Not resting in peace.

Sussex has a handful of its own saints, but I suspect you won't be surprised to hear of those only one is female. We were near her base on my big recent birthday so I went to pay homage.

This is Saint Lewinna whose feast day is 24th July and as far as I am aware nobody marks it. She is said to have been a young virgin who was murdered in the 7th century by a heathen and at a time when Sussex was still transitioning to Christianity. Ours was the last county to be converted. Upon her burial accounts began to emerge of all sorts of miracles being attributed to her and by the 10th century Eadhelm, Bishop of Chichester [950-80], no doubt sensing a chance to make some money off the pilgrim industry, ordered that her remains should be exhumed. Her relics were placed within the church of St Andrew's in Bishopstone [another contender is Alfriston, but Bishopstone is thought to be the correct site] for people to come and venerate her. Her shrine was probably within in what you can now see is the porch, but was once a side chapel. I've seen porches of that size in East Anglia, but not round here.

You might imagine that Lewinna might have had a few hundred years of resting in peace at least until the time of the break with Rome under Henry VIII. Alas she was soon on the move again. According to the historical sources a monk called Balgerus was due to be sailing from Flanders to Dover, but enroute he got blown off course and wound up in Seaford on Easter Monday 1058 where he stumbled across this very church. He decided that he rather fancied having a personal relic of his own from Lewinna, but the priest refused his request. This monk though was a wily old fox and he wasn't going to give up that easily. Instead he asked if he could spend the night praying and saying mass by her shrine. He appears to have laid his morals aside at this point and managed to break into the end of her coffin from which he stole all of her bones bar a couple of small ones. These he wrapped in a red cloth and made good his escape back to St Winoc's Abbey, Bergues [near Dunkirk] from whence he came. 

By 1224 Lewinna had her very own grand and shiny new shrine in the abbey, but by 1383 it had been sacked by the allies of Charles VI of France. The shrine was stripped of all the precious metals, but the relics remained until 4th July 1558 when the abbey was burnt to the ground by French Protestants. Only one of her ribs was left which by 1905 was still within the church of St Martin's [still in the same area]. Alas this church was bombed in WWII and upon its restoration no trace of the single rib remained. Now all we have is her name and echoes of her story stretching back across a thousand years.

This is not the only reason I stopped here as it has this rather fabulous Saxon dial above the porch. Upon it is etched the name of Eadric. No one knows who this mysterious chap was, but one theory is that the cross next to him may denote that he was a bishop.

I'll show you where I spent the rest of my day in the next post.

Arilx