Classic Audiobook Collection - Highways and Byways in Sussex by E. V. Lucas ~ Full Audiobook [history]

Starting point is 00:00:00 Highways and Byways in Sussex by E. V. Lucas, illustrated by F. L.M. Griggs. Preface. Readers who are acquainted with the earlier volumes of this series will not need to be told that they are less guidebooks than appreciations of the districts with which they are concerned. In the pages that follow, my aim has been to gather a Sussex bouquet, rather than to present the facts which the more practical traveller requires. The order of progress through the country has been determined largely by the lines of railway. I have thought it best to enter Sussex in the west at Midhurst, making that the first centre, and to zigzag thence across to the east by way of Chichester, Arndall, Petworth, Horsham, Brighton. I name only the chief centres. Cuckfield, East Grinstead, Lewis, Eastbourne, Halesham, Hastings, Rye, and Tunbridge Wells,

Starting point is 00:00:56 leaving the county finally at Withiam on the borders of Ashdown Forest. For the traveller in a carriage or on a bicycle this route is not the best, but for those who would explore it slowly on foot, and much of the more characteristic scenery of Sussex can be studied only in this way, with occasional assistance from the train it is, I think, as good a scheme as any. I do not suggest that it is necessary for the reader who travels through Sussex to take the same route. He would probably prefer to cover the county, literally strip by strip, the forest strip from Tumbridge Wells to Horsham,

Starting point is 00:01:33 the Wealds strip from Billingshurst to Burwash, the Downs strip from Racton to Beechy Head, rather than follow my course, north to south and south to north across the land. But the book is, I think, the gainer by these tangents, and certainly its author is happier, for they bring him again and again back to the Downs. It is impossible at this date to write about Sussex, in accordance with the plan of the present series, without saying a great many things that others have said before, and without making use of the historians of the county.

Starting point is 00:02:08 To the collections of the Sussex Archaeological Society I am greatly indebted, also to Mr. J. G. Bishop's peep into the past, and to Mr. W. D. Parrish's Dictionary of the Sussex dialect. Many other works are mentioned in the text. The history, archaeology and natural history of the county have been thoroughly treated by various writers, but there are, I have noticed, fewer books than there should be, upon Sussex men and women. Carlisles saying that every clergyman should write the history of his parish, which one might amend to the history of his parishioners, has borne too little fruit in our district, nor have lay observers arisen in any number to atone for the short. shortcoming, and yet Sussex must be as rich in good character, pure, quaint, shrewd, humorous or noble,

Starting point is 00:03:01 as any other division of England. In the matter of honouring illustrious Sussex men and women, the late Mark Anthony Lauer played his part with The Worthies of Sussex, and Mr Fleet with glimpses of our Sussex ancestors. But the Sussex characters, where are they, who has set down their little unremembered acts, their eccentricities, their sterling southern tenacities. The Reverend A. D. Gordon wrote the history of Harding, and quite recently the Reverend C. N. Sutton has published his interesting historical notes of Withium, Hartfield and Ashdowne Forest, and there may be other similar parish histories which I am forgetting. But the only books that I have seen which make a patient and sympathetic attempt to understand

Starting point is 00:03:48 the people of Sussex are Mr. Parrish's diction. Mr. Egerton's Sussex Folk and Sussex's Ways, and John Halsham's Idlehurst. How many rare qualities of head and heart must go unrecorded in rural England? I have to thank my friend Mr. C. E. Clayton for his kindness in reading the proofs of this book and in suggesting editions, E.V.L. Readers note, a list of the 14 1-inch ordinance maps of Sussex is a major. at this point. End reader's note. Chapter 1, Midhurst. If it is better in exploring a county, to begin with its least interesting districts,

Starting point is 00:04:33 and to end with the best, I have made a mistake in the order of this book. I should rather have begun with the comparatively dull, hot inland hilly region of the northeast, and have left it at the cool chalk downs of the Hampshire border. But if one's first impression of new country cannot be too favourable, we have done rightly in starting at Midhurst, even at the risk of a loss of enthusiasm in the concluding chapters. For although historically, socially and architecturally, North Sussex is as interesting as South Sussex, the crown of the county's scenery is the Downs, and its most fascinating districts are those which the Downs dominate. The further we travel from the Downs and the Sea, the less unique are our surroundings. Many of the villages in the Northern Weald, beautiful as they are, might equally well be in Kent or Surrey. A visitor suddenly alighting in their midst, say from a balloon, would be puzzled to name the county he was in.

Starting point is 00:05:37 But the Downs and their dependencies are essential Sussex. Hence a Sussex man in love with the Downs becomes less house. at every step northward. One cause of the unique character of the Sussex Downs is their virginal security, their unassailable independence. They stand a silent, undiscovered country between the seething pleasure towns of the seaboard plain and the trim estates of the wheeled. Londoners, for whom Sussex has a special attraction, by reason of its proximity. Note Brighton's Beach is the nearest to the capital point of time, end note. Either pause north of the downs, or rush through them in trains, on bicycles,

Starting point is 00:06:24 or in carriages, to the sea. Houses there are among the downs, it is true, but they are old established, the homes of families that can remember no other homes. There is as yet no fashion for residences in these altitudes. Until that fashion sets in, and may it be far distant, the downs will remain essential Sussex, and those that love them will exclaim with Mr. Kipling. God gave all men all earth to love, but since man's heart is small, ordains for each one spot shall prove beloved over all.

Starting point is 00:07:06 Each to his choice, and I rejoice the lot has fallen to me in a fair ground, in a fair ground. Yea, Sussex by the sea. if we are to begin our travels in sussex with the best then midhurst is the starting-point for no other spot has so much to offer a quiet country town gabled and venerable unmodernized and unambitious with a river a tudor ruin a park of deer heather commons immense woods and the downs only three miles distant moreover midhurst is also the centre of a very useful little railway system which having only a single line in each direction while serving the traveller never annoys him by disfiguring the country or letting loose upon it crowds of vandals single lines always mean thinly populated country as a pedestrian poet has sung my heart leaps up when i behold a single railway line for then i know the wood and wald are almost wholly mine

Starting point is 00:08:15 and midhurst being on no great high-road is nearly always quiet nothing ever hurries there the people live their own lives passing along their few narrow streets and the one broad one under the projecting eaves of timbered houses unrecking of london and the world sussex has no more contented town the church which belongs really to st mary magdalen but is popular credited to St. Dennis, was never very interesting, but is less so now that the Montague tomb has been moved to easebourne. Twenty years ago, I remember, was rumoured to harbour a pig-faced lady. I never had sight of her, but as to her existence and her cast of feature, no one was in the least doubt. Pig-faced ladies, once so common, seemed to have gone out, just as the day of spring-heeled jack is over. Sussex once had her spring-heeled jacks, too, in some profusion.

Starting point is 00:09:19 Cowdery Park is gained from the High Street, just below the Angel Inn, by a causeway through water-meadows of the Rother. The house is now but a shell, never having been rebuilt since the fire which ate out its heart in 1793, yet a beautiful shell, heavily draped in rich green ivy, that before very long must here and there forget its early duty of supporting the walls, and thrust them too far from the perpendicular to stand. Cowdery, built in the reign of Henry VIII, did not come to its full glory, until Sir Anthony Brown, afterwards first Viscount Montague, took possession. The seal was put upon its fame by the visit of Queen Elizabeth in 1591.

Starting point is 00:10:03 Note, Edward VIII had been banqueted there by Sir Anthony in 1552, Marvelously, nay, rather excessively, as he wrote, end note. The seal was put upon its fame by the visit of Queen Elizabeth in 1591, as some return for the loyalty of her host, who, although an old man, in 1588, on the approach of the Armada, had ridden straightway to Tilbury with his sons and his grandson, the first to lay the service of his house at Her Majesty's feet. A rare pamphlet is still preserved,

Starting point is 00:10:36 describing the festivities during Queen Elizabeth's third, Sojourn. On Saturday, about eight o'clock, Her Majesty reached the house, travelling from Farnham, where she had dined. Upon sight of her, loud music sounded. It stopped when she set foot upon the bridge, and a real man standing between two wooden dummies, whom he exactly resembled, began to flatter her exceedingly. Until she came, he said, the walls shook and the roof tottered, but one glance from her eyes had steadied the turret for ever. He went on to, and to her. He went on to call her virtue immortal, and herself, the miracle of time, nature's glory, fortune's empress, and the world's wonder. Elizabeth, when he had made an end, took the key from him, and embraced Lady

Starting point is 00:11:22 Montague and her daughter, the Lady Dormier, whereupon the mistress of the house, as it were, weeping in the bosom, said, oh, happy time, oh, joyful day. These preliminaries over, the fun began, At breakfast next morning, three oxen and 140 geese were devoured. On Monday, August the 17th, Elizabeth rode to her bower in the park, took a crossbow from a nymph who sang a sweet song, and with it shot three or four deer, carefully brought within range. After dinner, standing on one of the turrets, she watched sixteen bucks, pulled down with greyhounds, in a lawn.

Starting point is 00:12:02 On Tuesday the queen was approached by a pilgrim, who first called her fairest of all creatures, and expressed the wish that the world might end with her life, and then led her to an oak, whereon were hanging escutions of her majesty, and all the neighbouring nobleman and gentlemen. As she looked, a wild man, clad all in ivy, appeared, and delivered an address on the importance of loyalty.

Starting point is 00:12:30 On Wednesday, the queen was taken to a goodly fish-pond, now a meadow, where there was an angler. After some words from him, a band of fishermen approached, drawing their nets after them, whereupon the angler, turning to Her Majesty, remarked that her virtue made envy blush and stand amazed. Having thus spoken, the net was drawn and found to be full of fish, which were laid at Elizabeth's feet. The entry for this day ends with the sentence, That evening she hunted. On Thursday, the lords and ladies died, at a table 48 yards long, and there was a country dance with table and pipe, which drew from her majesty gentle applause. On Friday, the Queen knighted six gentlemen, and passed on to Chichester.

Starting point is 00:13:20 A year later, the first Lord Montague died. He was succeeded by another Anthony, the author of the Book of Orders and Rules, for the use of the family at Cowdery, and the dedicatee of Anthony Copley's FIG for Fortune, 1596. Copley has a certain Sussex interest of his own, having astonished, not a little, the good people of Horsham. A contemporary letter describes him as the most desperate youth that liveth. He did shoot at a gentleman last summer, and did kill an ox with a musket, and in Horsham church he threw his dagger at the parish clerk, and it stuck in a seat of the church. There liveth not his lest, not his lusket, and in his lurch. There liveeth not his like in England for sudden attempts.

Starting point is 00:14:06 Subsequently, the conspirator poet must have calmed down, for he states in the dedication to my lord that he is now winnowed by the fan of grace and Zionry. Today he would say saved. Copley, after narrowly escaping capital punishment, for his share in a Jesuit plot, disappeared. The instructions given in Lord Montague's Book of Orders and Rules, illustrate very vividly the generous amplitude of the old Cowdery Establishment. Thus,

Starting point is 00:14:39 My carver and his office, I will that my carver, when he cometh to the Uri board, Do there wash it together with the sewer, And that done be armed, Viedelt, With an arming a towel cast about his neck, And put under his girdle on both sides, And one napkin on his left shoulder, And another on the same arm,

Starting point is 00:15:02 and thence being brought by my gentleman usher to my table, with two courtesies thereto, the one about the midst of the chamber, the other when he cometh to it, that he do stand seemly and decently with due reverence and silence, until my diet and fair be brought up, and then do his office, and when any meat is to be broken up, that he do carry it to a side table, which shall be prepared for that purpose, and there do it, When he hath taken up the table and delivered the voider to the yeoman usher, he shall do reverence and return to the Uri board, there to be unarmed.

Starting point is 00:15:39 My will is that for that day he have the precedence and place next to my gentleman usher at the waiter's table. My gentlemen waiters. I will let some of my gentlemen waiters hearken when I or my wife at any time do walk abroad, that they may be ready to give their attendance upon us. at one time and some at another, as they shall agree amongst themselves. But when strangers are in place, then I will that in any sort they be ready to do such service for them as the gentleman usher shall direct. I will further that they be daily present in the

Starting point is 00:16:13 great chamber or other place of my diet, about ten of the clock in the forenoon and five in the afternoon, without fail, for performance of my service, unless they have license from my steward or gentleman usher, to the contrary, which, if they exceed, I will let they make known the cause thereof to my stewards, who shall acquaint me there with all. I will let they dine and sup at a table appointed for them, and there take place next after the gentleman of my horse and chamber, according to their seniorities in my service. The third Viscount Montague was not remarkable, but his account books are quaint reading, from July 1657, to July 1658, his steward spent £1,945, 10 shillings, solely in little personal matters for his master.

Starting point is 00:17:05 Among the disbursements were, on September the 11th, 14 pence, for washing Will Stapler. On November the 22nd, one shilling and fourpence, to the Lewis Carrier, for bringing a box of puddings for my mistress and my master. On January the 17th, four pounds to Mr. Fisk the Dancing Master for teaching my master to dance, being two months, and on April the 21st, seven shillings, for a tooth for my lord. The fifth Viscount was a man of violent temper. On reaching mass one day and finding it half done, he drew his pistol and shot the chaplain. The outcry all over the country was loud and vengeful, and my lord lay concealed for fifteen years, in a hiding-hole contrived in the Masonry of Cowdery for the shelter of persecuted priests.

Starting point is 00:17:56 The pier emerged only at night when he roamed the close walks, repentant and sad. Lady Montague would then steal out to him, dressing all in white to such good purpose that the desired rumours of a ghost soon flew about the neighbourhood. The Curse of Cowdery, which, if genuinely pronounced, has seen a good purpose. certainly been wonderfully fulfilled, dates from the gift of Battle Abbey by Henry VIII to Sir Anthony Brown, the father of Queen Elizabeth's host and friend. Sir Anthony seized his new property and turned the monks out of the gates in 1538. Legend says that as the last monk departed, he warned his dispoiler that by fire and water his line should perish. By fire and water it

Starting point is 00:18:44 perished, indeed. A week after Cowdery House was burned in 1793, the last Viscount Montague was drowned in the Rhine. His only sister, the wife of Mr. Stephen Points, who inherited, was the mother of two sons, both of whom were drowned while bathing at Bognar. When Mr. Points sold the estate to the Earl of Egmont, we may suppose the curse to have been withdrawn. Among the treasures that were destroyed in the fire were the role of Battle Abbey and many paintings. Dr. Johnson visited Cowdery a few years before its demolition. Sir, he said to Boswell, I should like to stay here four and twenty hours.

Starting point is 00:19:27 We see here how our ancestors lived. According to the Tour of Great Britain, attributed to Daniel Defoe, but probably by another hand, Cowdery's hall was of Irish oak. In the large parlour were the triumphs, of Henry VIII by Holbein, in the long gallery were the Twelve Apostles, as large as life, while the marriage of Cupid and Psyche, a tableau that never failed to please our ancestors, was not wanting.

Starting point is 00:19:58 The glory of the Montague's has utterly passed. The present Earl of Egmont is either an absentee, or he lives in a cottage near the gates, and the new house which is hidden in trees is of no interest. The park, however, is still ranged by its beautiful deer, and still possesses an avenue of chestnut trees and rolling wastes of turf. It is everywhere, as free as a heath. End of Chapter 1 Chapter 2 of Highways and Byways in Sussex This Librevox recording is in the public domain, recording by Peter Yearsley

Starting point is 00:20:36 Highways and Byways in Sussex bywis by E.V. Lucas Chapter 2 Midhurst's Villages The road from Midhurst to Blackdown ascends steadily to Henley, threading vast woods and preserves. On the left is a great common on the right, North Heath, where the two druids were hanged in chains after being executed at Horsham in 1799,

Starting point is 00:21:03 for the robbery of the Portsmouth Mail, probably the last instance of hanging in chains in this country. For those that like wild forest country, there was once no better ranable than might be enjoyed here. But now, 1903, that the King's new sanatorium is being built in the midst of Great Common, some of the wildness must necessarily be lost. A finer sight could not have been found. Above Great Common is a superb open space,

Starting point is 00:21:32 nearly 600 feet high, with gorse bushes advantageously placed to give shelter while one studies the Fernhurst Valley, the Hazelmere Heights, and blue in the distance, the north downs. Sussex has nothing wilder or richer than the country we are now in. A few minutes walk to the east from this lofty common, and we are immediately above Henley, clinging to the hillside, an almost alpine hamlet. Henley, however, no longer sees the travellers that once it did, for the coach-road, which, of old, climbed perilously through it, has been diverted in a curve through the hangar, and now sweeps into Fernhurst by way of Henley Common. Fernhurst, beautifully named, is in an exquisite situation among the minor eminences of the Hazelmere Range, but the builder has been busy here, and the village is not what it was. Two miles to the northwest on the way to Lynchmere, immediately under the green heights of Mali, is the old house which once was Shulbred Priory.

Starting point is 00:22:38 As it is now in private occupation and is not shown to strangers, I have not seen it, but of old many persons journeyed thither, attracted by the quaint mural paintings in the priors' room, of domestic animals uttering speech, Christus Natus est, crows the cock. when wheno the duck inquires inhack nocte says the raven ubi ubi asks the cow and the lamb satisfies her bethlehem bethlehem one may return deviously from shulbred to midhurst passing in the heart of an unpopulated country a hamlet called milland where is an old curiosity shop of varied resources by way of one of the pleasantest and narrowest lanes that i know rising and falling for miles through silent woods coming at last to chitthurst church one of the smallest and simplest and least accessible in the county and reaching midhurst again by the hard, dry and irreproachable road that runs between the heather of Trotten Common.

Starting point is 00:23:48 On the eastern side of Fernhurst, to which we may now return, a mile on the way to Lurgashaw, was once Verdeley Castle, but it is now a castle no more merely a ruined heap. Utilitarianism was too much for it, and its stones fell to Macadam. After all, if an old castle has to go, there are few better forms of reincarnation for it than a good hard road. While at Fernhurst it is well to walk on to Blackdown, the best way, perhaps, being to take the lane to the right, about half a mile beyond the village, and make for the hill across country.

Starting point is 00:24:25 Blackdown, whose blackness is from its heather and its furs, frowns before one all the while. The climb to the summit is toilsome, over 900 feet, but well worth the effort for the, The hill overlooks hundreds of square miles of Sussex and Surrey, between Leith Hill in the north and Chanktonbury in the south. Aldworth, Tennyson's house, is on the northeast slope, facing Surrey. The poet laid the foundation stone on April 23rd, Shakespeare's birthday, 1868.

Starting point is 00:25:00 The inscription on the stone running, Prosper thou the work of our hands, O prosper thou our handiwork. the site, Aubrey DeVier wrote, It lifted England's great poet to a height from which he could gaze on a large portion of that English land which he loved so well. See it basking in its most affluent summer beauty, and only bounded by the inviolate sea. Year after year he trod its two stately terraces with men the most noted of their time. Pilgrims from all parts journeyed thither, not too welcome. Among them, that devout American who had worked his way across the Atlantic in order to recite Maud to its author, a recitation from which, says the present Lord Tennyson, his father suffered. Tennyson has, I think, no poems upon his Sussex home,

Starting point is 00:25:55 but I always imagine that the dedication of the death of Iney and other poems in 1894 must belong to Blackdown. on the top of the down, the wild heather round me, and over me June's high blue. When I looked at the bracken so bright and the heather so brown, I thought to myself, I would offer this book to you, this and my love together, to you that are 77, with a faith as clear as the heights of the June blue heaven, and a fancy as summer new as the green of the bracken amid the gloom of the heather. The most interesting village between Midhurst and the western boundary, due west, is Trotten, three miles distant on the superb road to Petersfield, of which I have spoken above. There is no better road in England. Trotten is quiet and modest,

Starting point is 00:26:52 but it has two great claims on lovers of the English drama. In the ode to pity of one of our Sussex poets, we read thus of another. But wherefore need I wander wide to old illicit distant side, deserted streams, and mute? Wild Aron, too, has heard thy strains, and echo midst thy native plains, been soothed by pity's loot. There first the wren thy myrtle's infant head, to him thy cell was shown, and while he sung the female heart, With youth's soft notes, unspoiled by art, thy turtles mixed their own. So wrote William Collins, adding in a note that the Aaron, more properly the Rother, a tributary of the Aaron, runs by the village of Trotten in Sussex, where Thomas Otway had his birth.

Starting point is 00:27:49 The unhappy author of Venice Preserved and The Orphan was born at Trotten in 1652, the son of Humphrey Otway, the curate, who afterwards, became rector of woolbeeding close by. Otway died miserably when only 33, partly of starvation, partly of a broken heart at the unresponsiveness of Mrs. Barry, the actress, whom he loved, but who preferred the Earl of Rochester. His two best plays, although they are no longer acted, lived for many years, providing in Belvedera in Venice Preserved, and Minimia in the Orphan, in which he sung the female heart. Congenial roles for tragic actresses.

Starting point is 00:28:35 Mrs. Barry, Mrs. Oldfield, Mrs. Sibber, Mrs. Siddons, and Miss O'Neill. Otway was buried in the churchyard of St. Clement Daines, but a tablet to his fame is in Trotten Church, which is of unusual plainness, not unlike an ecclesiastical barn. Here also is the earliest known brass to a woman, Margaret de Cammoy's, who lived about The transition is easy, at Trotten, from Otway to Shakespeare, from Venice preserved to Henry IV. Hotspur to Lady Percy. Come, Kate, thou art perfect in lying down, come quick, quick, that I may lay my head in thy lap.

Starting point is 00:29:18 Lady P. Go, you giddy goose. Note, the music plays, end note. Hotspur. Now I perceive the devil understands well. And tis no marvel he's so humorous. By our lady, he's a good musician. Lady P., then should you be nothing but musical, for you are altogether governed by humours. Lye still, your thief, and hear the lady sing in Welsh. Hotspur, I had rather hear, lady, my brach, howl in Irish.

Starting point is 00:29:50 Lady P., wouldst have thou head broken? Hotspur, no, Lady P., then be still. Hotspur. Neither. Tis a woman's fault. Lady P. Now, God help thee. Hotspur.

Starting point is 00:30:05 To the Welsh lady's bed. Lady P. What's that? Hotspur. Peace. She sings. Note. A Welsh song sung by Lady Mortimer.

Starting point is 00:30:16 End note. Hotspur. Come, Kate. I'll have your song, too. Lady P. Not mine in good sooth. Hotsper. Not yours in good sooth.

Starting point is 00:30:27 "'Heart, you swear like a comfort-maker's wife, "'not you in good sooth, "'and as true as I live, "'and as God shall mend me, "'and as sure as day, "'and gives such sarsenet surety for thy oaths, "'as if thou never walks further than Finsbury. "'Swear me, Kate, like a lady as thou art,

Starting point is 00:30:47 "'a good mouth-filling oath, "'and leave in sooth "'and such protest of pepper gingerbread "'to velvet guards and Sunday citizens. "'Come sing!' Lady P. I will not sing. Hotspur. "'Tis the next way to turn tailor or be red-breast teacher,

Starting point is 00:31:04 as the indentures be drawn aisle away within these two hours, and so come in when you will.' "'Note, exit, end note.' "'My excuse for introducing this little scene is that Kate, whose real name was Elizabeth, lies here. Her tomb is in the chancel, where she reposes beside her second husband, Thomas, Lord Camoy. beneath a slab on which are presentments in brass of herself and her lord.

Starting point is 00:31:32 It was this Lord Camois who rebuilt Trotten's church, about 1400, and who also gave the village its beautiful bridge over the rother, at a cost it used to be said of only a few pence less than that of the church. Trotten has still other literary claims. At Trotten Place lived Arthur Edward Knox, whose ornithological rambles in Sussex, published in 1849, is one of the few books worthy to stand beside White's natural history of Selborne. In Sussex, as elsewhere, the fowler has prevailed, and although rare birds are still occasionally to be seen,

Starting point is 00:32:11 they now visit the country only by accident, and leave it as soon as may be, thankful to have a whole skin. Guns were active enough in Knox's time, but to read his book today is to be translated to a new land, From time to time I shall borrow from Mr. Knox's pages. Here I may quote a short passage which refers at once to his home and to his attitude to those creatures whom he loved to study and studied to love. I have the satisfaction of exercising the rights of hospitality towards a pair of barn owls, which have for some time taken up their quarters in one of the attic roofs

Starting point is 00:32:50 of the ancient ivy-covered house in which I reside. I delight in listening to the product. longed snoring of the young, when I ascend the old oak stairs to the neighbourhood of their nursery, and in hearing the shriek of the parent birds on the calm summer nights, as they pass to and fro near my window, for it assures me that they are still safe, and as I know that at least a qualified protection is afforded them elsewhere, and that even their arch-enemy the game-keeper is beginning, reluctantly, but gradually, to acquiesce in the general belief of their innocence and utility, I cannot help indulging the hope that this bird will eventually

Starting point is 00:33:29 meet with that general encouragement and protection to which its eminent services so richly entitle it. One more literary association. It was at Trotten that William Cobbett looked at the Squire. From Rowgate we came on to Trotten, where Mr. Twyford is the Squire, and where there is a very fine and ancient church close by the squire's house. I saw the squire looking at some poor devils who are making worst improvements, ma'am, on the road which passes by the squire's door. He looked uncommonly hard at me. It was a scrutinising sort of look mixed, as I thought, with a little surprise, if not of jealousy, as much as to say, I wonder who the devil you can be. My look at the squire was with the head a little on one side, and with the cheek drawn up from the left

Starting point is 00:34:19 corner of the mouth, expressive of anything rather than a sense of inferiority to the squire, of whom, however, I had never heard speak before. By passing on to Roagate, whose fine church not long since was restored too freely, and turning due south, we come to what is perhaps the most satisfying village in all Sussex, South Harding. Cool and spacious and retired, it lies under the downs, with a little subsidiary range of its own, to shelter it also from the west. Three inns are ready to refresh the traveller, the ship, the White Heart, a favourite Sussex sign, and the coach and horses, with a new signboard of dazzling freshness. The surrounding country is good, Petersfield and Midhurst are less than an hour's drive distant,

Starting point is 00:35:10 while the village has one of the most charming churches in Sussex, both without, and within. Unlike most of the county's spires, South Harding's is slate and red shingle, but the slate is of an agreeable green hue, resembling old copper. Perhaps it is copper. The roof is of red tiles mellowed by weather, and the south side of the tower is tiled too, imparting an unusual suggestion of warmth, more of comfort to the structure. While on the east wall of the chancel is a Virginian creeper, which, as autumn advances, emphasizes, this effect. Within the church is winning, too, with its ample arches, perfect proportions, and that aesthetic satisfaction that often attends the cruciform shape. An interesting monument

Starting point is 00:35:58 of the Cowper and Coles families is preserved in the South transept, three full-sized, coloured figures. In the north transept is a spiral staircase leading to the tower, and elsewhere are memorials of the Fords and Fanchors of Up Park, a superiors of Up Park. A superfluous of the A superb domain over the brow of Hartings Down, and of the carols of Lady Holt, of whom we shall see more directly. The east window is a peculiarly cheerful one, and the door of South Harding Church is kept open, as every church door should be, but as too many in Sussex are not. In the churchyard, beneath a shed, are the remains of two tombs with recumbent stone figures, now in a fragmentary state. At the church gates are the old,

Starting point is 00:36:44 Village Stocks. Harting has a place in literature, for one of the Carols was Pope's friend, John, 1666, a nephew of the diplomatist and dramatist. Pope's Carol, who suggested the Rape of the Lock, lived at Lady Holt at West Harding, long destroyed, and also at West Grinstead, where, as we shall see, the poem was largely written. Mr. H. D. Gordon, rector of Harting for many years, wrote a history. of his parish in 1877. A very interesting gossipy book, where we may read much of the Carroll family, including passages from their letters. How Lady Mary Carroll had the kind impulse

Starting point is 00:37:26 to take one of the Parsons' nine daughters to France to educate and befriend, but was so thoughtless as to transform into a pretty papist. How Lady Mary disliked Mrs. Jones, the steward's wife, and many other matters. I quote a passage from a letter of Lady Mary's about Mrs. Jones, showing that human nature was not then greatly different from what it is today. Mr. Jones and his fine madam came down two days before your birthday, and expected to lie in the house, but as I apprehended the consequences of letting them begin so, I made an excuse for want of rooms by expecting company, and sent them to Gould's. Note.

Starting point is 00:38:07 Arthur Gould married Kate Carroll, and lived at Harding Place, end note, where they stayed two nights. I invited them the next day to dinner, and they came but the day following Madame Hufft, I believe, for she went away to Barnards and would not so much as see the desert. Desert. However, I don't repent it. He has been here at all the merriment, and I believe you'll find it better to keep them at a civil distance than other ways, for she seems a high dame, and not very good-humoured, for she has been sick ever since of the Muley Groobes. Mrs Jones soon afterwards succumbed, either to the Muley groups or a worse visitation. Lady Mary thus broke the news.

Starting point is 00:38:50 Mr. Jones's wife died on Sunday, just as she lived, an independent, and would have no parson with her, because, she said, she could pray as well as they. He is making a great funeral, but I believe not in much affection, for he was all night at a merry bout two days before she died. On the arrival of the young squire Carol at Lady Holt with his bride in 1739, Paul Kelly, the bailiff, informed Lady Mary that the villagers conducted their lord and lady home with the uppermost satisfaction. A good phrase. Mr. Gordon writes elsewhere in his book of a famous writer whom Hampshire claims, for at least 40 years, 1754 to 1792, Gilbert White was an East Harting Squire.

Starting point is 00:39:38 The bulk of his property was at Woodhouse and nigh Wood. on the northern slope of East Harding, and bounded on the west by the road to Harding Station. The passenger from Harding to the railway has, on his right, immediately opposite the Severals wood, Gilbert White's farm, extending nearly to the station. White had also other Harding lands. These were upon the downs,

Starting point is 00:39:58 viz, a portion of the park of up park on the south side, and a portion of Kill Devil Lane, on the north Marden side of Harting Hill. Gilbert White was on his mother's side a ford, and these lands had been transmitted to him through his great-uncle Oliver Whitby, nephew to Sir Edward Ford. A glimpse of the old Sussex Field routine, not greatly changed in the remote districts today, was given to Mr. Gordon thirty years ago by an aged labourer. This was the day.

Starting point is 00:40:30 Out in the morning at four o'clock, mouthful of bread and cheese and pint of ale, then off to the harvest field, rip in and mowen, reaping and mowing, till I ate, then morning breakfast and small beer. Breakfast, a piece of fat pork as thick as your hat, a broad-brimmed wide awake, is wide. Then work till ten o'clock, then a mouthful of bread and cheese and a pint of strong beer. Note, far noona, i.e. fornuna. Far nooner's lunch, we called it. End note. Work till twelve. Then that's dinner in the farmhouse.

Starting point is 00:41:05 Sometimes a leg of mutton, sometimes a piece of ham and plum pudding. then work till five, then a nunch and a quart of ale. Nunch was cheese, it was skimmed cheese, though. Then work till sunset, then home and have supper and a pint of ale. I never knew a man drunk in the harvest field in my life, could drink six quarts and believe that a man might drink two gallons in a day. All of us were in the house, i.e. the usual hired servants, and those specially engaged for the harvest.

Starting point is 00:41:33 The yearly servants used to go with the monthly ones. There was two thrashers And the head thrashers Used always to go before the reapers A man could cut According to the goodness of the job Half an acre a day The terms of wages were

Starting point is 00:41:46 £3 £10 shillings to 50 shillings For the month When the hay was in cock Or the wheat in shock Then the tithman come You didn't dare take up a field Without you let him know If the titheman didn't come at the time

Starting point is 00:41:59 You tithed yourself He marked his sheaves with a bough or bush You couldn't get over the tithe man If you began at a hedge and made the tenth cock smaller than the rest, the titheman might begin in the middle just where he liked. The tithman at Harding, old John Blackmore, lived at Mondays, South Harding Street. His grandson is blacksmith at Harding now. All the tithing was quiet.

Starting point is 00:42:21 You didn't dare even set your egg still the tithman had been, and tae on his tithe. The usual day's work was from seven to five. Like all Sussex villages, Harting has had its witches and possessors of the evil eye. Most curious of these was Old Mother Digby, nay, Mullen, who in Mr. Gordon's words lived at a house in Hogs Lane, East Harding, and had the power of witching herself into a hair, and was continually, like Haccati, attended by dogs.

Starting point is 00:42:53 Squire Russell of Thai Oak always lost his hair at the sinkhole of a drain, nearby the old lady's house. One day the dogs caught hold of the hair by its hind quarters, but it escaped down the drain, and Squire Russell, instantly opening the old Beldam's door, found her rubbing the part of her body corresponding to that by which the hound had seized the hair. Squire Carroll, however, declined to be hard on the broomstick and its riders, as the following entry in the records of the court leet,

Starting point is 00:43:22 held for the hundred of Dumford in 1747, shows. Also, we present the Honourable John Carroll, Esquire, Lord of this manner, for not having and keeping a ducking stool within the said hundred of Dumford, according to law, for the ducking of scolds and other disorderly persons. The road from South Harding to Elstead runs under the hills, which here rise abruptly from the fields to great heights, notably Beacon Hill, like a huge green mammoth, 800 feet high,

Starting point is 00:43:54 on which, before the days of telegraphy, lived the Signaller, who passed on the tidings of danger on the coast, to the next Beacon Hill above Henley, and so on, to London. In the days of Napoleon, when any moment might reveal the French fleet, the Sussex hilltops must often have smouldered under false alarms. The next hill in the east is Trafford Hill above Trafford Village, whose church tower standing on a little hill of its own, nearly 300 feet high, might take a lesson in beauty from South Hartings,

Starting point is 00:44:27 although its spire has a slenderness not to be improved. Next to Trafford Hill is Diddling Hill, above Diddling, and then lynch down, highest of all in these parts, being 818 feet. Elstead, which, has no particular interest, possesses an inn, the three horseshoes, on a site superior to that of many a nobleman's house, it stands high above a rocky lane, commanding a superb sidelong view of the Downs and the Weald. Midhurst's river is the Rother, not to be confounded with the Rother in the east of Sussex, which flows into the Arron near Hardham. It is wild enough at Midhurst for small boats,

Starting point is 00:45:10 and is a very graceful stream on which to idle and watch the few kingfishers that man has spared. One may walk by its side for miles, and hear no sound say the music of repose, the soft munching of the cows in the meadows, the chuckle of the water as a round, the rat slips in, the sudden, yet soothing plash caused by a jumping fish, around one's head in the evening. The stag beetle buzzes, with its multiplicity of wings and fierce lobster-like claws outstretched. Following the rother to the west, one comes first to easebourne, a shady, cool village only a few steps from Midhurst. Once notable for its Benedictine priory of nuns, Henry VIII put an end to its religious life, which, however, if we may believe the rather disgraceful revelations divulged at an Episcopal examination, for some years had not been of too sincere a character.

Starting point is 00:46:09 In Eastbourne Church is the handsome tomb of the first Viscount Montague, the host of Queen Elizabeth, which was brought hither from Midhurst Church some forty years ago. Beyond Eastbourne, on the banks of the Rother, is wool-beating amid lush grass and foliage as green a spot as any in Green England. On the eastern side of the town, with a diversion into Queen Elizabeth's sombre wood walk, one may come by the side of the river part of the way to West Lavington, which stands high on a slope facing the downs, with pine woods immediately beneath it. Perhaps as fairer sight as any church can claim, the grave of Richard Cobden, the Free Trader, a native of Hayshott nearby, is in the churchyard. Here in 1850, Henry Edward Manning, afterwards Cardinal, preached his last sermon for the Church of England.

Starting point is 00:47:06 It is indeed Manning country, for besides being curate and rector of Woolavington with Graffam, four or five miles to the southeast, from 1833 until his secession he was for nine years Archdeacon of Chichester. He married Miss Sargent, daughter of the late Rector, and sister of Mrs. Samuel Wilberforce of Willavington, and while Rector he rebuilt both churches. Graffam is interesting also as being the present home

Starting point is 00:47:35 of one of the most truthful of living painters, Mr Henry Latang, whose scenes of peasants at work in the manner of Barbizon, and studies of sunlight spattering through the trees are among the triumphs of modern English art. One more village, and we will make for the hills. A mile beyond the eastern gate of Cowdery Park is Lodzworth, still a paradise of apple orchards, but no longer famous for its cider as once it was.

Starting point is 00:48:06 Arthur Young had the pleasure of tasting some Lodzworth cider of a superior quality, at Lord Egremont's table at the beginning of the last century, but I doubt if Petworth House honours the beverage today. Cider, except in the cider country, becomes less and less common. End of Chapter 2. Chapter 3 of Highways and Byways in Sussex. This Librevox recording is in the public domain, recording by Peter Yearsley.

Starting point is 00:48:41 Highways and Byways in Sussex by E.V. Lucas. Chapter 3. First Sight of the Downs Between Midhurst and Chichester, our next centre, rise the Downs, to a height of between 700 and 800 feet. Although we shall often be crossing them again before we leave the county, I should like to speak of them a little in this place. The Downs are the symbol of Sussex, the sea, the weald, the heather hills of her great forest district. She shares with other counties, but the Downs are her own. Wiltshire, Berkshire, Kenney, and Hampshire. It is true, have also their turf-covered chalk hills, but the Sussex Downs are

Starting point is 00:49:25 vaster, more remarkable and more beautiful than these, with more individuality and charm. At first they have been known to disappoint the traveller, but one has only to live among them, or near them, within the influence of their varying moods, and they surely conquer. They are the smoothest things in England, gigantic, rotund, easy. The eye rests upon their gentle contours and is at peace. They have no sublimity, no grandeur, only the most spacious repose. Perhaps it is due to this quality that the wilder folk, accustomed to be overshadowed by this unruffled range, are so deliberate in their mental processes, and so averse from speculation

Starting point is 00:50:13 or experiment. There is a hypnotism of form. A rugged peak will alarm the mind, where a billowy green undulation will lull it. The downs change their complexion, but are never other than soothing and still. No stress of weather produces in them any of that sense of fatality that one is conscious of in Westmoreland. Thunder clouds imperple the turf and blacken the hangars, but they cannot break the imperturbable equanimity of the line. Rain throws over the range a gauze veer.

