Cocking parish Church

The earliest parts of the church in Cocking date to the 11thC and it is mentioned in the Domesday Book. It's set at the foot of the South Downs, in a quiet and lovely backwater of the village.

For 900 years Cocking parish Church had no formal name, no formal dedication to any saint. In 2007 the congregation rectified this state of affairs, and it's now The Church of St Catherine of Siena.

How do you choose a name for a church after all that time? Though no one knows why, one of the two medieval bells in the church is inscribed with St Catherine's name, so the congregation thought it fitting to adopt her as their patron saint.

St Catherine [1347-1338] and her twin were born to the wife of cloth dyer in Siena, who already had 22 other children. She had her first vision at the age of 5 and by the time she was 7 years old, she took a vow of chastity, dedicating her life to the sick, the poor and the imprisoned. She is also one of the two patron saints of Italy, along with St Francis of Assisi. Amazingly more than 300 of her letters survive, so quite a lot is known about her short life. How a bell inscribed with her name came to be in a tiny village church in West Sussex is not recorded.

The tree beside it is not covered in bird's nests, but bunches of mistletoe. Never seen so much growing in one place.

Tired I was; my head would go
Nodding under the mistletoe
(Pale-green, fairy mistletoe),
No footsteps came, no voice, but only,
Just as I sat there, sleepy, lonely,
Stooped in the still and shadowy air
Lips unseen - and kissed me there.

Walter de la Mare