St Thomas A Becket Church, Brightling, East Sussex.

Having been to Bodiam Castle earlier in the afternoon, we visited the church of St Thomas A Becket in the village of Brightling in East Sussex in the evening of the 23rd of March 2022.

There was a church on this site that was recalled in the Domesday Book, and it was originally dedicated to St Nicholas, but it was rededicated to St Thomas A Becket not long after his murder in 1170.

None of that original church remains, with the earliest parts of the current church dating from the thirteenth century, with the Tower, Nave, Chancel and St Nicholas’ Chapel all being dated from this time. The North Aisle and various buttresses were added in the fourteenth century, with a new window added to the chapel in the fifteenth century. The porch was added in 1749.

There are suggestions (Pevsner) that the decorated windows adjoining the porch which light the nave were ‘Victorianised’ during the nineteenth century.

The Gallery to the west was erected in the eighteenth century and is supported by two fluted wooden columns of Doric order. It was given to the church by local resident and MP John “Mad Jack” Fuller to accommodate the famous barrel organ given to the church in 1820. It is the largest in full working order in the UK, having been restored in 1960. It has six stops and two barrels each playing twelve tunes.

The church was restored in 1903 and many of the floor slab memorials were moved and became part of the walls.

Elsewhere in the church there are some wall paintings, the north aisle has some original interesting early wall paintings, whereas the rest of the church was refurbished by John Fuller in the early nineteenth century, boxing in and plastering the walls of the nave and chancel and roof in preparation for the visit of the Bishop.

There are eight bells, the first five are of unknown date, which John Fuller (yes him again) had re-cast, and another treble bell added in 1815 in honour of the Duke of Wellington’s famous victories (Toulouse, Orthes, Pyrenees, Vittoria, Salamanca, and Trattoria), he then added second and trebles bells both inscribed Waterloo in 1818.

The pictures on the west wall were moved there having originally been the Reredos pictures and are copies of the Arundel Society of fifteenth century Italian paintings.

The churchyard is extensive, and a lot is fenced off, included the part that contains the reason why most people would come to visit the church. Here in this remote, tiny, East Sussex village is a Pyramid tomb. Built by John Fuller, it is one of his so-called follies, of which there are half a dozen of in the locality. He had it built before his death with the instructions he was to be seated at a table in there as his final resting place. Over a century later it was found he is in a standard encased tomb and not sat decomposing at a table.

Postscript. John Fuller is deeply embedded with the church’s history and upkeep; however, it should be noted that his family-owned plantations in the West Indies, and he voted against the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 and was a vociferous supporter of keeping slaves. A typically selective form of Christianity.

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