Starting point is 00:50:47 of added softness. A mist makes them more wonderful, unreal, romantic. Snow brings them to one's doors. At sunrise they are magical, a background for Mallory. At sunset they are the lovely home of the serenest thoughts, a spectacle for Marcus Aurelius. Their coombs or hollows are then filled with purple shadow cast by the sinking sun, while the summits and shoulders are gold. gilbert white has an often quoted passage on these hills though i have now travelled the sussex downs upward of thirty years yet i still investigate that chain of majestic mountains with fresh admiration year by year and i think i see new beauties every time i traverse it this range which runs from chichester eastward as far as eastbourne is about sixty miles in length and is called the south downs properly speaking only round which runs from chichester eastward as far as eastbourne is about sixty miles in length and is called the south downs properly speaking only round As you pass along, you command a noble view of the wild, or wheeled, on one hand, and the broad

Starting point is 00:51:55 downs and sea on the other. Mr. Ray used to visit a family, Mr. Quartthorpe of Danny, just at the foot of these hills, and was so ravished with the prospect from Plumpton Plain, near Lewis, that he mentions those scapes in his wisdom of God in the works of the creation, with the utmost satisfaction, and thinks them equal to anything he had seen in the finest parts of Europe. For my own part, I think there is something peculiarly sweet and amusing in the shapely-figured aspect of the chalk hills, in preference to those of stone, which are rugged, broken, abrupt, and shapeless. Perhaps I may be singular in my opinion, and not so happy as to convey to you the same idea. But I never contemplate these mountains without thinking I perceive

Starting point is 00:52:44 somewhat analogous to growth in their gentle swellings and smooth fungus-like protuberances, their fluted sides and regular hollows and slopes that carry at once the air of vegetative dilatation and expansions. Or was there even a time when these immense masses of calcareous matter were thrown into fermentation by some adventitious moisture, were raised and leavened into such shapes by some plastic power, and so made to swell and heave their broad backs into the sky, so much above the less animated clay of the wild below. The Downs have a human and historic as well as scenic interest. On many of their highest points are the barrows or graves of our British ancestors. Who could they revisit,

Starting point is 00:53:34 the glimpses of the moon, would find little change, for these hills have been less interfered with than any district within twice the distance from London. The English dislike of climbing has saved them. They will probably be the last stronghold of the horse, when Petrel has ousted him from every other region. After the Britain came the Roman, to whose orderly military mind such a chain of hills seemed a series of heaven-sent earthworks. Every point in a favourable position was at once fortified by the legionaries. Standing upon these ramparts today, identical in general configuration in spite of the intervening centuries, one may imagine oneself a Caesarian soldier, and see in fancy the hinds below running for safety. After the Romans came the Saxons, who did not,

Starting point is 00:54:30 however, use the heights as their predecessors had. Yet they left even more intimate traces, for, as I shall show in a later chapter on Sussex dialect, the language of the Sussex labourer is still largely theirs. The farms themselves often follow their original Saxon disposition. The field's names are unaltered, and the character of the people is of the yellow-haired parent's stock. Sussex, in many respects, is still Saxon. In a poem by Mr. W. G. Hole is a stanza which no one that knows Sussex can read without visualising instantly a Sussex hillside farm. The Saxon lies, too, in his grave where the plough lands swell, and he feels with the joy that is earths, the spring with its myriad births, and he

Starting point is 00:55:20 sense as the evening falls the rich, deep breath of the stalls, and he says, still the seasons bring increase and joy to the world. It is well. Standing on one of these hills above the heartings, one may remember an event in English history of more recent date than any of the periods that we have been recalling, the escape of Charles II in 1651. It was over these Downs that he passed, and it has been suggested that a traveller wishing for a picturesque route across the Downs might do well to follow his course. According to the best accounts, Charles was met on the evening of October the 13th, near Hamilton in Hampshire, afterwards to be famous as the cradle of first-class cricket,

Starting point is 00:56:09 by Thomas and George Gunter of Racton, with a leash of greyhounds as if for coursing. The king slept at the house of Thomas Simmons, Gunter's brother-in-law, in the character of a roundhead. The next morning at daybreak, the king, Lord Wilmot and the two Gunters, crossed broad halfpenny down, celebrated by Niren, and proceeding by way of Catherington down, Charlton Down and Ibsworth Down, reached Compting Down in Sussex. At Stansted House, Thomas Gunter left the King, and hurried on to Brighton to arrange for the crossing to France. The others rode on by way of the hills, with a descent from Dunkton Beacon, until they reached what promised to be the security of Houghton Forest. There they were panic-stricken nearly to meet

Starting point is 00:56:54 Captain Morley, governor of Arundel Castle, and therefore by no means a king's man. The king, on being told who it was, replied merrily, I did not much like his starched mouchats. This peril avoided. They descended to Houghton Village, where the Aron was crossed, and so to Amberley, where, in Sir John Briscoe's castle the king slept. Footnote. That is the story as the Amberley people like to have it, but another version makes his ride from Hambledon to Brighton in one day, in which case he may have avoided Amberley altogether. End footnote.

Starting point is 00:57:32 On Amberley Mount, the king's horse cast a shoe, necessitating a drop to one of the Burpams, at Lee Farm, to have the mishap put right. Ascending from the hills again, the fugitives held the high track as far as staining. At Bramber they survived a second meeting with Cromwellians, three or four soldiers of Colonel Herbert Morley, of Gly, of Glyend, suddenly appearing, but being satisfied merely to insult them. At beading, George Gunter rode on

Starting point is 00:57:58 by way of the lower road to Brighton, while the king and Lord Wilmot climbed the hill at Horton, crossing by way of White Lot to Southwick, where, according to one story, in a cottage at the west of the green, was a hiding-hole in which the king lay, until Captain Nicholas Tattersall of Brighton was ready to embark him for Faycamp. George Gunter's own story is, however, that the King rode direct to Brighton. He reached Fecamp on October the 16th. Two hours after Gunter left Brighton soldiers came thither to search for a tall black man six feet four inches high, to wit the merry monarch. Such is the bare narrative of Charles Sussex's ride. If the reader would have it garnished and spiced, he should turn to the pages of Ainsworth's Ovingdeen

Starting point is 00:58:48 Grange, where much that never happened is set forth as entertainingly, or so I thought when I read it as a boy, as if it were truth. End of Chapter 3 Chapter 4 of Highways and Byways in Sussex. This Librevox recording is in the public domain, recording by Peter Yearsley. Highways and Byways in Sussex by V. Lucas Chapter 4, Chichester I have already quoted some lines by Collins,

Starting point is 00:59:22 on Otway, it is time to come to Collins himself. When music, heavenly made, was young, while yet in early Greece she sung, the passions oft to hear her shell thronged around her magic cell. The perfect ode which opens with these unforgettable lines belongs to Chichester, for William Collins was born there on Christmas Day, 1721, and educated there at the Bendal School until he went to Winchester. William Collins was the son of the mayor of Chichester, a hatter from whom Pope's friend Carol brought his hats. I have no wish to tell here the sad story of Collins' life. It is better to remember that few as are his odes, they are all of gold. He died at Chichester in 1759 and was buried in St Andrew's Church. With eyes up raised as one inspired, pale melancholy sat, retired, and from her wild sequestered seat, in notes by distance,

Starting point is 01:00:30 made more sweet, poured through the mellow horn her pensive soul, and dashing soft from rocks around, bubbling runnels joined the sound. Through glades and glooms the mingled measure stole, or o'er some haunted stream with fond delay, round and holy-combe. calm diffusing, love of peace and lonely musing, in hollow murmurs died away. Collins is Chichester's great poet. She had a very agreeable minor poet, too, in George Smith, one of the three Smiths, all artists. William, born in 1707, painter of portraits and of fruit and flower-pieces, and George and John, born in 1713 and 1717, who painted.

Starting point is 01:01:20 landscapes, known collectively as the Smiths of Chichester. I mention them rather on account of George Smith's poetical experiments than for the brother's fame as artists. But there is such a pleasant flavour in one at least of his pastoral's that I have copied a portion of it. It is called the country lovers, or Isaac and Margate going to town on a summer's morning. The town is probably Chichester, certainly one in Sussex and near the Downs. Isaac speaks first. Come, Margaret, come, the team is at the gate. Not ready yet. You always make me wait. I omits a certain amount of the dialogue which follows, but at last Margaret exclaimed, Well, now I'm ready. Long I have not stayed. Isaac, one kiss before we go, my pretty maid.

Starting point is 01:02:13 Margaret, go, don't be foolish, Isaac. Get away. Who loiter's now? I thought I could not stay. There, that's enough. Why, Isaac, sure you're mad. Isaac, one more, my dearest girl, Margaret. Be quiet, lad. See both my cap and hair are rumpled oar. The tying of my beads is got before. Isaac, there let it stay, thy brighter blush to show, which shames the cherry-coloured silken bow,

Starting point is 01:02:42 thy lips which seem the scarlet's hue to steal, are sweeter than the candied lemon peel. Margaret, pray take these chickens for me to the cart. Dear little creatures, how it grieves my heart to see them tied, that never knew a crime, and formed so fine a flock at feeding time. The pretty poem ends with fervid protestations of devotion from Isaac. For thee the press with apple-juice shall foam,

Starting point is 01:03:12 for thee the bees shall quit their honeycomb, For thee the elder's purple fruit shall grow, For thee the pales with cream shall overflow. But see yon teams returning from the town, Wind in the chalky wheel-ruts o'er the down. We now must haste, For if we longer stay, They'll meet us, ere we leave the narrow way. Another of Chichester's illustrious sons is Archbishop Juxon,

Starting point is 01:03:40 Who stood by the side of Charles I on the scaffold, and bad farewell to him, in the words, You are exchanging from a temporal to an eternal crown, a good exchange. Yet another of a very different type is John Hardham. When they talked of their Raphael's, Correggios and stuff, wrote Goldsmith of Sir Joshua Reynolds, he shifted his trumpet and only took snuff.

Starting point is 01:04:08 Had it not been for Chichester, the great painter might never have had the second of these consolations, for the only snuff he liked was Hardham's number 37, and Hardham was a native of Chichester. Before he became famous as a tobacconist, Hardham was by night, a numberer of the pit for Garrick at Drury Lane. One day he happened to blend Dutch and rapé, and poured the mixture into a drawer labelled 37. Garik so liked the pinch of it which he chanced upon, that he introduced a reference to its merits in some of his comic parts, with the results that Hardham's little shop in Fleet Street soon became a resort,

Starting point is 01:04:48 and no nose was properly furnished without No. 37. As Colton wrote in his hypocrisy, A Name is All. From Garrick's breath, a puff of praise gave immortality to snuff, since switch each connoisseur a transient heaven finds in each pinch of Hardham's 37. The wealth that came to the tobacconist, he left to the city of Chichester to relieve it of certain of its poor rates, and the citizens still magnify Hardham's name. He died in 1772, and had the good sense to restrict the expense of his funeral to £10. Chichester was the scene of a pleasant incident recorded by Leslie in his autobiographical recollections. He was staying with Wilkie at Petworth, the guest of their patron, and the patron.

Starting point is 01:05:39 of so many other painters, Lord Egremont, of whom we shall learn more when Petworth is reached. They all drove over to Chichester after a visit to Goodwood. Lord Egremont, says Leslie, had some business to transact at Chichester, but one of his objects was to show us a young girl, the daughter of an upholsterer, who was devoted to painting, and considered to be a genius by her friends. She was not at home, but her mother said she could soon be found. if his lordship would have the goodness to wait a short time. The young lady soon appeared, breathless and exhausted with running.

Starting point is 01:06:15 Lord Egremont mentioned our names, and she said, looking up to Wilkie with an expression of great respect, Oh, sir, it was, but yesterday I had your head in my hands. This puzzled him, as he did not know she was a phrenologist. And what bumps did you find? said Lord Egremont. The organ of veneration, very large, was her answer, and Wilkie, making her a profound bow, said, Madam, I have a great veneration for genius.

Starting point is 01:06:43 She showed us an unfinished picture from the bride of Lamarmoor. The figure of Lucy Ashton was completed, and she told us was the portrait of a young friend of hers, but Ravenswood was without a head, and this she explained by saying, there are no handsome men in Chichester, but, she continued, her countenance brightening, the tenth are expected here soon.

Starting point is 01:07:05 The tenth was noted for its handsome officers. Leslie does not carry the story farther. Whether poor Ravens would ever gain his head, whether if he did so it was a military one, or, as a last resource, a Chichester one, and where the picture, if completed, now is, I do not know, nor have I succeeded in discovering any more of the young lady, but passing through the streets of the town,

Starting point is 01:07:30 I was conscious of the absence of the tenth. chichester is a perfect example of an english rural capital thronged on market days with tilt carts each bringing a farmer or farmer's wife and rich in those well-stored ironmongers shops that one never sees elsewhere but it is more than this it is also a cathedral town with the ever-present sense of domination by the cloth even when the cloth is not visible chichester has its ruffs and its public houses note mr hudson in his nature in downland gives them a caustic chapter, end note. It also has its race week every July, and barracks within hail, yet it is always a cathedral town. Whatever noise may be in the air, you know in your heart that quietude is its true characteristic. One might say that above the loudest street cries you are continually conscious of the silence of the close. Chichester's Cathedral is not among the most beautiful or the most interesting, but there is none cooler.

Starting point is 01:08:42 It dates from the 11th century and contains specimens of almost every kind of church architecture, but the spire is comparatively new, having been built in 1866 to take the place of its predecessor, which suddenly dropped like an extinguisher five years before. Seen from the channel it rises, a friendly landmark, white or grey according to the clouds, and while walking on the downs, above or on the plane around, one is frequently pleased to catch an unexpected glimpse of its tapering beauty. I have heard it said that Chichesa is the only English cathedral that is visible at sea. Within the cathedral is disappointing, offering one neither richness on the one hand,

Starting point is 01:09:26 nor the charm of pure severity on the other. A cathedral must either be plain or coloured, And Chichester comes short of both ideals. It has no colour and no purity. Its proportions are, however, exquisite, and it is impossible to remain here long without passing under the spell of the stone. Yet had it one feels only radiance, how much finer it would be. For the completest contrast to the vastness of the cathedral, one may cross into North

Starting point is 01:09:58 Street and enter the portal of the Toy Church of St. Oly's. which dates from the 14th century, and is remarkable not only for its minuteness, but as being one of the churches of Chichester, which, in my experience, is not normally locked and barred. That Chichester was built by the Romans in the geometrical Roman way, you may see as you look down from the bell tower upon its four main streets, north, south, east and west, east becoming Stain Street, and running direct to London, Chichester then was Regnum. On the departure of the Romans, Kissa, son of Ella, took possession, and the name was changed to Kisashtri, hence Chichester. Remnants of the old walls still stand,

Starting point is 01:10:49 and a path has been made on the portion running from North Street down to Westgate. More attractive, because more human, than the cathedral itself, are its precincts, the long, resounding cloisters, the still discreet lanes populous with clerics, and most of all that little terrace of ecclesiastical residences parallel with South Street, in the shadow of the mighty feign, covered with creeping greenness, from wisteria to Ampelopsis, with minute windows inviolable front doors, and trim front gardens, which, like all similar settlements, remind one of arms-houses carried out to the highest power, surely the best of places, in which to edit Horace afresh or find new meanings in St. Augustine. There is a tendency for the cathedral to absorb all the

Starting point is 01:11:44 attention of the traveller, but Chichester has other beauties, including the Market Cross, which is a mere child of stone, dating only from the reign of Henry VIII, St. Mary's Hospital in North Street, and the remains of the monastery of the Greyfriarches, and the remains of the Monastery of the Greyfriars, in the Priory Park. Young Chichester now plays cricket where, of old, the monks caught fish and performed their duties. It was probably on the mound that their calvary stood. The last time I climbed it was to watch Bonner, the Australian giant, practising in the nets below, too many years ago.

Starting point is 01:12:21 Like all cathedral towns, Chichester has beautiful gardens, as one may see from the Campanile. There are no lawns, like the lawns of bishops, deans and colleges, and few flower-beds more luxuriantly stocked. Chichester also has a number of grave, solid houses, such as Miss Austen's characters might have lived in, at least one superb specimen of the art of Sir Christopher Wren,

Starting point is 01:12:48 a masterpiece of substantial red brick, and a noble inn, the dolphin, where one dines in the assembly room, a relic of the good times before inns became hotels, We have some glimpses of Old Chichester in the reminiscences, about 1720 to 1730, of James Spurshot, a Chichester Baptist elder, who died in 1789, aged 80. I quote a passage here and there from his paper of recollections, printed in the Sussex archaeological collections. Spinning of household linen was in use in most families, also making their own bread, and likewise their own household physic. No tea, but much industry and good cheer.

Starting point is 01:13:34 The bacon racks were loaded with bacon, for little pork was made in these times. The farmer's wife's and daughters were plain in dress, and made no such gay figures in our market as nowadays. At Christmas the whole constellation of patty pans which adorned their chimney-fronts were taken down. The spit, the pot, the oven were all in use together. The evenings spent in jollity and their glass guns smoking, tote, the tumbler with the froth of good October, till most of them were slain or wounded,

Starting point is 01:14:05 and the Prince of Orange and Queen Anne's Marlborough could no longer be resounded. Here is Mr Spurshot's account of a Chichester calamity. Juno Page, Esquire, native of this city, coming from London to stand candidate here, a great number of voters went on horseback to meet him. Among the rest, Mr Joshua Lover, a noted schoolmaster, a sober man in the general, but of flighty passions. As he was setting out one of his scholars, Patty Smith,

Starting point is 01:14:34 afterwards my spouse, asked him for a copy, and in haste he wrote the following. Extremes beget extremes, extremes, extremes avoid. Extremes without extremes are not enjoyed. He set off in high carrier, and turning down Rook's Hill before the square, riding like a madman to and fro,

Starting point is 01:14:56 forward and backward, hallooing among the company, The horse at full speed fell with him and killed him, a caution to the flighty and unsteady, and a verification of his copy. Again, Robert Madlock, a most profane swearer, being employed in cleaning the outside of the steeple, fell, owing to a breaking rope, and soon after died. Mr. Spurshot adds, A warning to swearers. Another entry states, In my younger years, there were many very large,

Starting point is 01:15:29 corpulent persons in the city, both of men and women. I could now recite by name between twenty and thirty, the greater part of that number so prodigious that, like other animals thoroughly fatted, they could hardly move about. One of Chichester's epitaphs runs thus, here lies a true soldier whom all must applaud, much hardship he suffered at home and abroad, But the hardest engagement he ever was in was the battle of self in the conquest of sin. I have left, until the last, the prettiest thing in this city of comely streets and houses, St. Mary's Hospital, at the end of Lyon Street, out of North Street, the quaintest armshouse in the world. The building stands back behind the ordinary houses, and is gained by a passage and a courtyard.

Starting point is 01:16:22 You then enter what seems to be a church, for at the far end is an altar beneath an unmistakably ecclesiastical window. But when the first feeling of surprise has passed, you discover that there is only a small chancel at the east end of the building, on either side of which are little dwellings. Each of these is occupied by a nice little old woman, who has two rooms, very minute and cosy, with a little supply of faggots close at hand, and all the dignity of a householder. although the occupant only of an infinitesimal toy house within a house. How do they agree, one wonders, these little old ladies of a touchy age under their great roof? Different accounts are given of the origin of St Mary's Hospital.

Starting point is 01:17:09 Mr. Lohar says that it was founded in 1229 for a chaplain and 13 beadsman. In 1562, a warden and five inmates were the prescribed occupants. Now there are eight sets of rooms, each with its demure tenant, all of whom troop into the little chapel at fixed hours. Mrs. Evans, Sacristan, who does the honours, would tell me nothing as to the process of selection by which she and the seven other occupants came to be living there. All that she could say was that she was very happy to be a hospitler, and that by no possibility could one of the little domiciles ever fall to me.

Starting point is 01:17:49 End of Chapter 4. of Highways and Byways in Sussex. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Peter Yearsley. Highways and Byways in Sussex by E. V. Lucas. Chapter 5. Chichester and the Hills. Chichester may have a cathedral and a history, but nine out of ten strangers know of it only as a station for Goodwood Racecourse, towards which, in that hot week at the end of July,

Starting point is 01:18:22 hundreds of carriages toil by the steep road that skirts the Duke of Richmond and Gordon's Park. Goodwood Park gives me little pleasure. I miss the deer, and when the first park that one ever knew was buxted with its moving antlers above the brake fern, one almost is compelled to withhold the word park from any enclosure without them. It is impossible to lose the feeling that the right place for cattle, even for alderneys, is the meadow. Cows in a park are a poor makeshift. Parks are for deer. To my eyes, Goodwood House has a chilling exterior. The road to the hilltop is steep and lengthy, and when one has climbed it and crossed the summit wood, it is to come upon the last thing that one wishes to find, in the heart of the country among rolling downs, sacred to hawks and solitude,

Starting point is 01:19:20 a grandstand, and the railings of a race-course. Race-courses are for the outskirts of towns, as at Brighton and Lewis, or for hills that have no mystery and no magic, like the heights of Epsom, or for such mockeries of parks as Sandown and Kempton. The good park has many deer and no race-course, and yet goodwood is superb for it has some of the finest trees in sussex within its walls including the survivors of a thousand cedars of lebanon planted a hundred and fifty years ago and with every step higher one unfolds a wider view of the channel and the plain best of these prospects is perhaps that gained from khan's seat as the belvedere to the left of the road to the race-course is called its name deriving from a old servant of the family, whose wooden hut was situated here when Khan died, and whose name and fame were thus perpetuated. The stones of the building were in part those of Old Hove Church, near Brighton, then lately demolished. In Goodwood House, which is shown on regular days,

Starting point is 01:20:33 are fine Van Dykes and Lelis, relics of the two Charles, and, above all the fascinatingly absorbing cenotaph of Lord Darnley, a series of scenes in the life of that ill-fated husband. It may be said that among all the treasures of Sussex there is nothing quite so interesting as this. Leaving Chichester by East Street, or Stain Street, the old Roman road to London, one comes first to West Hampnet, famous as the birthplace in 1792 of Frederick William Lilywhite, the Non-Paree bowler, whom we shall meet again at Brighton. A mile and a half beyond is Halnaker, midway between two ruins,

Starting point is 01:21:19 those of Halnaker House to the north, and Boxgrove Priory to the south. Of the remains of Halnaker House, a Tudor Mansion once the home of the Delawas, little may now be seen, but Boxgrove is still very beautiful, as Mr Griggs' drawings prove. The Priory dates from the rain.

Starting point is 01:21:38 of Henry I, when it was founded very modestly for three Benedictine monks, a number which steadily grew. Seven Henrys later came its downfall, and now nothing remains but some exquisite Norman arches, and a few less perfect fragments. Boxgrove Church is an object of pilgrimage for antiquaries and architects, the vaulting being peculiarly interesting. At the Halnaker Arms in 1902 was a landlady whom few cooks could teach anything in the matter of pastry. The next village on Stain Street, or rather a little south of it, about two miles beyond Halnaker, is Ertham, which brings to mind William Haley, the friend and biographer of Cowper, and the author of The Triumphs of Temper, perhaps the least read of any book that once was popular.

Starting point is 01:22:34 Haley succeeded his father as squire of Eartham. Here he entertained Cowper and other friends. Here Romney painted. When need came for retrenchment, Haley let Eartham to Huskison, the statesman, and moved to Phelpum on the coast, where we shall meet with him again. Kappa's occupations upon this charming Sussex hillside

Starting point is 01:22:56 are recorded in Haley's account of the visit. Homer was not the immediate object of our attention, while Cowper resided at Earthen, the morning hours that we could bestow on books were chiefly devoted to a complete revisal and correction of all the translations which my friend had finished from the Latin and Italian poetry of Milton, and we generally amused ourselves after dinner in forming together a rapid metrical version of Andreini's Adamo. But the constant care which the delicate health of Mrs. Unwin required rendered it impossible for us to be very assiduous in study.

Starting point is 01:23:32 And perhaps the best of all studies was to promote and share that most singular and most exemplary tenderness of attention, with which Cowper incessantly laboured to counteract every infirmity, bodily and mental, with which sickness and age had conspired to load this interesting guardian of his afflicted life. The air of the South infused a little portion of fresh strength into her shattered frame, and, to give it all possible efficacy, the boy, whom I have mentioned, and a young associate and fellow student of his, employed themselves regularly twice a day in drawing this venerable cripple in a commodious garden-chair round the airy hill of earthen. To Cowper, and to me it was a very pleasing spectacle to see the benevolent vivacity of blooming youth, thus continually laboring for the ease, health and amusement of disabled age. The poet and Mrs. Unwin, after much trepidation and doubt,

Starting point is 01:24:32 had left Western Underwood on August 1st, 1792. They slept at Barnet the first night, Ripley the next, and were at Earthen by ten o'clock on the third. They stayed till September. Cowper describes Haley's estate as one of the most delightful pleasure grounds in the world. I had no conception that a poet could be the owner of such a paradise, and his house is as elegant as his scenes are charming. The poet, apart from his rapid treatment of Adamo, did not succeed independently in attaining to Haley's fluency among these surroundings. I am in truth so unaccountably local in the use of my pen, he wrote to Lady Hesketh, that like the man in the fable who could leap well, nowhere but had run.

Starting point is 01:25:21 roads, I seem incapable of writing at all except at Western. Hence the only piece that he composed in our county was the epitaph on Fop, a dog belonging to Lady Throckmorton. But while he was at Eartham, Romney drew his portrait in crayons. Cowper always looked back upon his visit with pleasure, but, as he remarked, the genius of Western Underwood suited him better. It has an air of snug concealment, in which a disposition like mine feels itself peculiarly gratified, whereas now I see, from every window woods like forests and hills like mountains, a wilderness, in short, that rather increases my natural melancholy. Accordingly, I have not looked out for a house in Sussex, nor shall. The simplest road from Chichester to the Downs is the railway. The little train

Starting point is 01:26:17 climbs laboriously to Singleton, and then descends to Cocking and Midhurst. By leaving it at Singleton, one is quickly in the heart of this vast district of wooded hills, sometimes wholly forested, sometimes as in West Dean Park, curiously studied with circular clumps of trees. The most interesting spot to the east of the line is Charlton, once so famous among sporting men, but now, alas, unknown. for Charlton was of old a southern Melton Mowbray, the very centre of the aristocratic hunting county. The Charlton hunt had two palmy periods. Before the Duke of Monmouth's rebellion, and after the accession of William III,

Starting point is 01:27:04 Monmouth and Lord Grey kept two packs, the master being Squire Roper. With the fall of Monmouth, Roper fled to France to hunt at Chanty, but on the accession of William III, he returned. turned to Sussex, the hounds resumed their old condition, and the Charlton Pack became the most famous in the world. On the death of Mr. Roper, in the hunting field at 1715, at the age of 84, the Duke of Bolton took the mastership, which he held until the charms of Miss Fenton, the actress, the Polly Peacham of the beggar's opera, lured him to the tents of the women. Then came the glorious reign of the second Duke of Richmond, when sported.

Starting point is 01:27:47 with the Charlton was at its height. The Charlton Hunt declined upon his death in 1750, became known as the Goodwood Hunt, and wholly ceased to be at the beginning of the last century. The crowning glory of the Charlton Hunt was the run of Friday, January 26th, 1738, which is thus described in an old manuscript. A full and impartial account of the remarkable chase at Charlton on Friday 26th January 1738. It has long been a matter of controversy in the hunting world to what particular country or set of men the superiority belonged. Prejudices and partiality have the greatest share in their disputes, and every society their proper champion to assert the preeminence and bring home the trophy to their own country. Even Richmond Park has the dimook. But on Friday,

Starting point is 01:28:44 the 26th of January 1738, there was a decisive engagement on the Plains of Sussex, which, after ten hours of struggle, has settled all further debate and given the brush to the gentlemen of Charlton. Present in the morning, the Duke of Richmond, Duchess of Richmond, Duke of St. Albans, the Lord Viscount Harcourt, the Lord Henry Bo-Clark, the Lord Ossolstone, Sir Harry Liddle, Brigadier Henry Hawley, Ralph Jenison, Master of His Majesty's Buckhounds, Edward Pornsfort, Esquire, William Farquois, Cornett Philip Honiwood, Richard Biddlef, Esquire, Charles Bidulf, Esquire,

Starting point is 01:29:22 Mr. St. Paul, Mr. Johnson, Mr. Pierman, of Chichester, Mr. Thompson, Tomson, Tom Johnson, Billy Ives, Yeoman Pricker to His Majesty's Hounds, David Briggs and Nim Ives, Whippers Inn. At a quarter before eight in the morning, the fox was found in East Dean Wood, and ran an hour in that cover, Then into the forest, up to Puntis Coppice, through Herringdeen to the Marlows, up to Coney Coppice, Back to the Marlows, to the Forest Westgate, over the fields to Nightingale Bottom,

Starting point is 01:29:53 To Cobdens at Draft, Up his pine-pit-hanger, where his grace of St. Albans got a fall, Through my Lady Lucna's Patux, and missed the earth, Through West Dean Forest to the corner of Collar Down, where Lord Harcourt blew his first horse, crossed the Hackney Place, down the length of Coney Coppice, Through the Marlowe's to Herringdeen into the forest, And Pretis Coppice, East Dean Wood, Through the lower teaglays across by Cocking Cours, Down between Graffam and Will Lavington,

Starting point is 01:30:22 Through Mr. Orms Park and Paddock over the heath to fielders Furses, To the Harlands, Selham, Ambersham, through Todham Fursies, Over Todham Heath, almost to Cowdry Park, There turned to the lime kiln at the end of Cocking Causeway, Through Cocking Park and Fursies. There crossed the road and up the hills between Bepton and Cocking. Here the unfortunate Lord Harcourt's second horse felt the effects of long legs and a sudden steep. The best thing that belonged to him was his saddle, which my lord had secured,

Starting point is 01:30:52 but by bleeding and, Geneva, contrary to Act of Parliament, he recovered, and with some difficulty was got home. Here Mr. Farquhar's humanity, claims your regard, who kindly sympathised with my lord in his misfortunes, and had not known. not power to go beyond him. At the bottom of cocking Warren, the hounds turned to the left, across the road by the barn near Herringdeen, then took the side near to the north gate of the forest. Here General Hawley thought it prudent to change his horse for a true blue that stayed up the hills. Billy Ives likewise took a horse of Sir Harry Liddles, went quite through the forest, and run the foiled through Nightingale Bottom to Cobden at Draft, up his pine-pit-hanger to

Starting point is 01:31:33 my lady Lucna's puttocks. Through every muse she went in the house. the morning. Went through the Warren above Westdean, where we dropped Sir Harry Liddle, down to Benderdon Farm. Here Lord Harry sank, through Goodwood Park. Here the Duke of Richmond chose to send three lame horses back to Charlton, and took saucy face and Sir William that were luckily at Goodwood. From thence at a distance Lord Harry was seen driving his horse before him to Charlton. The hounds went out at the upper end of the park over Strettington Road, by Seeley Coppice, where his grace of Richmond got a summer set, through Halnaker Park over Halnaker Hill to Sea Beach Farm. Here the master of the staghounds, cornet,

Starting point is 01:32:13 Honywood, Tom Johnson, and Nim Ives were thoroughly satisfied, up long down, through earthen common fields and Kemp's Highwood. Here Billy Ives tried his second horse and took Sir William, by which the Duke of St. Albans had no great coat, so returned to Charlton. From Kemp's Highwood the hounds took away through Gunworth Warren, Kemp's rough piece, Overslinden down to Maidhurst Parsonage, where Billy came in with them, Overpour down up to Maidhurst, then down to House and Forest, Where his grace of Richmond, General Hawley and Mr Pornsfort came in, The latter to little purpose, for beyond the rural hill neither Mr Pornsford nor his horse tinker cared to go,

Starting point is 01:32:54 So wisely returned to his impatient friends. Up the rural hill, left showward on the wrong, right bank, crossed Offam Hill to southward, from thence to South Stoke, to the wall of Arndale River, where the glorious 23 hounds put an end to the campaign, and killed an old bitch fox, ten minutes before six. Billy Ives, His Grace of Richmond, and General Hawley were the only person's inner to the death, to the immortal honour of seventeen stone, and at least as many campaigns. In Singleton Church is a record of the Charleston. hunt in the shape of a memorial to one of the huntsmen, the moral of which seems to be that

Starting point is 01:33:35 we must all be huntsman too. Near this place lies interred Thomas Johnson, who departed this life at Charlton, December 20, 1774. From his early inclination to foxhounds, he soon became an experienced huntsman. His knowledge in the profession, wherein he had no superior, and hardly an equal, joined to his honesty in every other particular, recommended him to the service and gained him the approbation of several of the nobility and gentry. Among these were the Lord Conway, Earl of Cardigan, the Lord Gower, the Duke of Marlborough, the Honourable M. Spencer. The last master, whom he served, and in whose service he died, was Charles, Duke of Richmond, Lennox and Obigny, who erected this monument in memory of a good and faithful servant, as a reward to the deceased,

Starting point is 01:34:27 and an incitement to the living. Go and do thou likewise. St. Luke, chapter 10, verse 37. Here Johnson lies, What human can deny, old honest Tom, The tribute of a sigh? Deaf is that ear which caught the opening sound, Dumb that tongue which cheered the hills around.

Starting point is 01:34:49 Unpleasing truth, Death hunts us from our birth, In view, and men like foxes take to earth. A few words on the packs of Sussex at the present time may be interesting in this connection. Chief is the south down foxhounds, a very fine fast pack brought to a high state of perfection by the late master the Honourable Charles Brand. They hunt the open and hill country, between the Adour and Cuckmere, between Haywood's Heath and the sea. In the north are the Crawley and Horsham Foxhounds, which have large woodlands, high hedges, and some stiff ploughed soil,

Starting point is 01:35:26 to their less easy lot. The hounds are bigger and heavier than the South Downers. Smaller packs are Lord Lekonfield's foxhounds, which have the Charlton country, the Eastbourne foxhounds, to which the East Sussex foxhounds allotted a share of the western part of their country east of the Kukmere, and the Bustor and Erich packs.

Starting point is 01:35:47 Of Harriers, the best are the Brighton Harriers, so long hunted by Mr Hugh Goringe of Kingston-by-Sea. A very smart pack, lately covering the ground between the Adour and Falma, and now adding the Brookside Harriers country to their own domain, the two packs having been amalgamated. In the east are the Bexhill Harriers, and the Halesham Harriers, and in the west, the South Coast Harriers, for the Chichester country.

Starting point is 01:36:13 Sussex, in addition to possessing the Warnham Staghounds, is much raided by the Surrey Staggounds. The Crowhurst Otterhounds also visit the Sussex streams now and then. foot-beagles may be numerous, but I know only of the Brighton pack. And here let me give Mr. Knox's description of a day's shooting in the gentlemanly way on the Sussex Downs, following in his ornithological rambles upon some remarks on the Batu. How different is the pursuit of the pheasant with the aid of spaniels in the thick covers of the wheeled, or tracking him with a single setter among some of the wilder portions of the forest range,

Starting point is 01:36:53 intently observing your dog, and anticipating the wily artifices of some old cock, with spurs as long as a dragon's, who will sometimes lead you for a mile through bog, brake, fern, and heather, before the sudden drop of your staunch companion, and a rigidity in all his limbs, satisfy you that you have at last compelled the bird to squat under that wide holly-bush, from whence you kick him up, and feel some little exultation as you bring him down with a snapshot, having only caught a glimpse of him through the evergreen boughs, as he endeavoured to escape by a rapid flight at the opposite side of the tree. And then the woodcock shooting in November. I must take you back once more to my favourite downs.

Starting point is 01:37:36 With the first full moon during that month, especially if the wind be easterly or the weather calm, arrive flights of woodcocks, which drop in the covers and are dispersed among the bushy veysed, valleys, and even over the heathery summits of the hills. If it should happen to be a propitious year for beach-mast, the great attraction to pheasants on the Downs, as is the acorn in the wield, you may procure partridges, pheasants, hares, and rabbits, in perhaps equal proportions, with half a dozen woodcocks to crown the bag. The extensive undulating commons and heaths,

Starting point is 01:38:10 dothed with broken patches of scotch furs and hollies on the ferruginous sand north of the Downs, afford, where the manorial rights are enforced, still greater variety of sport. On this wild ground accompanied by my spaniels and an old retriever, and attended only by one man to carry the game, I have enjoyed as good sport as mortal need desire on this side of the tweed. Here is a rough sketch of a morning's work. Commencing operations by walking along a turnip field, two or three coveys spring wildly from the farther end,

Starting point is 01:38:44 and fly, as I expect, to the adjoining common, where they are marked down on a brow thickly clothed with furs, marching towards them with spaniels at heel, up jumps a hair under my nose, then another, then a rabbit, I reload rapidly, and on reaching the gorse, put in the dogs. There goes a partridge. The spaniels dropped to the report of my gun, but the fluttering wings of the dying bird roused two of his neighbours before I am ready, and away they fly, screaming loudly. The remainder are flushed in detail, and I succeed in securing the greater part of them. Now for the next, Covey, they were marked down in that little hollow where the heather is longer than usual, a beautiful spot. But before I reach it, up they all spring in an unexpected

Starting point is 01:39:29 quarter. That cunning old patriarch at their head had cleverly called them together to a naked part of the hill, from whence he could observe my manoeuvres, and a random shot sent after him with hearty goodwill proved totally ineffective. Now the spaniels are worming through the thick sedges on either side of the brook which intersects the moor, and by their bustling anxiety, it is easy to see that game is afoot. Keeping well in front of them, I am just in time for a satisfactory right and left at two cock-feasants, which they had hunted down to the very edge of the water, before they could persuade them to take wing. Now, for that little alder coppice at the farther end of the marshy swamp. Hark to that whipping sound, so,

Starting point is 01:40:09 different from the rush of the rising pheasant, or the drumming flight of the partridge. I cannot see the bird, but I know it is a woodcock. This must be one of his favourite haunts, for I perceive the tracks of his feet and the perforations of his bill in every direction on the black mud around. Mark! Again! A second is sprung, and as he flits between the naked alders, a snapshot stops his career. I now emerge at the farther end, just where the trees are thinner than elsewhere. A wisp of snipes utter their well-known cry and scud over the heath. One of these is secured. The rest fly towards a little pool of dark water, lying at a considerable distance from the common, a well-known rendezvous for those birds. Cautiously approaching downwind, I reached the margin,

Starting point is 01:40:54 upsprings a snipe, but, just as my finger is on the trigger, and when, too late to alter my intention, a duck and mallard rise from among the rushes and wheel round my head. One barrel is fortunate, left and the Drake comes tumbling to the ground. Three or four pheasants, another couple of woodcocks, a few more snipes, a teal or two, and half a dozen rabbits picked up at various intervals, complete the day's sport, and I return home, better pleased with myself and my dogs, than if we had compassed the destruction of all the hairs in the county, or assisted at the emulation of a perfect hecotum of pheasants. Kingley Bottom is the most interesting spot to the west of Singleton.

Starting point is 01:41:37 One may reach it either through Chillgrove or by walking back towards Chichester, as far as Binderton House, turning then to the right and walking due west for a couple of miles. Report says that the ewes in Kingley Bottom, or Kingley Vale, mark a victory of Chichester men over a party of marauding Danes in 900, and that the dead were buried beneath the barrows on the hill. The story ought to be true. The Vale is remarkable for its grove of views, some of enormous girth, which extends along the bottom to the foot of the escarpment. The charge that might be brought against Sussex, that it lacks sombre scenery and the elements of dark romance,

Starting point is 01:42:17 that its character is to open and transparent, would be urged to no purpose in Kingley Vale, which, always grave and silent, is transformed at dusk into a sinister and fantastic forest, a home, for witchcraft and unquiet spirits. So it seems to me, but among the verses of Bernard Barton, the Quaker poet and the friend of Charles Lamb, I lately chanced upon a sonnet, written on hearing it remarked that the scenery of Kingley Bottom was too gloomy to be termed beautiful, and that it was also associated with dolorous recollections of druidical sacrifices. In this poem Barton takes a surprisingly not novel line. Nay, nay, it is not gloomy, he begins, and the end is thus, nor fancy druid rites have left a stain upon its gentle beauties. Loiter there in a calm summer night, confess how fair

Starting point is 01:43:17 its moonlight charms, and thou wilt learn how vain and transitory superstitions reign, over a spot which gladsome thoughts may share. The ordinary person, not a poet, would, I fear, prefer to think of Kingley Bottom's druidical past. The last time I was in Kingley Bottom, it was in April. After leaving the barrows on the summit of the Bow Hill, above the veil, I walked by devious ways to East Marden, between banks thick with the whitest and sweetest of sweet white violets. East Marden, however, has no inn, and is therefore not the best friend of the traveller, but it has the most modest and least ecclesiastical-looking church in the world, and by seeking it out I learned two secrets, the finest place for white violence,

Starting point is 01:44:12 and the finest place to keep a horse. There is no riding country to excel this hill district between Singleton and the Hampshire border. At the neighbouring village of Stoughton, whither I meant to walk, since an inn is there, was born in 1783, the terrible George Brown, Brown of Brighton, the fast bowler, whose arm was as thick as an ordinary man's thigh. He had two long stops, one of whom padded his chest with straw.

Starting point is 01:44:43 A long stop once held his coat before one of Brown's balls, but the ball went through it and killed a dog on the other side. Brown could throw a four-and-a-half-ounce ball 137 yards, and he was the father of 17 children. He died at Sompting in 1857. Of Racton, on the Hampshire border, and its association with Charles II, I have already spoken.

Starting point is 01:45:09 Below it is Westbourne, a small border village, in whose churchyard are two pleasing epitaphs, of Jane, wife of Thomas Curtis, who died in 1719, It is written, she was like a lily, fresh and green, soon cast down and no more seen. And of John Cook. Pope said an honest man is the noblest work of God. If Pope's assertion be, from error clear, one of God's noblest works lies buried here.

Starting point is 01:45:45 End of Chapter 5. Chapter 6 of Highways and Byways in Sussex This Librivox recording is in the public domain, recording by Peter Yearsley. Highways and Byways in Sussex by V. Lucas Chapter 6, Chichester and the Plain On leaving Chichester, West Street becomes the Portsmouth Road, and passes through Fishbourne, a pleasant but dusty village. A mile or so beyond, and a little to the south, is Bosch-Whorne,

Starting point is 01:46:18 on one of the several arms of Chichester Harbour, once of some importance, but now chiefly mud. Bosham is the most interesting village in what may be called the Selsea Peninsula. Yet how has its glory diminished? What is now a quiet abode of fishermen and the tarrying place of yachtsmen and artists? There are few Royal Academy exhibitions without the spire of Boscham Church, has been in its time a very factory of history. Vespasian's camp was hard by, and it is possible that certain Roman remains that have been found here

Starting point is 01:46:56 were once part of his palace. Boscham claims to be the scene of Canyute's encounter with the encroaching tide, which may be the case, although one has always thought of the king rebuking his flatterers, rather by the margin of the ocean itself, than inland at an estuary's edge. But beyond question, Cunute had a palace here, and his daughter was buried in the church.

