At Holy Trinity, Bosham, a stone marks a child’s coffin discovered beneath the nave in 1865.
The skeleton, aged about eight, was traditionally identified as the daughter of King Cnut, said to have drowned in the millstream nearby. The attribution is unproven, yet deeply affecting.
Bosham was Harold Godwinson’s Sussex stronghold, traditionally claimed as his birthplace. It is even named in the Bayeux Tapestry, which shows Harold riding to its church before embarking on the voyage that would draw him towards the Norman Conquest. Parts of the church tower are Anglo-Saxon.
The village also claims the shore where Cnut demonstrated to flattering courtiers that even a king could not command the advancing sea. Viking king, lost child, Saxon earl and Norman invasion seem to knot themselves around this grave marker.
Standing above that coffin, history ceases to feel like a procession of dates. Bosham feels charged instead - by power, grief, departure and the inexorable pull of the tide.
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