Lancing College Chapel ,Sussex

The buildings erected at Lancing were first conceived in 1852 when Richard Cromwell Carpenter produced drawings for a college at Shoreham, a complex comprising a double quadrangle arrangement, and a seven-bay chapel. By i855 the site had changed to Lancing, and the chapel had become the dining hall, a new chapel being indicated beyond the most eastern quadrangle. With the death of R. C. Carpenter in 1855 responsibility for designing the college passed to his successor William Slater, and it was he who designed the chapel, switching the style from medieval and English to a form of Early French, echoing the three-storey formula used in the cathedrals of northern France. Slater’s proposals were illustrated in the Builder in 1868. However, progress was slow, and responsibility for the chapel designs passed from Slater to Richard Herbert Carpenter. In the process the two eastern towers were shortened and simplified, and eventually the great tower was abandoned because of the cost involved in sinking the foundations some fifty feet on to solid rock. R H Carpenter continued to develop the scheme and supervise its eventual construction and is widely credited as architect.

However, as John Elliott notes, “a careful comparison of Slater's drawings and the building as executed shows that the external changes introduced by R. H. Carpenter were more decorative than structural, much of Slater's 1868 design surviving. The plan remained unchanged, the balustrade and pinnacles survived; as did the crocketed gables above the clerestory windows in the apse, such changes as were made being mainly concentrated on the choir and aisle windows, where couplets gave way to elaborate three-light affairs, and where the crocketed gables in the choir clerestory were replaced by simpler drip mouldings.” [Lancing College Chapel: A Question of Attribution. Page 122] 

Reference     John Elliott: Lancing College Chapel: A Question of Attribution. Architectural History v39, 1996, pages 114-123