| Hardham | |
St Botolph's Church |
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Hardham
Hardham shown within West Sussex |
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| OS grid reference | TQ038176 |
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| Parish | Coldwaltham |
| District | Horsham |
| Shire county | West Sussex |
| Region | South East |
| Country | England |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Police | Sussex |
| Fire | West Sussex |
| Ambulance | South East Coast |
| EU Parliament | South East England |
| UK Parliament | Arundel and South Downs |
| List of places: UK • England • West Sussex | |
Hardham is a small village in the Horsham District of West Sussex, England. It lies on the A29 road 1.2 miles (2 km) southwest of Pulborough.
The small Anglican parish church, dedicated to St Botolph, has some of the oldest surviving wall paintings in the country, including an image of St George at the battle of Antioch. The village is on the line of the Roman road Stane Street,[1] which changes direction here, leaving the modern A29 road which has followed it from Capel, to head south west to Bignor and Chichester. The Sussex Greensand Way from Lewes joined Stane Street here and remains of a Roman way station or mansio have been found.[2] In the late eighteenth century a canal tunnel was built on the Arun Navigation to avoid a large loop of the River Arun.[3] The railway line from Pulborough to Midhurst passed over the tunnel, and when the canal closed the railway company broke into the tunnel and filled that part of it under the rails with chalk. Standing on higher ground on the south side of the village Hardham Priory, the Priory of St. Cross, was an Augustinian monastery, established in the mid thirteenth century.[4]
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The wall paintings at St Botolph's Church date from the early 12th century. They survived by being covered by plaster until uncovered in 1866.[5]
The painters used colours made from locally available materials - red and yellow ochre, lime white, carbon black and a green from copper carbonate.
The paintings are in two tiers on each wall and originally had inscriptions describing the scenes above them. One if these can still be seen on the east wall of the nave.[6]
The paintings have the following themes:
Media related to [//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Hardham Hardham] at Wikimedia Commons