal home of Harold Godwinson, King of England in 1066; the Bayeux Tapestry shows him and his retinue riding to Bosham before sailing to Normandy to meet William, Duke of Normandy. In 1954, workmen replacing stones under the chancel arch rediscovered the coffin thought to be of King Canute's daughter, and also found a coffin containing a headless and legless skeleton; the coffin was resealed after examination of the remains by a coroner.King's grave mystery may be unearthed
BBC News, 24 November 2003. Retrieved 25 July 2018. In 2003, amateur historians sought permission from the consistory court of the Diocese of Chichester to exhume the remains, in order to confirm if they were those of King Harold. DNA was to be compared with DNA of three people claiming to be his descendants.Exhumation of "Harold" refused
BBC News, 10 December 2003. Retrieved 25 July 2018. Permission was refused. It was stated that exhumation should only be carried out on "special and exceptional grounds" or for a "good reason"; the court heard that the three supposed descendants each had different DNA.

References

External links

Holy Trinity Church Bosham
Choral Evensong {{DEFAULTSORT:Bosham, Holy Trinity Church 12th-century church buildings in England Grade I listed churches in West Sussex Church of England church buildings in West Sussex English churches with Norman architecture Churches with elements of Anglo-Saxon work Holy Trinity Church, Bosham Holy Trinity Church, Bosham Bosham