Starting point is 01:47:19 Earl Godwin, father of Harold, last of the Saxons, dwelt here also. Da me Bacium! Give me a kiss. He is fabled to have said to Archbishop Ithelnoth, and on receiving it, to have taken the salute as acquiescence in the request Dami Bosham, probably the earliest, and also the most expensive recorded example in England of this particular form of humour. It was from Boscham that Harold sailed on that visit to the Duke of Normandy, which resulted in the Battle of Hastings. In the Bayeur Tapestry he may be seen riding to Boscham with his company,

Starting point is 01:48:00 and also putting up prayers for the success of his mission. Of this success, we shall see more when we come to battle. Boscham, furthermore, claims Hubert of Boscham, the author of the Book of Beckett's Martyrdom, who was with St. Thomas of Canterbury, when the assassins stabbed him to the death. The church is of great age. It is even claimed that the tower is the original Saxon. The circumstance that, in the representation of the edifice in the Bayo Tapestry, there is no tower, has been urged against this theory, although architectural realism in embroidery has never been very noticeable.

Starting point is 01:48:41 The bells, it is told, were once carried off in a Danish raid, but they brought their captors no luck, rather the reverse, since they so weighed upon the ship that she sank. When the present bells ring, the ancient submerged peal is said to ring also in sympathy at the bottom of the channel. A pretty habit, which would suggest that bell-metal is happily and wisely superior to changes of religion, were it not explained by the unromantic principles of acoustics.

Starting point is 01:49:12 A heavy pole, known as the same. staff of Bevis of Southampton and Arundel was of old kept in Bosham Church. At high water, Bosham is the fair abode of peace. When every straggling arm of the harbour is brimming full, when there still surfaces reflect the sky with a brighter light, and the fishing boats ride erect, Boscham is serenely beautiful and restful. But at low tide she is a slut.

Starting point is 01:49:44 The withdrawing floods lay bare vast tracts of mud. The ships heal over into attitudes disreputably oblique. Stagnation reigns. Jidham, by Bosham is widely famous for its wheat. Jidham White, or Hedge wheat, was first produced a little more than a century ago by Mr. Woods, a farmer. He noticed one afternoon, probably on a Sunday when farmers are most noticing, an unfamiliar patch of wheat growing in a hedge.

Starting point is 01:50:17 It contained 30 ears, in which were 1,400 corns. Mr. Woods carefully saved it, and sowed it. The crop was eight pounds and a half. These he sowed, and the crop was 48 gallons. Thus it multiplied, until the time came to distribute it to other farmers at a high price. The cultivation of chid and wheat by Mr. Woods at one side of the county synchronized with the breeding of the best south-down sheep by John Elman at the other, as we shall see later.

Starting point is 01:50:51 South of Chichester stretches the Manhood Peninsula, of which Selsey is the principal town, the part of Sussex, most neglected by the traveller. In a county of hills, the stranger is not attracted by a district that might almost have been hewn out of Holland, but the ornithologist knows its value, and in all of the only thing In a world increasingly bustling and progressive, there is a curious fascination in so remote and deliberate a region, over which, even in the finest weather and during the busiest harvest, a suggestion of desolation broods. Nothing one feels can ever introduce success into this plain, and so thinking, one is at peace. A tramway between Chichester and Selsey has to some extent opened up,

Starting point is 01:51:43 up the east side of the peninsula, but the west is still remote and will probably remain so. The country is, however, not interesting. A dead level of dusty road and grass, or arable land, broken only by hedges, dikes, white cottages, and the many homestidswept elms. Wheat and oats are the prevailing crops, still for the most part, cut and bound by hand. Of the villages in the centre of the peninsula, Seidelsham is the most considerable, with its handsome square church tower and its huge red tide-mill, now silent and weather-worn, standing mournfully at the head of the dry harbour of Pagham,

Starting point is 01:52:29 whose waters once turned its wheels. On the west, on the shores of the Boscham Estuary, or Chichester Harbour, are the sleepy amphibious villages of Appledram, famous once for its assault and its smugglers, Burdom and Earnley. Let no one be tempted to take a direct line across the fields from Cels to Ernley, for dikes and canals must effectually stop him. Indeed, cross-country walking in this part of the country is practically an impossibility, except by continuous deviations and doublings. In attempting one day to reach Earnley from Selsey in this way, after giving up

Starting point is 01:53:09 on the beach in despair, I came across several adders, and I once found one crossing a road absolutely in Celsie. Celsie is a straggling white village or town, over-populous with visitors in summer, empty, save for its regular inhabitants, in winter. The oldest and truest part of Selsey is a fishing village on the east shore of the bill, a little settlement of tarred tenements and lobster pots. Celsie Church, now on the confines of the town, once stood a mile or more away, whither it was removed, the stones being numbered, and, like Temple Bar, again set up. The chancel was, however, not removed, but left desolate in the fields.

Starting point is 01:53:58 Selsie Bill is a tongue of land projecting into a shallow sea, A lighthouse being useless to warn strange mariners of the sandbanks of this district, a light ship known as the Oars flashes its rays far out in the channel. The sea has played curious pranks on the Selsea coast. Beneath the beach and a large tract of the sea now lies what was once, 400 years ago, a park of deer, which in its most prosperous day extended for miles. The shallow water covering it is still called the park by the fishermen who drop their nets, where once the bucks and doze of Celsius were wont to graze.

Starting point is 01:54:42 But the sea has obliterated more than the pasturage of the deer. A mile distant from the present shore stood the first monastery erected in Sussex after Wilfrid's conversion of the South Saxons to Christianity. Although St. Wilfrid eventually found a home in Sussex, and worked hard among its people. His first attempt to bring Christianity to the county was, according to his friend Eddas, Vita Wilfridi, ill-starred. I quote the story.

Starting point is 01:55:12 A great gale, blowing from the south-east, the swelling waves threw them on the unknown coast of the South Saxons. The sea too left the ship and men, and retreating from the land and leaving the shore uncovered, retired into the depths of the abyss. And the heathen, coming with a great army, intended to seize the ship, to divide the spoil of money, to take them captives forthwith, and to put to the sword those who resisted, to whom our great bishop spoke gently and peaceably, offering much money, wishing to redeem their souls.

Starting point is 01:55:47 But they with stern and cruel hearts, like Pharaoh, would not let the people of the Lord go, saying proudly that all that the sea threw on the land became as much theirs as their own property. And the idolatrous chief priest of the heathen, standing on a lofty mound, strove like Balam to curse the people of God, and to bind their hands by his magic arts. Then one of the bishop's companions hurled like David, a stone blessed by all the people of God, which struck the cursing magician in the forehead, and pierced his brain, when an unexpected,

Starting point is 01:56:23 death surprised, as it did Goliath, falling back a corpse in sandy places. The heathen, therefore preparing to fight, vainly attacked the people of God, but the Lord fought for the few, even as Gideon by the command of the Lord with 300 warriors, slew at one attack 12,000 of the Midianites. And so the comrades of our Holy Bishop well-armed and brave, though few in number, they were 120 men, the number of the years of Moses, determined and agreed that none should turn his back in flight from the other, but would either win death with glory or life with victory, for both alike are easy to the Lord. So St. Wilfrith, with his clerk, fell on his knees, and, lifting his hands to heaven,

Starting point is 01:57:11 again sought help from the Lord. For, as Moses triumphed when Her and Aron supported his hands, by frequently imploring the protection of the Lord, when Joshua the son of Nun was fighting with the people of God against Amalek, thus these few Christians, after thrice repulsing the fierce and untamed heathen routed them with great slaughter, with a loss, strange to say, of only five on their side. And their great priest, Wilfrith, prayed to the Lord his God, who immediately ordered the sea to return a full hour before it won't, so that when the heathen on the arrival of their king were preparing for a fourth attack, with all their forces, the rising sea covered with its waves the whole of the shore, and floated the ship which sailed into the deep,

Starting point is 01:57:59 but greatly glorified by God and returning him thanks, with a south wind they reached Sandwich, a harbour of safety. The Sussex people, it would seem, do not take kindly to missionaries, for John Wesley records that he had less success. in this county than in all England. Between Selsey and Bogner lies Pagham, famous in the pages of Knox's ornithological rambles, but otherwise unknown. Of the lost glories of Pagham, which was once a harbour, but is now dry, let Mr. Knox speak. Here in the dead, long summer days, when not a breath of air has been stirring, have I frequently remained for hours, stretched on the hot shingle, and gazed at the osprey as he sawed aloft, or watched the little islands of mud at the turn of the tide, as each gradually rose from the receding waters, and was successfully taken possession of by flocks of sandpipers and ring doterals, after various circumvolutions on the part of each detachment, now simultaneously presenting their snowy breasts to the sunshine, now suddenly turning their dusky backs, so that the dazzled eye lost sight of them from the contrast,

Starting point is 01:59:21 while the prolonged cry of the titural and the melancholy note of the peewit from the distant swamp have mingled with the scream of the turn and the taunting laugh of the gull. Footnote, titural is the Sussex provincial name for the Wimbril, end footnote. Here have I watched the oyster-catcher, as he flew from point to point, and cautiously waded into the shallow water, and the patient heron, that pattern of a fisherman, as with retracted neck and eyes fixed on vacancy,

Starting point is 01:59:54 he has stood for hours without a single snap, motionless as a statue. Here too have I pursued the gillimot, or craftily endeavoured to cut off the retreat of the diver, by mooring my boat across the narrow passage, through which alone he could return to the open sea without having recourse to his reluctant wings. Nor can I forget how often during the Siberian winter of 1838, when a whole gale, as the sailors have it, has been blowing up from the north-east,

Starting point is 02:00:26 I used to take up my position on the long and narrow ridge of shingle, which separated this paradise from the raging waves without, and sheltered behind a hillock of seaweed, with my long duck gun and a trusty double, or half buried in a hole in the sand. I used to watch the legions of water-birds as they neared the shore, and dropped distrustfully among the breakers, at a distance from the desired haven. Until, gaining confidence from the accession of numbers, some of the bolder spirits, the pioneers of the army, would flap their wings, rise from the white waves, and make for the calm water. Here they come! I can see the pied golden eye, pre-eminent among the advancing party. Now the Potchard, with his copper-coloured

Starting point is 02:01:11 head and neck may be distinguished from the darker scalp duck. Already the finger is on the trigger, when perhaps they suddenly veer to the right and left, far beyond the reach of my longest barrel, or it may be come swishing overhead, and leave a companion or two struggling on the shingle, or floating on the shallow waters of the harbour. Pagham Harbour is now reclaimed, and where, once was mud, or at high-tide shallow water, is rank grass and thistles. One ship that seems to have waited a little too long before making for the open sea again

Starting point is 02:01:47 now lies high and dry, a forlorn hulk. Pagham Church is among the airiest that I know, with a shingle spire, the counterpart of Boshams on the other side of the peninsula. The walk from Pagham to Bognar along the sand is uninspiring, and not too easy, for the sand can be very soft. About a mile west of Bogner, one is driven inland, just after passing, as perfect an example of the simple yet luxurious seaside home as I remember to have seen, all on one floor, thatched, shaded by trees, surrounded by its garden, and facing the channel. Among the unattractive types of town, few are more dismal than the watering place Monquay.

Starting point is 02:02:38 Bogner, must, I fear, come under this heading. Its reputation such as it is was originally made by Princess Charlotte, daughter of George III, who found the heir recuperative, and who was probably not unwilling to lend her prestige to a resort, as her brother George was doing at Brighton, and her sister Amelia had done at Worthing. But before the Princess Charlotte, Sir Richard Hottom, the Hatter, had come, determined at any cost to make the town popular.

Starting point is 02:03:10 One of his methods was to rename it Hot Hampton. His efforts were, however, only moderately successful, and he died in 1799, leaving to what Horsefield calls his astonished heirs only £8,000 out of a great fortune. The name Hot Hampton soon vanished. The local authorities of Bogner seem to be keenly alive to the value of enterprise, for their walls are covered with instructions as to what may or may not be done

Starting point is 02:03:44 in the interests of cleanliness and popularity. A new seawall has been built, receptacles for waste paper continually confront one, and deck chairs at tuppence for three hours, are practically unavoidable. And yet Bogner remains a... a dull place once the visitor has left his beach abode, tent or bathing-box, whichever it might be. It seems to be a town without resources, but it has the interest, denied one in more fashionable

Starting point is 02:04:18 watering places, of presenting old and new Bogner at the same moment. Not that old Bogner is really old, but it is instructive to see the kind of crescent which was considered the last word in architectural enterprise when our great-grandmothers were young and would take the sea air. From Bogner it is a mere step to Felham, a village less than a mile to the east. Whether or not one goes there today is a matter of taste, but a hundred years ago to omit a visit was to confess oneself a bore, for William Haley, the poet and friend of genius, lived there, and his castellated stucco house became a shrine. At that day, it seems to have been no uncommon sight for the visitor to Bognor to be refreshed by the spectacle of the poet falling

Starting point is 02:05:13 from his horse. According to his biographer, Cowper's Johnny of Norfolk, Haley descended to earth almost as often as Alice's White Knight, partly from the high spirit of his steed, and partly from a habit which he never abandoned of wearing military spurs and carrying an umbrella. The memoir of the poet contains this agreeable passage. The editor was once riding

Starting point is 02:05:38 gently by his side on the stony beach of Bogner, when the wind suddenly reversed his umbrella as he unfolded it. His horse, with a single but desperate plunge, pitched him on his head in an instant. On another occasion, on the same visit, he was tossed into the air

Starting point is 02:05:54 on the downs, at the precise moment when an interested friend whom they had just left, being apprehensive of what would happen, was anxiously viewing him from his window through a telescope. Those who look through telescopes are rarely so fortunate. It is odd that Haley, a delicate and heavy man suffering from hip disease, should have taken so little hurt. Although he had a covered passage for horse exercise in the grounds of his villa, no amount of practice seems to have improved his sea. This covered way has been removed, but a mulberry tree planted by Haley still flourishes. Whenever Haley was ill, he became an object of intense interest to visitors at Bogner.

Starting point is 02:06:38 Binstead's library in the town exhibited a daily bulletin, and in 1819 the Prince and Princess of Saxe-Coburg called upon him, while the Princess of Hess-Homburg on her return sent a prescription from Germany. Mrs. Opie, the novelist, who stayed with Mr. Haley every summer, and also served as a magnet to devout sojourners at Bogner, has left an account of the poet's habits, which is vastly more entertaining than his poetry. He rose at six or earlier, and at once composed some devotional verse. At breakfast he read to Mrs. Opie. Afterwards, Mrs. Opie read to him. At eleven, they drank coffee, and before he dressed for dinner, a very temperate meal, Mrs. Opie said, Opie sang. After dinner there was more reading aloud, the matter being either manuscript compositions of Mr. Haley's or modern publications. Mr. Haley took Coco and Mrs. Opie tea, and afterwards

Starting point is 02:07:38 Mrs. Opie read aloud or sang. At nine, the servants came to prayers, which were original compositions of Mr. Haley's, read by him in a very impressive manner, and before bed Mrs. Opie sang one of Mr. Haley's hymns. haley's grave is at felpum and his epitaph by mrs opi may be read by the industrious on the wall of the church among the many epitaphs on his neighbours by haley himself who had a special knack of mortuary verse is this on a felpum blacksmith my sledge and hammer lie reclined my bellows too have lost their wind my fires extinct my forge decayed and in the dust my vice is lay My coal is spent, my iron gone, The nails are driven, My work is done. The last verses that Haley wrote have more charm and delicacy than perhaps anything else among his works. Ye gentle birds that perch aloof and smooth your pinions on my roof, preparing for departure hence ere winter's angry threats commence.

Starting point is 02:08:51 Like you, my soul would smooth her. would smooth her plume for longer flights beyond the tomb. May God, by whom is seen and heard departing man and wandering bird, in mercy mark us for his own, and guide us to the land unknown. But it is not Haley that gives its glory to Phelpham. The glory of Phelpham is that William Blake was happy there for nearly three years. It was at Felperm that he saw that. He saw the the fairy's funeral. Did you ever see a fairy's funeral, ma'am? he asked a visitor. Never, sir. I have. I was walking alone in my garden. There was great stillness among the

Starting point is 02:09:35 branches and flowers, and more than common sweetness in the air. I heard a low and pleasant sound, and I knew not whence it came. At last I saw the broad leaf of a flower move, and underneath it I saw a procession of creatures, of the size and colour of green and grey. grasshoppers, bearing a body laid out on a rose-leaf, which they buried with songs, and then disappeared. It was a fairy's funeral. Blake settled at Felperm to be near Haley, for whom he had a number of commissions to execute. He engraved illustrations to Haley's works, and painted eighteen heads for Haley's library. Among them, Shakespeare, Homer, and Haley himself, but all have vanished. The present owner knows not where.

Starting point is 02:10:21 In some verses which Blake addressed to Anna Flaxman, the wife of the sculptor, in September 1800, a few days before moving from London to the Sussex Coast, he says, This song to the flower of Flaxman's joy, to the blossom of hope for a sweet decoy, Do all that you can and all that you may to entice him to Phelpham and far away. Away to sweet Phelpham, for heaven is there. The ladder of angels Descends through the air On the turret

Starting point is 02:10:53 Its spiral does softly descend Through the village then winds At my cot it does end Blake's house still stands A retired thatched cottage Facing the sea But some distance from it In a letter to Flaxman a little later

Starting point is 02:11:11 He says Phelpham is a sweet place for study Because it is more spiritual than London Heaven opens here on all sides its golden gates. The windows are not obstructed by vapors. Voices of celestial inhabitants are more distinctly heard, their forms more distinctly seen,

Starting point is 02:11:31 and my cottage is also a shadow of their houses. Beside the sea, Blake communed with the spirits of Dante and Homer, Milton, and the Hebrew prophets. Blake's sojourn at Felperm ended in 1803, A grotesque and annoying incident marred its close, the story of which, as told by the poet in a letter to Mr. Butler, certainly belongs to the history of Sussex. It should, however, first be stated that an ex-soldier in the Royal Dragoons,

Starting point is 02:12:04 named John Scolfield, had accused Blake of uttering seditious words. The letter runs, His enmity arises from my having turned him out of my garden, into which he was invited as an assistant by a gardener at work therein, without my knowledge that he was so invited. I desired him as politely as possible to go out of the garden. He made me an impertinent answer. I insisted on his leaving the garden. He refused. I still persisted in desiring his departure. He then threatened to knock out my eyes, with many abominable imprecations, and with some contempt for my person. It affronted my foolish pride. I therefore took him

Starting point is 02:12:45 by the elbows and pushed him before me until I had got him out. There I intended to have left him, but he, turning about, put himself into a posture of defiance, threatening and swearing at me. I, perhaps foolishly, and perhaps not, stepped out at the gate, and, putting aside his blows, took him again by the elbows, and keeping his back to me, pushed him forward down the road about fifty yards. He, all the while endeavouring to turn round and strike me, and raging and cursing which drew out several neighbours. At length, when I had got him to where he was quartered, which was very quickly done, we were met at the gate by the master of the house, the Fox Inn, who is the proprietor of my cottage, and his wife and daughter, and the man's

Starting point is 02:13:28 comrade and several other people. My landlord compelled the soldiers to go indoors after many abusive threats against me and my wife from the two soldiers, but not one word of threat on account of sedition was uttered at that time. As a result, Blake was hailed before the magistrates and committed for trial. The trial was held in the Guildhall at Chichester on January the 11th, 1804. Haley, in spite of having been thrown from his horse on a flint with, says Gilchrist Blake's biographer, more than usual violence, was in attendance to swear to the poet's character,

Starting point is 02:14:05 and Cowper's friend Rose, a clever barrister, had been retained. According to the report in the county paper, William Blake, an engraver at Felper, was tried on a charge exhibited against him by two soldiers for having uttered seditious and treasonable expressions such as, Damn the King! Damn all his subjects!

Starting point is 02:14:26 Damn his soldiers! They are all slaves. When Bonaparte comes, it will be cutthroat for cutthroat. And the weakest must go to the wall. I will help him, and so on and so on. Blake electrified the court by calling out, False! In the midst of the military evidence, the invented character of which was, however so obvious,

Starting point is 02:14:47 that an acquittal resulted. In defiance of all decency, the spectators cheered, and Haley carried off the sturdy Republican, as he was at heart, to mid-Lavant, to sup at Mrs. Pools. Mr. Gilchrist found an old fellow who had been present at the trial, drawn thither by the promise of seeing the great man of the neighbourhood, Mr. Haley, all that he could remember was Blake's flashing eye. The Fox Inn, by the way, is still as it was, but the custom I fancy goes more to the thatched house,

Starting point is 02:15:21 which adds to the charm of refreshment, a museum containing such treasures as a petrified coconut, the skeleton of a lobster 28 years old, and a representation of Moses in the bulrushes. A third and fourth great man, of a different type, both from Haley and, and Blake met at Phelpham in 1819. One was Cyril Jackson, Dean of Christ Church, who, lying on his deathbed in the manor house, was visited by the other, his old pupil, the first gentleman

Starting point is 02:15:56 in Europe. End of Chapter 6. Chapter 7 of Highways and Byways in Sussex. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Peter Yearsley. and byways in Sussex byways byways by-ways by Sussex by V. Lucas. Chapter 7, Arndel and Neighborhood. Seen from the river or from the east side of the Aron Valley, Arndel is the most imposing town in Sussex. Many are larger, many are equally old, or older, but none wears so unusual and interesting an air, not even Lewis among her downs. Arndel clings to the side of a shaggy hill above the Aron. Castle, Cathedral, Church. These are Arendel. The town itself is secondary, subordinate, feudal. The castle is what one likes a castle to be, a mass of

Starting point is 02:16:53 battlemented stone, with a keep, a gateway, and a history, and yet more habitable than ever. So many of the rich make no effort to live in their ancestral halls, and what might be a home carrying on the tradition of ages is so often a mere show that to find an historic castle like Arundel still lived in, is very gratifying. In Sussex alone are several half-ruined houses that the builders could quickly make habitable once more. Arndall Castle, in spite of time and the sieges of 1102, 1139 and 1643, is both comfortable and modern. Arndel still depends for her life. upon the complacence of her overlord. I know of no town with so low a pulse

Starting point is 02:17:44 as this precipitous little settlement under the shadow of Rome and the Duke. In spite of picnic parties in the park, in spite of anglers from London, in spite of the railway in the valley, Arundel is still medieval and curiously foreign. On a very hot day, as one climbs the hill to the cathedral,

Starting point is 02:18:05 one might be in old France, and certainly in the Middle Ages. Times revenges have had their play in this town. Although the Church is still bravely of the establishment, half of it is closed to the Anglican visitor, the Chancellor having been adjudged the private property of the Dukes of Norfolk, and the once-dominating position of the Edifice has been impaired by the proximity of the new Roman Catholic Church of St. Philip Neri, which the present Duke has been building these many years. Within, it is finished, a very charming and delicate feat in stone, but the spire has yet to come. The old Irish soldier, humorous and

Starting point is 02:18:48 be meddled, who keeps watch and ward over the fane, is not the least of its merits. Although the chancel of the parish church has been closed, permission to enter may occasionally be obtained. It is rich in family tombs of great interest and beauty, including that of the 19th Earl of Arundel, the patron of William Caxton. In the siege of Arndel Castle in 1643, the soldiers of the parliamentarians under Sir William Waller fired the cannon from the church tower. They also turned the church into a barracks and injured much stonework beyond repair. A fire beacon blazed of old on the spire to serve as a mark for vessels entering Little Hampton Harbour.

Starting point is 02:19:32 Bevis of Southampton, the giant, who, when he visited the Isle of White, waded thither, was a warder at Arndall Castle, where he ate a whole ox every week with bread and mustard, and drank two hogsheads of beer, hence Bevis Tower. His sword Morglay is still to be seen in the armoury of the castle. His bones lie beneath a mound in the park, and the town was named after his horse. So runs a pretty story, which is, however, demolished, with the ruthlessness that comes so easily to the antiquary and philologist. Bevis Tower, science declares, was named probably after another Bevis. There was one at the Battle of Lewis, who took prisoner, Richard King of the Romans, and was knighted for it,

Starting point is 02:20:22 while Arandall is a corruption of Irondell, a swallow. Mr. Lower mentions that in recent times in Sussex, swallow was a common name in stables, even for heavy dray horses. But before accepting finally the swallow theory, we ought to hear what Fuller has to say. Some will have it so named from Arendel, the horse of Beau Voice, the great champion. I confess it is not without precedence in antiquity for places to take names from horses, meeting with the promontory bukephalus in Peloponnesus, where some report the horse of Alexander buried,

Starting point is 02:21:01 and Belonius will have it for the same cause called Kevala, at this day. But this castle was so-called long before that imaginary horse was folled, who cannot be fancied elder than his master Bovois, flourishing after the conquest, long before which Arundel was so called from the River Arund, running hard by it. the owls that once multiplied in the keep have now disappeared they were established there a hundred years or so ago by the eleventh duke and certain of them were known by the names of public men please your grace lord thurlow has laid an egg is an historic speech handed down by tradition lord thurlow the owl in question died at a great age in eighteen fifty nine to walk through arundle park is to receive a vivid impression

Starting point is 02:21:54 of the size and richness of our little isolated England. Two or three great towns could be hidden in it unknown to each other. Valley succeeds to valley. New herds of deer come into sight at almost every turn, as far as the eye can see the grass hills roll away. Those accustomed to parks whose deer are always huddled close, and whose wall is never distant, are bewildered by the vastness of this, enclosure. Yet one has also the feeling that such magnificence is right. To so lovely a word

Starting point is 02:22:31 as Arendel, to the premier duke and hereditary Earl-Marshal of England, should fittingly fall this far-spreading and comely pleasance. Had Arndel Park been small and empty of deer, what a blunder it would be! Walking west of Arndel through the vast rural wood we come suddenly upon Punchbowl Green and open a great green valley dominated by the white faade of Dale Park House, below Maidhurst, one of the most remote of Sussex villages. By keeping due west for another mile, Slindon is reached. This village is one of the Sussex backwaters, as one might say. It lies on no road that anyone ever travels except for the purpose of going to Slindon, or coming from it, and those that perform either of these actions are few.

Starting point is 02:23:24 Yet all who have not seen Slindon are by so much the poorer, for Slendon House is nobly Elizabethan, with fine pictures and hiding places, and Slindon beaches are among the aristocracy of trees. And here I should like to quote a Sussex poem of haunting wistfulness and charm, which was written by Mr. Hillier Belloc, who once walked to Rome, and is an old dweller at Slendon. The South Country When I am living in the Midlands that are sodden and unkind, I light my lamp in the evening, my work is left behind, and the great hills of the South Country come back into my mind. The great hills of the South Country, they stand along the sea, and it's there walking in the

Starting point is 02:24:15 high woods that I could wish to be, and the men that were boys when I was a boy, walking along with me. The men that live in North England, I saw them for a day. Their hearts are set upon the waste fells, their skies are fast and grey. From their castle walls a man may see the mountains far away. The men that live in West England they see the seven strong, a rolling on rough water brown, light aspen leaves along. They have the secret of the rocks and the oldest kind of song. But the men that live in the South Country are the kindest and most wise. They get their laughter from the loud surf, and the faith in their happy eyes comes surely from our sister the spring, when over the sea she flies. The violets suddenly bloom at her feet. She blesses

Starting point is 02:25:11 us with surprise. I never get between the pines, but I smell the Sussex air, nor I never come on a belt of sand, but my home is there, and along the sky the line of the downs, so noble and so bare. A lost thing could I never find, nor a broken thing mend, and I fear I shall be all alone when I get towards the end. Who will be there to comfort me? or who will be my friend. I will gather and carefully make my friends of the men of the Sussex wield. They watch the stars from silent folds. They stiffly plough the field. By them and the god of the

Starting point is 02:25:57 South Country, my poor soul shall be healed. If I ever become a rich man, or if ever I grow to be old, I will build a house with deep thatch to shelter me from the cold, and there shall the Sussex songs be sung, and the story of Sussex told. I will hold my house in the high wood, within a walk of the sea, and the men who were boys when I was a boy shall sit and drink with me. Richard Newland, the father of serious cricket, came from this parish.

Starting point is 02:26:36 He was born in 1718, or thereabouts, and in 1745 he made 88 for England against Kent. He was left-handed, and the finest bat ever seen in those days. He taught Richard Niren of Hambledon all the skill and judgment that that noble general possessed. Niren communicated his knowledge to the Hambledon 11, and the game was made. An interesting historical veracity compels me to add that William Belder, Silver Billy, talking to Mr. Pyecroft, discounted some of Niren's praise. Cricket, he said, was played in Sussex very early, before my day at least, he was born in 76.

Starting point is 02:27:20 But that there was no good play I know by this, that Richard Newland of Slindon in Sussex, as you say, sir, taught old Richard Niren, and that no Sussex man could be found to play Newland. Now, a second-rate man of our parish beat Newland either. so you may judge what the rest of Sussex then were. But this is disregarding the characteristic uncertainty of the game. If one would spend a day far from mankind on high ground, there is no better way than to walk from Arendel through Houghton Forest, where, as we have seen, Charles II avoided the governor,

Starting point is 02:28:01 to cocking. End of Chapter 7. Chapter 8 of Highways and Byways in Sussex This Librivox recording is in the public domain, recording by Peter Yearsley. Highways and Byways in Sussex by E.V. Lucas Chapter 8, Little Hampton Little Hampton is favoured in having both sea and river. It also has lawns between the houses and the beach, as at Dieppe,

Starting point is 02:28:34 and is as nearly a children's paradise as exists. The sea at low tide recedes almost beyond the reach of the ordinary paddler, which is, as it should be, except for those that would swim. A harbour, a pier, a lighthouse, a windmill. All these are within a few yards of each other. On the neighbouring beach, springing from the stones, you find the yellow-horned poppy, beautiful both in flower and leaf, and the delicate tamarisk makes a natural hedge parallel with the sea, to Worthing on the one side, and to Bogner on the other. The little villages in the flats behind the eastern tamarisk hedge, Rustington, Preston, Ferring, are, in summer, veritable sun-traps, with their white walls dazzling in radiance. Such trees as grow about here all bow to the north-east, bent to that posture by the prevailing

Starting point is 02:29:25 southwest winds. A Sussex man, on the hills or south of them, lost at night, has but to ascertain the outline of a tree, and he may get his bearings. If he cannot see so much as that, He has but to feel the bark for lichen, which grows on the northeast, or Lee, sighed. It was at Little Hampton in September 1817 that Coleridge met Cary, the translator of Dante. Cary was walking on the beach, reciting Homer to his son. Up came a noticeable man with large grey eyes. Sir, yours is a face I should know. I am Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The county paper for February the 26th. 7th, 1796, has this paragraph. On Monday last, a duel was fought betwixt Mr. R. N., and Lieutenant

Starting point is 02:30:17 B. Y, both of Little Hampton, in a field near that place, which, after the discharge of each, a pistol, terminated without bloodshed. The dispute, we understand, originated about a pew in the parish church. A local proverb says that, if you eat winkles in March, it is as good as a dose of medicine, which reminds me that Sussex has many wise sayings of its own. Here is a piece of Sussex Council in connection with the roaring month. If from fleas you would be free, on the first of March let all your windows closed be. I quote two other rhymes. If you would wish your bees to thrive, gold must be paid for every hive, for when they

Starting point is 02:31:03 they're bought with other money there will be neither swarm nor honey. The first butterfly you see, cut off his head across your knee, bury the head under a stone, and a lot of money will be your own. On which Sunday the devout Sussex man eats roast veal and gooseberry pudding. A Sussex child born on Sunday can neither be hanged nor drowned. West of Little Hampton is an architectural treasure in the shape of climping church, which no one should miss. The way is over the ferry and along the road to the first signboard, when one strikes northward towards Ford, and comes suddenly upon this squat and solid feign.

Starting point is 02:31:49 A Saxon church stood here, built by the prioress of Leominster, before the conquest. To Roger de Montgomery was the manor given by the conqueror, as part of the earldom of Arndel and Chichester, together with Atherington Manor, much of which is now like Celsius Park under the Channel. De Montcomery gave Climping Manor to the nuns of Almanesh, by whom the present Norman Fortress Tower, with walls four and a quarter feet thick, was added, and in 1253, John De Climping, the vicar, rebuilt the remainder. The church is thus six and a half centuries old, and parts of it are older. Boscham for antiquity, boxgrove for beauty, and climping for perfection, is the dictum of an antiquary quoted by the present vicar in a little pamphlet history

Starting point is 02:32:40 of his parish. As regards the Norman doorway, at any rate, he is right. There is nothing in Sussex to excel that, while in general architectural attraction the building is of the richest. It is also a curiously homely and ingratiating church. One of the new windows representing St. Paul has a peculiar interest, as the vicar tells us. St. Paul was a prisoner at Rome shortly after Caracticus, the British chief, whose daughter, Claudia, married Pudens, both friends of the Apostle. Note 2 Timothy, Chapter 4, verse 21. End note. Pudens afterwards commanded the Roman soldiers stationed at Regnum, Chichester.

Starting point is 02:33:23 And if St. Paul came to Britain at Claudia's request, as ancient writers testify, he certainly would visit Sussex. How close this brings us here in Sussex to the Bible story. At Bailey's court now a farmhouse, the Benedictine monks of Seas, also protégés of Robert de Montgomery, had their chapel, remains of which are still to be seen. Climping, which otherwise lives its own life, is the result of golfers, who, to the Vickers' regret, play all Sunday and turn Easter Day into a, heathen festival, and of the sportsmen of the Sussex Coursing Club, who find that the terrified Climping Hare gives satisfaction beyond most in the county. Of Ford north of Climping, there is nothing to say, except that popular rumour has it that its minute and uninteresting

Starting point is 02:34:17 church, the antithesis of Climping, was found one day by accident in a bed of nettles. A good eastern walk from Little Hampton takes one by the sea, to Goring, and then inland over high down hill, to Angmering, and so to Little Hampton again, or to Arndel, our present centre. Goring touches literature in two places. The great house was built by Sir Bish Shelley, grandfather of the poet, and in the village died in 1887 Richard Jefferies, author of The Story of My Heart, after a life of ill health spent in the service of nature.

Starting point is 02:34:56 Many beautiful and sympathetic descriptions of Sussex are scattered about in Geoffrey's books of essays, notably to Brighton, the South Down Shepherd, and the breeze on beechy head in Nature near London. Climatis Lane, nature near Brighton, sea sky and down, and January in the Sussex woods, in the life of the fields.

Starting point is 02:35:20 Sunny Brighton in the open air, and the countryside Sussex, and Buckhurst Park in Field and Hedgerow. Jefferies had a way of blending experiences and concealing the names of places, which makes it difficult to know exactly what part of Sussex he is describing, but I think I could lead anyone to Clomatis Lane. I might, by the way, have remarked of South Harding that the luxuriance of the Clomatis in its hedges is unsurpassed. John Taylor, the water poet, has a doggerel narrative entitled A New Discovery by Sea with a Werry from London to Salisbury, 1623, wherein he mentions a woeful knight with fleas at goring, and pens a couplet, worthy to take a place with

Starting point is 02:36:10 the famous description of a similar visitation in Aeothen, who in their fury nipped and skipped so hotly that all our skins were almost turned to. Motley. Taylor gives us in the same record a pleasant picture of the Sussex Constable in 1623. The night before a constable there came, who asked my trade, my dwelling, and my name, my business, and a troop of questions more, and wherefore did we land upon that shore? To whom I framed my answers, true and fit, according to his plenteous want of wit, but were my words all true, or if I lied, with neither could I get him satisfied. He asked if we were pirates.

Starting point is 02:36:55 We said no. As if we had, we would have told him so. He said that lords sometimes would enterprise to escape and leave the kingdom in disguise. But I assured him on my honest word that I was no disguised knight or lord. He told me then that I must go six miles to a justice there, Sir John, or else Sir Giles. I told him I was loath to go so far, and he told me he would my journey bar. Thus what with fleas, and with the several prates of the officer and his associates, We arose to go. But fortune bade us stay. The constable had stolen our oars away,

Starting point is 02:37:37 And borne them thence a quarter of a mile, Quite through a lane, beyond a gate and style, And hid them there to hinder my depart, For which I wished him hanged with all my heart. A ploughman for us found our oars again, within a field well filled with barley grain, then madly, gladly out to sea we thrust, against winds and storms and many a churlish gust, by Kingston, Chapel, and by Rushington, by Little Hampton, and by Middleton. High down above Goring is a good hill in itself, conical in shape, as a hill should be, according to the exacting ideas of childhood, with a sweeping view of the coast and the channel.

Starting point is 02:38:21 But its fame as a resort of holiday-makers comes less from its position and height than from the circumstance that John Oliver is buried upon it. John Oliver was the miller of high-down hill. When not grinding corn, he seems to have busied himself with thoughts upon the necessary end of all things, to such an extent that his meditations on the subject

Starting point is 02:38:43 gradually became a mania. His coffin was made while he was still a young man, and it remained under his bed until its time was ripe, fitted, to bring it to a point of preparedness unusual even with the Chinese, those masters of anticipatory obsequies, with wheels, which the miller, I doubt not, regularly oiled. John Oliver did not stop there. Having his coffin comfortably at hand, he proceeded to erect his tomb. This was built in 1766, with tenfold. tedious verses upon it from the miller's pen, while in an alcove near the tomb was a mechanical arrangement of death's heads, which might keep the miller's thoughts from straying, when, as with Dr. Johnson's philosopher, cheerfulness would creep in. The miller lived in the company of his coffin, his tomb, and his memento mori, until 1793, when, at the age of 84, his hopes were realized. Those who love death die old. Between two and three thousand persons attended the funeral.

Starting point is 02:39:49 No one was permitted to wear any but gay clothes, and the funeral sermon was read by a little girl of twelve from the text Micah Chapter 7 verses 8 and 9. The mill of John Oliver has vanished, nothing but a depression in the turf, now indicating where its foundations stood. Too many Sussex windmills have disappeared. Clayton still has her twain, landmarks for many miles. I have seen them on exceptionally clear days from the Kentish hills, and other windmills are scattered over the county, but many more than now exist have ceased to be, victims of the power of steam. There is probably no contrast, aesthetically more to the disadvantage of the modern substitute

Starting point is 02:40:35 than that of the steam mill of today with the windmill of yesterday. The steam mill is always ugly, always dusty, always noisy, using. in a town. The windmill stands high and white, a thing of life and radiance and delicate beauty, surrounded by grass, in communion with the heavens. Such noise as it has is elemental, justifiable, like a ship's cordage in a gale. No one would paint a steam mill. A picture with a windmill can hardly be a failure. Constable, who knew everything about the magic of windmills, painted several in Sussex, one even at Brighton. Brighton now has but one mill.

Starting point is 02:41:21 There used to be many, one in the West Hill Road, a comelier landmark than the stucco congregational tower that has taken its place close by, and serves as the town's sentinel from almost every point of approach. In 1797, a miller near Brighton anticipated American enterprise, by moving his mill bodily to a place two miles distant by the help of 80 oxen.

Starting point is 02:41:48 Another weakness of steam mills is that they are apparently without millers. At least there is no unmistakable dominating presence in a white hat, to whom one can confidently apply the definite article, as in the mill on the hill. Millers men there are in plenty, but the miller is lacking. This is because steam mills belong to companies. Thus, with the passing of the windmill, we lose also the mill. miller, that notable figure in English life and tradition. Always jolly, if the old songs are true, often eccentric, as the story of John Oliver has shown, and usually a character, as becomes one

Starting point is 02:42:29 who lives by the four winds, or by water, for the miller of tradition was often found in a watermill too. The water miller's empire has been threatened less than that of the windmill, for there is no sudden cessation of water power, as of wind power. Sussex still. Still has many water-mills, cool and splashing homes of peaceful bustle. Long may they endure. High Down Hill has other associations. In 1812 the Gentleman of the Weald met the Gentleman of the Sea Coast at cricket on its dividing summit.

