Didling, St Andrew

'Setting in Downs Field' by Simon Jenkins

The following article comes from England's Thousand Best Churches reproduced with kind permission from Penguin Press.

The churches of the Sussex Downs merit a book to themselves. They are the simplest religious structures in England, begun by pious Saxons and Normans and mostly left alone in their poverty even by the Victorians. While Didling has no speciality apart from its benches, its setting at the end of a lane on a sweeping north slope of the Downs is incomparable. This solitude has given it the title of 'the shepherd's church', and sheep still graze its boundary.

The building has a continuous barn-like roof and no break between nave and chancel. Priest and congregation must always have been as one. From the Saxon period there remains only the font, a rough-hewn lump of stone. The rest of the church dates from the early 13th century. The remarkable bench-ends are gnarled and old, with holders for candles, their backs an 18th-century luxury. The windows are Early Gothic, the rough-carved pulpit Jacobean, the altar rails slightly later. Yet all merges into a timeless whole.

Didling was in a state of neglect in the 16th century and derelict in the 19th, but was restored and reopened in 1872. It is still in use, candle-lit in winter since there is no electricity. By the gate is a huge yew which narrowly escaped felling in the 19th century. The woodmen were stopped by a passing parishioner as they began work. The axe marks can still be seen on its base.