Volume 4: South-East England
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Current Display: Sompting 04, Sussex 
Overview
Object type: Part of string-course
Measurements: H. 12 cm (4.7 in); W. 50 cm (19.7 in); D. (visible) 8 cm (3.2 in)
Stone type: Pale grey to yellowish, fine-grained, soft limestone; Caen stone, Calcaire de Caen Formation, Bathonian, Middle Jurassic; Caen, Normandy
Plate numbers in printed volume: Ills. 169-170
Corpus volume reference: Vol 4 p. 174
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Present Location
Incorporated into lower part of nineteenth-century reredos immediately behind altar
Evidence for Discovery
None; first recorded in Clapham 1935a
Church Dedication
St Mary
Present Condition
Broken and worn
Description
Like Sompting nos. 1–3, except that some of the backward-curling lateral leaves are tightly scrolled.
Discussion
Local oral tradition describes the friezes behind the altar as nineteenth-century copies of Sompting nos. 1–3, but they are of the same type of stone as nos. 1–3, and each piece is roughly broken at the ends, an unnecessary elaboration in fragments which can never have been intended to be seen if they were made for their present position. Nor are they exact copies of nos. 1–3. It seems more likely that local tradition has confused the date of the reredos itself with that of the fragments reused in it. Sompting nos. 5–8 exhibit no sign of the re-tooling seen on nos. 1–3.
Date
Eleventh century
References
Clapham 1935a, 407 - 8, pl. VIIIB; Kendrick 1949, 103; Rice 1952, 144; Quirk 1961, 32; Fisher 1962, 381; Nairn and Pevsner 1965, 331; Taylor and Taylor 1965 - 78, ii, 562; Fisher 1970, 181; Kirby 1978, 165; Gem 1983, 128; Tweddle 1986b, i, 72 - 3, 180 - 2, ii, 461 - 2, iii, pl. 87b
D.T.
Endnotes
