St Mary. East Guldeford. Romney Marsh. East Sussex. TN31 7PA.

Описание: ** sussexparishchurches.org/church/east-guldeford-st-mary/ **
A brick church, consecrated in 1505, it shows the influence of the Low Countries. It has been much altered, but retains good pre-Victorian fittings.

East Guldeford is the only marshland church in Sussex; East Guldeford level is technically part of Walland Marsh, not Romney Marsh, but the flat, wind-swept terrain is similar. The marsh appeared after the Western Rother was diverted westwards to Rye in a storm in 1287 (Millward and Robinson p173). It was gradually drained and passed into the possession of the Guldeford family, which was settled in Kent though taking their name from Guildford, Surrey. The marsh was then in the parish of Playden, but by the later C15 there was a sizeable settlement and in 1499 Sir Richard Guldeford (c1455-1506) received a faculty to build a church, consecrated in 1505 (1 p1).

The church is thus of one precisely dated build. Despite its breadth it has neither chancel nor aisles and there is on each side a shallow plinth topped by a moulded course, best seen to the north. Both north and south walls have three large windows and there is a single east one, but there is none at the west end, where there is simply a doorway with an elliptical head, set in a pointed and roll-moulded wall-arch. All have been altered and the simple intersecting tracery of the east and the south west windows is unlikely to be original; the straight mullions of the other windows are also clearly later, perhaps C18, possibly because the exterior of the church has suffered much from its exposed position.