Bramber and Steyning

Bramber Castle is a Norman motte-and-bailey castle. William De Braose constructed the castle c1070, along with the Norman church, on a natural mound and most of the surviving masonry dates from this time. Except for a period of confiscation during the reign of King John, Bramber Castle remained in the ownership of the De Braose family until the line died out in 1324. During Norman times the coastline would have been much further inland, and at high tide the water would have reached the castle walls.
The only remaining part of the castle is the remain west wall of the keep.Several smaller sections of the perimeter (curtain) wall exist on the north and east sides. It is likely the locals used the stone in their own buildings, after the civil war.
St Nicolas church was originally built in 1075 as a chapel for the castle and housed a small Benedictine college. Part of the original nave remains, but much damage was done in the seventeenth century and the Victorian restoration is not good. The present chancel is housed in the original tower and transepts.

Steyning is a lovely village to visit, if you are in this part of West Sussex, with an interesting historic core of building. The origins of Steyning's church are somewhat vague: it was founded around the 8th or 9th centuries, supposedly by St Cuthman. But it is clear that during the 9th century there was a flourishing Minster church here, dedicated to its presumed founder, and Ethelwulf, King of Wessex and the father of Alfred the Great, was buried here in 858. (His body was later moved to Winchester Cathedral.) An ancient gravestone in the porch purports to be from his tomb.
Unfortunately, nothing else recognisably survives from the Saxon period: after the Norman conquest, the church came into the care of the monks of Fecamp Abbey in France, who rebuilt the church in romanesque style between the late 11th and mid 12th centuries. The porch was added in the 15th century and the tower in the 16th, but after the dissolution, the Norman chancel decayed and the present chancel is a Victorian addition.

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