Starting point is 02:43:04 The game which was for one hundred guineas was a very close thing, the Gentleman of the Weald winning by only seven runs. Among the Gentlemen of the Sea Coast was Mr. Osses. Baldwin, while the principal gentleman of the wheeled was Mr. E. H. Bud. A mile north of high down hill in a thickly wooded country are Patching and Clapham. Patching celebrated for its pond, which washes the high road to Arundle, and Clapham for its woods. Three hundred and more years ago, Patching Cops was the scene of a treasonable meeting between William Shelley, an ancestor of the poet, one branch of whose family long-held Mitchell Grove, where Henry VIII was entertained by our plotter's grandfather,

Starting point is 02:43:49 and Charles Padgett. Sturdy Roman Catholics both, who thus sought each other out on the night of September the 16th, 1583, to confer as to the possibility of invading England, deposing Elizabeth, and setting Mary Queen of Scots upon the throne. Nothing came of the plot, save the imprisonment of Shelley, who was condemned to death but escaped the sentence, and the flight of Padgett to hatch further treason abroad. The last Shelley to hold Mitchell Grove, now no more, was Sir John, who after it had been in the family for 350 years, sold it in 1800. This was the Sir John Shelley, who composed the following epitaph in Clapham Church, one of Gilbert Scott's restorations, to commemorate the very remarkable virtues of his lady,

Starting point is 02:44:39 untimely snatched from his side. Here lieeth the body of Willamina Shelly, who departed this life the 21st of March 1772, aged 23 years. She was a pattern for the world to follow, such a being, both in form and mind perhaps never existed before. A most dutiful, affectionate, and virtuous wife, a most tender and anxious parent, a most sincere and constant friend, a most amiable and elegant companion, universally benevolent, and benevolent, generous and humane, the pride of her own sex, the admiration of ours. She lived universally beloved and admired. She died, as generally revered and regretted, a loss felt by all who had the happiness of knowing her, by none to be compared to that

Starting point is 02:45:32 of her disconsolate, affectionate, loving, and in this world, everlastingly miserable husband. Sir John Shelley, who has caused this inscription to be engraved, Horsefield tells us that the beachwards in this parish, patching, and its immediate neighbourhood are very productive of the truffle, Lycopurden, Tuba. About forty years ago William Leach came from the West Indies, with some hogs accustomed to hunt for truffles, and proceeding along the coast from the land's end in Cornwall to the mouth of the River Thames, determined to fix on that spot where he found them most abundant. He took four years to try the experiment, and at length settled in this parish, where he carried on the business of Truffle Hunter till his death. Angmering, which we may take on our return to Arendall, is a typically dusty Sussex village,

Starting point is 02:46:26 with white houses and thatched roofs, and a rather finer church than most. On our way back to Arndel, in the middle of a wood a little more than a mile from Angmering to the west, we come upon an interesting relic of a day when tables bore nobler loads than, then now they do. A decoy pond formed originally to supply wild duck to the kitchen of Arndale Castle, but now no longer used. The long, tapering tunnels of wire netting into which the tame ducks of the decoy lured their wild cousins are still in place, although the wire has largely perished. At an old house near the decoy, now converted into cottages, which any native will gladly and amusedly point out, lived in the reign of Henry VIII, Lady Palmer,

Starting point is 02:47:14 the famous mother of the Palmer triplets, who were distinguished from other triplets, not only by being born each on a successive Sunday, but by receiving each the honour of knighthood. The curious circumstances of their birth seem to be well attested. End of Chapter 8 Chapter 9 of Highways and Byways in Sussex. This Libravox recording is in the public domain, recording by Peter Yearsley. Highways and Byways in Sussex by E. V. Lucas. Chapter 9, Amberley and Parham.

Starting point is 02:47:55 Five miles to the north of Arundel by road, over the Aron at Houghton's ancient bridge, restored by the bishops of Chichester in the 15th century, and a few minutes by rail, is Amberley, the fishing metropolis of Sussex, where, every Sunday in the season, London anglers meet to drop their lions in friendly rivalry. Amarly Trout, as Walton calls them, and Arndall Mullet, are the best of the Arons' treasures, and this reminds me of Fuller's tribute to Sussex Fish, which may well be quoted in this

Starting point is 02:48:29 watery neighbourhood. Now, as this county is eminent for both sea and river fish, namely an Arndall Mullet, a chichester lobster, a self-revellinger. Cossie Cockle and an Amelie Trout, so Sussex aboundeth with more carps than any other of this nation, and though not so great as Jovius reporteth to be found in the Lurian Lake in Italy, weighing more than fifty pounds, yet those generally of great and goodly proportion. I need not add that physicians account the galls of carps, as also a stone in their heads, to be medicinable. Only I would We'll observe that because Jews will not eat caviar made of the sturgeon, because, coming from a fish wanting scales and therefore forbidden in the Levitical law, therefore the Italians make

Starting point is 02:49:21 greater profit of the spawn of carps, whereof they make a red caviar, well-pleasing the Jews both in palate and conscience. All I will add of carps is this, that Ramos himself doth not so much redound in dichotomies as they do, seeing no one bone is to be found in their body which is not forked or divided into two parts at the end thereof. Amberley proper, as distinguished from Ambley of the anglers, is a mile from the station, and is built on a ridge. The castle is the extreme western end of this ridge, the north side of which descends precipitously to the marshy plain that extends as far as Pulborough. Standing on the castle, one sees Pulbara Church, due north, height calling unto height.

Starting point is 02:50:12 The castle is now a farm, indeed all ambley is a huge stockyard, smelling of straw and cattle. It is sheer Sussex, chalky soil, whitewashed cottages, huge wagons, and one of the best of Sussex painters, and in his exquisite modest way of all painters living, dwells in the heart of it. Edward Stott, who year after year shows London connoisseurs how the clear skin of the Sussex boy takes the evening light, and how the south-down sheep drink at hill-ponds beneath a violet sky, and that there is nothing more beautiful under the stars than a whitewashed cottage, just when the lamp is lit. Amberly has no right to lay claim to a castle, for the old ruins are not truly as they seem, the remains of a castellated stronghold, but of a crenellated mansion.

Starting point is 02:51:08 John Langton, Bishop of Chichester in the 14th century, was the first builder. Previously the church lands here had been held very jealously, and in twelve hundred we find Bishop Gilbert de Leofar twice excommunicating, and as often absolving, the Earl of Arendel for poaching, as he termed it, in Houghton Forest. the church lost ambley in the sixteenth century william reed who succeeded langton to both house and sea wishing to feel secure in his home craved permission to dig a motor round it and to render it both hostile and defensive hence its lion-like mean but it has known no warfare and the castle's mouldering walls now give what assistance they can in harbouring livestock twentyth century sheds lean against 14th century masonry. Thaggots are stored in the moat, lawn tennis is played in the courtyard, and black pigeons peep from the slits cut for aqua-boosiers. Ambley Castle only once intrudes itself in history. Charles II, during his flight in 1651, spent a night there under the protection of Sir John Briscoe, as we saw in Chapter 3. In winter, if you ask an Ambley man where he dwells,

Starting point is 02:52:31 he says, Ambley, God help us. In summer he says, Amberley, where would you live? From Ambley to Parham, one keeps upon a narrow ridge for a mile or so, branching off then to the left. Parham's advance guard is seen all the way,

Starting point is 02:52:50 a clump of fir trees, indicating that the soil there changes to sand. For two possessions is Parham noted, a heronery in the park, and in the house a copy of a copy of. Montaigne, with Shakespeare's autograph in it. The house, a spreading Tudor mansion, is the seat of Lord Zouche, a descendant of the traveller Robert Curzon, who wrote the Monasteries of the Levant, that long, leisurely and fascinating narrative of travel. In addition to Montaigne,

Starting point is 02:53:20 it enshrines a priceless collection of armour, of Incunabula, and Eastern manuscripts. Among the pictures are full lengths of Sir Philip Sidney and Lady Sidney, and that Penelope Darcy, one of Mr. Hardy's noble dames, who promised to marry three suitors in turn, and did so, we see her again at Furl Place. A hiding-hole for priests and other refugees is in the long gallery, access to it being gained through a window-seat. There was hidden Charles Padgett after the Babington conspiracy. Parham Park has deer and a lake and an enchanted forest of sombre trees.

Starting point is 02:54:04 On the highest ground in this forest is the clump of furs, in which the famous herons build. The most interesting time to visit the heronery is in the breeding season, for then one sees the lank birds continually homing from the amberly wild brooks, with fishes in their bills and long legs streaming behind. The noise is tremendous, beyond all rookeries. Mr. Knox's ornithological rambles, from which I have already quoted freely, has this passage. The herons at Fparham assemble early in February, and then set about repairing their nests, but the trees are never entirely deserted during the winter months.

Starting point is 02:54:43 A few birds, probably some of the more backward of the preceding season, roosting among their boughs every night. They commence laying early in March, and the greater part of the young birds are hatched during the early days of April. About the end of May they may be seen to flap out of their nests to the adjacent boughs, and bask for hours in the warm sunshine, but although now comparatively quiet during the day, they become clamorous for food as the evening approaches, and indeed for a long time appear to be more difficult to wean and less able to shift for themselves than most birds of a similar age.

Starting point is 02:55:20 They may be observed as late as August, still on the trees, screaming for food and occasionally fed by their parents who forage for them assiduously. Indeed, these exertions so far from being relaxed after the setting of the sun, appear to be redoubled during the night, for I have frequently disturbed herons when riding by moonlight, among the low grounds near the river, where I have seldom seen them during the day, and several cottages in the neighbourhood of Parham have assured me

Starting point is 02:55:48 that their shrill cry may be heard at all hours of the night during the summer season, as they fly to and fro overhead on their passage between the Heronry and the open country. The history or genealogy of the progenitors of this colony is remarkable. They were originally brought from Coyte Castle in Wales, by Lord Leicester's steward in James I's time to Penhurst in Kent, the seat of Lord Delisle, where their descendants continued for more than 200 years. From thence they migrated to Mitchell Grove, about seventy miles from Penshurst and eight from Parham.

Starting point is 02:56:23 Here they remained for nearly twenty years, until the proprietor of the estate disposed of it to the late Duke of Norfolk, who having purchased it not as a residence, but with the view of increasing the local property in the neighbourhood of Arendall, pulled down the house and felled one or two trees on which the herons had constructed their nests. The migration commenced immediately, but appears to have been gradual, for three seasons elapsed before all the members of the heronry had found their way over the downs to their new quarters in the fir woods of Parham. This occurred about 17 years ago, written about 1848.

Starting point is 02:57:02 Sussex, says Mr. Borah, author of The Birds of Sussex, has two other large heronries, at Windmill Hill Place near Halesham, and Bred, near Winchell Sea, and some smaller ones, one being at Mollcombeam, above. Goodwood. Betsy's oak in Parham Park is said to be so called because Queen Elizabeth sat beneath it, but another and more probable legend calls it Bates's oak, after Bates, an archer at Agincourt in the retinue of the Earl of Arundel, and in Henry V. Good Queen Bess, however, dined in the Hall of Parham House in 1592. At Northeam in East Sussex we shall come, not to be utterly balked, to a tree under which she truly did sit, and dine, too. Beyond Parham, less than two miles to the east, is Starrington, a quiet Sussex village far from

Starting point is 02:58:01 the rail and the noise of the world, with the downs within hail, and fine, sparsely inhabited country between them and it to wander in. The church is largely modern. I find the following sententious paragraph in the county paper for 1792. This is an age of sights and polite entertainment in the country, as well as in the city. The little town of Starrington has lately been visited by a company of comedians, a multi-bank doctor, and a puppet show. One day the doctor's jack-pudding, finding the shillings coming in but slowly, exclaimed to his master, "'Gad sir, it is not worth our while to stay here any longer. Players have got all the gold, we all the silver, and punch all the copper.

Starting point is 02:58:50 So, like sagacious locusts, let us migrate from the place we help to impoverish. This reminds me that I saw recently at Petworth, whither we are now moving, a travelling circus, whose programme included a comic interlude that cannot have received the slightest modification since it was first planned perhaps hundreds of years ago. It was sheer, essential, elemental horseplay, straight from Bartholomew Fair, and the audience received it with rapture that was vouchsafed to nothing else. The story would be too long to tell, but briefly it was a dumb show representation of the visit of a guest, the clown, to a wife, unknown to her husband. The scenery consisted of a table, a large chest, a heap of straw, and a huge barrel. The fun consisted in the clown, armed with a bladder on a string, hiding in the barrel,

Starting point is 02:59:46 from which he would spring up and deliver a sounding drub on the head of whatever other character, husband or policeman, might be passing, to their complete perplexity. They were, of course, incapable of learning anything from experience. At other times he hid himself or others in the straw, in the chest, or under the table. When, in a country district such as this, one hears, the laughter that greets so venerable a piece of pantomime. One is surprised that circus owners think it worthwhile to secure novelties at all. The primitive taste of West Sussex, at any rate, cannot require them. End of Chapter 9. Chapter 10 of Highways and Byways in Sussex.

Starting point is 03:00:37 This Librevox recording is in the public domain, recording by Peter Yearsley. Highways and Byways in Sussex By E. V. Lucas Chapter 10, Petworth Petworth Petworth is not on the direct road to Horsham which is our next centre, but it is easily gained from Arendel by rail,

Starting point is 03:00:57 changing at Pulborough, or by road through Berry, Fittleworth and Eggdeen. Pulbara is now nothing. Once it was a Gibraltar, guarding Stain Street for Rome. The fort was on a mound west of the railway, corresponding with the church mound on the east. Here probably was a catapultor,

Starting point is 03:01:16 and certainly a vigilant garrison. Pulbara has no invader now but the floods, which every winter transform the green waste at her feet into a silver sea, of which Pulbara is the northern shore and amberly the southern. The Dutch, polder, are not flatter or greener than are these intervening meadows.

Starting point is 03:01:37 The village stands high and dry above the water level, extended in long line, quite like a seaside town. Excursionists come, too, as to a watering-place, but they bring rods and creels, and return at night with fish for the pan. Between Pulbara and Petworth lie Stopham and Fittler, both on the Rother, which joins the Aron a little to the west of Pulborough. Stopham has the most beautiful bridge in Sussex, dating from the 14th century, and a little church filled with memorials of the Bartolot family. One of Stopham's rectors was Thomas Newcomb, a descendant of the author of the Fairy Queen, the friend of the author of Knight Thoughts, and the author himself of a formidable

Starting point is 03:02:23 poem in twelve books, after Milton, called the Last Judgment. Fittlerth has of late become an artist's mecca, partly because of its pretty woods and quaint architecture, and partly because of the warm welcome that is offered by the swan, which, which is a lot of the swan, which is probably the most ingeniously placed in in the world. Approaching it from the north, it seems to be the end of all things. The miles of road that one has travelled apparently have been leading nowhere but to the Swan. Runaway horses or unsettled chauffeurs must project their passengers literally into the open door. Coming from the south one finds that the road narrows by this inn almost to a lane, and the swans hospital

Starting point is 03:03:09 hospitable sign, barring the way, exerts such a spell that to enter it is a far simpler matter than to pass. The Swan is a venerable and rambling building, stretching itself lazily with outspread arms. One of those inns long may they be preserved from the rebuilders, in which one stumbles up or down into every room, and where eggs and bacon have an appropriateness that make them a more more desirable food than Ambrosia. The little parlour is wainscoted with the votive paintings, a village diploma gallery, of artists who have made the swan their home.

Starting point is 03:03:53 Fittlworth has a dual existence. In the south it is riparian and low, much given to anglers and visitors. In the north it is high and sandy, with clumps of furs, living its own life and spreading gorse-covered commons at the feet of the walker. Between its southern border and Bignor Park is a superb common of sand and heather, an inland paradise for children. Petworth Station and Petworth Town are far from being the same thing, and there are few more fatiguing miles than that which separates them. A bus, it is true, plies between, but it is one of those long, close prisons with window those that annihilate thought by their shattering unfixedness.

Starting point is 03:04:43 Petworth's spire is before one all the way, Petworth itself clustering on the side of the hill, a little town with several streets, rather than a great village all on one artery. I say several streets, but, but this is dead in the face of tradition, which has a joke to the effect that a long timber wagon once entered Petworth's single circular street

Starting point is 03:05:05 and has never yet succeeded in emerging. I certainly met it. The town seems to be beneath the shadow of its lord even more than Arendel. It is like Pompeii, with Vesuvius emitting glory far above. One must, of course, live under the same conditions, if one is to feel the authentic thrill. The mere sojourner cannot know it. One wonders in these feudal towns what it would be like to leave democratic London, or the independence of one's country fastness, and pass for a while beneath the spell of

Starting point is 03:05:41 a Duke of Norfolk, or a Baron Lekonfield. A spell possibly not consciously cast by them at all, but existing nonetheless, largely through the fostering care of the townspeople on the rent-roll, largely through the officers controlling the estates, at any rate unmistakable, as present in the very air of the streets, as is the presage of a thunder. understorm. Surely to be so dominated without actual influence must be very restful. Petworth must be the very home of low-pulsed peace, and yet a little oppressive, too, with the great house and its traditions at the top of the town, like a weight on the forehead. I should not like to make Petworth my home, but as a place of pilgrimage and a stronghold of architectural taste, it is almost unique. In the Doomsday Book, Petworth is called Petiord. It was rated at 1,080 acres, and possessed a church, a mill worth a sovereign, a river containing 1,620 eels, and pannage for 80 hogs.

Starting point is 03:06:53 In the time of the confessor, the manor was worth 18 pounds. A few years later, the price went down to 10 shillings. Robert de Montgomery held Petworth till 1102, when he did, He defied the king and lost it. Adelaiza, widow of Henry I, having a brother Jocelyn de Louvain, whom she wished to benefit, Petworth was given to him. Jocelyn married Agnes, daughter of William de Percy, the descendant of one of the conqueror's chief friends, and doing so took his name. In course of time came Harry Hotspur, whose sword which he swung at the Battle of Shrewsbury,

Starting point is 03:07:31 is kept at Petworth House. The second Earl was his son, also Henry, who fought at Chevy Chase. He was not, however, slain there, as the balladmonger says, but at St. Albans. Henry, the third Earl, fell at Tauton. Henry the fourth Earl, was assassinated at Cork Lodge, Thirsk. Henry, the fifth Earl, led a regiment at the Battle of the Spurs. Henry, the sixth Earl, fell in love with Anne Boleyn, but had the good sense not to let Henry the eighth see it,

Starting point is 03:08:03 Thomas, his brother, was beheaded for treason. Thomas, the seventh Earl, took arms against Queen Elizabeth, and was beheaded in Scotland. Henry, the 8th Earl, attempted to liberate Mary Queen of Scots, and was imprisoned in the tower, where he slew himself. Henry, the 9th Earl, was accused of assisting Guy Fawkes, and locked up for 15 years. He was set at liberty only after paying £30,000, and promising never to go more than thirty miles from Petworth House. This kept him out of London. The last two noble earls of Northumberland were Algernon, Lord High Admiral of England, who married Lady Anna Cecil, and planted an oak in the

Starting point is 03:08:48 park, it is still there, to commemorate the Union, and Jocelyn, 11th Earl, who died in 1670, leaving no son. He left, however, a daughter, a little Elizabeth, Baroness Percy, who had countless suitors and was married three times before she was sixteen. Her third husband was Charles Seymour, sixth Duke of Somerset, who became in time the father of thirteen children. Of these all died save three girls, and a boy, Algernon, who became seventh Duke of Somerset. Through one of the daughters Catherine, who married Sir William Wyndham, the estates fell to the present family. The next important Lord of Petworth was George O'Brien Wyndham, Third Earl of Egremont, the friend of art and agriculture, who collected most of the pictures.

Starting point is 03:09:40 The present owner is the third Baron Leconfield. C. R. Leslie, who painted more than one picture in the Petworth Gallery, has much to say in his autobiographical recollections of its noble founder, the third Earl. His generosity, courtesy, kindly thoughtfulness and extreme modesty of bearing. One story contains half his biography. I give it in Leslie's words. After referring to his lordship's men's servants and their importance in the house, the painter continues, His own dress in the morning, being very plain,

Starting point is 03:10:19 he was sometimes by strangers mistaken for one of them. This happened with a maid of one of his lady guests, who had not been at Petworth before. She met him crossing the hall, as the bell was ringing for the servant's dinner, and said, Come, old gentleman, you and I will go to dinner together, for I can't find my way in this great house.

Starting point is 03:10:38 He gave her his arm, and led her to the room where the other maids were assembled at their table, and said, You dine here, I don't dine till seven o'clock. On certain days in the week, visitors are allowed to walk through the galleries of Petworth House. the parties are shown by a venerable servitor into the audit room a long bare apartment furnished with a statue and the heads of stags and at the stroke of the hour a commissionaire appears at the far door and leads the way to the office where a visitor's book is signed

Starting point is 03:11:12 then the real work of the day begins and for fifty-five minutes one passes from dutch painters to italian from english to french amid boers by tenier beauty-year beauty-year and for fifty-five minutes one passes from dutch painters to italian from english to french amid boers by tennier beauty-beauts by tennier beauty-beauts by beauties by Lely, landscapes by Turner, carvings by grinning gibbons. The commissioner knows them all. The collection is a fine one, but the lighting is bad, and the conditions under which it is seen are not favourable to the intimate appreciation of good art.

Starting point is 03:11:44 One finds one's attention wandering too often from the soldier with his little index ratan to the deer on the vast lawn that extends from the windows to the lake. the lake that Turner painted and fished in. Hobimus, Van Dykes, Murilloes, what are these when the sun shines, and the ceaseless mutations of a herd of deer

Starting point is 03:12:07 render the middle distance fascinating? Among the more famous pictures is a Peg Woffington by Hogarth, not here dallying and dangerous, but demure as a nun, also the modern midnight conversation from the same hand. three or four bewitching Romneys, a room full of beauties of the court of Queen Anne, Henry VIII by Holbein, a wonderful Claude Lorraine, a head of Servantes attributed to Velazquith,

Starting point is 03:12:37 and four views of the Thames by Turner. Hazlitt, in his sketches of the picture galleries of England, says of this collection, we wish our readers to go to Petworth, where they will find the coolest grottos and the finest van dykes in the world. Lord Lecomfield's Park has not the remarkable natural formation of the Duke of Norfolk's, nor the superb situation of the Duke of Richmond and Gordons, with its channel prospects, but it is immense and imposing. Also, it is unreal. It is like a park in a picture.

Starting point is 03:13:14 This effect may be largely due to the circumstance that Fates in Petworth Park have been more than once painted, but it is due also, I think, to the shape and colour of the house, to the lake, to the extent of the lawn, to the disposition of the knolls and to the deer. A scene painter, bidden to depict an English park, would produce, though he had never been out of the strand, something very like Petworth. It is the normal park of the average imagination on a large scale.

Starting point is 03:13:50 Cobbitt wrote thus of Petworth. The park is very fine, and consists of a parcel of those hills and dells which nature formed here when she was in one of her most sportive moods. I have never seen the earth flung about in such a wild way as roundabout hind-head and blackdown, and this park forms a part of this ground. From an elevated part of it, and indeed from each of many parts of it, you see all around the country to the distance of many miles. From the southeast to the northwest the hills are so lofty and so near that they cut the view rather short, but for the rest of the circle you can see to a

Starting point is 03:14:31 very great distance. It is upon the whole a most magnificent seat, and the Jews will not be able to get it from the present owner, though if he live many years they will give even him a twist. On an eminence in the west is a tower, near a clump where ravens build. from which the other parks of this wonderful park district of Sussex may be seen. Cowdery to the west, the highest points of Goodwood to the southwest, the highest points of Arendel to the southeast, and Parham's dark forest, more easterly still. Mr. Knox's account of the vicissitudes of the Petworth Ravens sixty years ago is as interesting as any history of equal length on the misfortunes of man.

Starting point is 03:15:17 Their sufferings at the hands of keepers and schoolboys read like a page of fox. The final disaster was the spoilation of their nest by a boy who removed all four of the children, or squabs, as he called them. Mr. Knox, who used to come every day to examine them through his glass, was in despair, until, after much meditation, he thought of an expedient. Seeking out the boy, he persuaded him to give up the one squab whose wings had not yet been clipped, and this the ornithologist carried to the clump and deposited in the ruined nest. The next morning the old birds were to be seen, just as of old, and that was their last

Starting point is 03:15:57 molestation. Just under the park, on the road to Midhurst, is Tillington, a little village with a rather ornamental church, which dates from 1807. There is nothing to say of Tillington, but I should like to quote a pretty sentence from Horsefield's history of Sussex, concerning the monuments in the church, in a kind of writing of which we have little today. And as the volume for which this has been written is likely to fall chiefly into the hands of men who are occupied almost solely with the cares and business of this life, this slight reference is made to the monuments of the dead, in order that, should the reader of

Starting point is 03:16:39 this book, find, in the present dearth of honesty, of faithfulness, of disinterested valour and of loyalty, an aching want in his spirit for such high qualities, let him hence be taught where to go. Let him learn that, though they are rarely found in the busy haunts of men, they are still preserved, and have their home around the sanctuary of the altar of his God. Petworth should be visited by all young architects, not for the mansion, except as an object lesson, for it is like a London terrace, but for the ordinary buildings in the town. It is a paradise of old-fashioned architecture. The church is hideous.

Starting point is 03:17:26 The new hotel, the swan, might be at Ballam, but the old part of the town is perfect. There is an arms-house, which Mr. Griggs has drawn, in which, in its palmy days, a lady bountiful might have lived. Even the workhouse has charms. It is the only pretty workhouse I remember, with the exception, perhaps, of battle. But that is, however, self-conscious. Petworth has known, at any rate, one poet. In the churchyard was once this epitaph, now perhaps obliterated. from a husband's hand. She was. She was.

Starting point is 03:18:09 She was! What? She was all that a woman should be. She was that. In a book which takes account of Sussex men and women of the past, it is hard to keep long from cricket. To the north of Petworth, whither we now turn, is North Chapel,

Starting point is 03:18:29 where was born and died one of the great men of the Hambledon Club, Noah Mann, who once made ten runs from one hit, and whose son was named Horace after the cricketing baronet of the same name, by special permission. Sir Horace, by this simple act of graceful humanity, hooked for life the heart of poor Noah Man, says Niren, and in this world of hatred and contention the love even of a dog is worth living for. This is Nairon's account of Noah Mann. He was from Sussex, and lived at North Chapel, not far from Petworth. He kept an inn there, and used to come a distance of at least twenty miles every Tuesday to practice. He was a fellow of extraordinary activity, and could perform clever feats of agility on horseback. For instance,

Starting point is 03:19:19 when he has been seen in the distance coming up the ground, one or more of his companions would throw down handkerchiefs, and these he would collect, stooping from his horse while it was going at full speed. He was a fine batter, a fine field, and the swiftest runner I ever remember. Indeed, such was his fame for speed, that whenever there was a match going forward, we were sure to hear of one being made for man to run against some noted competitor, and such would come from the whole country round. Upon these occasions he used to tell his friends, if, when we are halfway, you see me alongside of my man, you may always bet your money upon me, for I am sure to win.

Starting point is 03:19:58 and I never saw him beaten. He was a most valuable fellow in the field, for besides being very sure of the ball, his activity was so extraordinary that he would dart all over the ground like lightning. In those days of fast bowling, they would put a man behind the long stop that he might cover both long stop and slip.

Starting point is 03:20:16 The man always selected for this post was Noah. Now and then little George Lear, whom I have already described as being so fine a long stop, would give Noah the wink to be on his guard, who would gather close behind him. Then George would make a slip on purpose, and let the ball go by, when in an instant Noah would have it up,

Starting point is 03:20:36 and into the wicket-keeper's hands, and the man was put out. This I have seen done many times, and this nothing but the most accomplished skill in fielding could have achieved. At a match of the Hamilton Club against All England, the club had to go in to get the runs, and there was a long number of them.

Starting point is 03:20:54 It became quite apparent that the game would be closely fought, Man kept on worrying old Nairn to let him go in, and although he became quite indignant at his constant refusal, our general knew what he was about in keeping him back. At length, when the last but one was out, he sent man in, and there were then ten runs to get. The sensation now all over the ground was greater than anything of the kind I ever witnessed before or since. All knew the state of the game, and many thousands were hanging upon this narrow point. There was Sir Horace man walking about outside the ground cutting down the daisies with his stick

Starting point is 03:21:32 A habit with him when he was agitated The old farmers Leaning forward upon their tall old staves And the whole multitude perfectly still After Noah had had one or two balls Lumpy tossed one a little too far When our fellow got in and hit it out in his grand style Six of the ten were gained

Starting point is 03:21:51 Never shall I forget to the roar that followed this hit Then there was a dead stand for some time time, and no runs were made. Ultimately, however, he gained them all, and won the game. After he was out, he upbraided Nairn for not putting him in earlier. If you would let me go in an hour ago, said he, I would have served them in the same way. But the old tactician was right, for he knew Noah to be a man of such nerve and self-possession that the thought of so much depending upon him would not have had the paralyzing effect that it would upon many others. He was sure of him, and Noah afterwards felt the compliment.

Starting point is 03:22:28 Man was short in stature, and when stripped, as swarthy as a gypsy, he was all muscle, with no encumbrance whatever of flesh, remarkably broad in the chest with large hips and spider legs. He had not an ounce of flesh about him, but it was where it ought to be. He always played without his hat. The son could not affect his complexion, and he took a liking to me as a boy, because I did the same. Lurgus Hall on the roads to North Chapel is a pleasant village with a green and a church unique among Sussex churches by virtue of a curious wooden gallery or cloister said to have been built as a shelter for parishioners from a distance who would eat their nunchen there.

Starting point is 03:23:13 The church which has distinct Saxon remains once had for rector the satirical James Brampton author of The Art of Politics and the man of taste, two admirable poems in the manner of Pope. This is his unimpeachable advice to public speakers. Those who would captivate the well-bred throng should not too often speak, nor speak too long. Church, nor church matters ever turn to sport, nor make St. Stephen's Chapel, Dovercourt. End of Chapter 10. Chapter 11 of Highways and Byways in Sussex This Librevox recording is in the public domain

Starting point is 03:24:03 Recording by Peter Yearsley Highways and Byways in Sussex by E. V. Lucas Chapter 11, Bignor Two miles due south from Petworth is Burton Park, a modest sandy pleasance, with some beautiful deer, an ugly house, and a church for the waistcoat pocket, which some American relic hunter will assuredly carry

Starting point is 03:24:26 off, unless it is properly chained. Mr. Knox has an interesting anecdote of a sparrowhawk at Burton. In May 1844, he writes, I received from Burton Park an adult male sparrowhawk in full breeding plumage, which had killed itself, or rather, met its death, in a singular manner. The gardener was watering plants in the greenhouse, the door being open, when a blackbird dashed in suddenly, taking refuge between his legs, and at the same moment the glass roof above his head was broken with a loud crash, and a hawk fell dead at his feet. The force of the swoop was so great that for a moment he imagined a stone hurled from a distance to have been the cause of the fracture. At Stuncton, the neighbouring village under the hill, James Broadbridge was born in 1796. James Broadbridge,

Starting point is 03:25:21 who was considered the best all-round cricketer in England in his day, He had a curious hit to square leg between the wicket and himself, and he was the first of whom it was said that he could do anything with the ball except make it speak. In order to get practice with worthy players, he would walk from Duncton to Brighton, just as Lambert would walk from Ryegates to London, or Noa Man ride to Hambledon from Petworth. Jim Broadbridge's first great match was in 1815, for Sussex against the Epsom Club, including Lambert and Lordearn. Frederick Bo Clark for a thousand guineas. Broadbridge, after his wont, walked from Dunkton

Starting point is 03:26:01 to Brighton in the morning, and he looked so much like a farmer, and so little like a cricketer, that there was some opposition to his playing. But he bowled out three and caught one, and Sussex won the money. Above Dunkton rises Dunkton down, which is 837 feet high, one of our mountains. But we are not to climb it just now, having the business in the wheeled some four miles away to the east, past Bar-Lavington and Sutton at Bignor. Admirers of yew trees should make a point of visiting Bignor Churchyard. The village has also what is probably the quaintest grocer's shop in England, certainly the completest contrast that imagination could devise to the modern grocer's shop of the town, plate-glast, illumined,

Starting point is 03:26:50 and stored to repletion. It is close to the ewe-shadowed-shadowed-chewed. It is close to the ewe-shadowed church, and is gained by a flight of steps. I should not have noticed it as a shop at all, but, rather as a very curious survival of a kindly and attractive form of architecture, had not a boy, when asked the way to the Roman pavement, which is bignor's glory, mentioned the grocer's as one of the landmarks. One's connotation of grocer, excluding diamond panes, oak timbers, difficult steps, and reverend antiquity, I was like to be. to lose the way in earnest, had not a customer emerged opportunely from the crazy doorway with a basket of goods. It was natural for the boy, whose pennies had gone in oranges and sweets,

Starting point is 03:27:37 to lay the emphasis on the grocery, but the house externally is the only one of its kind within miles. In some respects there is no more interesting spot in Sussex than the Mangold Field on Mr Tupper's farm that contains the Roman pavements. Approaching this scene of alien treasure, one observes nothing but the mangolds, here and there a rough shed as if for cattle, and Mr. Tapper, the grandson of the discoverer of the Mosaics, at work with his hoe. This he lays on one side on the arrival of a visitor, taking in his hand instead a large key. So far we are in Sussex, pure and simple. Mangolds all round, cattle sheds in front, a Sussex farmer for a companion, the sky of Sussex.

Starting point is 03:28:25 Essex over all, and the 20th century in her non-edge. Mr. Tupper turns the key, throws open the creaking door, and nearly two thousand years roll away. We are no longer in Sussex, but in the province of the Regne, no longer at Bignor, but Addecimum, or ten miles from Regnum, or Chichester, on Stain Street, the direct road to Londinum, in the residence of a Roman colonial governor of immense wealth, probably supreme in command of the province. The fragments of pavement that have been preserved are mere indications of the splendour and extent

Starting point is 03:29:05 of the building, which must have covered some acres, a welcome and imposing sight as one descended Bignor Hill by Stain Street, with its white walls and columns rising from the dark wheeled. The pavement in the first shed which Mr. Tupper unlocks has the figure of Ganymede in one of its circular compartments, and here the hot air pipes by which the villa was heated may be seen where the floor has given way. A head of winter in another of the sheds is very fine, but it is rather for what these relics stand for than any intrinsic beauty that they are interesting. They are perfect symbols of a power that has passed away. Nothing else so

Starting point is 03:29:46 brings back the Roman occupation of Sussex when on still nights. The clanking of our armour in the camp on the hilltop could be heard by the trembling Britain in the wheeled beneath, or by day the ordered sounds of marching would smite upon his ears, and, looking fearfully upwards, he would see a steady file of warriors descending the slope. I never see a Sussex hill crowned by a camp, as at Wollstonebury, without seeing also in imagination a flash of steel. Perhaps one never realises the new terror which the Romans must have brought into the life of the Sussex peasant, a terror which utterly changed the downs from ramparts of peace into

Starting point is 03:30:29 coins of military advantage, and transformed the gaze of security with which their grassy contours had once been contemplated into anxious glances of dismay and trepidation. One never so realises this terror as when one descends ditchling beacon by the the sunken path which the Romans dug to allow a string of soldiers to drop unperceived into the wheeled below. That semi-subterranean passage and the Bignor pavements are to me the most vivid tokens of the Roman rule that England possesses. Charlotte Smith, the sonneteer and novelist, was the daughter of Nicholas Turner of Bignor

Starting point is 03:31:12 Park, which contains, I think, the plainest house I ever saw in the country. Sout Smith, who was all her life very true to Sussex, both in her work and in her homes, she was at school at Chichester, and lived at Woolbeeding and Brighton, was born in 1749. A century ago her name was as well known as that of Mrs. Heman's was later. Today it is unknown, and her poems and novels are unread, nor will they, I fear, be rediscovered. Her sister, Catherine Turner, afterwards Mrs. Dorset, was the author of The Peacock at Home, a very popular book for children at the beginning of the last century, suggested by Roscoe's Butterfly's Ball. Mrs. Dorset, by the way, married a son of the vicar of Walburton and

Starting point is 03:32:00 Burlington, whose curious headdress gave to an odd-looking tree on Berry Hill the name of Parson Dorset's wig, for the parson was known by his eccentricities far from home. The old story of advice to a flock. Do as I say, not as I do, is told also of him. The little village of West Burton, east of Bignor, is associated in my mind with an expression of the truest humility. A kindly villager had given me a glass of water, and I unfolded my map and spread it on her garden wall to consult while I drank. Why, she said, you don't mean to say a little place like West Burton is marked on a map. This is the very antipodes of the ordinary provincial pride,

Starting point is 03:32:48 which would have the world's axis project from the ground hard by the village pump, but pride of place is not, I think, a Sussex characteristic. Berry, the next hamlet in the east, under the hills, has curious cricket traditions. In June 1796, the married women of Berry beat the single women by 80 runs, and thereupon, uniting forces, challenged any team of women in the county. Not only did the women of Bury shine at cricket, but in a Sussex paper for 1791, I find an account of two of Bury's daughters, assuming the names of Big Ben and Mendoza, and engaging in a hardly contested prize fight before a large gathering.

Starting point is 03:33:36 Big Ben won. End of Chapter 11. Chapter 12 of Highways and Byways in Sussex. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Peter Yearsley. Highways and Byways in Sussex by E. V. Lucas. Chapter 12, Horsham. Horsham is the capital of West Sussex, a busy agricultural town,

Starting point is 03:34:07 with horse dealers in its streets, a core of old houses, and too many that are new. There is in England no more peaceful and prosperous row of venerable homes than the Causeway, joining Carfax and the Church, with its pollarded limes and chestnuts in line on the pavement's edge, its graceful gables, jutting eaves and glimpses of green gardens through the doors and windows. The sweetest part of Horsham is there. Elsewhere the town bustles. I should, however, mention the very picturesque house, our cottages, on the left of the road as one leaves the station, as fine a mass of timbers,

Starting point is 03:34:49 gables and oblique lines as one could wish, making an effect such as time alone can give. The days of such relics are numbered. Horsham not only has beautiful old houses of its own, but it has been the cause of beautiful old houses all over the county, since nothing so adds to the charm of a building as a roof of Horsham Stone, those large grey flat slabs on which the weather works like a great artist in harmonies of moss, lichen and stain. No roofing so combines dignity and homelessness, and no roofing except possibly Thatch, which, however, is short-lived, so surely passes into the landscape. But Horsham Stone is no longer used. It is to be obtained for a new house only by the

Starting point is 03:35:40 demolition of an old, and few houses have rafters sufficiently stable to bear so great a weight. Our ancestors built for posterity. We build for ourselves. Our ancestors used Sussex Oak, where we use fur. Not only is Horsham Stone on the roofs of the neighbourhood, it is also on the paths, so that one may step from flag to flag for miles dry shod, or at least without mud. Horsham's place in history is unimportant, but indirectly it played its part in the 14th century by supplying the war office of that era with bolts for crossbows, excellent for slaying Scots and Frenchmen. The town was famous also for its horseshoes. In the days of Cromwell we find Horsham to have been principally royalist. One engagement with parliamentarians is recorded in which it

Starting point is 03:36:33 lost three warriors to Cromwell's One. In the reign of William III, a young man claiming to be the Duke of Monmouth, and travelling with a little court who addressed him as Your Grace, turned the heads of the women in many an English town, his good looks convincing them at once, as the chronicler says, that he was the true prince. Justice's sitting at Horsham, however, having less susceptibility to the testimony of handsome features, found him to be the son of an innkeeper named Savage, and imprisoned him as a vagrant and swindler. Horsham was the last place in which pressing to death was practised. The year was 1735, and the victim, a man unknown, who, on being charged with murder and robbery, refused to speak, witnesses having been called to prove him no mute,

Starting point is 03:37:27 This old and horrible sentence, proper, as the law considered, to his offence and obstinacy, was passed upon him. The executioner, the story goes, while conveying the body in a wheelbarrow to burial, turned it out in the roadway at the place where the king's head now stands, and then putting it in again, passed on. Not long afterwards, he fell dead at this spot. The Church of St. Mary, which rises majestically at the end of the causeway, has a slender, shingled spire that reaches a great height. Not altogether, however, without indecision. There is probably an altitude beyond which shingles are a mistake.

