Surfing the “A Church Near You” website this week, I found that Ovingdean, a small village near Brighton, hosts a lovely church with a graveyard dating back the 11th century.
St Wulfran's Church, Ovingdean
St.Wulfran, that’s the name of the church (there are only other two churches in Britain named after such a saint) is the oldest building in the area of Brighton and Hove, and appears in the Doomsday Book. Most of the original church was destroyed during the centuries and rebuilt in the late 1870s, but the tower is believed to date back the 13th.
The wooden barrel-vaulted ceiling of the chancel on the interior of the Church, was painted by Eamer Kempe, with designs of leaves, flowers and doves, as part of the restoration works in the 19th.
Armed with all my equipment, on Saturday morning I set off to pay a visit, but I discovered at my expenses that church on Saturdays is closed (lesson learnt, always check the timetable for the services).
Nevertheless I enjoyed the walk and found the place where the church is, a little hill, half hidden by trees, with a great view of the dawns from its eastern side, simply charming.
Thus I persevered and I went back on Sunday. While the service was on, I could wander around understurbed among the graves. The ones immediatly surrounding the church date from the 18th to the beginning of the 20th, while much more recent tombs (the churchyard is still open for burials) can be found on the back, beside a small stone wall, presumably the extension of the churchyard. Beside the traditional headstones, crosses and celtic crosses seem to prevail for the graves prior the mid 60s.
I also found a few somewhat personal inscriptions, largely from the beginning of the 20th century, a fact which struck me as quite unusual since, in the churchyards I visited before inscriptions were largely quotes taken from the Bible up until at least the 1950s.
Another peculiarity, is the presence of a meridian (overview, close-up), next to the church’s front door, on the left.
