Over 1,000 years ago, the great forest of Anderida was one of the favourite hunting grounds of the kings of England. The king was proud to offer his guests in this great weald the very best of royal hospitality – wild boar, venison, game birds of every variety: they would come for perhaps a weekend or a day’s hunting in the forest and afterwards would feast upon the fruit of their hunting labours, at dinner in the Royal Manor. King Edward, the last of the Saxon kings of England always wanted the best for his guests and Anderida provided everything they needed but for one thing – a church in which to worship.
In these devout and religious times, the worship of God was paramount in the lives of the King’s subjects and religion was an integral part of many peoples’ day to day existence. Thus, the saintly King Edward – who became known throughout the land as “The Confessor” – founded Worth Church, which would rank alongside the other half dozen or so churches and monasteries which he had founded, the most famous being Westminster Abbey. The Confessor felt he needed to offer the very finest buildings his masons, architects and builders could provide and so the great Saxon Church of Worth came into being. Possibly in its early days, it served as an Abbey or Minster Church or as an outpost of the Abbey at nearby Chertsey, or possibly as a training place for the secular clergy. Whatever its purpose, its objective was to provide a fitting place of worship and devotion for the faithful, be they royal guests or workers of the land, to enable them to give thanks for the benefaction and piety of King Edward and to give them a building in which to offer their prayers and praises
A fanciful story? Perhaps. But one which may just be true. Certainly the experts have dated Worth Church from about A.D.950 and the church may well have been in the possession of Saxon kings for many generations. It is often described as the most perfect specimen of a Saxon cruciform church in England. The large chancel is unique in an English church of this age and, given the church’s secluded location in a forest clearing, it would have been much too large to serve purely local needs. An Ordnance Survey publication denotes Worth as a pre-Conquest minster [a principal church], the nearest other minsters being in London, Guildford, Cuckfield, and Otford in Kent. It is also quite possible that Worth was the spiritual home of a college of secular or monastic clergy. The religious activities of Saint Edward the Confessor [the last Saxon King of England] lend support to this view, as he is reputed to have established a number of such colleges throughout England.
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