The church of St John the Evangelist sits alongside the green at Old Coulsdon, on high ground overlooking the valley to the west which carries the Brighton Road, and Caterham Valley to the east which carries the old Roman Road to Lewes. In 1086 the manor belonged to St Peter’s Abbey at Chertsey. The Domesday Book says ”Ipsa abbatia ten Colesdone”, “The Abbey holds Coulsdon itself”, meaning that the Abbey was the final owner, and did not merely hold the manor on behalf, or at the discretion, of some other lord.
As is usually the case, although Domesday tells us that a Saxon church stood at Coulsdon, no physical remains of it have been found. Excavators working inside the church in the 1970s, investigating the area under the choir stalls in the chancel, hoped that they might discover something, but were disappointed. But the area they excavated was very small, so their failure was no great surprise. There is no reason to doubt that a Saxon church once stood on, or very near, the site of the present church.
At the heart of St John’s today, therefore, is a later medieval church, to which has been added a large 1950s modernist-Gothic extension.
Our interest, of course, is focused on the medieval heart.
The 1970s excavation found possible foundations for a chancel arch which may date to the twelfth century, which in turn suggests that the original Saxon church was first replaced by a Norman one. But the oldest fabric which confronts us today dates from a century later, not Norman in style but early Gothic, erected as part of a major re-building overseen by Chertsey Abbey. Most of this work is concentrated in the chancel: the blank arcade;
and the three sedilia, priest-seats, carved as a single composition on the south side of the sanctuary, accompanied by a small piscina to wash the communion vessels.
Here as in so many other ancient churches, the spell lies in the detail.
SOURCES:
Bridget Cherry & Nikolaus Pevsner, London 2: South, Penguin Books, 1983.
Lesley L. Kettering, ‘Excavations at the Church of St John the Evangelist, Coulsdon’ in Surrey Archaeological Collections, 1977, Vol.71.
John Morris, Domesday Book: 3: Surrey, Phillimore & Co. Ltd, Chichester, 1975.
pengepast 