Starting point is 03:38:11 They are better suited to the more modest spire of the small village. The church is remarkable also for length of roof, well covered with Horsham Stone, and it is is altogether a singularly commanding structure. Within is an imposing plainness. The stone effigy of a knight in armour reclines just to the south of the altar, son of a branch of the Brayes family, of Chesworth hard by, now in ruins, of whose parent stock we shall hear more when we reach Bramber. The knight, Thomas, Lord Braes, died in 1395. The youth of Horsham, hostile, while invincibly like all boys to the stone nose, have reduced that feature to the level of the face? Or was it the work of the Puritans, who are known to have shared in the nasal

Starting point is 03:39:01 objection? South of the churchyard is the river, from the banks of which the church would seem to be all Horsham, so effectually as the town behind it blotted out by its broad back. On the The edge of the churchyard is perhaps the smallest house in Sussex, certainly the smallest to combine Gothic windows with the sale of ginger beer. Horsham seems always to have been fond of pleasure. Within iron railings in the Carfax, in a trim little enclosure of turf and geraniums, is the ancient iron ring used in the bull-baiting, which the inhabitants indulged in and loved until as recently as 1814.

Starting point is 03:39:43 At the town is still disposed to entertainment, although of a quieter kind, its walls testify, for the hoardings are covered with the promise of circus or conjurer, minstrels or athletic sports, drama or lecture. In July, when I was there last, Horsham was anticipating a fate in which a mock bullfight and a battle of confetti were mere details, while it was actually in the throes of a fair. The booths filled an open space to the west of the town, known as the Jew's Meadow, and among the attractions was Professor Adams, with his School of Undefeated Champions. The plural is in the grand manner, giving the lie to Cashel Byron's pathetic plaint.

Starting point is 03:40:28 It is a lonely thing to be a champion. Avoiding Professor Adams and walking due west, one comes after a couple of miles to Broadbridge Heath, Where is Field Place, the birthplace of the greatest of Sussex poets, and perhaps the greatest of the county's sons, Percy Bish Shelley? The author of Adonais was born in a little bedroom with a South aspect on August 4, 1792. His father's mother, nay Mitchell, was the daughter of a late vicar of Horsham and member of an old Sussex family. Another Horsham cleric, the Reverend Thomas Edwards, gave the boy his first lessons. Field Place is still very much what it was in Shelley's early days, the only days it was a home to him. It stands low, in a situation darkened

Starting point is 03:41:21 by the surrounding trees. A rambling house, neither as old as one would wish for aesthetic reasons, nor as new as comfort might dictate. There is no view. In the garden one may in fancy see again the little boy, like all poetic children, deep in his unknown days employ. Indeed, like all children might be said, for is not every child a poet for a little while? In the Life of Shelley by his cousin Thomas Medwin is printed the following letter to a friend at Horsham, written when he was nine, which I quote not for any particular intrinsic merit, but because it helps to bring him before us in his field-place days, of which too little is known. Monday, July the 18th, 1803, Miss Kate, Horsham, Sussex.

Starting point is 03:42:19 Dear Kate, we have proposed a day at the pond next Wednesday, and if you will come tomorrow morning I would be much obliged to you, and if you could anyhow bring Tom over to stay all the night, I would thank you. We are to have a cold dinner over at the pond, and come home to eat a bit of roast chicken and peas at about nine o'clock. Mama depends upon your bringing Tom over tomorrow, and if you don't we shall be very much disappointed. Tell the bearer not to forget to bring me a faring,

Starting point is 03:42:48 which is some gingerbread, sweetmeats, hunting nuts, and a pocket-book. Now I end. I am not your obedient servant. F. B. Shelley We are proud to call Shelley, the Sussex poet, but he wrote no Sussex poems and a singularly uncongenial father, for the cursing of whom and the king the boy was famous at Eton, made him glad to avoid the county when he was older. It was, however, to a Sussex lady, Miss Hitchiner of Hurst Pierpoint, that Shelley, when in Ireland

Starting point is 03:43:23 in 1812, forwarded the box of inflammatory matter which the Custom House officers confiscated, copies of his pamphlet on Ireland and his Declaration of Rights Broadside, which Miss Hitchens was to distribute among Sussex farmers, who would display them on their walls. These were the same documents that Shelley used to put in bottles and throw out to sea, greatly to the perplexity of the spectators, and not a little to the annoyance of the government. Miss Hitchiner, as well as the revolutionary, was kept under surveillance,

Starting point is 03:43:56 as we learned from the letter from the Postmaster General of the Day. Lord Chichester. I return the pamphlet declaration. The writer of the first is son of Mr. Shelley, member for the rape of Bramber, and is by all accounts a most extraordinary man. I hear he has married a servant, or some person of very low birth.

Starting point is 03:44:17 He has been in Ireland for some time, and I heard of his speaking at the Catholic Convention. Miss Hitchiner of Hurst Pierpoint keeps a school there, and is well spoken of. Her father keeps a public house, in the neighbourhood. He was originally a smuggler, and changed his name from York to Hitchinor before he took the public house. I shall have a watch upon the daughter, and discover whether

Starting point is 03:44:40 there is any connection between her and Shelley. There, Shelley's connection with Sussex may be said to end, yet a poet, whether he will or know, is shaped by his early surroundings. In some verses by Mr. C. W. Dalman, called the Sussex Muse, I find the influence of Shelley surroundings on his mind, happily recorded. When Shelley's soul was carried through the air toward the manor house where he was born, I danced along the avenue at Den, and praised the grace of heaven, and the morn which numbered with the sons of Sussex's man, a genius so rare, so high an honour and so dear a birth, that though the horsham folk may little care to lord the favour of his birthplace there, my name is blessed for it throughout the earth. I taught the child to love,

Starting point is 03:45:34 and dream, and sing of witch, hobgoblin, folk and flower-law, and often led him by the hand away into St. Leonard's forest, whereof yore, the hermit fought the dragon. To this day the children every spring find lilies of the valley blowing where the fights took place. Alas! they quickly drove my darling from my bosom and my love, and snatched my crown of laurel from his hair. Two miles southwest of Field Place, by a footpath which takes us beside the Arron, here a narrow stream, and a deserted water-mill, we come to the churchyard of Slinfold, a little quiet village with a church of almost suburban solidity and complete want of Sussex feeling. James Dalloway, the historian of Western Sussex, was rector here from 1803 to 1834. He lived, however, at Leatherhead, Slinfold being a sinecure.

Starting point is 03:46:36 A slinfold epitaph on an infant views bereavement with more philosophy than his usual, in conclusion calling upon patience, thus to comfort the parents. Teach them to praise that God with grateful mind for babes that yet may come, for one still left behind. A quarter of a mile west is Stain Street, striking Londonwoods from Billingshurst, and we may follow it for a while on our way to Rudgewick, near the county's border. We leave the Roman Road, which once ran as straight as might be as far as Billingsgate, but is now diverted and lost in many spots, at the drive to Dedisham on the left, and thus save a considerable corner.

Starting point is 03:47:22 Dedisham, in its hollow, is an ancient agricultural settlement, a farm and feudatory cottages in perfect completeness, an isolated self-sufficing community, lacking nothing, not even the yellow ferret in the cage. The footpaths beyond the homestead crosses a field where we find the Aran once again, here a stream winding between steep banks, sure home of Kingfisher and Water Rats.

Starting point is 03:47:51 Ruddwick, which is three miles farther west along the hard high road, is a small village on a hill, with the most comfortable-looking church tower in Sussex, hiding behind the inn and the general shop. In the churchyard lies a Frusana, a name new to me. Ruderick was the birthplace in 1717 of Raynal Cotton, destined to be the author of the best song in praise of cricket. He entered Winchester College in 1730, took orders,

Starting point is 03:48:22 and became master of Hyde Abbey School in the same city, and died in 1779. Niren prints his song in full. This is the heart of it. The wickets are pitched now, and measured the ground. Then they form a large ring and stand gazing round. Since Ajax fought Hector in sight of all Troy, no contest was seen with such fear and such joy.

Starting point is 03:48:46 You bowlers take heed to my precept attend. On you the whole fate of the game must depend. Spare your vigour at first, nor exert all your strength, but measure each step, and be sure, pitch a length. Your fieldsman look sharp, lest your pains you beguile. Move close, like an army in rank and in file. When the ball is returned, back it, sure, for I trow, whole states have been ruined by one overthrow.

Starting point is 03:49:15 You strikers, observe when the foe shall draw nigh, Mark the bowler advancing with vigilant eye, Your skill all depends upon distance and sight. Stand firm to your scratch, let your bat be upright. Further west is lockswood, on the edge of a little-known tract of country. Untroubled by railways, the most unfamiliar village in which is perhaps plaster, plaster is on the road to nowhere and has not its equal for quietude in england it is a dependency of curdford whence comes the petford marble which we see in many sussex churches shilling lee park the seat of the earl of winterton is hard by from these remote parts one may return to horsham by way of warnham on whose pond shelly as a boy used to sail his little boat and where perhaps he gained that love of navigation which never left him and brought about his death

Starting point is 03:50:14 Warnham always a cricketing village, until lately supplied the Sussex Eleven with dashing Lucases, but it does so no more. Before passing to the east of Horsham, something ought to be said of one at least of the villages of the south-west, namely Billingshurst, on Stain Street, once an important station between Regnum and Londinum, or Chichester and London, as we should now say. It has been conjectured that Stain Street, which we first saw at Chichester under the name of East Street, and again as it descended Bignor Hill in the guise of a Bostle, was constructed by Belinus, a Roman engineer, who gave to

Starting point is 03:50:57 the woods through which he had to cut his way in this part of Sussex the name Billingshurst, and to the gate by which London was entered, Billingsgate. Billingshurst's place in literature was made by William Cobbitt, for it was here that he met the boy in a smock frock, who recalled to his mind so many of his deeds of quixotry. The incident is described in the rural rides. This village is seven miles from Horsham, and I got here to breakfast about seven o'clock. A very pretty village and a very nice breakfast in a very neat little parlour of a very decent public house. The landlady sent her son to get me some cream, and he was just such a chap as I was

Starting point is 03:51:41 at his age, and dressed just in the same sort of way, his main garment being a blue smock-frock, faded from wear, and mended with pieces of new stuff, and of course not faded. The sight of this smock-frock brought to my recollection many things very dear to me. This boy will, I dare say, perform his part at Billingshurst, or at some place not far from it. If accident had not taken me from a similar scene, how many villains and fools, who have been well teased and tormented, would have slept in peace at night, and have fearlessly swaggered about by day. When I look at this little chap, at his smock-frock, his nailed shoes, and his clean, plain, coarse

Starting point is 03:52:25 shirt, I ask myself, will anything, I wonder, ever send this chap across the ocean to tackle the base, corrupt, perjured Republican judges of Pennsylvania? Will this little lively, but, at the same time, simple, boy, ever become the terror of villains and hypocrites across the Atlantic? What a chain of strange circumstances there must be to lead this boy to thwart a miscreant tyrant like McKean, the Chief Justice and afterwards governor of Pennsylvania, and to expose the corruption of the band of rascals called a Senate and a House of Representatives at Harrisburg in that state?

Starting point is 03:53:07 Billingshurst Church has an interesting ceiling, an early brass to Thomas and Elizabeth Bartlett, and the record of one of those disputes over pews which add salt to village life, and now and then, as we saw at Little Hampton, lead to real trouble. The verger, if he be the same, will tell the story, the best part of which describes the race which was held every Sunday for certain seats in the chancel, and the tactical packing of the same by the winning party. In the not very remote past, a noble carved chair used to be placed in one of the galleries for the schoolmaster,

Starting point is 03:53:46 and there he would sit during service, surrounded by his boys. One returns to Horsham from Billingshurst through Itching Field, where the New Christ's Hospital has been built in the midst of green fields, a glaring red-brick settlement which the fastidiously, Urban ghost of Charles Lamb can now surely never visit. Lamb's house, however, is the name of one of the buildings, and Time the Healer, who can do all things, may mellow the new school into alien congeniality.

Starting point is 03:54:23 End of Chapter 12. Chapter 13 of Highways and Byways in Sussex. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Peter Yearsley. Highways and Byways in Sussex By E. V. Lucas Chapter 13. St. Leonard's Forest To the east of Horsham

Starting point is 03:54:49 spreads St. Leonard's Forest, that vast tract of moor and preserve, which, merging into Tillgate Forest, Bolcombe Forest and Worth Forest, extends a large part of the way to East Grinstead. Only on foot can we really explore this territory, and a compass as well as a good map is needed if one is to walk with any decision, for there are many conflicting tracks and many points

Starting point is 03:55:15 whence no broad outlook is possible. Remembering old days in St. Leonard's Forest, I recall in general the odoriferous damp open spaces of long grass suddenly lighted upon, over which silver-washed fratilleries flutter, and, in particular, a deserted farm, in whose orchard, it must have been late June, was a spreading tree. of white-heart cherries in full bearing. One may easily, even a countryman, I take it, live to a great age and never have the chance of climbing into a white-heart cherry tree

Starting point is 03:55:51 and eating one's fill. Certainly I have never done it since, but that day gave me an understanding of blackbird's temptations that is still stronger than the desire to pull a trigger. The reader must not imagine that St. Leonard's forest is rich in deserted farms with attractive orchards, I have found no other, and indeed it is notably a place in which

Starting point is 03:56:14 the explorer should be accompanied by provisions. To take train to Faygate and walk from that spot is the simplest way, although more interesting is it perhaps to come to Faygate at the end of the day, and gaining permission to climb the beacon tower on the hill in the Holmbush estate, retrace one's steps in vision from its summit. In this case one would walk from Horsham to Lower Beading, then strike north over Plummer's Plain. This route leads by Coolhurst and through Manning Heath, just beyond which, by following the south that runs for a mile, one could see Nuthurst. Lower Beading is not in itself interesting, but close at hand is Leonard's Lee, the seat of Sir Edmund

Starting point is 03:56:57 Loder, which is one of the most satisfying estates in the county. North and South runs a deep ravine, on the one side richly wooded, and on the other, the west, planted with all acclimatizable varieties of alpine plants and flowering shrubs. The chain of ponds at the bottom of the ravine forms one of the principal sources of the Adur. In an enclosure among the woods, the kangaroo has been acclimatized, and beavers are given all lore. North of Plummer's plain, in a hollow, are two immense ponds, hammer pond and Hawkins Pond, our first reminder that we are in the old iron country. St. Leonard's Forest and all the forests on this, the Forest Ridge of Sussex, were, of course, maintained to supply wood with which to feed the furnaces of the ironmasters, just as the overflow of these

Starting point is 03:57:52 ponds was trained to move the machinery of the hammers for the breaking of the iron stone. The enormous consumption of wood in the iron foundries was a calamity series. seriously viewed by many observers, among them Michael Drayton of the Polyoblion, who was, however, distressed less as a political economist, than as the friend of the wood-nymphs, driven out by the encroaching and devastating foundrymen, from their native sanctuaries to the inhospitable downs. Thus he writes, illustrating Lamb's criticism of him that in this work he has animated hills and streams with life and passion above the dreams of old mythology.

Starting point is 03:58:30 The Daughters of the Weald, that in their heavy breasts had long their griefs concealed, For seeing their decay each hour so fast come on, Under the Axis stroke fetched many a grievous groan, When, as the Anvil's weight, and Hammer's dreadful sound, even rents the hollow woods, And shook the quechy ground, So that the trembling nymphs, oppressed through ghastly fear, madding to the downs, with loose dishevelled hair. The sylvanes that about the neighbouring woods did dwell, both in the tufty frith and in the mossy fell, forsook their gloomy bowers, and wandered far abroad, expelled their quiet seats and place of their abode, when labouring carts they saw to hold their daily trade, where they, in summer, won't to sport them in the shade. Could we?

Starting point is 03:59:30 Say they, suppose that any would us cherish, Which suffer every day the holiest things to perish, Or to our daily want to minister supply? These iron times breed none that mind posterity. Tis but in vain to tell what we before have been, or changes of the world that we in time have seen. When, now devising how to spend our wealth with waste, We to the savage swine let fall our larding mast.

Starting point is 04:00:03 But now, alas, ourselves we have not to sustain, Nor can our tops suffice to shield our roots from rain. Jove's oak, the warlike ash, veined elm, The softer beach, short hazel, maple plain, Light Asp, the bending witch, Tough holly and smooth birch, must all together burn. What should the builder serve, supplies the forger's turn, When under public good base private gain takes hold,

Starting point is 04:00:38 And we poor, woeful woods, To ruin, lastly sold. We shall learn later more of this old Sussex industry, But here in the heart of St Leonard's Forest, I might quote also what another old author with less invention says of it, Under the heading of Sussex manufactures, Thomas Fuller writes in the worthies of great guns. It is almost incredible how many are made of the iron in this county. Count Gondoma well knew their goodness, when of King James he so often begged the boon to transport them. A monk of mens, some 300 years since, is generally reputed the first founder of them.

Starting point is 04:01:23 Surely ingenuity may seem transposed, and to have to have been a man. have crossed her hands, when, about the same time, a soldier found out printing, and it is questionable which of the two inventions hath done more good or more harm. As for guns, it cannot be denied that, though most behold them as instruments of cruelty, partly because subjecting valour to chance, partly because guns give no quarter, which the sword sometimes doth, yet it will appear that since their invention victory hath not stood so long an neuter, and has been determined with the loss of fewer lives. Yet, do I not believe what soldiers commonly say, that he was cursed in his mother's belly, who is killed with a cannon,

Starting point is 04:02:10 seeing many prime persons have been slain thereby? Cannon were not, of course, the only articles which the old Sussex ironmasters contrived. The old railings around St. Paul's were cast in Sussex, and iron firebacks were turned out in great number. These are still to be seen in a few of the older Sussex cottages in their original position. Most curiosity dealers in the country have a few firebacks on sale. Iron tombstones one meets with two in a few of the churches and churchyards in the Iron District. There are several at Wadhurst, for example. I have seen grass snakes in plenty in St. Leonard's Forest,

Starting point is 04:02:49 and was once there with a botanist, who, the day being fine, killed a particularly beautiful one. but the forest is no longer famous as once it was for really alarming reptiles. The year 1614 was the time. A rambler in the neighbourhood in August of that year ran the risk of meeting something worth running away from, just as John Steele, Christopher Holder and a widow woman did. Their story may be read in the Harleian miscellany. True and Wonderful is the title of the narrative, a discourse relating a strange and monstrous serpent, or dragon, lately discovered and yet living,

Starting point is 04:03:31 to the great annoyance and diverse slaughters both of men and cattle by his strong and violent poison. In Sussex, two miles from Horsham, in a wood called St. Leonard's Forest, and thirty miles from London, this present month of August 1614, with the true generation of serpents. The discourse runs thus. In Sussex there is a pretty market town called Horsum, near unto it a forest called St. Leonard's forest, and there in a vast and unfrequented place, heathy, vaulty, full of unwholesome shades, and overgrown hollows, where this serpent is thought to be bred.

Starting point is 04:04:12 But wheresoever bred, certain and too true it is, that there it yet lives. Within three or four miles compass are its usual haunts, oftentimes at a place called Faygate, and it hath been seen within half a mile of horse-some, a wonder, no doubt, most terrible and noisome to the inhabitants thereabouts. There is always in his track or path left a glutinous and slimy matter, as by a small similitude we may perceive in a snails, which is very corrupt and offensive to the scent, in so much that they perceive the air to be putrified with all which must needs be very dangerous. For though the corruption of it cannot strike the outward part of a man, unless heated into his blood, yet by receiving it in at any of our breathing organs, the mouth or nose, it is by authority of all authors, writing in that kind, mortal and deadly, as one thus saith,

Starting point is 04:05:13 Noxia serpentum est admixed do sanguine a pestis, Lucan. This serpent or dragon, as some call it, is reputed to be nine feet, or rather more, in length, and shaped almost in the form of an axle-tree of a cart, a quantity of thickness in the middest, and somewhat smaller at both ends. The former part, which he shoots forth as a neck, is supposed to be an L long, and a white ring, as it were, of scales about it. The scales along his back seem to be blackish, and so much as is discovered under his belly, appeareth to be red, for I speak of no nearer description than of a reasonable ocular distance, for coming too near it hath already been too dearly paid for, as you shall hear hereafter.

Starting point is 04:06:03 It is likewise discovered to have large feet, but the eye may be there deceived, for some suppose that serpents have no feet, but glide upon certain ribs and scales, which both defend them from the upper part of their throat unto the lower part of their belly, and also cause them to move much the faster. For so this doth, and Ridd's way, as we call it, as fast as a man can run. He is of countenance very proud, and at the sight or hearing of men or cattle

Starting point is 04:06:32 will raise his neck upright, and seem to listen and look about, with great arrogance. There are likewise, on either side of him, discovered, two great bunches so big as a large foot-ball, and as some think, will in time grow to wings, but God I hope will, to defend the poor people in the neighbourhood, that he shall be destroyed before he grow so fledge. He will cast his venom about four rod from him, as by woeful experience it was proved upon the bodies of a man and woman coming that way, who afterwards were found dead, being poisoned and very much swelled, but not pre-fulled.

Starting point is 04:07:11 Appraved upon. Likewise, a man going to chase it, and, as he imagined, to destroy it with two Mastive dogs, as yet, not knowing the great danger of it, his dogs were both killed, and he himself glad to return with haste to preserve his own life. Yet this is to be noted that the dogs were not preyed upon, but slain and left whole, for his food is thought to be, for the most part, in a coni-waran, which he much frequents, and it is found much scanted and impaired in the increase it had wont to afford. These persons, whose names are here under printed, have seen this serpent, beside diverse others, as the carrier of horseham, who lieth at the white horse in Southwalk, and who can certify the truth of all that has been here related,

Starting point is 04:08:00 John Steele, Christopher Holder, and a widow woman dwelling near Faygate. It would be very interesting to know what John Steele, Christopher Holder and the Widow Woman really saw. Such a story must have had a basis of some kind. A printed narrative such as this would hardly have proceeded from a clear sky. St. Leonard's Forest has another familiar, for there the headless horse, not on his own horse, but on yours, seated on the crupper with his ghostly arms encircling your waist. His name is Powlett. but I know no more, except that his presence is an additional reason why one should explore the forest on foot. Sussex, especially near the coast, is naturally a good nightingale country.

Starting point is 04:08:50 Many of the birds pausing there after their long journey at the end of April do not fly farther, but make their home where they first alight. I know of one meadow and copse under the north escarpment of the Downs, where three nightingales singing in rivalry in a triangle, the perfect condition, can be counted upon in May by night, and often by day too, as surely as the rising and setting of the sun. But in St. Leonard's forest, the nightingale never sings. American visitors, who, as Mr. John Burroughs once did,

Starting point is 04:09:25 come to England in the spring to hear the nightingale, must remember this. End of Chapter 13 Chapter 14 of Highways and Byways in Sussex This Librevox recording is in the public domain Recording by Peter Yearsley Highways and Byways in Sussex

Starting point is 04:09:51 By E. V Lucas Chapter 14 West Grinstid Cowfold and Henfield West Grinstid is perhaps the most remarkable of the villages on the line from Horsham to staining, by reason of its association with literature, the rape of the lock, having been

Starting point is 04:10:11 to a large extent composed beneath a tree in the park. Yet as one walks through this broad expanse of break-furn, among which the deer are grazing, with the line of the downs culminating in Chanktonbury ring in view, it requires a severe effort to bring the mind to the consideration of Belinda's loss and all the surrounding drama of the toilet and the card table. If there is one thing that would not come naturally to the memory in West Grinstead Park, it is the poetry of Pope. The present house, the seat of the Burrells, was built in 1806. It was in the preceding mansion that John Carrel, Pope's friend, made his home, moving hither from West

Starting point is 04:10:56 Harding, as we have seen. Carroll suggested to Pope the subject of the Rape of the Lock, The hero of which was his cousin, Lord Petrie. The line, This verse to Carol, Muse, is due, is the poet's testimony and thanks. John Gay, who found life a jest, has also walked amid the West Grinstid Brackham. West Grinstid Church is isolated in the fields, a curiously pretty and cheerful building, with a very charming porch and a modest shingled spire rising from its midst, brass to members of the Halsham family are within, and a monument to Captain Powlett, whose, unquiet ghost, hunting without a head, we have just met.

Starting point is 04:11:43 Hard by the Church is one of the most attractive and substantial of the smaller manor-houses of Sussex, square and venerable, and well-roofed with Horsham stone. A mile to the west, in a meadow by the Worthing Road, stands the forlorn fragment of the keep, which is all that remains of the Norman stronghold of NEP. For its other stones you must seek the highways, the roadmenders having claimed them a hundred years ago. William de Brays, who we shall meet at Bramber, built it.

Starting point is 04:12:16 King John more than once was entertained in it, and now it is a ruin. Yet, if NEP no longer has its castle, it has its lake, the largest in the county, a hundred acres in extent, a beautiful sheet of water, the overflow of which feeds the Adour. Within a quarter of a mile of the ruin is the new Nepp Castle,

Starting point is 04:12:40 which was built by Sir Charles Merrick Burrell, son of Sir William Burrell, the antiquary, whose materials for a history of Sussex on a grand scale, collected by him for many years, are now in the British Museum. But Nepp Castle, the new, with all its hullbines, was destroyed by fire. 1904

Starting point is 04:13:02 To the east of the line lies cowfold, balancing West Grinstead, a village ranged on either side of a broad road. It is famous chiefly for possessing in its very pretty church the Nelond brass, being the effigy of Thomas Nellond, prior of Lewis, who died in 1433. Few brasses are finer or larger. In length it is nearly ten feet. Its estate is practically perfect, and pilgrims come from all quarters to rub it. John Nelland, in the dress of a cluniac monk, stands with folded hands beneath an arch, protected by the Virgin and Child, St. Pancras, and St. Thomas A. Beckett. This splendid relic would, perhaps, were ours an ideal community, be handed over to the

Starting point is 04:13:52 keeping of the Carthusian monks nearby in the monastery of St. Hugh, the commanding building to the south of Caulfold, whose spire is to the wield what that of Chichester Cathedral is, to the plain between the Downs and the sea, and whose Angelus may be heard on favourable evenings for many miles. The Carthusian monks of St. Hughes lend a very foreign air to the village when they walk through it. Visitors are encouraged to call at the porter's gate and explore this huge settlement, often in the very competent care of an Irish brother, while to the very competent care of an Irish brother, while to suffer an accident anywhere in the neighbourhood is to be certain of a cordial glass of the monastery's own charters. It was at Brook Hill just to the north of Cowfold that William Bora, the ornithologist and the author of The Birds of Sussex, lived and made many of his interesting observations.

Starting point is 04:14:48 Near Cowfold is Okendine, a stronghold of cricket at the beginning of the last century. William Wood was the greatest of the Okandine men. He was the best bowler in Sussex, the art having been acquired as he walked about his farm with his dog, when he would bowl at whatever he saw, and the dog would retrieve the ball. Bora of ditchling, Marchand of Hurst, voice of hand cross,

Starting point is 04:15:12 and Valance of Brighton, also belonged to the Okundeen Club. Bora and Valant played for Brighton against Marilabon, at Lords in 1792, and, when all the betting was against them, including gold rings and watches, won the match in the second innings, by making, respectively, 60 and 68 not out. Another player in that match was Jutton, the fast bowler, who, when things were going against him, bowled at his man, and so won by fear what he could

Starting point is 04:15:43 not compass by skill. There are too many Jutton's on village greens. Five miles south of Caulfold is Henfield, separated from staining in the southwest, by the low-lying meadows through which the Adour runs, and which, in winter, are too often a sheet of water. Headfield consists of the usual street, and a quiet, retired common, flat and marshy, with a flock of geese, some scotch furs, and a fine view of Walstonbury, rising in the east. It was on Henfield Common that Mr. Bora once saw fourteen golden orioles on a thornbush. Adventures are to the adventurous, birds to the ornithologist. Most of us have never succeeded in seeing even one Oriole.

Starting point is 04:16:32 William Bora, the botanist, uncle of the ornithologist, was born in Henfield and is buried there. In his Henfield Garden in 1860, as many as 6,600 varieties of plants were growing. Beyond a small memoir on Lycans, written in conjunction with Dawson Turner, he left no book. Another illustrious son of Henfield was Dr Thomas Stapleton, once Canon of Chichester, and one of the founders of the Catholic College of Duay, of whom it was written somewhat ambiguously,

Starting point is 04:17:08 that he was a man of mild demeanour and unsuspected integrity. Fuller has him characteristically touched off in the worthies. He was bred in New College in Oxford, and then by the bishop, Christopherson, as I take it, made canon of Chichester, which he quickly quitted in the first of Queen Elizabeth. Flying between the seas he first fixed at Duet, and there commendably performed the office of Catechist, which he discharged to his commendation. Rida pardon an excursion caused by just grief and anger. Many, counting themselves Protestants in England do slight and neglect that ordinance of God by which their religion was set up, and gave

Starting point is 04:17:53 credit to it in the first reformation. I mean catechising. Did not our Saviour say even to St. Peter himself, feed my lambs, feed my sheep? And why? Lambs first? One, because they were lambs before they were sheep. Two, because if they be not fed whilst lambs, they could never be sheep. Three, because sheep can in some sort feed themselves, but lambs, such their tenderness, must either be fed or famished. Our Stapleton was excellent at this lamb-feeding. An epitaph in Henfield's church is worth copying for its quaint mixture of mythology and theology. It bears upon the death of a lad, Menelib Rainsford, aged nine, who died in 1627. Great Joe, hath lost his Ganymede, I know, which made him seek another here below, and, finding none,

Starting point is 04:18:52 not one, like unto this, hath taean him hence into eternal bliss. Cease, then, for thy dear Menelib to weep, God's darling was too good for thee to keep, but rather joy in this great favour given, a child on earth is made a saint in heaven. Three miles east of Henfield and a little to the north is a farm, the present tenant of which has made an interesting experiment. He found in the house an old map of the county, and, identifying his own estate, discovered a large sheet of water marked on it. On examining the site, he saw distinct traces of this ancient lake, and at once set about building a dam to restore it. Water now, once again, fills the hollow, completely transforming this part of the country, and bringing into it wild duck and herons as of old.

Starting point is 04:19:48 The lake is completely hidden from the neighbouring roads, and is accessible only by field paths, but it is well worth finding. They're once hung in the parlour of Henfield's chief inn. I wonder if it is there still. A rude etching of local origin, rather in the manner of buses' plates to Pickwick, representing an in-k kitchen, filled with a jolly company listening uproariously to a fat farmer by the fire, who with an arm raised told his tale. Underneath was written Mr. West, describing how he saw a woodcock settle on an oak. A perfect specimen of the

Starting point is 04:20:28 Sussex joke. End of Chapter 14. Chapter 15 of Highways and Byways in Sussex This Libravox recording is in the public domain, recorded by Peter Yearsley. Highways and Byways in Sussex by E.V. Lucas. Chapter 15. Staining and Bramber Of great interest and antiquities staining, the little grey and red town which huddles under the hill four miles to Henfields south-west. The beginnings of staining are lost in the distance. Its church was founded, probably in the eighth century,

Starting point is 04:21:12 by St. Cuthman, an early Christian whose adventures were more than usually quaint. He began by tending his father's sheep, with which occupation his first miracle was associated. Being called one day to dinner, and having no one to take his place as shepherd, he drew a circle round the flock with his crook, and bade the sheep, in the name of the Lord, not to stray beyond it. The sheep obeyed, and thenceforth on repeating the same manoeuvre, he left them with an easy mind. In course of time his father died, and Cuthman determined to travel.

Starting point is 04:21:48 Intense filial piety determined him to take his aged mother with him. In order to do this, he constructed a wheelbarrow couch, which he partly supported by a cord over his shoulders. Thus united mother and son fared forth into the cold world, which was, however, warmed for them by the watchful interest taken in Cuthman by a vigilant providence. One day, for example, the cord of the barrow broke in a hayfield, where Cuthman, who supplied its place by elder twigs,

Starting point is 04:22:19 was a subject of much ridicule among the haymakers. Immediately a heavy storm broke over the field, destroying the crop, and not only then but ever afterwards in the same field, possibly to this day, has haymaking been imperiled by a similar storm. So runs the legend. The second occasion on which the cord broke and let down Cuthman's mother was at Staining. Cuthman took the incident as a divine intimation that the time had come to settle, and he therefore first built for his mother and himself a hut, and afterwards a church.

Starting point is 04:22:53 The present church stands on its site. Cuthman was buried there. So also was Ethel Wolf, father of Alfred the Great, whose body afterwards was moved to Winchester. the Great had estates at staining, as elsewhere in Sussex. While Cuthman was building his church, a beam shifted, making a vast amount of new labour necessary, but, as the saint sorrowfully was preparing to begin again, a stranger appeared, who pointed out how the mischief could be repaired in a more speedy manner, and with less toil. Cuthman and his men followed his instructions, and all was quickly well again. Custman thereupon fell on his knees, and asked the stranger,

Starting point is 04:23:35 he was. I am he, in whose name thou buildest this temple, he replied, and vanished. The present church, which stands on the sight of St. Cusman's, is only a reminder of what it must have been in its best days. When one faces the curiously checkered square tower, an impression of quiet dignity is imparted, but a broadside view is disappointing, by reason of the high deforming roof, giving an impression as of hunched back. One sees the same effect at Udimore in the east of Sussex. Within are two rows of superb circular arches, with zigzag mouldings, on massive columns. Staining has an importance in English history that is not generally credited to it.

Starting point is 04:24:22 Edward the Confessor gave a great part of the land to the Abbey at Faycamp, whose church is, or was the counterpart of Stainings. These possessions Harold took away, an act that, among others, decided William, Duke of Normandy, upon his assailing and conquering course. Staining should be proud. To have brought the conqueror over is at least as worthy as to have come over with him, and far more uncommon. In Church Street stands Brotherhood Hall, a very charming ancient building, long used as a

Starting point is 04:24:57 grammar school, flanked by overhanging houses, which, though less imposing, are often more quaint and ingratiating. most of staining indeed is of the past, and the spirit of antiquity is visibly present in its streets. The late Louis Jennings, in his rambles among the hills, was fascinated by the placid air of this unambitious town, as an American might be expected to be in the uncongenial atmosphere of age and serenity. One almost expects, he wrote, to see a fine green moss all over an inhabitant of staining. One day as I passed through the town I saw a man painting a new sign over a shop,

Starting point is 04:25:38 a proceeding that so aroused my curiosity that I stood for a minute or two to look on. The painter filled in one letter, gave a huge yawn, looked up and down two or three times as if he had lost something, and finally descended from his perch and disappeared. Five weeks later I passed that way again,

Starting point is 04:25:57 and it is a fact that the same man was at work on the same sign. Perhaps when the reader takes the walk I'm about to recommend to his attention, a walk which comprises some of the finest scenery in Sussex, that sign will be finished, and the accomplished artist will have begun another, but I doubt it. There is plenty of time for everything in staining.

Starting point is 04:26:20 I am told that staining was incensed when this criticism was printed. There was even talk of an action for libel, but it seems to me that whatever may have been intended, the words contain more of compliments than censure in this hurrying age it is surely high praise to have one's wise passiveness as wordsworth called it so emphasized the passage calls to mind diogenes requesting as the greatest of possible boons that alexander the great would stand aside and not interrupt the sunshine only at staining would one seek for diogenes to-day no commendation of staining in the direction of its enterprise briskness, smartness, or any of the other qualities which are now most in fashion, would so speedily decide a wise man to pitch his tent there, as Mr. Jennings' certificate of inertia.

Starting point is 04:27:16 Staining, if still disposed, to stand on its defence, might plead external influence beyond the control of man, as an excuse for some of its interesting placidity, for this curiously inland town was once a port. In Saxon times, when Staining was more important than Birmingham, the Adour was practically an estuary of the sea, and ships came into Staining Harbour, or St. Cuthman's Port, as it was otherwise called. There is notoriously no such quiet spot as a dry harbour town. In those days, Staining also had a mint. Bramber, a little roadside village, less than a mile south-east of Staining, also a mere relic of its great place. days, was once practically on the coast, for the arm of the sea which narrowed down at

Starting point is 04:28:07 Staining was here of great breadth, and washed the sides of the castle mound. The last time I came into Staining was by way of the Bostle down Staining round hill. The old place seems more than ever medieval, as one descends upon it from the height, the best way to approach a town, and sitting among the wild time on the turf, I tried to reconstruct in imagination, the scene a thousand years ago, with the sea flowing over the meadows of the Adur Valley, and the masts of ships clustered beyond staining church. Once one had the old prospect well in the mine's eye, the landscape became curiously in need of water.

Starting point is 04:28:52 After rain Bramber is a pleasant village, but when the dust flies it is good neither for man nor beast. All that remains of the castle is crumbling battlement and a wall of the keep, survivals of the renovation of the old Saxon stronghold by William de Brays, the friend of the conqueror, and the Sussex founder of the Duke of Norfolk's family. Picnic parties now frolic among the ruins, and enterprising boys explore the rank overgrowth in the moats below. The castle played no path in history, its demolition being due probably to gunpowder, pacifically fired, with a view to obtaining building materials. But during the Civil War, the village was the scene of an encounter between royalists and roundheads.

Starting point is 04:29:40 A letter from John Coulton to Samuel Jeek of Rye, dated January the 8th, 1643 to 4. Thus describes the event. The enemy attempted Bramber Bridge, but our brave Carlton, and Evanden with his dragoons and our colonel's horse, welcomed them with drakes and muskets, sending some eight or nine men to hell, I fear, and one trooper to Arendel Castle, prisoner, and one of Captain Evanden's dragoons to heaven. A few years later, as we have seen,

Starting point is 04:30:10 Charles II ran a grave risk at Bramber, while on his way to Brighton and safety. Bramber was, for many years, a pocket-barra of the worst type. George Spencer, writing to Algernon-Sidney after the Bramber election in 1679, says, you would have laughed to see how pleased i seemed to be in kissing of old women and drinking wine with handfuls of sugar and great glasses of burnt brandy three things much against the stomach in seventeen sixty eight eighteen votes were polled for one candidate and sixteen for his rival one of the tenants in a cottage valued at about three shillings a week refused a thousand pounds for his vote bramber remained a pocket-bara until the reform bill william wilberforce the abolitionist sat for it for some years there is a story that on passing one day through the village he stopped his carriage to inquire the name bramber why that's the place i member for

Starting point is 04:31:15 Ramba possesses a humorist in taxidermy whose efforts win more attention than the castle. They are to be seen in a small museum in its single street, the price of admission being for children one penny, for adults' tuppence, and for ladies and gentlemen what they please, indicating that the naturalist also knows human nature. In one case, guinea-pigs strive in crickets manly toil, In another, rats read the paper and play dominoes. In a third, rabbits learn their lessons in school.

Starting point is 04:31:52 In a fourth, the last scene in the tragedy of the babes of the wood is represented. Bramber Castle in the distance, strictly localising the event, although Norfolk usually claims it. Isolated in the fields south of Bramber are two of the quaintest churches in the county, Coombs and Botolphs. Neither has an attendant village. The owl story, which crops up all over the country and is found in literature in Mr. Hardy's novel, far from the madding crowd, the scene whereof is a hundred miles west of Sussex, has a home also at Upper Beeding, the little dusty village beyond Bramber across the river.

Starting point is 04:32:36 Mr. Hardy gives the adventure to Joseph Poorgrass. At Beeding, the hero is one kiddie wee. His rightful name was Kid, but, being very small, the village had invented this double diminutive. Lost in the wood, he cried for help just as poor grass did. Who? Who? asked the owl. Kiddy-wee of beeding, was the reply. It was not long ago that a masterpiece was discovered at beeding,

Starting point is 04:33:04 in one of those unlikely places in which, with ironical humour, fine pictures so often hides themselves. It hung in a little general. shock kept by an elderly widow. After passing unnoticed or undetected for many years, it was silently identified by a dealer who happened to be buying some biscuits. He made a casual remark about it, learned that any value that might be set upon it was sentimental rather than monetary, and returned home. He laid the matter before one or two friends, with the results that they visited Beading in a party a day or so later, in order to bear away

Starting point is 04:33:43 the prize. Outside the shop they held a council of war. One was for bidding at the outset a small but sufficient sum for the picture, another for affecting to want something else and leading round to the picture, and so forth. But in the discussion of tactics, they raised their voices too high, so that a visitor of the widow sitting in the room over the shop heard something of the matter. Suspecting danger, but wholly unconscious of its nature, she hurried downstairs and wore her friend of a predatory gang outside, who were not to be supplied on any account with anything they asked for. The widow obeyed blindly. They asked for tea. She refused to sell it. They asked for biscuits. She set her hand firmly on the lid. They mentioned the picture. She was a rock.

