🕯️The Stones That Moved🕯️
These six photos tell a simple story - Chichester Cathedral stands where another church once died
Before the Normans arrived, the seat of the South Saxon bishopric wasn’t in Chichester at all — it was down at Church Norton, on the edge of Selsey’s marshes. That lonely little chapel I’ve photographed is all that remains of a once-significant monastery. When the Normans took control, they did what conquerors always do: they moved the centre of gravity. The bishopric was uprooted, the monastery dismantled, and its stones carted north to build the grand cathedral we know today.
So I photographed both places on purpose.
Chichester Cathedral is a showcase of power — Norman arches, medieval ambition, Victorian confidence, and a touch of modern colour thrown in for good measure. Church Norton, by contrast, is the ghost of the world that came before it. Small. Weather-bitten. Honest.
Put together, they form a kind of architectural before-and-after:
the mighty structure that rose, and the quiet shell that was left behind.
That’s the story I saw through the lens — the journey of English Christianity from a windswept coastal monastery to a city of stone and spires. Two buildings. One heritage. And a thousand years between them.
