Francis Hill Sewell

In 1848 Sewell graduated from Caius College Cambridge and became the Curate of All Saints, where he contributed more than £650 of his own money towards the estimated £2,000 total needed, engaging the architect John Henry Taylor to oversee the restoration of the building to its 14th Century splendour.

[1] After graduating from Cambridge in 1839 he was ordained into the clergy and was appointed curate of All Saints Church, Lindfield, where he remained the incumbent until his death in 1862.

By the mid-19th Century All Saints Church, Lindfield had fallen into disrepair and rectoral tithes remained low at just £35 per annum.

[4] This sorry state of affairs changed with Sewell's appointment; the new curate brought a "Victorian reformer's zeal" to the welfare and restoration of the church.

[3] In 1847 the view of the influential Cambridge Camden Society was that: "The whole [church] was in a most wretched condition and the only wonder is that in the miserably peculiar circumstances of the parish any restoration should be attempted at all.