Starting point is 04:34:32 Baffled, they withdrew. And the widow, now on the right scent, took the next train to Brighton to lay the hall matter before her landlord. He took it up, consulted an expert. and the picture was found to be a portrait of Mrs. Jordan, the work either of Romney or Lawrence. Furniture is the usual prey of the dealer who lounges casually through old villages in the guise of a tourist, asking for food or water at old cottages and farmhouses, and using his eyes to some purpose the while. Pictures are rare. The search for chests, turned bedposts, firebacks, chippendowed chairs, warming pans, grandfather's clocks, and other indigenous articles of the old simple homestead, which are thought so decorative in the sophisticated villa, and established the artistic credit and taste of their new

Starting point is 04:35:25 owner, has been prosecuted in Sussex with as much energy as elsewhere, not only by the professional dealer, but by amateurs no less unwilling to give an ignorant peasant fifteen shillings for an article which they know to be worth as many pounds. But suspicion of the plausible furniture collector has, I am glad to say, begun to spread, and the parmiest days of the spoilation of the country are probably over. It must not, however, be thought that the peasant is always the underdog, the amateur, the upper. A London dealer informs me that the planting of spurious antiques in old cottages has become a recognized form of fraud among less scrupulous members of the trade.

Starting point is 04:36:11 An old chest bearing every superficial mark of age that a clever workman can give it, and the profession of worm-holer is now, I believe, recognised, is deposited in a tumble-down, half-timbered home in a country village, whose occupant is willing to take a share in the game. A ticket marked ginger-beer sold here is placed in the window, and the trap is ready. It is almost beyond question that everyone who bids for this chest which has of course been in the family for generations, is hoping to get it at a figure much lower than is just.

Starting point is 04:36:49 It is quite certain that whatever is paid for it will be too much. Ugly as the situation is, I like to think of this biting of the biter. End of Chapter 15. Chapter 16 of Highways and Byways in Sussex. This Librevox recording is in the public. domain, recording by Peter Yearsley. Highways and Byways in Sussex by E. V. Lucas. Chapter 16. Chanktonbury, Washington, and Worthing. For nothing within its confines is staining so famous, as for the hill which

Starting point is 04:37:33 rises to the southwest of it. Chanktonbury Ring. Other of the South Downs are higher, other are more commanding. Walsdenbury, for example, standing forward from the line, makes a bolder show, and Ferl Beacon daunts the sky with a braver point. But when one thinks of the South Downs as a whole, it is Chanktonbury that leaps first to the inward eye. Chanktonbury, when all is said, is the monarch of the range. The words of the Sussex enthusiast, refusing an invitation to spend a summer abroad,

Starting point is 04:38:08 express the feeling of many of his countrymen. For howsoever fare the land, the time would surely be that brought our wheeled and blackbird's note across the waves to me, and howsoever strong the door, t'would never keep at bay, the thought of Falking's violets, the scent of Holmbush hay, and ever, when the day was done, and all the sky was still, how I should miss the climbing moon, or Chanktonbury's hill. It is Chanktonbury's crown of beaches that lifts it above the other hill, Uncrowned, it would be no more noticeable than Fulking Beacon, or a score of others, but its

Starting point is 04:38:50 dark grove can be seen for many miles. In Wiston House under the hill, the seat of the Goring family, to whom belong the hill and a large part of the country that it dominates, is an old painting of Chanktonbury before the woods were made, bare as the bearest, without either beech or juniper, and the eye does not notice it, until all else in the picture has been examined. The planter of Chanktonbury's ring in seventeen sixty was Mr. Charles Goring of Whiston, who wrote in extreme old age in 1828 the following lines, How oft around thy ring, sweet hill, a boy I used to play, and form my plans to plant

Starting point is 04:39:35 thy top on some auspicious day! How oft among thy broken turf! With what delight I trod, With what delight I placed those twigs beneath thy maiden sod, And then an almost hopeless wish would creep within my breast, O, could I live to see thy top in all its beauty dressed? That time's arrived, I've had my wish, and lived to eighty-five. I'll thank my God who gave such grace as long as ere I live. Still, when the morning sun, in spring, whilst I enjoy my sight, shall gild thy new-clothed

Starting point is 04:40:18 beach and sides. I'll view thee with delight. Most of the trees on the side of Chanktonbury and its neighbours were self-sown, children of the clumps which Mr. Goring planted. I might add that Mr. Charles Goring was born in 1743, and his son, the present Reverend John Goring, in 1823, when his father was 80, so that the two lives cover a period of 160 years, true Sussex longevity. Wiston House, pronounced Wisson, is a grey Tudor building in the midst of a wide park, immediately under the hill. The lofty hall, dating from Elizabeth's reign, is as it was. Much of the remainder of the house was restored in the last century.

Starting point is 04:41:06 The park has deer and a lake. The Goring family acquired Whisson by marriage with the Fags, and a superb portrait of Sir John Fagg, in the manner of Van Dyke, with a fine flavour of Velazquith is one of the treasures of the house. Before the Fags came the Shirley's, a family chiefly famous for the three wonderful brothers, Anthony, Robert and Thomas. Fuller, in the Worthies, gives them full space indeed, considering that none was interested in the church.

Starting point is 04:41:36 I cannot do better than quote him. Sir Anthony Shirley, second son to Sir Thomas, set forth from Plymouth, May the 21st, 1596, in a ship called the Bevis of Southampton, attended with six lesser vessels. His design for St. Tom was violently diverted by the contagion they found in the south coast of Africa, where the rain did stink as it fell down from the heavens, and within six hours did turn into maggots. This made him turn his course to America, where he took and kept the city of St. Jago,

Starting point is 04:42:10 two days and nights, with two hundred and eighty men, whereof eighty were wounded in the service, against three thousand portugals. Hence he made for the Isle of Fuego, in the midst whereof a mountain, Etna-like, always burning, and the winds did drive such a shower of ashes upon them, that one might have wrote his name with his finger on the upper deck.

Starting point is 04:42:33 However, in this fiery island they furnished themselves with good water, which they much wanted. Hence he sailed to the island of Margarita, which to him did not answer its name, not finding here the pearl-dredgers which he expected, nor was his gain considerable in taking the town of St. Martha, the Isle and chief town of Jamaica, whence he sailed more than thirty leagues up the river Rio Dulci, where he met with great extremity. At last, being diseased in person, distressed for vittles,

Starting point is 04:43:05 and deserted by all his other ships, he made by newfound land to England, where he arrived June the 15th, 1597. Now, although some behold his voyage begun with more courage than counsel, carried on with more valor than advice, and coming off with more honour than profit to himself or the nation, the Spaniard being rather frightened,

Starting point is 04:43:28 than harmed, rather braved than frighted therewith, yet unpartial judgments who measure not, worth by success, justly allow it a prime place among the probable, though not prosperous, English adventures. Sir Robert Shirley, youngest son to Sir Thomas, was by his brother Anthony entered in the Persian court. Here he performed great service against the Turks, and showed the difference betwixt Persian and the English valour. the latter having therein as much courage and more mercy, giving quarter to captives who craved it, and performing life to those to whom he promised it. These his actions drew the envy of the Persian lords and love of the ladies, among whom one reputed a kinsman to the great Sophie,

Starting point is 04:44:16 after some opposition, was married unto him. She had more of ebony than ivory in her complexion, yet amiable enough, and very valiant, a quality considerable in that sex in those countries. With her he came over to England, and lived many years therein. He much affected to appear in foreign vests, and as if his clothes were his limbs, accounted himself never ready till he had something of the Persian habit about him. At last a contest happening betwixt him and the Persian ambassador, to whom some reported Sir Robert gave a box on the ear, the king sent them both into Persia, there mutually to impeach one another, and joined Dr. Gough, a senior fellow of Trinity College in Cambridge, in commission with Sir Robert. In this voyage, as I am informed, both died on the seas, before the controverted difference

Starting point is 04:45:10 was ever heard in the court of Persia, about the beginning of the reign of King Charles. Sir Thomas Shirley, I name him the last, though the eldest son of his father, because, last appearing in the world, men's activity not always observing the method of their register. As the trophies of Militides would not suffer Themistocles to sleep, so the achievements of his two younger brethren gave an alaraman to his spirit. He was ashamed to see them worn like flowers in the breasts and bosoms of foreign princes, while he himself withered upon the stalk he grew on. This made him leave his aged father and fair inheritances in this county, and to undertake sea voyages into foreign parts, to the great honour of his nation, but small enriching of

Starting point is 04:45:58 himself, so that he might say to his son, as Enius to Iscanias, Disque, puer, vertutem ex me verum, quere, fortune, ex alias. Virtue and labour, learn from me, thy father, as for success, child, learn from others, rather. As to the general performance of these three brethren, I know the affidavit of a poet Carrieth but a small credit in the court of history, and the comedy made of them is but a friendly foe to their memory, as suspected more accommodated to please the present spectators than inform posterity. However, as the belief of Mityo, when an inventory of his adopted son's misdemeanors was brought unto him, embraced a middle and moderate way,

Starting point is 04:46:47 neck omnia crederi nekhil, neither to believe all things nor nothing of what was told him, so in the list of their achievements we may safely pitch him on the same proportion, and when abatement is made for poetical embellishments, the remainder will speak them worthies in their generations. Such were the three Shirley's. Whisson Church, which shelters under the eastern wall of the house, almost leaning against it, has some interesting tombs. Walking west from Wisson we come to the tiny hamlet of Bunkton, one of the oldest settlements in Sussex,

Starting point is 04:47:26 a happy hunting ground for excavators in search of Roman remains, and possessing in Bunkton Chapel a quaint little Norman edifice. The word Bunkton is a sign of modern carelessness for beautiful words. The original Saxon form was Bayochchandau, which is charming. Bunkton belongs to Ashington, two miles to the northwest on the Worthing Road, a quiet village with a 15th century church, a mere child compared with Bunkton Chapel, and a famous loss. The loss is tragic, being no less than that of the parish register, containing a full and complete account by Ashington's best scribe of a visit of Good Queen

Starting point is 04:48:08 Best to the village in 1591. A destroyed church may be built again. gain, but who shall restore the parish register? The book, however, is perhaps still in existence, for it was deliberately stolen, early in the 18th century by a thief who laid his plans as carefully as did Colonel Blood in his attack on the regalia, abstracting the volume from a cupboard in the rectory through a hole which he made in the outside wall. No interest in the progress of Queen Elizabeth prompted him. The register was taken during the hearing of a lawsuit, in order that its damning evident

Starting point is 04:48:44 might not be forthcoming. While at Ashington, we ought to see Warminghurst only a mile distant, once the abode of the Shelley's, and later of William Penn, who bought the great house in 1676. One of his infant's children is buried at Coolum, close by, where he attended the Quakers' meeting, and where services are still held. The meeting-house was built of timber from one of Penn's ships. A later owner than Penn, James Butler, rebuilt Warminghurst and converted a large portion of the estate into a deer park, but it was thrown back into farmland by one of the Dukes of Norfolk, while the house was destroyed, the deer exiled, and the lake drained. Perhaps it was time that the house came down,

Starting point is 04:49:30 for in the interim it had been haunted, the ghost being that of the owner of the property, who one day, although far distant, was seen at Warminghurst by two persons, and afterwards was found to have died at the time of his appearance. Warminghurst in those days of park and deer, lake and timber, it had a chestnut two hundred and seventy years old, might well be the first spot to which an enfranchised spirit winged its way. From Warmington is a road due south over high sandy heaths to Washington, which, unassuming as it is, may be called the capital of a large district of West Sussex that is unprovided with a railway. Staining five miles to the east, Amberley, seven miles to the west, and West

Starting point is 04:50:18 Worthing, eight miles to the south, on the other side of the downs, are the nearest stations. In the midst of this thinly populated area stands Washington, at the foot of the mountain pass that leads to Findon, Worthing and the sea. It was once a Saxon settlement, Wassa Ingharthun, town of the sons of Wassa. It is now derelict. memorable only as a baiting place for man and beast, but there are few better spots in the country for a modest, contented man to live and keep a horse. Rents are low, turfed hills are near, and there is good hunting. The church, which was restored about fifty years ago, but retains its Tudor Tower, stands above the village. In 1866, three thousand pennies of the reign of Edward

Starting point is 04:51:09 the Confessor and Harold were turned to the time. up by a plough in this parish, and, says Mr. Lauer, were held so cheaply by their finders that half a pint measure of them was offered at the inn by one man in exchange for a quart of beer. Possibly Mr. Hilaire Bellock would not think the price excessive, for I find him writing in a Sussex drinking song. They sell good beer at Hazelmere, and under Guilford Hill. At little cow-fold, as I've been told, a beggar may drink his fill. There is a good brew in Ambley, too, and by the bridge also, but the swipes they take in at the Washington Inn is the very best beer I know.

Starting point is 04:51:49 The White Road to Worthing from Washington first climbs the hill, and then descends steadily to the sea. The first village is Finden, three miles distant, but one passes on the way two large houses, Hyden and Muntum. Muntum, which was originally a shooting-box of Viscount Montague, Lord of Cowdry, was rebuilt in the 19th century by an eccentric traveller in the east, named Franklin, a descendant of Oliver Cromwell, who, settling at home again, gave up his time to collecting mechanical appliances. Findon is a pleasant little village at the bottom of the valley, the home of the principal

Starting point is 04:52:29 Sussex Training Stable, which has its galloping course under Sissbury. Training Stables may be found in many parts of the Downs, but the Sussex turf has not played the same part in the making of racehorses as that of Hampshire and Berkshire. Lady Butler painted the background of her picture of Balaclava at Finden, the neighbourhood of which curiously resembles in configuration the Russian battlefield. The rector of Finden in 1276, Galfredus de Aspal, seems to have brought the art of pluralising to a finer point than most. In addition to being rector of Finden, he had, Mr. Lauer tells us,

Starting point is 04:53:10 A benefit in London, two in the Diocese of Lincoln, one in Rochester, one in Hereford, one in Coventry, one in Salisbury, and seven in Norwich. He was also Canon of St. Paul's and Master of St. Leonard's Hospital at York. Above Fendon on the southeast rises Sissbury, one of the finest of the South Downs, but by reason of its inland position, less noticeable than the hills on the line. There have been many conjectures as to its history. The Romans may have used it for military purposes, as certainly they did for the Pacific cultivation of the grape, distinct terraces as of a vineyard being still visible. Traces of a factory of Flint arrowheads have been found, giving it the ugly name of the Flint Sheffield, while Sissar, Lord of Chichester, may have had a bury or fort there. Mr. Lauer's theory is that the earthworks on the summit, whatever they later function, were originally religious and probably druidical.

Starting point is 04:54:10 Selvington, a little village which is gained by leaving the main road two miles beyond Cisbury and bearing it to the west, is distinguished as the birthplace in 1584, of one who was considered by Hugo Grotius to be the glory of the English nation John Selden. Nowadays when we choose our glories among other classes of men than jurists and wits, it is more than possible for even cultured persons who are interested in books to go through life very happily, without knowledge at all, of this great man, the friend of great men, and the writer best endowed with common sense of any of his day. From Selden's table-talk, I take a few passages on the homelier side, to be read at Salvington. Friends. Old friends are best. King James

Starting point is 04:55:01 used to call for his old shoes. They were easiest for his feet. Conscience. Some men make it a case of conscience whether a man may have a pigeon house, because his pigeons eat other folks corn. But there is no such thing as conscience in the business. The matter is whether he be a man of such quality that the state allows him to have a dovehouse. If so, there's an end of the business. His pigeons have a right to eat where they please themselves. Charity Charity to strangers is enjoined in the text. By strangers, is there understood those that are not of our own kin, strangers to your blood. Not those you cannot tell whence they come, that is, be charitable to your neighbours whom you know to be honest, poor people. Ceremony.

Starting point is 04:55:52 Ceremony keeps up all things. It is like a penny glass to a rich spirit, or some excellent water. Without it the water was spilt, the spirit lost. Of all people, ladies have no reason to cry down ceremony, for they take themselves slighted without it. And were the water, they not used with ceremony, with compliments and addresses, with legs and kissing of hands, they were the pitifulest creatures in the world. But yet methinks to kiss their hands after their lips, as some do, is like little boys that after they eat the apple fall to the pairing, out of a love they have to the apple. Religion Religion is like the fashion. One man wears his doublet slashed, another laced, another plane,

Starting point is 04:56:35 but every man has a doublet. So every man has his religion. We differ about trimming. Alteration of religion is dangerous because we know not where it will stay. It is like a millstone that lies upon the top of a pair of stairs. It is hard to remove it, but if once it be thrust off the first stair, it never stays till it comes to the bottom. We look after religion as the butcher did after his knife, when he had it in his mouth.

Starting point is 04:57:02 WIT Nature must be the groundwork of wit and art, otherwise what is done will prove but Jack Pudding's work. wife you shall see a monkey some time that has been playing up and down the garden at length leap up to the top of the wall but his clog hangs a great way below on this side the bishop's wife is like that monkey's clog himself is got up very high takes place of the temporal barons but his wife comes a great way behind selden's father was a small farmer who played the fiddle well the boy is said at the age of ten to have carved over the door a Latin dystick, which, being translated, runs, Walk in and welcome, honest friend, repose. Thief, get thee gone, to thee I'll not unclose.

Starting point is 04:57:51 Between Salvington and Worthing lies Tarring, noted for its fig gardens. It is a fond belief that Thomas A Beckett planted the original trees, from which the present Tarring figs are descended, and there is one tree still in existence, which tradition asserts was set in the earth by his own hand. Whether this is possible, I am not sufficiently an arboreculturist to say, but Beckett certainly sojourned often in the Archbishop of Canterbury's palace in the village. The larger part of the present fig garden dates from 1745. I have seen it stated that during the season a little band of Beca Fico's fly over from Italy to taste the fruit, disappearing when it is gathered.

Starting point is 04:58:34 But a Sussex ornithologist tells me that this is only a pretty story. The fig gardens are perhaps sufficient indication that the climate of this part of the country is very gentle. It is indeed unique in mildness. There is a little strip of land between the sea and the hills, whose climatic conditions approximate to those of the Riviera, hence in addition to the success of the Tarring fig gardens, Worthing's fame for tomatoes and other fruit. I cannot say when the tomato first came to the English table,

Starting point is 04:59:05 but the first that I ever saw was at Worthing. and Worthing is now the centre of the tomato-growing industry. Miles of glasshouses stretch on either side of the town. Worthing, like Brighton and Bogner, owed its beginning as a health resort to the House of Guelph, the visit of the Princess Amelia in 1799, having added a cachet, previously lacking, to its invigorating character.

Starting point is 04:59:31 But unlike Brighton, neither Worthing nor Bogner has succeeded in becoming quite indispensable. Brighton has the advantage not only of being nearer London, but also nearer the hills. One must walk for some distance from Worthing before the lonely Highland district between Sissbury and Lansing Clump is gained, whereas Brighton is partly built upon the downs, and has a little dike railway to boot. But the visitor to Worthing, who, surfeited of sea and parade, makes for the hill country, knows a solitude as profound as anything that Brighton's heights can give him.

Starting point is 05:00:10 Worthing has at least two literary associations. It was there that the most agreeable comedy, the importance of being earnest, was written. The town even gave its name to the principal character, John Worthing, and it was there that Mr. Henley lived while the lyrics in Hawthorne and Lavender were coming to him. The beautiful dedication to the The book is dated Worthing, July the 31st, 1901. Ask me not how they came, these songs of love and death, these dreams of a futile stage, these thumbnails seen in the street, ask me not how or why, but take them for your own, dear wife of twenty years, knowing, oh, who so well, you it was, who made the man that made

Starting point is 05:01:00 these songs of love, death, and the trivial rest, so that, your love elsewhere, these songs, or bad or good, how should they ever have been? Of the villages to the west we have caught glimpses in an earlier chapter, goring, angmering, faring, and so forth. To the north and east are Broadwater, sompting, and lansing. Broadwater is perhaps a shade too near worthing to be Interesting, but Sompting, lying under the Downs, is unspoiled with its fascinating church among the elms and rocks. The church, of which Mr. Griggs has made an exquisite drawing, was built nearly 800 years ago. Within are some curious fragments of sculpture, and a tomb which Mr. Lauer considered to belong to Richard Berry, Bishop of Chichester in the reign of Henry VIII. East of

Starting point is 05:01:55 Sompting lie the two Lansing's, North Lansing on the hill, South Lansing on the coast. East of North Lansing, the true village, stands Lansing College, high above the river, with its imposing chapel, a landmark in the valley of the Adour and far out to sea. End of Chapter 16 Chapter 17 of Highways and Byways in Sussex. This Librevox recording is in the public domain, recording by Peter Yearsley. Highways and Byways in Sussex by E. V. Lucas

Starting point is 05:02:34 Chapter 17 Brighton Brighton is interesting only in its past. Today it is a suburb, a lung, of London, the rapid recuperator of Londoners with whom the pace has been too severe. The mecca of day exertionists, the steady friend of invalids and half-pay officers. It is vast, glittering, gay, But it is not interesting.

Starting point is 05:03:03 To persons who care little for new towns, the value of Brighton lies in its position as the key to good country. In a few minutes one can travel by train to the dike, and leaving booths and swings behind be free of miles of turfed down or cultivated wheeled. In a few minutes one can reach Haseks, the station for Wollstonebury and Ditchling Beacon. In a few minutes, one can reach Fowlerfell.

Starting point is 05:03:30 and plunge into Stanmer Park, or, travelling to the next station, correct the effect of Brighton's hard brilliance, amid the soothing sleepiness of Lewis. In a few minutes on the western line one can be at Shoreham, amid shipbuilders and sail-makers, or on the ramparts of Bramber Castle, or among the distractions of staining cattle market, with Chanktonbury Ring rising solemnly beyond. Brighton, however, knows little of these homes of peace, for she looks only out to sea or towards London. Brighton was, however, interesting a hundred years ago, when the pavilion was the favourite resort of the first gentleman in Europe, whose opulent charms preserved in the permanency of mosaic may be seen in the museum.

Starting point is 05:04:23 When the stain was a centre of fashion and folly, coaches dashed out of castles, Square every morning, and into Castle Square every evening. Mundan and Mrs. Siddens were to be seen at one or other of the theatres. Martha Gunn dipped ladies in the sea. Lord Frederick Beaucleck played long innings on the level, and Mr. Barrymore took a pair of horses up Mrs. Fitzherbert's staircase, and could not get them down again without the assistance of a posse of blacksmiths. Brighton was interesting then, reposing in the smiles of the Prince of Wales and his friends.

Starting point is 05:05:03 But it is interesting no more. With the pavilion a show-place, the dome, a concert hall, the stain and enclosure, Martha Gunn in her grave, the chain pier a memory, Mrs Fitzherbert's house, the headquarters of the Young Men's Christian Association, and the Brighton Road a racing track for cyclists, motor cars and walking stockbrokers. Brighton is entertaining, salubrious, fashionable, what you will, its interest has gone. The town's rise from Brighthelmstone, pronounced Brighton, a fishing village, to Brighton, the marine resort of all that was most dashing in English society, was brought about by Lewis doctor in the days when Lewis was to Brighton, what Brighton now is to Lewis. This doctor was

Starting point is 05:06:00 Richard Russell, born in 1687, who, having published in 1750, a book on the remedial effects of seawater in 1754 removed to Brighton to be able to attend to the many patients that were flocking thither. That book was the beginning of Brighton's greatness. The seal was set upon it in 1783, when the Prince of Wales, then a young man just one and twenty, first visited the town. The Prince's second visit to Brighton was in July 1784. He then stayed at the house engaged for him by his cook, Louis Welch, which, when he decided to build, became the nucleus of the pavilion. The Prince, at this time he was now 22, was full of spirit and enterprise, and in the company of Colonel Hanger, Sir John Laid of Edgingham, and other Bloods, was ready for anything,

Starting point is 05:06:55 even hard work, for in July 1784 he rode from Brighton to London and back again on horseback in ten hours. One of his diversions in 1785 is thus described in the press. On Monday, June the 27th, His Royal Highness abused himself on the stain for some time in attempting to shoot doves with single balls. But with what result we have not heard, though the prince is esteemed a most excellent shot, and seldom presents his peace without doing some execution. The prince, in the course of his diversion, either by design or accident, lowered the tops of several of the chimneys of the Honourable Mr. Wyndham's house. The Prince seemed to live for the stain. When the first scheme of the pavilion was completed in 1787, his bedroom in it was so designed

Starting point is 05:07:50 that he could recline at his ease, and, by means of mirrors, watch everything that was happening on his favourite promenade. The Prince was probably as bad as history states, but he had the quality of his defects, and Brighton was the livelier for the presence of his friends. Lime Regis, Margate, Worthing, Limington, Bogner. These had nothing to offer beyond the sea. Brighton could lay before her guests a thousand odd diversions, in addition to concerts, balls, masquerades, theatres, races. The stain, under the ingenious direction of Colonel Hanger, the Earl of Barrymore and their

Starting point is 05:08:33 associates became an arena for curious contests. Officers and gentlemen, ridden by other officers and gentlemen, competed in races with octogenarians. Strapping young women were induced to run against each other for a new smock or hat. Every kind of race was devised, even to walking backwards, while a tame stag was occasionally liberated and hunted to refuge. To the theatre came in turn all the London players, and once the mysterious Chevalier-Déant was exhibited on its stage in a fencing-bout with a military swordsman. The Promenade Grove, which covered part of the ground between New Road, the pavilion, North Street and Church Street, was also an evening resort in fine weather, and to read about Brighton in its heyday is to receive an impression of continual fine weather,

Starting point is 05:09:29 tempered only by storms of wind, such as never failed to blow when Rowlinson and his pencil were in the town, to supply that robust humorist with the contours on which his reputation was based. The grove was a marine ranley, maskers moved among the trees, orchestras discoursed the latest airs, rockets soared into the sky. In the county paper for October 1st, 1798, I find the following florid reference to a coming event in the grove. The glittering azure and the noble oar of the peacock's wings under the meridian sun cannot afford greater exultation to that bird

Starting point is 05:10:13 than some of our beautiful bell of fashion promised themselves, from a display of their captivating charms at the intended masquerade at Brighton tomorrow ser night. In another issue of the paper for the third, same year are some extemporary lines on Brighton, dated from East Street, which end thus ecstatically. Nature's ever-bounteous hand sure has blessed this happy land. Tis here no brow appears with care.

Starting point is 05:10:47 What would we be but what we are? Before leaving this genial county organ, I must quote from a paragraph in 1796 on the Prince himself, The following couplet of Pope may be fitly applied to His Royal Highness. If, to his share, some manly errors fall, look on his face, and you'll forget them all. What could be kinder? A little earlier in a description of these Anodyne features, the journalist had said of his royal highness's arch-eyes, that they seem to look more ways than one at a time, and especially when they are directed towards the fair sex.

Starting point is 05:11:32 Quieter and more normal pastimes were gossip at the libraries, riding and driving, and bathing in the sea. Bathing seems to have been taken very seriously, with none of the present matter-of-course haphazardness. In an old guide to Brighton, dated 1794, I find the following description of the intrepid dippers of that day. It may not be improper here to introduce a short account of the manner of bathing in the sea at Brighton. By means of a hook ladder, the bather ascends the machine, which is formed of wood and raised on high wheels. He is drawn to a proper distance from the shore, and then plunges into the sea, the guides attending on each side to assist him in recovering the machine, which, being accomplished, he is drawn back to shore. The guides are strong, active and careful, and in every respect adapted to their employments.

Starting point is 05:12:31 Chief of the bathing women for many years was Martha Gunn, whose descendants still sell fish in the town. Chief among the men was the famous Smoker, his real name John Miles, the Prince of Wales's swimming tutor. There is a story of his pulling the prince back by the ear, when he had swum out too far against the old man's instruction. While on another occasion when the sea was too rough for safety, he placed himself in front of his obstinate pupil in a fighting attitude with the words, What do you think your father would say to me if you were drowned? You would say, this is all lying to you, Smoker. If you'd taken proper care of him, Smoker, poor George would still be alive. Another of the pleasant stories of the Prince refers to Smoker's feminine correlative, Martha Gunn.

Starting point is 05:13:20 One day being in the act of receiving an illicit gift of butter in the pavilion kitchen, just as the prince entered the room, she slipped the pat into her pocket. But not quite in time. Talking with the utmost affability, the prince proceeded to edge her closer and closer to the great fire, pocket-side nearest, and there he kept her, until her sin had found her out, and dress and butter were both ruined. Doubtless his royal highness made both good, all the minor generosities. An old book, quoted in Mr. Bishop's interesting volume, A Peep into the past, gives the following scrap of typical conversation between Martha and a visitor.

Starting point is 05:14:06 "'What, my old friend, Martha?' said I. "'Still queen of the ocean, still industrious and busy as ever, "'and how do you find yourself?' "'Well and hearty, thank God, sir,' replied she, "'but rather hobbling. "'I don't bathe, because I ain't so strong as I used to be. So I superintend on the beach, for I'm up before any of them. You may always find me and my picture at one exact spot every morning by six o'clock. You wear vastly well, my old friend. Pray what age may

Starting point is 05:14:35 be? Only 88, sir. In fact, 89 come next Christmas pudding. I, and though I've lost my teeth, I can mumble it with as good relish and hearty appetite as anybody. I'm glad to hear it. Brighton would not look like itself without you, Martha, said I. I. "'Oh, I don't know. It's like to do without me some day,' answered she. "'But while I've health and life I must be bustling amongst my old friends and benefactors. I think I ought to be proud, for I have as many boughs from man, woman, and child as the prince himself. I, I do believe the very dogs in the town know me.' "'And your son, how is he?' said I.

Starting point is 05:15:15 "'Brave and charming. He lives in East Street. If Your Honour wants any prime pickled salmon or oysters, there you have them.' On the prince's birthday, and on the birthday of his royal brothers, Brighton went mad with excitement. Oxen were roasted whole, strong beer ran like water, and among the amusements, single-wicket matches were played. One of the good deeds of the prince was the making of a cricket ground. Before 1791, when the prince's ground was laid out, matches had been played on the neighbouring hills, or on the level. The Prince's ground stood partly on the level, as it now is, and partly on Park Crescent. In 1823 it became Ireland's Gardens, upon whose turf the most famous cricketers of England played until 1847.

Starting point is 05:16:07 In 1848, the Brunswick ground at Hove was opened, close to the sea, into which the ball was occasionally hit by Mr. C. I. Thornton. The present hove ground dates from 1871. I like to think that George IV, though no great cricketer himself, he played now and then when young, with great condescension and affability, is the true father of Sussex cricket. He may deserve all that Lamb, Lee Hunt and Thackeray said of him, but without his influence and patronage,

Starting point is 05:16:42 the history of cricket would be the poorer by many bright pages. Where Montpellier Crescent now stands was 80 years ago, the ground on which Frederick William Lilywhite, the non-paray, used to bowl to gentlemen, young or old, who were prepared to put down five shillings for the privilege. Little Wisden acted as a long stop. Lily White was the real creator of round-arm bowling, although Tom Walker of the Hambledon Club was the pioneer,

Starting point is 05:17:12 and James Broadbridge, an earlier exponent. It was not until 1828 that round arm was legalised. Me bowling, pilch-batting, and box-keeping wicket, that's cricket, was the old man's dictum, or, when I bowls and full of bats, a variant has it, bowled being pronounced, to rhyme with owl, then you'll see cricket. He was 35 before he began his first-class career. he bowled fewer than a dozen wides in 27 years, and his myriad wickets cost only seven runs apiece.

Starting point is 05:17:50 Brighton, in its parmiest days, was practically contained within the streets that bear boundary names, North Street, East Street, West Street, and the sea, with the parish church high on the hill. On the other side of the stain were the naked downs, while the Lewis Road and the London Road were mere thoroughfeworthy, between equally bare hills, with a few houses here and there. During the town's most fashionable period, which continued for nearly fifty years,

Starting point is 05:18:19 say from 1785 to 1835, everyone journeyed thither, and indeed everyone goes to Brighton today, although its visitors are now anonymous, where, of old they were notorious. I believe that Robert Browning is the only eminent Englishman that never visited the town. Perhaps it does little for poets. Yet Byron was there as a young man, much in the company of a charming youth with which he often sailed in the channel,

Starting point is 05:18:49 and who afterwards was discovered to be a girl. A minor poet Horace Smith gives us in Horace in London, a sprightly picture of the town in 1813, from which we see that the changes between now and then are only in externals. Brighton.

Starting point is 05:19:08 Solvitur Acris Hayem's gratavikeveris Now fruitful autumn lifts his sun-burnt head The slighted park Few Cambric muslins whiten The dry machines revisit Ocean's bed

Starting point is 05:19:25 And Horace quits Awhile the town For Brighton The sit Forgoes his box at Turnham Green To pick up health and shells With amphitrity Pleasures frail daughters

Starting point is 05:19:38 trip along the stain, led by the dame the Greeks call Aphrodite. Phoebus the tanner plies his fiery trade. The graceful nymphs ascend Judea's ponies, scale the west cliff, or visit the parade, while poor papa in town a patient drone is. Loose trousers snatch the wreath from pantaloons. Nankine of late were worn the sultry weather in. But now, so will the prince's light dragoon. white gene have triumphed over their Indian brethren.

Starting point is 05:20:12 Here with choice food, earth smiles, and ocean yawns, intent alike to please the London glutton. This, for our breakfast, proffers shrimps and prawns, that, for our dinner, south down lamb and mutton. Yet here, as elsewhere, death impartial rains, visits alike, the cot and the pavilion, and for a bribe with equal scorn disdains my half a crown and bearings half a million. Alas, how short the span of human pride!

Starting point is 05:20:47 Time flies and hopes, romantic schemes are undone. Coswell as coach that carries four inside waits to take back the unwilling bard to London. Ye circulating novelists, adieu, long, envious cords, my black portmanteau titan. Billiards, begone, avaunt, illegal loo, farewell old oceans' bauble, glittering brighton. Long shalt thou laugh thine enemies to scorn, proud as Phoenicia, queen of watering-places. Boys yet unbreached, and virgins yet unborn, on thy bleak downs, shall tan their blooming faces. I believe that the phrase Queen of Watering Places was first used in this poem.

Starting point is 05:21:43 An odd glimpse of a kind of manners, now extinct, in Brighton visitors in its palmy days, is given in Hazlitz, notes of a journey through France and Italy. Haslet, like his friends the Lambs, when they visited Versailles in 1822, embarked at Brighton. That was in 1824. He reached the town by coach in the evening, in the height of the season, and it was then that the incident occurred to which I have referred. In Hazlitt's words, a lad offered to conduct us to an inn. Did he think there was room? He was sure of it. Did he belong to the inn? No, he was from London. In fact, he was a young gentleman from town, who had been stopping some time at the White Horse Hotel, and who wished to employ his spare time when he was not riding out on a blood horse. in serving the house, and relieving the perplexities of his fellow-travellers. No one but a Londoner would volunteer his assistance in this way. Amiable land of cocaine, happy in itself, and in making others happy,

Starting point is 05:22:49 blessed exuberance of self-satisfaction that overflows upon others, delightful impertinence that is ford to oblige them. Brighton's decline as a fashionable resort came with the railway. Coaches were expensive and few, and the number of visitors which they brought to the town was negotiable. But when the trains began to pour crowds upon the platforms, the distinction of Brighton was lost. Society retreated, and the last master of ceremonies, Lieutenant Colonel Eld, died. It was of this admirable aristocrat that Sidney Smith wrote so happily in one of his letters from Brighton. A gentleman attired Point DeVise, walking down the parade like A-gag, delicately. He pointed out his

Starting point is 05:23:40 toes like a dancing-master, but carried his head like a potentate. As he passed the stands of flies, he nodded approval, as if he owned them all. As he approached the little goat carriages, he looked askance over the edge of his starched neck-cloth and blandly smiled encouragement. Sure that in following him I was treading in the steps of greatness, I went on to the pier, and there I was confirmed in my conviction of his eminence, for I observed him look first over the right side, and then over the left, with an expression of serene satisfaction spreading over his countenance, which said as plainly as if he had spoken to the sea aloud. That is right. You are low tide at present, but never mind, in a couple of hours I shall make you high tide again.

Starting point is 05:24:34 Beyond its connection with George IV, Brighton has played but a small part in history, her only other monarch being Charles II, who merely tarried in the town for a while on his way to France, in 1651, as we have seen. The king's head in West Street claims to be the scene of the merry monarch's bargain with Captain Nicholas Tattersall, who conveyed him across the channel. But there is good reason to believe that the inn was the George in Middle Street, now demolished, but situated on the site of number 44. The epitaph on Tattesol in Brighton Old Parish Church contains the following lines. When Charles the Great was nothing but a breath, this valiant soul stepped between his. him and death, which glorious act of his for church and state, eight princes in one day did gratulate. The episode of the captain's cautious bargaining with the king, of which Colonel Gunter tells

Starting point is 05:25:34 in the narrative from which I have quoted in an earlier chapter, is carefully suppressed in the memorial tablet. Another famous Bryson character and friend of George IV was Phoebe Hessel, who died at the age of 106, and whose tombstone may be seen in the Old Churchyard. Phoebe had a varied career. For having fallen in love when only 15, with Samuel Golding, a private in Kirk's Lambs, she dressed herself as a man, enlisted in the fifth regiment of foot, and followed him to the West Indies. She served there for five years, and afterwards at Gibraltar,

Starting point is 05:26:12 never disclosing her sex, until her lover was wounded and sent to Plymouth, when she told the general's wife, and was allowed to follow and nurse him. On leaving hospital, Golding married her, and they lived, I hope, happily, together for 20 years. When Golding died, Phoebe married Hessel. In her old age, she became an important, Brighton character, and, attracting the notice of the prince, was provided by him with a pension of 18 pounds a year, and the epithet, a jolly good fellow. It was also the prince's money which paid the stone-cutter. When visited by a curious student of human nature, as she lay on her deathbed, Phoebe talked much of the past, he records, and seemed proud of having kept her secret when in the army.

Starting point is 05:27:01 But I told it to the ground, she added. I dug a hole that would hold a gallon, and whispered it there. Phoebe kept her faculties to the last, and to the last sold her apples to the quality by the sea, returned repartee with extraordinary vervent for false delicacy, and knew as much of the quality of Brighton liquor as if she were a soldier in earnest. One ought to mention Pitt's visit to Brighton in 1785 as an historical event, if only for the proof which it offers that Sussex folk have an effective, if not nimble, wit. I use Mr. Bishop's words. Pitt, during his journey to Brighton in the previous week, had some experience of popular

Starting point is 05:27:49 feeling in respect to the obnoxious window-tax. Whilst horses were being changed at Horsham, he ordered lights for his carriage, and the persons assembled, learning who was within, indulged pretty freely in ironical remarks on light and darkness. The only effect upon the minister was that he often laughed heartily. Whilst in Brighton, a country glove-maker hung about to the door of his house on the stain, and when the minister came out showed him a hedger's cuff, which he held in one hand, and a bush in the other, to explain the use of it, and asked him

Starting point is 05:28:24 if the former, being an article he made and sold, was subject to a stamp duty. Mr. Pitt appeared rather struck with the oddity and bluntness of the man's question, and, mounting his horse, waved a satisfactory answer by referring him to the stamp office for information. Brighton's place in literature makes up for her historical poverty. Dr. Johnson was the first great man of letters to visit the town. He stayed in West Street with the thrales, rode on the downs, and, after his wont, abused their bareness, making a joke about our dearth of trees,

Starting point is 05:29:03 similar to one on the same topic in Scotland. The doctor also bathed. Mrs Piazzi relates that one of the bathing men seeing him swim remarked, Why, sir, you must have been a stout-hearted gentleman 40 years ago, much to the doctor's satisfaction. It was, I always think, in Hampton Place, that Mrs. Pipchin, whose husband broke his heart in the Peruvian minds, kept her establishment for children, and did her best to discourage Paul Dombey. How does the description run? This celebrated Mrs. Pipchin was a marvellous, ill-favoured, ill-conditioned old lady of a stooping figure.

