Lancing College Chapel: the back story

About Lancing College Chapel: the back story

By the ULTIMATE Brighton Editorial Team

Editor-in-Chief: Jai Michael

Lancing College Chapel stands on the slope of the Downs above the River Adur, the landmark you see from Shoreham, the A27 and the airport. Begun in 1868, consecrated in 1911 and completed more than a century and a half after work began, it is open to the public every day.

From almost anywhere around Shoreham your eye is drawn to it: a tall, pale Gothic building on the hillside west of the river, looking more like a cathedral than a school chapel. It belongs to Lancing College, and it is one of the great buildings of the Gothic Revival in England, which the college itself calls a nationally important masterpiece.

A cathedral for a school

Lancing College was founded in the nineteenth century by Nathaniel Woodard, a clergyman who set up a family of schools. He wanted its chapel to be the heart of the school, and he chose the architects R. H. Carpenter and William Slater, who designed it in the Gothic style. The vault rises about ninety feet above the floor.

Check opening times and trains on the official sites before you travel.

A century and a half in the making

Work began in 1868. The crypt was dedicated in 1875 and used for worship while the great upper chapel rose above it; that was consecrated in 1911, though still unfinished. Building went on, slowly, through the twentieth century, and the chapel was finally completed with its new western porch in 2022, more than 150 years after the first stone. A planned tower was never built.

The rose window

At the west end is a rose window thirty-two feet across, designed by Stephen Dykes Bower, often described as the largest rose window in England. Seen from inside in the late afternoon, when the low sun comes through it, it is the chapel’s great moment.

Visiting

The chapel is open to the public daily from 10am to 4pm, and from 12 noon to 4pm on Sundays and bank holidays; it is closed on Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Year’s Day, Good Friday and Easter Sunday, and hours can change around school events, so check the college’s chapel page first. It is a working school chapel, so visit quietly.

Our advice: walk or cycle out along the Adur from Shoreham, or come up from the Coastway, and time your visit for a bright afternoon, when the rose window glows; then look back from the chapel steps over the river to the sea.

Opening hours, prices and seasonal openings change, so please check with Lancing College Chapel: the back story before you go.