Church Of St Mary The Virgin

The Church of St Mary the Virgin is a parish church built in 1886 by the architectural firm Scott and Company, with later alterations. It is constructed of flint with Bath stone dressings, has a tiled roof, and features a shingled spire. Notably, flint is not naturally found in Buxted but was frequently used in churches on the South Downs to the west, giving St Mary's a distinctive appearance in this area.

The church has a seven-bay continuous nave and chancel, with the Walsingham Chapel on the south side, and a porch and vestry on the north. The principal entrance is set at the base of the tower and approached by a flight of stone steps.

Architectural Character

Built in the Late Gothic style, the church has the appearance of a medieval Sussex church. All elevations feature Bath stone dripmoulds at ground and clerestory level. The tower has simple trefoil-enriched single-light windows at the lower level and two-light louvered mullion belfry openings in its upper stage. The west elevation is framed by two angle buttresses with Bath stone quoins and dominated by a large seven-light west window with rectilinear tracery. The north elevation has seven single lights at clerestory level, although the eastern two are no longer visible due to the 1956 vestry extension.

The vestry is also of flint with stone dressings, with a two-light mullion and transom window to the west and a porch on the northern elevation. Its blank east wall is of red brick, indicating it was built to accommodate future extension. The east wall of the main church is blind, and beyond it is an area left free for an unrealised further expansion of the church. As with the west front, the apex is surmounted by a stone Celtic cross finial.

The eastern end of the Walsingham Chapel has a simple two-light mullioned window and a southern diagonal buttress. The apex of the chapel roof has a chimney stack disguised as a finial stack, with relief crosses and a coped top. The south elevation has four single lancet windows at clerestory level and, to the west, the tower with its southern stair turret under a pitched roof.

Below the west window is a carved wooden Calvary consisting of a crucifix with the Virgin and St John. This was made by the Art and Book Company of Westminster and erected in 1921 to commemorate those of the parish who fell in the First World War.

Interior

The church has a plain interior painted white, although it is apparent in a few places that the walls originally had stencilled decoration, with wall paintings in the chancel. A pointed-arched arcade runs between the nave and aisle. The two-bay chancel and five-bay nave share a timber barrel roof. The church did not originally contain pews but wooden chairs, and the current seating is modern. The altar is mounted on a single step at the east end of the nave with a crucifix hanging from the ceiling above.

Fixtures and Fittings

Notable fixtures and fittings include stained glass by Charles Eamer Kempe of various dates: the Annunciation in the south chapel east window (1896); the Nativity, St Elizabeth with John the Baptist, and the Good Shepherd in the south chapel south windows (1909); and St Agnes and St John the Evangelist in the north aisle (1920 and 1921 respectively). There is also a Victorian pulpit in English oak and a lectern, an octagonal stone font decorated with quatrefoils under the west window, the rood screen to the Walsingham Chapel which is original to the church, and a statue of Our Lady of Walsingham standing in the Walsingham Chapel, carved in Oberammergau, Bavaria, painted in Walsingham and dedicated on 18 December 1932.

Historical Context

St Mary the Virgin Church was erected and endowed by the Reverend Father Arthur Douglas Wagner (1824-1902) and consecrated on 11 June 1887. The architects were Scott and Company, a Brighton-based firm founded by Edmund Evan Scott (1828-1895), from whom Wagner had commissioned other churches. Scott's partner Frank Thomas Cawthorn (1856-1921) is likely to have taken the lead on the design.

Wagner was ordained deacon in 1848 and priest in 1849, serving as curate to his father, who between 1846 and 1849 built the new church of St Paul at Brighton. Designed by Richard Cromwell Carpenter, St Paul's was the first church in Brighton at which Tractarian ritual (including the use of vestments and incense) was adopted. When the church acquired a parish in 1873, Wagner the younger became its first vicar, a position he retained until the end of his life. Wagner continued the work begun by his father by founding a sisterhood in connection with St Paul's in 1855, the Community of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Wagner was a wealthy man and also built four new churches in Brighton: St Mary Magdalene (1862, demolished), the Annunciation (1864), St Bartholomew (1874, also by Edmund Evan Scott) and St Martin (1875).

In 1873, Wagner leased Totease House in Buxted as a holiday home; when not in use, it served as a retreat for the Blessed Virgin Mary sisters. Wagner later built a house for himself at Buxted, complete with a chapel which was shared with the sisters. By the mid-19th century, hastened by the arrival of the railway in 1868, the pattern of settlement in the village had shifted eastwards away from the medieval parish church of St Margaret. In 1883, therefore, Wagner endowed a new church for the village; the foundation stone was laid on 27 January 1885 and on 12 March 1885 the schoolroom was opened, which operated as a temporary worship space until the church was completed.

Edmund Evan Scott of Brighton (1828-1895) is best known as the designer of St Bartholomew's Church in that town (1872-1874). Scott worked in partnership with a number of local architects, including Frank Thomas Cawthorn (1856-1921), who continued the practice after Scott's death. In addition to this church, Cawthorn is credited as the designer of St Agnes, Hove (1903, disused) and St Saviour, Brighton (1885-1900, as Scott and Company, now demolished).

The stained glass in the church is by Charles Eamer Kempe and Company, and is of various dates, from 1896 until 1921. Kempe (1837-1907) was also a major figure in the 19th-century Anglo-Catholic movement. Prevented from taking holy orders by a severe stammer, he devoted his religious fervour to the cause of ecclesiastical art, training with George Frederick Bodley, a leading figure in the later phase of the Gothic revival in architecture. He studied briefly in the major stained-glass studios of Clayton and Bell, and in 1866 set up his own business. Kempe's early work was inspired by 15th-century English glass but by 1880 he was turning to German models, and as business increased (he is believed to have employed as many as 100 men) his work became more standardised.

St Mary's was designed to promote Anglo-Catholic worship and the screen in the Lady Chapel, known as the Walsingham Chapel, was positioned so that the dimensions of the chapel replicated those of the medieval Holy House at Walsingham; the latter was itself modelled on the Holy House at Nazareth, considered traditionally to have been the scene of the Annunciation. The Walsingham Chapel at St Mary's became the first restored post-Reformation Walsingham shrine (the medieval house having been destroyed in the 16th century) and was the precursor of the revival of devotion to Our Lady of Walsingham in England. Aside from the proportions of the chapel, established when the church was built, the connection between Buxted and Walsingham does not seem to have been much celebrated by Wagner or his successors until, in the 1930s, Walsingham became a popular place of pilgrimage for Anglo-Catholics. This generated new activity at St Mary's and a statue of Our Lady, identical to one at Walsingham, was dedicated in 1932.

The chapel screen was removed, thus modifying the chapel's sacred proportions, when various alterations and additions were made to the east end of the church and the vestry in 1952 (the screen was stored in the church hall before it was later reinstated). Despite this, in 1964 the Buildings of England volume for East Sussex still described St Mary's as 'lavishly furnished'; later in that decade, however, many interior features were removed including an altarpiece by George Frederick Bodley.