Starting point is 05:29:43 with a mottled face like bad marble, a hook nose, and a hard grey eye, that looked as if it might have been hammered at on an anvil, without sustaining any injury. Forty years at least had elapsed, since the Peruvian mines had been the death of Mr. Pippchin, but his relict still wore black bombazine of such a lustreless, deep, dead, sombre shade that gas itself couldn't light her up after dark, and her presence was a quencher to any number of candles. She was generally spoken of as a great manager of children, and the secret of her management was to give them everything that they didn't like, and nothing that they did, which was found to sweeten their disposition very much. She was such a bitter old lady that

Starting point is 05:30:30 one was tempted to believe that there had been some mistake in the application of the Peruvian machinery, and that all her waters of gladness and milk of human kindness had been pumped out dry, instead of the mines. The castle of this ogress and child queller was in a steep by-street at Brighton, where the soil was more than unusually chalky, flinty and sterile, and the houses were more than usually brittle and thin, where the small front gardens had the unaccountable property of producing nothing but marigolds, whatever was sown in them, and where snails were constantly discovered holding on to the street doors, and other public places they were not expected to ornament, with the tenacity of cupping glasses. In the wintertime the air couldn't be got out of the castle,

Starting point is 05:31:20 and in the summertime it couldn't be got in. There was such a continual reverberation of wind in it, that it sounded like a great shell which the inhabitants were obliged to hold to their ears night and day whether they liked it or not. It was not, naturally, a fresh-smelling house, and in the window of the front parlour which was never opened, Mrs. Pipchin kept a collection of plants in pots, which imparted an earthy flavour of their own to the establishment. However choice examples of their kind too, these plants were of a kind peculiarly adapted to the embalment of Mrs. Pipchin. There were half a dozen specimens of the cactus, writhing round bits of alas, like hairy serpents, another specimen shooting out broad claws like a green lobster,

Starting point is 05:32:10 several creeping vegetables, possessed of sticky and adhesive leaves, and one uncomfortable flower-pot hanging to the ceiling, which appeared to have boiled over, and, tickling people underneath with its long green ends, reminded them of spiders, in which Mrs. Pipchin's dwelling was uncommonly prolific, though perhaps it challenged competition still more proudly in the season, in point of earwigs. From Mrs. Pipchins, Paul Dombey passed to the forcing-house of Dr. Blimber, Mrs. Blimber, Miss Blimber, and Mr. Feeder, B.A., also at Brighton, where he met Mr. Toots. The Doctors, says Dickens, was a mighty fine. house, fronting the sea, not a joyful style of house within, but quite the contrary. Sad-coloured

Starting point is 05:33:03 curtains, whose proportions were spare and lean, hid themselves despondently behind the windows. The tables and chairs were put away in rows like figures in a sum. Fires were so rarely lighted in the rooms of ceremony that they felt like wells, and a visitor represented the bucket. The dining room seemed the last place in the world where any eating or drinking was likely to occur. There was no sound through all the house but the ticking of a great clock in the hall, which made itself audible in the very garrets, and sometimes a dull queuing of young gentlemen at their lessons, like the murmurings of an assemblage of melancholy pigeons.

Starting point is 05:33:46 Dr. Blimbers must have been, I think, somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Bedford Hotel, Among other writers who have found Brighton good to work in, I might name the authors of The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton and A System of Synthetic Philosophy. Mr. William Black was for many years a familiar figure on the Kemp Town Parade, and Brighton plays a part in at least two of his charming tales, the beautiful wretch, and an early and very sprightly novel called Kilmeny. Brighton should be proud to think that Mr Herbert Spencer chose her as a retreat in which to come to his conclusions, but I doubt if she is.

Starting point is 05:34:29 Thackeray's affection is, however, cherished by the town, his historic praise of Merry, cheerful Dr. Brighton, having a commercial value hardly to be overestimated. Brighton in return gave Thackeray Lord Stain's immortal name, and served as a background for many of his scenes. Although Brighton has still a fishing industry, the spectacle of its fishermen refraining from work is not an uncommon one. It was once the custom I read, and perhaps still is, for these men, when casting their nets for mackerel or herring, to stand with bare heads, repeating in unison these words. There they goes, then. God Almighty send us a blessing it is to be hoped. As each barrel, which is attached to every two-night, which is attached to every two-night, nets out of the fleet, or 120 nets, was cast overboard, they would cry, Watch barrel, watch, mackerel's for to catch, white may they be like a blossom on a tree, God send thousands, one, two, and three, some by their heads, some by their tails. God sends thousands, and never fails.

Starting point is 05:35:41 When the last net was overboard, the master said, Sees all, and then lowered the foremast, and laid to the wind, If he were to say, last net, he would expect never to see his nets again. There are more handsome women in Brighton than anywhere else in the world, wrote Richard Jefferies some twenty years ago. They are so common that gradually the standard of taste in the mind rises, and good-looking women who would be admired in other places pass by without notice. Where all the flowers are roses, you do not see a rose.

Starting point is 05:36:19 shirley brooks must have visited brighton on a curiously bad day for seeing no pretty face he wrote of it as the city of the plain richard jefferies who lived for a while at hove blessed also the treelessness of brighton therein he saw much of its healing virtue let nothing he wrote cloud the descent of those glorious beams of sunlight which fall at brighton watch the pebbles on the beach the foam runs up and wets them. Almost before it can slip back, the sunshine has dried them again. So they are alternately wetted and dried, bitter sea and glowing light, bright clear air, dry as dry. That describes a place. Spain is the country of sunlight, burning sunlight. Brighton is a Spanish town in England, a Seville. The principal inland attraction of Brighton is still the pavilion. which is indeed the town's symbol.

Starting point is 05:37:22 On passing through its many, numerous and fantastic rooms, one is struck by their incredible smallness. Sidney Smith's jest, if it were his, I find Wilberforce the abolitionist says something similar, is still unimproved. One would think that St. Paul's Cathedral had come to Brighton and ppped. Cobbitt, in his rough and homely way, also said something to the point about the Prince's Pleasure House.

Starting point is 05:37:51 Take a square box, the sides of which are three feet and a half, and the height a foot and a half. Take a large Norfolk turnip, cut off the green of the leaves, leave the stalks nine inches long. Tie these round with a string three inches from the top, and put the turnip on the middle of the top of the box. Then take four turnips of half the size, treat them in the same way, and put them on the corners of the box. Then take a considerable number of bulbs of the Crown Imperial, the Narcissus, the Hyacinth, the Tulip, the Crocus and others, let the leaves of each have sprouted to about an inch, more or less according to the size of the bulb. Put all these pretty promiscuously but pretty thickly on the top of the box. Then stand off and look at your architecture.

Starting point is 05:38:37 To its ordinary museum in the town, Brighton has added the collection of stuffed birds made by the late Mr. E. T. Booth, which he housed in a long gallery in the road that leads to the dike. Mr. Booth, when he shot a bird in its native haunts, carried away some of its surroundings, in order that the taxidermist might reproduce as far as possible its natural environment. Hence, every case has a value that is missing when one sees merely the isolated stuffed bird. In one instance, realism has dictated the addition of a clutch of pipette's eggs found on the bass rock, in a nest, invisible to the spectator. The collection in the Natural History Museum at South Kensington is, of course, more considerable and finer, but some of Mr Booth's

Starting point is 05:39:27 cases are certainly superior, and his collection has the special interest of having been made by one man. Brighton has another very interesting possession in the collection of old domestic pottery in the museum, an assemblage, the most entertaining and varied that I know, of jugs and mugs, plates and ornaments, all English, all quaint and characteristic, too, and mostly inscribed with mottoes or decorated with designs in celebration of such events as the Battle of Waterloo, or the discomfiture of Mr Pitt, or a victory of Tom Cribb. Others are ceramic satires on the drunkenness folly, or the inconstancy of women. Why are the potters of our own day, so dull? History is still being made. Human nature is not less frail, but I see no genial commentary on jug or

Starting point is 05:40:25 dish. Is it the march of taste? End of Chapter 17. Chapter 18 of Highways and Byways in Sussex. This Librevox is in the public domain. Recording by Peter Yearsley Highways and Byways in Sussex by E. V. Lucas Chapter 18. Rottingdeen and Wheat-Ears Beyond Kemp Town's serene and silent line of massive houses is the new road that leads to Rottingdeen.

Starting point is 05:40:58 The old road fell into the sea some few years ago, the fourth or fifth to share that fate. But the pleasantest way thither is on foot over the turf that tops. the white cliffs. By diverging inland between Brighton and Drottingdean, just beyond the most imposing girls' school in the kingdom, Ovingdean is reached, one of the nestling homestids of the Downs. It is chiefly known as providing Harrison Ainsworth with the very pretty title of one of his stories, Ovingdine Grange. The gallant novelist, however, was a poor historian in this book, for Charles II, as we have seen, never set foot east.

Starting point is 05:41:39 of Brighton on the occasion of his journey of escape over the Sussex Downs. The legend that lodges him at Ovingdeen, although one can understand how Ovingdeen must cherish it, cannot stand. Mock Beggars Hall in the same romance is South Over Grange at Lewis. Peace hath her victory is no less renowned than war. Ovingdine is famous not only for its false association with Charles II, but as the burial place of Thomas Pelling, an old-time vicar, the first person who introduced Mangal-Wurzel into England. Ruttingdeen today must be very much of the size of Brighton two centuries ago,

Starting point is 05:42:21 before fashion came upon it, but the little village is hardly likely ever to creep over its surrounding hills in the same way. The past few years, however, have seen its growth from an obscure and inaccessible settlement to a shrine. It is only of quite recent, date that a glimpse of Rottingdeen has become almost as necessary to the Brighton visitor as the journey to the dike. Had the legend of the Briar Rose never been painted, had Mulvaney, Ortheris and Leroyd remained unchronicaled, and the British soldier escaped the label absent-minded beggar. Rottingdeen might still be invaded only occasionally, for it was when, following Sir Edward Byrne Jones, Mr. Rajad Kipling found the little white village good to make a home in, that its public life began.

Starting point is 05:43:12 Although Mr. Kipling has now gone farther into the depths of the county, and the great draughtsman, some of whose stained-glass designs are in the church, is no more. The habit of riding to Rottingdeen is likely, however, to persist in Brighton. The village is quaint and simple, particularly so after the last bus is stale. but it is valuable, rather as the key to some of the finest solitudes of the Downs, in the great uninhabited hill district between the racecourse at Brighton and New Haven, between Lewis and the Sea, than for any merits of its own. One other claim has it, however, on the notice of the pilgrim, William Black, lies in the churchyard. Mr. Kipling, as I have said, has now removed his household gods, farther inland, de Burwash, but his heart and mind must be still among the downs.

Starting point is 05:44:08 The Burwash country, good as it is, can, I think, never inspire him to such verse as he wrote in The Five Nations, on the turf hills about his old home. No tender-hearted garden crowns, No bosomed woods adorn, A blunt, bow-headed, whale-backed downs. But gnarled and writhen thorn,

Starting point is 05:44:31 Bare slopes were chasing shadows skim, And through the gaps revealed, Belt upon belt, The wooded, dim, blue goodness of the wield, Clean of a fissuous fence or hedge, Half-wild and wholly tame, The wise turf cloaks the white cliff-edge, As when the Romans came!

Starting point is 05:44:52 What sign of those that fought And died at shift of sword and sword? The barrow and the camp abide, the sunlight and the sward. Here leaps ashore the full south-west, All heavy-winged with brine. Here lies above the folded crest, The channels leaden line.

Starting point is 05:45:12 And here the sea-fogs lap and cling. And here, each warning each, The sheep-bells and the ship-bells ring along the hidden beach. We have no waters to delight to our broad and brook-less veils, Only the dew-pond on the height, unfed, that never fails, whereby no tattered herbage tells which way the season flies, only our close bit time that smells like dawn in paradise. Here through the strong and salty days the unshaded silence thrills, or little lost-down churches, praise the Lord who made the hills.

Starting point is 05:45:56 But here the old gods guard there round, and, in her secret heart, the heathen kingdom Wilfrid found dreams, as she dwells apart. Of old, the best wheat-eer country was above Rottingdeen, but the Southdown Shepherds no longer have the wheat-eer money that used to add so appreciably to their wages in the summer months. A combination of circumstances has brought about this loss. One is the decrease in wheat-eers, another the protection of the bird by law, and a third the refusal of the farmers to allow their men any longer to neglect the flocks by setting and tending snares. But in the 17th, 18th and early part of the 19th centuries, wheat-ears were taken on the downs in enormous quantities,

Starting point is 05:46:45 and formed a part of every South County banquet in their season. People visited Brighton solely to eat them, as they now go to Greenwich for whitebait and to Colchester for oysters. This is how Fuller describes the little creature in the worthies. Wheat-eers is a bird peculiar to this county, hardly found out of it. It is so called because fatest when wheat is ripe, whereon it feeds, being no bigger than a lark which it equaleth in fineness of the flesh, far exceedeth in the fatness thereof. The worst is that being only seasonable in the heat of summer,

Starting point is 05:47:22 and naturally larded with lumps of fat, it is soon subject to co. corrupt, so that, though abounding within forty miles, London polterers have no mind to meddle with them, which no care in carriage can keep from putrefaction. That pallet-man shall pass in silence, who, being seriously demanded his judgment concerning the abilities of a great lord, concluded him a man of very weak parts, because once he saw him at a great feast feed on chickens when there were wheat-ears on the table. I will add no more in praise of this bird, for fear some female reader may fall in longing for it, and unhappily be disappointed of her desire.

Starting point is 05:48:04 A contemporary of Fuller, John Taylor, from whom I have already quoted, and shall quote again, thus unscientifically dismisses the Wheatier in one of his doggerel narratives. Six weeks, or thereabouts, they are catched there, and are well-nigh eleven months, God knows where. As a matter of fact, the winter home of the wheat-ear is Africa. The capture of wheat-eers, mostly illegally by nets, still continues in a very small way to meet a languid demand, but the Sussex Autolan, as the little bird was sometimes called, has passed from the bill of fare. Wheat ears which, despite Fuller, have no connection with ears of wheat, the word signifying white tail, still abound, skimming over the turf in little groups, but they no longer fly towards the dinner

Starting point is 05:48:55 table. The best and most interesting description that I know of the old manner of taking them is to be found in Mr. W. H. Hudson's nature in Downland. The season began in July, when the little fat birds rest on the downs on their way from Scotland and Northern England to their winter home, and lasted through September. In July, says Mr. Hudson, the shepherds may be their coops, as their traps were called, a T-shaped trench about fourteen inches long, over which the two long, narrow sods cut neatly out of the turf were adjusted, grass downwards. A small opening was left at the end for ingress, and there was room in the passage for the bird to pass through towards the chinks of light, coming from the two ends of the cross-passage.

Starting point is 05:49:40 At the inner end of the passage a horsehair spring was set, by which the bird was caught by the neck as it passed in. But the noose did not, as a rule, strangle the bird. On some of the high downs near the coast, notably at beechy head, at Burlingap, at sea-foot, and in the neighbourhood of Rottingdeen, the shepherds made so many coops, placed at small distances apart, that the downs in some places looked as if they had been ploughed. In September when the season was over, the sods were carefully put back, roots down in the places, and the smooth green surface was restored to the hills. On bright clear days few birds would be caught, but in showery weather the traps would all be full.

Starting point is 05:50:21 This is because when the sun is obscured wheat-eers are afraid, and take refuge under stones or in whatever hole may offer. The price of each wheat-eer was a penny, and it was the custom of the persons in the neighbourhood who wanted them for dinner, to visit the traps, take out the birds, and leave the money in their place. The shepherd on returning would collect his gains and reset the traps. Near Brighton, however, most of the shepherds caught only for dealers, and one firm, until some twenty years ago, maintained the practice of giving an annual supper at the end of the season, at which the shepherds would be paid in the mass for their spoil.

Starting point is 05:50:59 An old shepherd, who had been for years on Westside farm near Brighton, spoke thus in 1882, as Mr. Borough relates in his Birds of Sussex. The most I ever caught in one day was thirteen dozen, but we thought it a good day if we caught three or four dozen. We sold them to a polterer at Brighton, who took all we could catch in a season at 18 pence a dozen. From what I've heard from old shepherds, it cannot be doubted that they were caught in much greater numbers a century ago than of late.

Starting point is 05:51:30 I have heard them speak of an immense number being taken in one day by a shepherd at East Dean near Beechy Head. I think they said he took nearly a hundred dozen, so many that they could not thread them on crow quills in the usual manner, but he took off his round frock and made a sack of it to put some into, and his wife did the same with her petticoat. This must have happened when there was a great flight. Their numbers are now so decreased that some shepherds do not set up any coops, as it does not pay for the trouble. Although wheat-ears are no longer caught, the Brighton bird-catcher is a very

Starting point is 05:52:04 busy man. Goldfinches fall in extraordinary plenty to his nets. A bird-catcher told Mr. Bora that he once caught 11 dozen of them at one hall, and in 1860 the annual take at Worthing was one thousand one hundred and fifty-four dozen. Larks are also caught in great numbers, also with nets. The old system still practised in France of luring them with glasses, having become obsolete. Knox has an interesting description of the lark glass and its uses. A piece of wood about a foot and a half long, four inches deep and three inches wide, is planed off at two sides, so as to resemble the roof of a well-known toy, eclipsed a Noah's Ark, but more than twice as long. In the sloping sides are set several bits of looking-glass.

Starting point is 05:52:52 A long iron spindle, the lower end of which is sharp and fixed in the ground, passes freely through the centre. On this the instrument turns and even spins rapidly when a string has been attached and is pulled by the performer, who generally stands at a distance of 15 or 20 yards from the decoy. The reflection of the sun's rays from these little revolving mirrors seemed to possess a mysterious attraction for the larks, for they descend in great numbers from a considerable height in the air, hover over the spot, and suffer themselves to be shot at repeatedly, without attempting to leave the field or to continue their course. To return to Rottingdeen, it was above the village seven hundred years ago that a sore scrimmish occurred

Starting point is 05:53:36 between the French and the cluniac prior of Lewis. The prior was defeated and captured, but the nature of his resistance decided the enemy that it was better, perhaps, to retreat to their boats. The holy man, although worsted, thus had the satisfaction of having proved to the king that a cluniac monk in this country was not, as was supposed at court, necessarily on the side of England's foes, even though they were of his own race. According to the scheme of this book, we should now return to Brighton, but, as I have said, the right use to which to put Rottingdeen

Starting point is 05:54:13 is as the starting point for a day among the hills. Once out and above the village, the world is your own. A conspiracy to populate a part of the Downs near the sea, a mile or so to the east of Rottingdeen, seems gloriously to have failed. But what was intended may be learned from the skeleton road, that duly fenced in disfigure the turf. They even have names these unlovely parallelograms.

Starting point is 05:54:41 One is Chatsworth Avenue, and Ambleside Avenue, another. End of Chapter 18. Chapter 19 of Highways and Byways in Sussex. This Librevox recording is in the public domain, recording by Peter Yearsley. Highways and Byways in Sussex by E.V. Lucas. Chapter 19 Shoreham The cliffs that make the coast between New Haven and Brighton so attractive slope gradually to level ground at the aquarium, and never reappear in Sussex on the channel's edge again,

Starting point is 05:55:22 although in the east they rise whiter and higher, with a few long gaps, all the way to Dover. It is partly for this reason that the walk from Brighton to Shoreham has no beauty save of the sea. Hove, which used to be a disreputable little smuggling village, sufficiently far from Brighton for risks to be run with safety, is now the well-ordered home of wealthy rectitude. Mrs. Grundy's seaside home is here. Hove is perhaps the genteelest town in the world, although once, only a poor hundred years ago,

Starting point is 05:55:59 there was no service in the church on a certain Sunday, because, as the clerk informed the complacent vicar, the pews is full of tubs and the pulpit full of tea. A pleasant fact to reflect upon during church parade, amid the gay yet discreet prosperity of the Brunswick lawns. West of Hove, and between that town and ports laid by the sea, is Aldrington. Aldrington is now new houses and brick fields. Thirty years ago it was nought,

Starting point is 05:56:32 But five hundred years ago, it was the principal township in these parts, and bright Helmerstone, a mere insignificant cluster of hovels. Centuries earlier it was more important still, for, according to some authorities, it was the Portus Adurnai of the Romans, the river Adur which now enters the sea between Shoram and Southwark, once flowed along the line of the present canal and the Wish Pond, and so out into the sea. I have seen it stated that the mouth of the river was even more easterly still, somewhere opposite the Norfolk Hotel at Brighton, but this may be fanciful, and can now hardly be proven.

Starting point is 05:57:12 The suggestion, however, adds interest to a walk on the otherwise unromantic Brunswick lawns. In those days the Roman ships entering the river here would sail up as far as Bramber. Between the river and the sea were then some two miles, possibly more, of flat meadowland. on which Aldrington was largely built. Over the ruins of that Aldrington, the channel now washes. Beyond Aldrington is Portslaid, with a pretty inland village on the hill. Beyond Portslaid is Sothick, notable for its green, and beyond Sothick is Shoreham. Southic and Shoreham both have that interest which can never be wanting to the seaport that has seen better days.

Starting point is 05:57:58 The life of a harbour, whatever its state of decay, is eternally absorbing, and in Shoreham Harbour, one gets such life at its laziest. The smell of tar, the sound of hammers, the laughter and whistling of the loafers, the continuous changing of the tide, the opening of the lock-gates, the departure of the tug, its triumphant return, leading in custody a timber-laden bark from the Baltic, a little self-conscious. and ashamed, as if caught red-handed in iniquity by this fussy little officer. The independent sailing of a grimy steamer, bound for Sunderland and more coal. The elaborate wharfing of the bark. All these things on a hot, still day, can exercise an hypnotic influence more real and strange than the open sea. The romance and mystery of the sea may indeed be more intimately near one on a harbour wharf, than on the deck of a liner in mid-ocean. Shoreham has its place in history.

Starting point is 05:59:04 Thence, as we have seen, sails Charles II in Captain Tattersall's Enterprise. Four hundred and fifty years earlier, King John landed here with his army, when he came to succeed to the English throne. In the reign of Edward III, Shoreham supplied 26 ships to the Navy, but in the 15th century,

Starting point is 05:59:25 the sea began an encroachment on the... the bar which disclassed the harbour. It is now unimportant, most of the trade having passed to New Haven, but in its days of prosperity, great cargoes of corn and wine were landed here from the continent. When people now say Shoreham, they mean New Shoreham, but Old Shoreham is the parent. Old Shoreham, however, declined to village state when the present harbour was made. New Shoreham Church, quite the noblest in the county, dates probably from about 1100. It was originally the property of the Abbey of Somor, to whom it was presented, together with Old Shoreham Church, by William de Browse, the Lord of Bramber Castle. It is New Shoreham Church which Mr. Swinburne had in mind, or so I imagine, in his noble poem on the South Coast.

Starting point is 06:00:21 Strong as time, and as faith sublime, Clothes round with shadows of hopes and fears. Nights and morrows and joys and sorrows, Alive with passion of prayers and tears, stands the shrine that has seen decline eight hundred waxing and waning years. Tower set square to the storms of air and change of season that glooms and glows. wall and roof of it tempest-proof and equal ever to suns and snows bright with riches of radiant niches and pillars smooth as a straight stem grows stately stands it the work of hands unknown of statelier afar and near rise around it the heights that bound our landward gaze from the seaboard here downs that swerve and aspire in curve and change of heights that the dawn holds dear. Dawn falls fair on the grey walls there, confronting dawn,

Starting point is 06:01:30 On the low green lee, lone and sweet as for fairies' feet, Held sacred, silent and strange and free, Wild and wet with its rills, But yet more fair falls dawn on the fairer sea. Rose-red Eve on the seas that heave, Sinks fair as dawn When the first ray peers Winds are glancing

Starting point is 06:01:56 From sun-bright-lancing To Shoreham, crowned with the grace of years Shoreham, clad with the sunset, Glad and grave with glory that death reveres. In the churchyard There was once, and maybe still, But I did not find it, An epitaph on a child of eight months,

Starting point is 06:02:18 in the form of a dialogue between the deceased and its parents. It contained these lines, I trust in Christ, the Blessed Babe replied, then smiled, then sighed, then closed its eyes, and died. Shoreham's notoriety as a pocket-borrow, it returned two members to Parliament, who were elected in the north transept of the church,

Starting point is 06:02:45 came to a head in 1701, when the naive means by which Mr. Gould had proved his fitness were revealed. It seemed that Mr. Gould, who had never been to Shoreham before, directed the crier to give notice with his bell that every voter who came to the King's arms would receive a guinea in which to drink Mr. Gould's good health. This fact being made public by the defeated candidate, Mr. Gould was unseated. At the following election, such was the enduring power of the original, Guinea, he was elected again. After the life of the harbour, the chief interest of Shoreham

Starting point is 06:03:24 is its river, the Adur, a yellow, sluggish, shallow stream, of great width near the town, which at low tide dwindles into a streamlet, trickling through a desert of mud, but at the full has the beauty of a lake. Mr. Swinburne, in the same poem from which I have been quoting, thus describes the river at evening. Skies fulfilled with the sundown, Stilled and splendid, spread as a flower that spreads, Pave with rarer device, and fairer than heavens, The luminous oyster-beds,

Starting point is 06:04:00 Grass embanked, and in square plots ranked, Inlaid with gems that the sundown sheds. To the ador belongs also another lyric. It is printed in hawthorn and lavender, to which I have already referred, and is one of Mr. Henley's most characteristic and remarkable poems. In Shoreham River, hurrying down to the live sea, by working, marrying, breeding, Shoreham Town, breaking the sunsets, wistful and solemn dream, an old black rotter of a boat, past service to the laboring, tumbling float, lay stranded in midstream.

Starting point is 06:04:44 with a horrid list, a frightening lapse from the line, that made me think of legs and a broken spine. Soon, all too soon, ungainly and forlorn to lie full in the eye of the cynical, discomfortable moon, that, as I looked, stared from the fading sky, a clown's face flowered for work, and by and by the wide-winged sunset, wand and wane. The lean night wind crept westward, chilling and sighing. The poor old hulk remained, stuck helpless in mid-eb.

Starting point is 06:05:26 And I knew why. Why, as I looked, my heart felt crying. For as I looked, the good green earth seemed dying, dying or dead. And as I looked on the old boat, I said, Dear God, it's I! The Adour is no longer the home of birds that once it was, but in the early morning one may still see there many of the less common water fell. The road to Portsmouth is carried across the Adour by the Norfolk suspension bridge, to cross which one must pay a toll,

Starting point is 06:06:03 not an unpleasant reminder of earlier days. Old Shoreham, a mile up the river, is notable for its wooden bridge. across the Adour to the Old Sussex pad, at one time a famous inn for smugglers. Few Royal Academy exhibitions are without a picture of Old Shoreham Bridge and the quiet cruciform church at its eastward end. A pleasant story tells how, in some Sussex journey, William IV and his queen chanced to be passing through Shoreham,

Starting point is 06:06:37 coming from Chichester to Lewis one Sunday morning. The clerk of Old Shoreham Church caught sights through the window of the approaching cavalcade, and leaping to his feet stopped the sermon by announcing, It is my solemn duty to inform you that their majesties the king and queen are just now crossing the bridge. Thereupon the whole congregation jumped up and ran out to show their loyalty. End of Chapter 19 Chapter 20 of Highways and Byways in Sussex This Librevox recording is in the public domain.

Starting point is 06:07:16 by Peter Yearsley. Highways and Byways in Sussex by E. V. Lucas. Chapter 20 The Devil's Dike and Hurst Pier Point At the hill above the Devil's Dike, for the Dike itself wins only a passing glance, been never popularised, thousands of Londoners, and many of the people of Brighton,

Starting point is 06:07:40 would probably never have seen the wheeled from any eminence at all. The view is bounded north and west, only by hills, on the north by the north downs, with Leith Hill standing forward as if advancing to meet a southern champion, and in the west, Blackdowne, Hindhead, and the Hogsback, the patchwork of the wheeled is between. The view from the Dyke Hill, looking north, is comparable to that from Leith Hill, looking south, and every day in fine weather there are tourists on both of these altitudes, amazing towards each other.

Starting point is 06:08:16 The worst slight that Sussex ever had to endure, so far as my reading goes, is in Houston's London and its neighbourhood, 1808, where the view from Leith Hill is described. After stating that the curious stranger on the summit feels sensations as we may suppose Adam to have felt, when he instantaneously burst into existence, and the beauties of Eden struck his all-wondering eyes. Mr. Hewson describes the prospect. It commands a view of the county of Surrey, part of Hampshire, Berkshire, Nettlebed in Oxfordshire, some parts of Bucks, Hertfordshire, Middlesex, Kent and Essex, and, by the help of a glass, Wiltshire. Not a word of Sussex.

Starting point is 06:09:05 The wisest course for the non-gregious traveller is to leave the dike on the right, and, crossing the ladies' golf links, gain Fulking Hill, from which the view is equally fine, save for lacking a little in the east, and where there is peace and isolation. I remember sitting one Sunday morning on Fulking Hill when a white mist like a sea filled the wheeled, washing the turf slopes, twenty feet or so below me. In the depths of this ocean, as it were, could be heard faintly the noises of the farms, and the chime of submerged bells. Suddenly a hawk shot up and disappeared again,

Starting point is 06:09:46 like a leaping fish. The same spot was, on another occasion, the scene of a superb effort of courageous tenacity. I met a large hare, steadily breasting the hill, turning neither to the right nor left it was soon out of sight over the crest. Five or more minutes later there appeared in view on the Hare's trail, a very tired little fox-terrier, not much more than half the size of the hair.

Starting point is 06:10:15 He also turned aside neither to the right nor the left, but panted wearily, yet bravely, past me, and so on over the crest after his prey. I waited for some time, but the terrier never came back. Such was the purpose depicted on his countenance that I can believe he is following still. On these downs, near the dike, less than a century ago, the great bastard used to be hunted with greyhounds. Mr. Bora tells us in the Birds of Sussex that his grandfather, who died in 1844, sometimes would take five or six in a morning. They fought savagely, and more than once injured the hounds. Enterprise has, of late, been at work at the dike. A cable railway crosses the gully

Starting point is 06:11:04 at a dizzy height. A lift brings travellers from the wheeled, a wooden cannon of exceptional calibre threatens the landscape, and pictorial advertisements of the devil and his domain may be seen at most of the Sussex stations. Ladies also play golf, where, when first I knew it, one could walk unharmed. A change that is to be regretted is the exile to the unromantic neighbourhood of the Dyke Station, of the Queen of the Gypsies, a swarthy ringleted lady of peculiarly comfortable exterior, who, splendid, yet a little sinister, in a scarlet shawl and ponderous gold jewels, used once to emerge from a tent beside the Dyke Inn, and a lot husbands, fair or dark. She was an astute reader of her fellows, with an eye too searching to be deceived by the removal of tell-tale rings.

Starting point is 06:12:00 A lucky shot in respect to a future ducal husband of a young lady, now a duchess, of the accuracy of which she was careful to remind you, increased her reputation tenfold in recent years. Her name is Lee, and, of her title of Queen of the Gypsies, there is, I believe, some justification. Sussex abounds in evidences of the devil's whimsical handiwork. Although in ordinary conversation Sussex rustics are careful. not to speak his name. They say he. Mr. Parrish in his dictionary of the Sussex dialect gives an example of the avoidance of the dread name. In the Down, there's a golden calf buried. People know very well where it is. I could show you the place any day.

Starting point is 06:12:47 Then why don't they dig it up? Oh, it's not allowed. He wouldn't let them. Has anyone ever tried? Oh yes, but it's never there when you look. He moves it away. His punch-bowl may be seen here, his footprints there, but the greatest of his enterprises was certainly the dyke. His purpose was to submerge, or silence, the irritating churches of the wheeled by digging a ditch that should let in the sea. He began one night from the north side at Saddlescombe, and was working very well until he caught sight of the beams of a candle which an old woman had placed in her window, being a devil of Sussex, rather than of Miltonic, invention. He was not clever, and, taking the candlelight for the break of dawn, he fled,

Starting point is 06:13:35 and never resumed the labour. That is the very infirm legend that is told and sold at the dike. I might just mention that the little church which one sees from the dike railway, standing alone on the hillside, is Hangleton. Dr. Caneli, who defended the claimant, is buried there. The hamlet of Hangleton, which may be seen in the distance, below, once possessed a hunting lodge of the coverts of slorm, which, after being used as labourers' cottages, has now disappeared. The fine Tudor Mansion of the Bellingham's now transformed into a farmhouse, although it has been much altered, still retains many original features. In the kitchen, no doubt once the hall, on an oak screen are carved the commandments,

Starting point is 06:14:24 followed by this ingenious motto, an exercise on the letter E. persevere ye perfect men ever keep these precepts ten from the dyke hill one is within easy walking distance of many wheeled and villages immediately at the north end of the dyke itself is foinings with its fine grey cruciform church raising an embattled tower among the trees on its mound it has been conjectured from the similarity of this beautiful church to that of alfriston that they may have had the same architect poinings now called punnings was of importance in norman times and was the seat of william fitzrainald whose descendants afterwards took the name of de poinings and one of whom was ennobled as barren de Poinings. In the fifteenth century the direct line was merged into that of Percy. The ruins of Poinings Place, the baronial mansion, are still traceable. Following the road to the west, under the hills, we come first to Fulking,

Starting point is 06:15:32 where one may drink at a fountain raised by a brewer to the glory of God and in honour of John Ruskin. then to Ed Burton, where the leaden font, one of three in Sussex, should be noted, then to truly, all little farming hamlets, shadowed by the downs, then so to beading and bramber, or striding south, to Shoreham. If, instead of turning into pointings, one ascends the hill on the other side of the stream, a climb of some minutes, with a natural amphitheatre on the right, brings one to the wood, northern escarpment of Saddlescombe North Hill, or New Timber Hill, which offers a view little inferior to that of the dike.

Starting point is 06:16:19 At Saddlescom, by the way, lives one of the most learned Sussex ornithologists of the day, and a writer upon the natural history of the county, so cavalierly treated in this book, for whose quick eye and descriptive hand the readers of Blackwood have reason to be grateful. Immediately beneath New Timber Hill lies New Timber, consisting of a house or two, a moated grange and a little church, which, though only a few yards from the London Road, is so hidden that it might be miles from everywhere. On the grass bank of the Bostle descending through the hangar to New Timber, I counted on one spring afternoon as many as a dozen adders basking in the sun.

Starting point is 06:17:03 We are still here, though so near Brighton, in country where the a badger is still found, while the new timber woods are famous among collectors of moths. If you are for the weald, it is by this Bostle that you should descend, but if still for the downs, turn to the east along the summit, and you will come to Picham, a straggling village on each side of the London road, just at the head of Dale Hill. Picham has lost its ancient fame as the home of the best shepherd's crooks, but the Peacom crook for many years was unapproached. The industry has left Sussex. Crooks are now made in the north of England, and sold over shop counters. I say industry wrongly, for what was truly an industry for a Pycombe blacksmith,

Starting point is 06:17:52 is a mere detail in an iron factory, since the number of shepherds does not increase, and one crook will serve a lifetime and more. An old shepherd at Pico, talking confidentially on the subject of crooks, complained that the new weapon, as sold at Lewis, although nominally on the piquem pattern, is a numb thing. The chief reason which he gave was that the maker was out of touch with the man who was to use it. His own crook, like that of Richard Jeffery's shepherd friend, had been fashioned from the barrel of an old muzzle-loader. The present generation, he added, is forgetting how to make everything. Why, he had neighbours, smart young fellows too, who could not even make their own clothes.

Starting point is 06:18:39 Picham is but a few miles from Brighton, which may easily be reached from it. A short distance south of the village is the Plough Inn, the point at which the two roads to London, that by way of Clayton Hill, Friars Oak, Cookfield, Balcombe and Red Hill, and the other, on which we are now standing, by way of Dale Hill, Bolney, Handcross, Crawley and Ryegate, become one. On the way to Brighton from the plough, one passes through Patcham, a dusty village that for many years has seen too many bicycles, and now is in the way of seeing too many motor-cars. In the churchyard is, or was, a tomb bearing the following inscription, which may be quoted both as a reminder of the more stirring experiences to which the Patches' people were subject a hundred years ago, and also as an example. of the truth, which is only half a truth. Sacred to the memory of Daniel Scales,

Starting point is 06:19:39 who was unfortunately shot on Thursday evening, November 7, 1796. Alas, Swift flew the fatal lead, which pierced through the young man's head. He instant fell, resigned his breath, and closed his languid eyes in death. All ye who do this stone draw near, O pray, let fall the pitying tear.

Starting point is 06:20:05 From the sad instance, May we all prepare to meet Jehovah's call. The facts of the case bear some likeness to the death of Mr. Bardell and Sergeant BuzzFuzz's reference to that catastrophe. Daniel Scales was a desperate smuggler, who when the fatal lead pierced him was heavily laden with booty,

Starting point is 06:20:28 he was shot through the head only as a means of preventing a similar fate befallen his slayer. Just beyond Patcham as we approach Brighton is the narrow chalk lane on the left, which leads to the Lady's Mile, the beginning of a superb stretch of turf, around an amphitheatre in the hills, by which one may gallop all the way to the Clayton Mills. The grass ride extends to Lewis.

Starting point is 06:20:56 Preston, once a village with an independent life, is now Brighton. but nothing can harm its little English church, noticeable for a fresco of the murder of Thomas A Beckett, a representation dating probably from the reign of Edward I. This, however, is a digression, and we must return to Picum, in order to climb Walsenbury, the most mountainous of the hills in this part,

Starting point is 06:21:21 and, indeed, although far from the highest, perhaps the noblest in mean of the whole range, by virtue of its isolation and its conical shape. The earthworks on Walstonbury, although supposed to be of Celtic origin, were probably utilised by the Romans for military purposes. More than any of the downs does Walsdenbury bring before one the Roman occupation of our country. Immediately below Walsdenbury, on the edge of the wheeled, is Danny, an Elizabethan house, today the seat of the Campions, but two hundred and more years ago the seat of Peter Courthope,

Starting point is 06:21:57 to whom John Ray dedicated his collection of English word, not generally used, and before then the property of Sir Simon de Pierpoint. The park is small and without deer, but the house has a façade of which one can never tire. I once saw Twelfth Night performed in its gardens, and it was difficult to believe that Shakespeare had not the spot in mind when he wrote that play. The Danny Drive brings us to Hurst Pierpoint, or Hurst, as it is generally called, which is now becoming a suburb of Browpenter's. and thus somewhat losing its character, but which the hills will probably long keep sweet. James Hannington, Bishop of Equatorial East Africa, who was murdered by natives in 1885, was born here.

Starting point is 06:22:45 Here lived Richard Weeks, the antiquary, and here, today, is the home of Mr. Mitton, most learned of Sussex botanists. To Hearst belongs one of the little Sussex squires, to whose diligence as a diarist, we are indebted for much entertaining knowledge of the past. Little Park, now the property of the Hannington family, where Thomas Marchant, the diarist in question, lived and kept his journal between 1714 and 1728, is to the north of the main street, lying low. The original document I have not seen, but from passages printed by the Sussex Archaeological Society, I borrow a few extracts, for the light they throw on old customs and social life. October the 8th, 1714, paid four shillings at Lewis for a quarter pound of tea, fivepence

Starting point is 06:23:39 for a quire of paper, and sixpence for two mouse traps. October the 29th, 1714, went to North Barnes near Homewood Gate to see the pond fished. I bought all the fish of a foot long and upwards, at fifty shillings per hundred. I am to give Mrs. Dobson to 200 storefish over and above the aforesaid bargain, but she is to send to me for them. October the 30th, 1714, we fetched 244 carps in three dung-carts from a stew of Parsons citizen at street, being brought thither last night out of the above pond. October the 31st, 1714, Sunday. I could not go to church, being forced to stay at home to look after and let down fresh water

Starting point is 06:24:28 to the fish, they being, as I supposed, sick, because they lay on the surface of the pond and were easily taken out, but towards night they sunk. The little park ponds still exist, but the practice of breeding fish has passed. In Arthur Young's general view of the agriculture of the County of Sussex, 1808, quoted elsewhere in this book, is a chapter on fish wherein he writes, A Mr. Fen of London has long rented and is the sole monopoliser of all the fish that are sold in Sussex. Carp is the chiefstock, but tench and perch, eels and pike are raised. A stream should always flow through the pond, and a marly soil is the best.

Starting point is 06:25:13 Mr. Millward has drawn carp from his marl pits twenty-five pounds a brace, and two inches of fat upon them. But then he feeds with peas. When the waters are drawn off and restocked, it is done with stores of a year old, which remain four years. The carp will then be 12 or 13 inches long, and if the water is good, 14 or 15. The usual season for drawing the water is either autumn or spring. The sail is regulated by measure from the eye to the fork of the tail. At 12 inches, carp are worth 50 shillings and three pounds per hundred. At 15 inches, six pounds.

