Southease No. 1 / Southese / Southesse / Suesse / Sueyse / Suthese

Noted in Hussey (1852): "The font is a square stone, hollowed out, with a leaden basin within. The lower part is simply the stone reduced, the angles being rounded into the appearance of shafts, the workmanship very rude." Either Hussey [cf. supra] was wrong in his identification of the base, or the base has been cut away, broken up and cemented together again, for, as the CRSBI (2008) notes, "the font is composed of jointed ashlar blocks". It is more likely that when Hussey saw the font ca. 1852 it was covered in the patina of centuries and may have given the impression of being a single block, whereas by the time Kathryn Morrison (CRSBI) saw the font in August 2001, it had undergone a thorough surface cleaning, to the extent that it appeared re-tooled. Harrison (1920) reports a stoup and a late-Norman font in this church. The Victoria County History (Sussex, vol. 7, 1940) notes: "The church, of which the invocation is unknown, consists of a nave, the eastern end of which forms the chancel, a circular western tower, and a south porch. It had in addition a chancel, and short aisles on either side of the eastern part of the nave. These aisles are in the form of pre-Conquest portici, and as the nave is apparently of the pre-Conquest period, the vanished aisles may have been contemporary with it. [...] The font is plain, probably later 12th century, and has been repaired."