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Tuxlith Chapel, also known as Milland Old Church, is a redundant
Anglican Anglicanism, also known as Episcopalianism in some countries, is a Western Christianity, Western Christian tradition which developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the ...
church in the village of
Milland Milland is a village and civil parish in the Chichester (district), Chichester Districts of England, district of West Sussex, England. It is situated north of the A272 road on the border with Hampshire. In the 2001 census the parish covered an ...
,
West Sussex West Sussex is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Surrey to the north, East Sussex to the east, the English Channel to the south, and Hampshire to the west. The largest settlement is Cr ...
, England (). It is recorded in the
National Heritage List for England The National Heritage List for England (NHLE) is England's official database of protected heritage assets. It includes details of all English listed buildings, scheduled monuments, register of historic parks and gardens, protected shipwrecks, ...
as a designated Grade II
listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Hi ...
, and is under the care of the Friends of Friendless Churches.


History

It has been stated that the church was built as a
chapel of ease A chapel of ease (or chapel-of-ease) is a church architecture, church building other than the parish church, built within the bounds of a parish for the attendance of those who cannot reach the parish church conveniently, generally due to trav ...
to St George, Trotton, in the 16th century. However, there must have been an earlier building on the site because during conservation work a blocked window dating from the 12th century, and herringbone masonry in the north wall in Norman style were found. The earliest surviving documentary evidence relating to the church is a bequest in a will dated 1532 to "the Church of Tyklyth". The parish registers go back to 1581. In the 17th century a gallery was added, approached by steps from outside the church. During the following century a north
transept A transept (with two semitransepts) is a transverse part of any building, which lies across the main body of the building. In cruciform ("cross-shaped") cruciform plan, churches, in particular within the Romanesque architecture, Romanesque a ...
was built. However, during the 19th century, due to growth of the local population, the building became too small for the size of the congregation, and a new church dedicated to St Luke was built to the west of it in 1879. The old church was used as a
Sunday school ] A Sunday school, sometimes known as a Sabbath school, is an educational institution, usually Christianity, Christian in character and intended for children or neophytes. Sunday school classes usually precede a Sunday church service and are u ...
until the 1930s, when it became unused and its fabric deteriorated. It was listed as Grade II listed building in 1959, at which time it was described as being "disused and neglected". The church was declared redundant in 1974. It was one of the first churches to be owned by the Charitable organization, charity, the Friends of Friendless Churches. At that time the charity was only a pressure group, but its constitution was changed so that it could instigate repair and renovation of the churches in its possession. The charity holds a 99-year
lease A lease is a contractual arrangement calling for the user (referred to as the ''lessee'') to pay the owner (referred to as the ''lessor'') for the use of an asset. Property, buildings and vehicles are common assets that are leased. Industrial ...
with effect from 1 January 1974. After its acquisition the building was immediately made waterproof. Money has since been raised for further restoration work, helped by the Friends of Tuxlith Chapel, a group founded in 1993. It is now used as a community centre, and it hosts concerts and meetings. Improvements to the furniture of the church have been undertaken, including restoration of the
pulpit A pulpit is a raised stand for preachers in a Christian church. The origin of the word is the Latin ''pulpitum'' (platform or staging). The traditional pulpit is raised well above the surrounding floor for audibility and visibility, accesse ...
in 1993, and a new altar designed by Sir Hubert Bennett.


Architecture

Tuxlith Chapel is constructed in plastered stone
rubble Rubble is broken stone, of irregular size, shape and texture; undressed especially as a filling-in. Rubble naturally found in the soil is known also as 'brash' (compare cornbrash)."Rubble" def. 2., "Brash n. 2. def. 1. ''Oxford English Dictionar ...
with
ashlar Ashlar () is a cut and dressed rock (geology), stone, worked using a chisel to achieve a specific form, typically rectangular in shape. The term can also refer to a structure built from such stones. Ashlar is the finest stone masonry unit, a ...
dressings and has a tiled roof. Its plan is L-shaped, consisting of a
chancel In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar, including the Choir (architecture), choir and the sanctuary (sometimes called the presbytery), at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may termi ...
with a north transept and a north porch, and a
nave The nave () is the central part of a church, stretching from the (normally western) main entrance or rear wall, to the transepts, or in a church without transepts, to the chancel. When a church contains side aisles, as in a basilica-type ...
with a south porch. On the south wall are stone steps which led up to the former gallery. On the west
gable A gable is the generally triangular portion of a wall between the edges of intersecting roof pitches. The shape of the gable and how it is detailed depends on the structural system used, which reflects climate, material availability, and aesth ...
is a bellcote. On the sides of the east window are Commandment Boards containing the
Creed A creed, also known as a confession of faith, a symbol, or a statement of faith, is a statement of the shared beliefs of a community (often a religious community) which summarizes its core tenets. Many Christian denominations use three creeds ...
and the
Lord's Prayer The Lord's Prayer, also known by its incipit Our Father (, ), is a central Christian prayer attributed to Jesus. It contains petitions to God focused on God’s holiness, will, and kingdom, as well as human needs, with variations across manusc ...
. Contrasting it favourably with St Luke's Church, its 19th-century replacement, architectural historian
Nikolaus Pevsner Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner (30 January 1902 – 18 August 1983) was a German-British art historian and architectural historian best known for his monumental 46-volume series of county-by-county guides, ''The Buildings of England'' (195 ...
described it as making "a very telling contrast between true piety and 19th-century religious advertisement".


See also

* List of former places of worship in Chichester (district)


References

{{Reflist, 33em 18th-century Church of England church buildings Grade II listed churches in West Sussex Churches preserved by the Friends of Friendless Churches English Gothic architecture in West Sussex