Friday's Church

Friday's Church is the name formerly given to a high point on Barpham Hill, originally a Bronze Age burial site. There is nothing to mark the location now except for some barely recognisable mounds in the grass; JCP's thorn tree had apparently blown down by the 1920s. But the view is still as described. On a clear day the Isle of Wight can be made out in the distance, and the spire of Chichester Cathedral, some fourteen miles away, is normally visible to the right of the photograph.

' But between the edge of the Gibbet Woods and the hill above the Leper's Path was an eminence on the top of the downs from which the sea, some half a dozen miles away, was clearly visible...It was called by the surprising name of "Friday's Church," and what it really was, was the site of an ancient Norse shrine belonging to the goddess Freya.'

The origin of the name is the subject of some debate. It is variously attributed to the Good Friday kissing games traditionally associated with barrows and burial-places or to an old custom that the priest went there on Fridays to preach to the lepers. The former spring nearby known as Friday's Well, however, does seem always to have been associated with the goddess Freya.

The site was excavated during the 1960s and 1970s. Two barrows were located and the remains of burial urns recovered, dated to 1000-1500 BC (Sussex Archaeological Collections 118 (1980), pp.171-82). Quantities of Roman pottery and coins were also found, indicating that the site had been used for burials at that period as well. The finds were deposited at Worthing Museum and items are occasionally on display.

Disappointingly, there were no finds from the Anglo-Saxon period. But the report of the excavation notes that the area around the site had been investigated in the 1890s by Mr Collyer of Peppering and a colleague, and that 'several Anglo-Saxon barrows' were opened. The finds apparently included skeletons, but it is not known whether they have been preserved.

Powys was on good terms with Mr Collyer, whose hospitality he records in Autobiography, and so it may be that his version of the name is the correct one.

 

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