Clayton, Sussex

Description
Clayton, a parish in Sussex, 1 mile S of Hassocks station on the L.B. & S.C.R., and 2 miles SE of Hurstpierpoint. It has a post office under Hassocks (R.S.O.); money order and telegraph office, Hassocks. Acreage, 2459; population of the civil parish, 1966; of the ecclesiastical, 1398. Clayton Priory is the seat of the Patton-Bethune family. A tunnel of the railway through the South Downs, 1 1/2 mile long, commences a short distance south of the church, and was formed at a cost of upwards of £90,000. The living is a rectory, united with the rectory of Keymer, in the diocese of Chi-chester; net value, about £400. Patron, Brazenose College, Oxford. The old church is Early English, with a round chancel-arch of quasi-Saxon character. A new church was built in 1863, at St John's Common, in the parish of Keymer, at a cost of £6000, is in the Decorated Englisli style and cruciform, and the charge of it is a separate vicarage, in the patronage of the rector.