Starting point is 06:25:50 At 18 inches, 8 pounds and 9 pounds. A hundred stores will stock an acre, or 35 brace, 10 or 12 inches long, are fully sufficient for a breeding pond. The first year they will be 3 inches long, second year 7, 3 year 11 or 12, 4th year, 14 or 15. This year they breed. Although fish breeding is not what it was, many of the Sussex ponds are still regularly dragged, and the proceeds sold in advance to a London firm. Sometimes the purchaser wins in the gamble, sometimes the seller. The fish are removed alive in large tanks, and sold as they are

Starting point is 06:26:30 wanted, chiefly for Jewish tables. But we must return to Thomas Marchant. January 16th, Sunday, 1715, I was not at church having a bad headache. January 25th, 1715, we had a trout for supper. Two feet two inches long from eye to fork, and six inches broad. It weighed ten and a half pounds. It was caught in the Albourne Brook, near Trussell House. We stayed very late, and drank enough. April the 15th, 1715, paid my uncle Cortness fifteen pence for a small bottle of Daffy's elixir. July the 18th, 1715. I went to Bolney and agreed with Edward Jenner to dig sandstone for setting up my father's tombstone at five shillings. I gave him sixpence to spend in drink that he might be more careful. August the 7th, Sunday, 1715, I was not

Starting point is 06:27:30 at church as my head ached very much. November the 22nd, 1716, fished the great pond and put 220 of the biggest carp into the new pond, and 18 of the biggest tench, put also three 358 store carp into the flat stew, and 36 tench, and also 550 very small carp into a hole in the low field. November the 24th, 1716. Fished the middle pond, put 66 large carp into the new pond, and 380 store tench into the flat stew, and 12 large carp, 10 large tench, and 57 middle-sized tench, into the hovel-fields June the 12th, 1717, I was at the cricket match at Dungton Gate towards night.

Starting point is 06:28:23 January the 24th, 1718, A mountebank came to our town today. He calls himself Dr. Richard Harness. Mr. Scut and I drank tea with the tumbler. Of his tricks I am no judge, but he appears to me to play well on the fiddle. January the 30th, Friday, 1719, King Charles Martin I was not at church as my head ached very much. February the 28th, 1719, we had news of the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, the Pretender, being taken and carried into the castle of Milan. September the 19th, 1719,

Starting point is 06:29:02 John Parsons began his year last Tuesday. He is to shave my face twice a week, and my head once a fortnight, and I am to give him a hundred faggots per annum. September the 30th, 1719. talked to Mrs. Beard for Alan Savage about her horse that was seized by the officers at Brighton, running brandy. December 5th, 1719, My Lord Treep put a feral and pick to my stick.

Starting point is 06:29:29 Note, My Lord Treep was a tinker named Treep, who lived in Treep's Lane. My Lord Bert, who is also mentioned in the diary, was a farrier. End note. July 28, 1721, paid Harry Walvin of Twyneum for killing an Otter, in our parish. Note, an otter, of course, was a serious enemy to the owner of stews and ponds. End note. February the 7th, 1722, Will and Jack went to Lewis to see a prize fight between Harris and another.

Starting point is 06:30:02 September the 18th, 1727, dined at Mr. Hazelgroves and cheapened a tombstone. Thomas Marchant was buried September the 17th, 1728. Less than two miles west of Hurst Pierpoint is Alborn, so hidden away that one might know this part of the country well, and yet be continually overlooking it. The western high road between Brighton and London passes within a stone's throw of Albourne, but one never suspects the existence close by of this retired village, so compact and virginal, and exquisitely old-fashioned. It is said that after the execution of Charles I, Bishop Jackson lived for a while at Albourne Place. during the Civil War, and once escaped the parliamentary soldiers by disguising himself as a bricklayer. There is a priest's hiding-hole in the house. Some three miles north of Albourne is Twyneham, another village which, situated only on a by-road

Starting point is 06:31:01 midway between two lines of railway, has also preserved its bloom. Here, at the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th centuries, at Hickstead Place, a beautiful Tudor Mansion that still stands, lived Richard Stapley, another of the Sussex diarists, whose manuscripts have been selected for publication by the Sussex Archaeological Society. I quote a few passages.

Starting point is 06:31:26 In the month of November, 1692, there was a trout found in the Poynings Wish, in Twynum, which was 29 inches long from the top of the nose to the tip of the tail, and John Flint had him and eat him. He was left in a low slank after, a flood, and the water fell away from him, and he died. The fish, I saw at John Flint's house, the Sunday after they had him, and at night they boiled him for supper, but could not eat one

Starting point is 06:31:54 half of him, and there was six of them at supper, John Flint, and his wife Jane, and four of their children, and the next day they all fell on him again, and compassed him. Here we have the spectacle of a good man struggling with accuracy. August the 19th, 1698, paid Mr. Thuard for Dr. Comer's paraphrase on the common prayer, twenty shillings, and sixpence for carriage. I paid it at the end of the kitchen table near the chamber-stairs door, and nobody in the room but he and I. No, it was the end of the table near the parlour. April 26, 1709, I brought a salmon-trout of William Lindfield of Grubbs in Bolney, which he caught the night before in his net, by his old orchard, which was wounded by an otter.

Starting point is 06:32:40 The trout weighed eleven pounds and a half, and was three foot three inches long from end to end, and but two foot nine inches between the eye and the fork. There is also a record of a salmon trout being caught at Balney early in the last century, which weighed twenty-two pounds and was sent to King George IV at Brighton. I must quote a prescription from the diary. To cure the hooping-off, get three field mice, floor them, draw them, and roast one of them, let the party afflicted eat it, dry the other two in the oven until they crumble to a powder, and put a little of this powder in what the patient drinks at night and in the morning.

Starting point is 06:33:21 Mice played and still play in remote districts, a large part in the rural pharmacopoeia. A Sussex doctor once told me that he had directed the mother of a boy at Portslaid to put some ice in a bag and tie it on the boy's forehead. When the next day the doctor asked after his patient, the mother replied, Oh, Tommy's better, but the mice are dead. The Stapley family ate an oatmeal pudding made in the following manner. Of oats decorticated take two pound, and of new milk enough the same to drown.

Starting point is 06:33:55 Of raisins of the sun stoned, ounces eight, of currants cleanly picked, an equal weight. Of suet finely sliced, an ounce at least, and six eggs newly taken from the nest. Season this mixture well with salt and spice, It will make a pudding far exceeding nice, and you may safely feed on it, like farmers, for the receipt is learned Dr. Harmer's. Richard Staples' diary was continued by his son Anthony and grandson John.

Starting point is 06:34:27 The most pleasing among the printed extracts is this. 1736, May the 21st. The white horse was buried in the saw pit in the Lane's wood. He was aged about 35. years as far as I could find of people that knew him fold. He had been in his time as good a horse as ever man was the owner of, and he was buried in his skin, being a good old horse. End of Chapter 20. Chapter 21 of Highways and Byways in Sussex. This Librevox recording is in the public domain, recording by Peter Yearsley. Highways and Byways in Sussex by

Starting point is 06:35:13 E. V. Lucas. Chapter 21, Ditchling. Another good walk from Brighton begins with a short railway journey to Falma on the Lewis line, then strike into Sussex Park, the seat of the Earl of Chichester, a descendant of the famous Sussex Peloms, with the church and the little village of Stanmer on the far side of it, and so up through the hollows and valleys to Ditchling Beacon. Dr. Johnson's saying of the downs about Brighton that, It was a country so truly desolate that if one had a mind to hang oneself for desperation at being obliged to live there, it would be difficult to find a tree on which to fasten a rope. Proves beyond question that his horse never took him Stanmer way, for the park is richly wooded.

Starting point is 06:36:02 On ditchling beacon, one of the noblest of the Sussex Hills, and the second, if not the first, in height of all the range, the surveys differ one given. giving the palm to Dunkton. The Romans had a camp, and the village of Ditchling may still be gained by the half-subterranean path that our conquerors dug, so devised that a regiment might descend into the wheeled unseen. Ditchling is a quiet little village on high ground, where Alfred the Great once had a park. The church is a very interesting and graceful specimen of early English architecture, dating from the 13th century.

Starting point is 06:36:40 A hundred and more years ago, water from a callibiate spring on the common was drunk by Sussex people for rheumatism and other ills. But the spring has lost its fame. The village could not well be more out of the movement, yet an old lady living in the neighbourhood, who, when about to visit London for the first time, was asked what she expected to find, replied, Well, I can't exactly tell, but I suppose something like the more bustling part of ditchling. A Kindred's story is told of a Sussex man who, finding himself in London for the first time, exclaimed with astonishment, What a queer large place! Why, it ain't like Newick and it ain't like Chaley!

Starting point is 06:37:23 On ditchling common are the protected remains of a stake known as Jacob's Post. A stranger requested to supply this piece of wood with the origin of its label would probably adventure long before hitting upon the right tack, For Jacob, whose name has in this familiar connection, a popular and almost an endearing sound, was Jacob Harris, a Jew peddler of astonishing turpitude, who, after murdering three persons at an inn on Ditchling Common, and plundering their house, was hanged at Horsham in the year 1734, and afterwards suspended as a lesson to the gibbet of which this post, Jacob's post, is the surviving relic. All gibbits, it is said, are good for something, and a piece of Jacob's post carried on the person is sovereign against toothache.

Starting point is 06:38:13 A Sussex archaeologist tells of an old lady, a resident on Ditchell-in-common for more than eighty years, whose belief in the post was so sound that her pocket contained a splinter of it long after all her teeth had departed. From extracts from the diary of Mr. John Burgess, Taylor, Sexton and Particular Baptist of Ditchling, which are given in the Sussex archaeological collections, I quote here and there. August 1, 1785, there was a cricket match at Lingfield Common between Lingfield in Surrey and all the county of Sussex, supposed to be upwards of 2,000 people. June the 29, 1786, went to look at Lungfield, with some wool to Mr. Chatfield, fine wool at eight pounds five shillings per pack, went

Starting point is 06:39:03 to dinner with Mr. Chatfield, had boiled beef, leg of lamb, and plum-puddin. Stopped there all the afternoon, Mr. Pullin was there, Mr. Trimby and the Curia, etc., was there. We had a good deal of religious conversation, particularly Mr. Trimby. June the 11th, 1787, spent three or four hours with some friends in conversation upon moral and religious subjects. The inquiry was the most easy and natural evidences of the existence and attributes of the supreme being. In discussing upon the subject we was nearly agreed, and proposed meeting again every first Monday after the full moon, to meet at four and break up at eight. March the 14th, 1788, went to Fryer's Oak, to a bull, bait to sell my dog. I sold him for one guinea upon condition he was hurt, but, as he received

Starting point is 06:39:56 no hurt, I took him back again at the same price. We had a good dinner. A round of beef boiled, a good piece roasted, a lag of mutton, and ham of pork and plum-puddin, plenty of wine and punch. At Brighthelmstone, washed in the sea. End of Chapter 21. Chapter 22 of Highways and Byways in Sussex This Librevox recording is in the public domain, recording by Peter Yearsley Highways and Byways in Sussex by E. V. Lucas Chapter 22, Cuckfield Haywood's Heath, on the London Line, would be our next centre, were it not so new and suburban.

Starting point is 06:40:46 Fortunately, Cuckfield, which has two coaching inns and many of the signs of the passed, is close by, in the midst of a very interesting country, with a church standing high on the ridge to the south of the town, broadside to the weald. It's spire a landmark for miles. Cuckfield Place, a house and park, according to Shelley, which abounded in bits of Mrs. Radcliffe, is described in Harrison Ainsworth's Rookwood. It was in the avenue leading from the gates to the house that that fatal tree stood, a limb of which fell as the presage of the death of a member of the family.

Starting point is 06:41:25 So runs the legend. Knowledge of the tree is, however, disclaimed by the gatekeeper. Ockenden House in Cuckfield has been for many years in the possession of the Burrell family, one of whom, Timothy Burrell, an ancestor of the antiquary, left some interesting account books, which contain, in addition to figures, many curious and sardonic entries, and some ingenious hieroglyphics. I quote here and there from the Sussex Archaeological Society's extracts by way of illustrating the life of a Sussex Squire in those days, 1683 to 1714.

Starting point is 06:42:03 1705 paid Gosmark for making cider one day, whilst John Coachman was to be drunk with the carrier's money by agreement, and I paid tuppence to the glazier for mending John's casement, broken at night by him when he was drunk. 1706, 25th March, paid John Coachman by Ned Virgo, that he may be drunk all the Easter week in part of his wages due £1. This was the fare provided on January 1, 1707, for 13107, for 13 guests. Plum Potage, Caves Head and Bacon, Goose, Pig, Plum Potage, Roast Beef, Soloin, Veal, Aloin, Goose, Plum Potage, Boiled beef, a clod, two baked puddings, three dishes of minced pies, two capons, two dishes of

Starting point is 06:42:58 tarts, two pullets. Plum porridge, it may interest some to know, was made thus. Take of beef soup made of legs of beef, 12 quarts. If you wish it to be particularly good, add a couple of tongues to be boiled therein. Put fine bread, sliced, soaked and crumbled, raisins of the sun, currents and pruents, two pounds of each. Lemons, nutmegs, mace and cloves are to be boiled with it in a muslin bag. Add a quart of red wine and let this be followed after half an hour's boiling by a pint of sack. Put it into a cool place, and it will keep through it. through Christmas. Mr. Burrell, giving a small dinner to four friends, offered them peas-potting, two carps, two tench, capon, pullet, fried oysters, baked pudding, roast leg of mutton,

Starting point is 06:43:49 apple-pudding, goose, tarts, minced pies. It is perhaps not surprising that the host had occasionally to take the waters of ditchling, which are no longer drunk medicinally, or to dose himself with heire-pickre. One more dinner, this time for four guests, who presumably were more worthy of attention. A soup take off. Two large carps at the upper end. Pigeon pie, salad, veal or leves. Leg of mutton and cutlets at the lower end.

Starting point is 06:44:21 Three rosed chickens. Scotch pancakes, tarts, asparagus. Three green geese at the lower end. In the room of the chickens removed four sourced mackerel. in cream at the upper end. Carves-foot jelly, dried sweetmeats, calves-foot jelly, flummery, savoury cakes, imperial cream at the lower end. In October 1709, Mr. Burrell writes in Latin,

Starting point is 06:44:49 from this time I have resolved, as long as the dearth of provisions continues, to give to the poor who apply for it at the door on Sundays 12 pounds of beef every week, on the 11th of February, four pounds more, in all 16 pounds. and a bushel of wheat and half a bushel of barley in four weeks. From Baud Hill to the northeast of Cuckfield is supposed to have come Andrew Baud, the original Merry Andrew. Among the later boards who lived there was George Baud,

Starting point is 06:45:19 in whose copy of Natura Brevium and Tenores Novelli bounds together, given him by John Sackville of Chidingly Park, is written Cidera Non Tothabet Calum, nec flumina pisces, Quots Scleragert Feminamenti Dolos, Dixit Burdas, which Mr. Loa translates, Quoth Baud, with stars the skies abound, with fish the flowing waters, but far more numerous I have found the tricks of Eve's Fair Daughters.

Starting point is 06:45:53 This board would be a relative of the famous Andrew, priest, doctor, and satirist, 1490 to 1549, who may indeed have been the author of the district above. It is certainly in his vein. Andrew Baud gave up his vows as a Carthusian, on account of their rougarosity, and he became a doctor, travelling much on the continent. Several books are known to be his, chief among them the dietary and breviary of health.

Starting point is 06:46:21 He wrote also an itinerary of England, and is credited by some with the merry tales of the Mad Men of Gotham. Lower and Horsefield indeed holds that the Gotham intended was not the Nottinghamshire village but Gottham near Pevensey, where Borde had property. That he knew something of Sussex is shown by Board's Book of Knowledge, where he mentions the old story, then a new one, that no Nightingale will sing in St. Leonard's Forest. It is the Book of Knowledge that has, for Frontispice, the picture of a naked Englishman with a pair of shears in one hand and a piece of cloth. over the other arm, saying, I am an English man, and naked I stand here, musing in my mind what Raymond I shall wear, for now I will wear this, and now I will wear that, now I will wear, I cannot tell what. We shall see Andrew again when we come to Pevensey. A glimpse of the orderly

Starting point is 06:47:22 mind of a pre-Reformation Cuckfield yeoman is given in a will, quoted recently in the Sussex Daily news, in an interesting series of articles on the county under the title of Old Time Sussex. In the year of Our Lord God, 1545, the 26th day of June, I, Thomas Gaston of the Pish of Cuccafield, psych in body, whole and of perfect memory, ordain and make this my last will and test in manner and former following. First, I bequeath my soul to Almighty God, our Lady St. Mary, and all the Holy Company of Having, my body to be buried in the churchyard of Cucfield. Item to the Mother Church of Chichester, fourpence. Item, to the high altar of Cookfield, fourpence. Item, I will have at my burial five masses, in likewise at my month's mind,

Starting point is 06:48:22 and also at my yearly mind, all the charge of the church set apart, I will have in meter and drink, and to poor people ten shillings at every time. The high altar was frequently mentioned favourably in these old wills. Another Cuckfield's testator in 1539 left to the high altar, for tithes and oblastions negligently forgotten sixpence. The same student of the calendar of Sussex wills in the District Probate Registry at Lewis between 1541 and 1652, which the British Record Society have just published, copies the following passage from the will of Gerard Onstey in 1568.

Starting point is 06:49:06 To marry my daughter, twenty pounds, the feather bed that I lie upon, the bolsters and coverlater of tapestia work with a blanket, four pairs of sheet, that is to say, four pairs of the best flaxen, and other two pair of the best hempen, the great brass of pot that her mother bought, the best board cloth, tablecloth, a lime and wheel, i.e., a spinning-wheel, that was her mother's, the chafing-dish that hangeth in the parlour. In those simple days everything was prized. In one of these Sussex wills in 1594, Richard Ferndeen, a labourer, left to his brother Stephen, his best doublet, his best jerkin, and his best shoes, and to Bernard Rosser. his white doublet, his leathern doublet, and his worst breeches.

Starting point is 06:49:58 Three miles west of Cuckfield is Bolney, just off the London Road, a village in the southern boundary of St. Leonard's Forest, the key to some very rich country. Before the days of bicycles, Balny was practically unknown, so retired is it. The church, which has a curious pinnacles tower nearly 300 years old, is famous for its bells, concerning whose melody, Horsfield gives the following piece of council,

Starting point is 06:50:23 Those who are fond of the silvery tones of bells may enjoy them to perfection by placing themselves on the margin of a large pond, the property of Mr. W. Marshall. The reverberation of the sound coming off the water is peculiarly striking. Sixty years ago this sheet of water had an additional attraction, says Mr. Knox. During the months of May and June 1843, an Osprey was observed to haunt the large ponds near Balney. After securing a fish, he used to retire to an old tree on the more exposed bank to devour it, and about the close of evening was in the habit of flying off towards the north-west, sometimes carrying away a prize in his talons if his sport had been unusually successful, as if he dreaded being disturbed at his repast during the dangerous hours of twilight.

Starting point is 06:51:13 Having been shot at several times without effect, his visits to these ponds became gradually less frequent, But the surrounding covers being unpreserved, and the bird itself, too wary to suffer a near approach, he escaped the fate of many of his congeners, and even reappeared with a companion early in the following September, to whom he seemed to have imparted his salutary dread of man, his mortal enemy, for during the short time they remained there, it was impossible to approach within gunshot of either of them. The indirect road from Bolney to Hand Cross, through warning-lid and slorm, parallel with the coaching road, is superb, taking us again into the iron country, and very near to Leonard's Lee, which we have already seen.

Starting point is 06:52:00 The glory of Sloan Place is no more, but one visible sign of it is preserved in Lewis in the town hall, in the shape of its old staircase. Slorm Place was the seat of the Covert family, whose estates extended, says tradition, from Southwark to the sea, and, says the more exact Horsefield, from Crawley to Hangleton, above Brighton. Slawn Park used to cover 1,200 acres, the church being within it. Perhaps nowhere in Sussex is the change so complete as here. And within recent times, too, for Horsefield quotes in 1835, the testimony of an aged person

Starting point is 06:52:42 whom the present rector buried about 25 years back, who used to relate that he remembers when the family at Slawn Park or place consisted of 70 persons. Horsfield continues in a footnote, the natural receptacle of many of his most interesting statements. The name of the aged person alluded to was Harding, who died at nearly 100.

Starting point is 06:53:07 According to his statement, the family were so numerous they kept constantly employed mechanics of every description who resided on the premises. A conduit which supplied the mansion with water is now used by the inhabitants of the village. The kitchen fireplace still remains, of immense size, with the irons that supported the cooking apparatus. The arms of the coverts, with many impalements and quarterings, yet remain on the ruins. The principal entrance was from the east and the grand front to the north. The pillars at the entrance fluted with seats on each side are still there.

Starting point is 06:53:42 According to the statement of the above person, there was a chapel attached to the mansion at the west part. The mill pond flowed over nearly 40 acres, according to a person's statement who occupied the mill many years. The ruins, little changed since Horsfield wrote, stand in a beautiful Old World Garden, which the traveller must certainly endeavour to enter. A mile north of Slawn is Hand Cross, a Clapham Junction of highways, whence Crawley is easily reached. Crawley, however, beyond a noble church, has no interest, its distinction being that it is halfway between London and Brighton on the High Road, its distinction and its misfortune. One would be hard put to it to think of a less desirable existence than that of dwelling on a dusty road,

Starting point is 06:54:35 and continually seeing people hurrying either from Brighton to London or from London to Brighton. Coaches, phaetons, motorcars, bicycles, pass through Crawley so numerously as almost to constitute one elongated vehicle, like the moving platform at the last Paris exhibition. And not only travellers on wheels, for since the fashion for walking came in, Crawley has had new excitements, or monotonies, in the shape of walking stockbrokers, walking butchers, walking auctioneers, clerks, walking Austrians pushing their families in wheelbarrows, walking brick layers, carrying hods of bricks, walking acrobats on stilts, all striving to get to Brighton within a certain time, and all accompanied by judges, referees and friends.

Starting point is 06:55:26 At hand cross, lower on the road, the numbers diminish, but every country. competitor seems to be able to reach Crawley, perhaps because the railway station adjoins the high road. It was not, for example, until he reached Crawley, that the Austrian's wheelbarrow broke down. On the other side of the line two miles northeast of Haywood's Heath is Lindfield, with its fine common of geese, its generous duck pond, and wide straggling street of old houses and new. Too many new, to my mind, rising ease of the sea of the to the graceful early English church with its slender shingled spire. Just beyond the church is one of the most beautiful of timbered houses in Sussex, or indeed in England.

Starting point is 06:56:12 When I first knew this house it was a farm in the hands of a careless farmer. It has been restored by its present owner with the most perfect understanding and taste. For too long, no one attempted to do as much for East Maskells, a timbered ruin lying low among the fields to the east of the village, but quite recently it has been taken in hand. A quaint Linfield Epitaph may be mentioned, that of Richard Turner, who died in 1768, aged 21. Long was my pain, great was my grief.

Starting point is 06:56:48 Surgeons, I'd many, but no relief. I trust, through Christ, to rise with the just. My leg and thigh was buried first. I must not betray secrets, but it might be right. remarked that the kindly yet melancholy study of Wealdon people and Wealdon scenery, called Idlehurst, the best book, I think, that has come out of Sussex in recent years, may be read with some special appropriateness in this neighbourhood. North of Lindfield is ardingly, now known chiefly in connection with the large school

Starting point is 06:57:23 which travellers on the line to Brighton see from the carriage windows as they cross the viaduct over the ooze. The village, a mile north of the college, is famous as the birthplace of Thomas Box, the first of the great wicket-keepers, who disdained gloves even to the fastest bowling. The church has some very interesting brasses to members of the Wakehurst and Culpeper families, who long held Wakehurst Place, the Elizabethan mansion to the north of the village. Nicholas Culpeper of the Herbal was of the stock, but he must not be confounded with the Nicholas Culpeper whose brass. together with that of his wife, ten sons and eight daughters, is in the church,

Starting point is 06:58:05 possibly the largest family on record depicted in that metal. The church also has a handsome, canopyed tomb, the occupant of which is unknown. From ardingly, superb walks in the Sussex Forest Country may be taken. The end of Chapter 22 Chapter 23 of Highways and Byways in Sussex This Librevox recording is in the public domain, recording by Peter Yearsley. Highways and Byways in Sussex by E. V. Lucas. Chapter 23. Forest Country again

Starting point is 06:58:46 On leaving the train at Balkam, one is quickly on the densely wooded forest ridge of Sussex, here fenced and preserved, but further east where it becomes Ashdowne Forest, consisting of vast tracts of open moorland and heather. Bolcombe has a simple church, protected by a screen of Scotch furs. Its great merit is its position as the key to a paradise for all who like woodland travel. From Bolcom to Worth is one vast pheasant run, with here and there a keeper's cottage or a farm. Originally, of course, a series of plantations growing furnace wood for the Iron Masters. In Tillgate Forest to the west of Bolcombe Forest are two large sheets of water,

Starting point is 06:59:32 once hammer ponds, walking west from which, towards Horsham, one may be said to traverse the lake country of Sussex. A strange transformation from black country to lake country, but nature quickly recovers herself, and were the true black country's furnaces extinguished, she would soon make even that grimy tract a haunt of loveliness once more. No longer are heard the sounds of the hammers, but Balkham Forest, Tillgate Forest, and Worth Forest, have still a constant reminder of machinery, for very few minutes pass from morning to night without the rumble of a train on the mainline to Brighton, which passes through the very midst of this wild game region, and plunges into the earth under the high ground

Starting point is 07:00:19 of Balkham Forest. I know of no place where the trains emit such a volume of sound, as in the valley of the Stamford Brook, just north of the tunnel. The noise makes it impossible ever, quite, to lose the sense of modernity in these woods, as one may on Shelley Plain, a few miles west, or at Gill's Lap, in Ashdowne Forest. Unless, of course, one's imagination is so complacent as to believe it to proceed from the old iron furnaces. This reminds me that, Crabbit, just to the north of Worth, where Church and Vicarage stand isolated on a sandy ridge on the edge of the forest, was the home of one of the most considerable of the Sussex Iron Landmasters, Leonard Gale of Tinslow Forge, who bought Crabbit, Park and House, in 1698, since

Starting point is 07:01:11 building, in his own words, is a sweet impoverishing. But we must pause for a moment at worth, because its church is remarkable as being the largest in England to preserve its Saxon foundations. Sussex, as we have seen, is rich in Saxon relics, but the county has nothing more interesting than this. The church is cruciform, as all churches should be, and there is a little east window in the north transept, through which it is conjectured, arrows were intended to be shot at marauding Danes, for an Englishman's church was once his castle. Archaeologists familiar with Wirth Church have been known to pass with disdain, cathedrals for which the ordinary

Starting point is 07:01:55 person cannot find too many fine adjectives. To regain Crabbit, the present owner, Mr. Wilfrid's Gaughan Blunt, poet, patriot and breeder of Arab horses, who is a descendant of the Gales, has a long poem entitled Worth Forest, wherein Old Leonard Gale is a notable figure. Among other poems by the Lord of Crabbit is the very pleasantly English ballad of the old squire.

Starting point is 07:02:23 I like the hunting of the hare better than that of the fox. I like the joyous morning air and the crowing of the cocks. I like the calm of the early fields, the ducks asleep by the lake, the quiet hour which nature yields before mankind is awake. I like the pheasants and feeding things of the unsuspicious morn. I like the flap of the wood-pigeon's wings as she rises from the corn. I like the blackbirds shriek and his rush from the turnips as I pass by.

Starting point is 07:02:56 and the partridge hiding her head in a bush, for her young ones cannot fly. I like these things, and I like to ride, when all the world is in bed, to the top of the hill where the sky grows wide, and where the sun grows red. The beagles at my horse heels trot in silence after me. There's ruby, Roger, diamond, dot, old slut, and margery, A score of names well used and dear The names my childhood knew The horn with which I rouse their cheer

Starting point is 07:03:30 Is the horn my father blue I like the hunting of the hair Better than that of the fox The new world still is all less fair Than the old world it mocks I covet not a wider range Than these dear manners give I take my pleasures without change

Starting point is 07:03:49 And as I lived I live I leave my neighbours to their thought, My choice it is and pride On my own lands to find my sport In my own fields to ride. The hare herself no better loves the field where she was bred Than I, the habit of these groves my own inherited. I know my quarries every one,

Starting point is 07:04:14 The muse where she sits low. The road she chose today was run a hundred years ago. The lags, the gills, the forest ways, the hedgerows, one and all. These are the kingdoms of my chase, and bounded by my wall. Nor has the world a better thing, though one should search it round, than thus to live one's own sole king, upon one's own soul ground. I like the hunting of the hare. It brings me, day by day, the memory of old days,

Starting point is 07:04:51 fair, with dead men passed away. To these, as homeward still I ply and pass the churchyard gate, where all are laid, as I must lie, I stop and raise my hat. I like the hunting of the hair, new sports I hold in scorn. I like to be as my fathers were in the days ere I was born. We are indeed just now in a bookish and poetical district. For a little more than a mile to the east of Crabbit, in a beautiful Tudor house in a hollow close to the station, lived Frederick Locker Lampson, the London lyricist, and here are treasured the famous Ralfant books and manuscripts,

Starting point is 07:05:38 which he brought together, the subject of graceful verses by many of his friends. Not the least charming of these tributes, printed in the Ralfant catalogue in 1886 are Mr. Andrew Lang's lines, to F. L. I mind that forest shepherds saw, for when men preached of heaven, quoth he, It's all that's bricht and all that's brough, but bore hopes quid enough for me. Beneath the green, deep-bosomed hills that guard St. Mary's Loch it lies. The silence of the pasture fills that shepherd's homely paradise.

Starting point is 07:06:15 Enough for him his mountain lake, His glen the hearne went singing through, And Ralfant, when the thrushes wake, may well, seem good enough for you. For all is old and tried and dear, And all is fair, And round about, the brook that murmurs from the mere, Is dimpled with the rising trout.

Starting point is 07:06:36 But when the skies of shorter days are dark, And all the ways are mire, How bright upon your books! The blaze gleams! from the cheerful study fire. On Quartos, where our fathers read enthralled the book of Shakespeare's play, on all that Po could dream of dread,

Starting point is 07:06:56 and all that Herrick sang of gay, fair first editions duly prized, above them all, methinks, I rate the tome, where Walton's hand revised his wonderful receipts for bait. Happy, who rich in toys like these forgets, a weary nation's ills, who from his study window sees the circle of the Sussex Hills. Ralfant was once the scene of one of the most determined struggles in history.

Starting point is 07:07:28 The contestants were a series of titmice and the GPO, and the account of the war may be read in the Natural History Museum at South Kensington. In 1888, a pair of the great titmouse, Paras Major, began to build their nest in the postbox, which stood in. the road at Ralfant, and into which letters, etc., were posted and taken out by the door daily. One of the birds was killed by a boy, and the nest was not finished. In 1889, a pair completed the nest, laid seven eggs, and began to sit, but one day when an unusual number of postcards were dropped into, and nearly filled the box, the birds

Starting point is 07:08:08 deserted the nest, which was afterwards removed with the eggs. In 1890, a pair built a new nest. and laid seven eggs and reared a brood of five young, although the letters posted were often found lying on the back of the sitting bird, which never left the nest when the door of the box was opened to take out the letters. The birds went in and out by the slit. End of Chapter 23. Chapter 24 of Highways and Byways in Sussex.

Starting point is 07:08:47 This Librevox recording is in the public domain, recording by Peter Years Highways and Byways in Sussex by W. E. V. Lucas, Chapter 24, East Grinstead. East Grinstead, the capital of southeast Sussex, is interesting, chiefly for Sackville College, that haunt of ancient peace, of which John Mason Neal, poet, enthusiast, divine, historian, and romance writer for children, was for many years the distinguished warden. Nothing can exceed the quiet restfulness of the quadrangle. The college gives shelter to five brethren and six sisters, one of whom shows the visitor over the building, and to award an and to assistants.

Starting point is 07:09:32 Happy Collegians, to have so fair a haven in which to pass the evening of life. East Grinstead otherwise has not much beauty, its commanding pinnacle's church tower being more impressive from a distance, and its chief street mingling two months. much that is new, with its few old timbered facades, charming though these are. The town, when it would be frivolous, today depends upon the occasional visits of travelling entertainers, but in the 18th century East Grinstead had a theatre of its own, in the main street, a playbill of which, for May 1758, is given in Bowdoin's Life of Mrs. Siddens. It states that Theodosius, or The Force of Love, is to be played for the benefit of Mrs. P. Varanis

Starting point is 07:10:20 by Mr. P., who will strive as far as possible to support the character of this fiery Persian prince, in which he was so much admired and applauded at Hastings, Arndel, Petworth, Midhurst, Lewis, etc. The attraction of the next announcement is the precise converse, Theodosius, by a young gentleman from the University of Oxford, who never appeared. appeared on any stage. The playbill continues with a delicate hint. Nothing in Italy can exceed the altar in the first scene of the play. Nevertheless, should any of the nobility or gentry wish to see it ornamented with flowers, the bearer will bring away as many as they choose to favour him with. Finally, Enby, the great yard dog that made so much noise on Thursday nights during

Starting point is 07:11:07 the last act of King Richard III will be sent to a neighbours over the way. The Sussex martyrs, to whom a memorial, as we shall see, has recently been raised above Lewis, are usually associated with that town. But on July the 18th, 1556, Thomas Dungate, John Foreman and Anne, or Mother, tree, were burned for conscience's sake at East Grinstead. Between East Grinstead and Forest Row on the east, just over the hill and close to the railway, are the remains of Bramble Thai House, a rather florid ruin. once the seat of the great Sussex family of Lucnor. In its heyday, Bramble-Tie must have been a

Starting point is 07:11:49 very fine place. Horace Smith's romance, which bears its name, and for which Horsefield, in his history of Sussex, predicted a career commensurable with that of the Waverly novels, is, now, I fear, justly forgotten. The slopes of Forest Row, which was of old a settlement of hunting lodges, belonging to the great lords who took their pleasure in Ashdowne Forest, are now bright with new villas. From Forest Row, witch-cross and Ashdown Forest are easily gained, but, of this open region of Dark Heather, more in a later chapter. Between Kingscote and West Hoseley, a short distance to the south-west of East Grinstead, is another Ty, grave-tie, a Tudor mansion in a deep hollow, the home of Mr. William Robinson, the author of the English Flower Garden.

Starting point is 07:12:42 Last April the stonework of which there is much was a mass of the most wonderful purple aubresia, and the wild garden between the house and the water, a paradise of daffodils. The church of West Hothley, called West Holy, which stands high on the hill to the south, has a slender shingled spire that may be seen from long distances. The tower has, however, been injured by the very ugly new clock that has been lately fixed in a position doubtless the most convenient, but doubtless also the least comely. To nail to such a delicate structure as West Holy Church, the kind of dial that one expects to see outside a railway station is a curious lapse of taste. Haver Church in Kent has a similar blemish, probably dating from one of the recent Jubilee celebrations. which left few loyal villages the richer by a beautiful memorial.

Starting point is 07:13:40 Surely it should be possible to obtain an appropriate clock-face for such churches as these. West Hoseley has some iron tombstones, such as used to be cast in the old furnace days, which are not uncommon in these parts. Opposite to the church is a building of great antiquity, which has been allowed to forget its honourable age. We are now on the fringe of the Sussex Rock Country, to which we come again in earnest when we reach Mearsfield, and of which Tunbridge Wells is the capital,

Starting point is 07:14:12 but not even Tunbridge Wells, with its famous toad, as anything to offer more remarkable than West Hoseley's Big on Little, in the Rockhurst estate. I am tempted to quote two descriptions of the rock from two very different points of view, an antiquary writing in the 18th century, quoted by Horsefield, thus begins his account.

Starting point is 07:14:34 About half a mile west of West Haudley Church, there is a high ridge covered with wood. The edge of this is a craggy cliff, composed of enormous blocks of sandstone. The soil hath been entirely washed from off them, and in many places, from the interstices by which they are divided, one perceives these crags with bare, broad white foreheads, and, as it were, overlooking the wood which clothes the valley,

Starting point is 07:15:00 at their feet. In going to the place I passed across this deep valley and was led by a narrow footpath almost trackless up to the cliff, which seems as one advances to hang over one's head. The mind in this passage is prepared with all the suspended feelings of awe and reverence, and as one approaches this particular rock, standing with its stupendous bulk, poised seemingly in a miraculous manner and point, one is struck with amazement. The recess in which it stands, hath behind this rock, and the rocks which surround it, a withdrawn and recluse passage, which the eye cannot look into but with an idea of its coming from some more secret and wholly at it.

Starting point is 07:15:42 All these circumstances, in an age of tutored superstition, would give even to the finest minds the impressions that lead to idolatry. And this is Cobbitt's description in the rural rites. At the place of which I am now speaking, that is to say, say, by the side of this pleasant road to Brighton, and between Turner's Hill and Lindfield, there is a rock which they call Big upon Little, that is to say a rock upon another, having nothing else to rest upon, and the top one being longer and wider than the top of the one it lies on. This big rock is no trifling concern being as big perhaps as a not very small house.

Starting point is 07:16:22 How then came this Big upon Little? What lifted up the big? It balances itself naturally enough, But what tossed it up? I do not like to pay a parson for teaching me while I have God's own words to teach me. But if any parson will tell me how big, came upon little, I do not know that I shall grudge him a trifle. And if he cannot tell me this,

Starting point is 07:16:45 if he say all that we have to do is to admire and adore, then I tell him that I can admire and adore without his aid, and that I will keep my money in my pocket. That is pure cobbet. West Hothley is in the midst of some of the best of the inland country of Sussex, and an excellent centre for the Walker. Several places that we have already seen are within easy distance,

Starting point is 07:17:10 such as Horstead Keens, Worth and Worth Forest, and Bulcombe and Bulcom Forest. End of Chapter 25 of Highways and Byways in Sussex. This Librevox recording is in the public domain, recording by Peter Yearsley Highways and Byways in Sussex by E. V. Lucas Chapter 25, Horstead Keens to Lewis The very pretty church of Horstead Keens, which, in its lowly position,

Starting point is 07:17:47 is the very antithesis of West Holy's hill-sermounting spire, is famous for the small recumbent figure of a knight in armour, with a lion at his feet, possibly a member of the Keens family that gives its name to this Horstead, thus distinguishing it from little, Horstead, a few miles distant in the east. Keens being an anglicisation of D'Ka-A-Ang, a family which sent a representative to assist in the Norman conquest. Horstead Keens, which is situated in

Starting point is 07:18:15 very pleasant country, once took its spiritual instruction from the lips of the Reverend Giles Moore, extracts from whose journals and account books, 1656 to 1679, have been printed by the S.A.S. I quote a few passages. wife, fifteen shillings to lay out at St. James Fair at Linfield, all which she spent except two shillings and sixpence, which she never returned me. 16th of September, I bought of Edward Barrett at Lewis a clock, for which I paid £2.10 shillings, and for a new jack at the same time made and brought home £1.5 shillings. For two prolongers, i.e. save-alls, and an extinguisher, two pence, and a pair of bellows, five shillings.

Starting point is 07:19:06 7th of May, 1656, I bought of William Claussen, upholster and itinerant, living over against the cross at Chichester, but who comes about the country with his pack on horseback, a fine large coverlet with birds and bucks, two pounds, ten shillings, no pence, a set of striped curtains and valence, one pound eight shillings and no pence, a coarse eight-quarter her coverlet, one pound two shillings no pence, two middle blankets, one pound four shillings no pence, one biesil, or holland tyke, or bolster, one pound thirteen shillings and sixpence. My maid being sick I paid for opening her veins, fourpence. To the widow Rugglesford, for looking to her, I gave one shilling, and to old bess, for

Starting point is 07:19:53 tending on her three days and two nights, I gave one shilling. In all two shillings four pence. This I gave her. Led to my brother Luxford at the widow Newport's, never more to be seen, one shilling. In 1658, to William Batchelor, for bleeding me in bed two shillings sixpence, and for barbering me one shilling. A year later, I agreed with Mr. Bachelor of Lindfield to barber me, and I am to pay him sixteen shillings a year, beginning from Lady Day.

Starting point is 07:20:26 In 1671, I bargained with Edward Waters. that he should have eighteen shillings in money for the trimming of me by the year, and deducting one shilling sixpence for his tithes. 23rd of April, 1660, this being King Charles II coronation, I gave my namesake Moore's daughter, then married, ten shillings, and the fiddler's sixpence. I paid the widow Potter of Haudley for knitting me one pair of worsted stockings, two shillings and sixpence, for spinning two pounds of wool, fourteen pence, and five pence, and for carding it, tuppence. To the collections made at three several sacraments, I gave three

Starting point is 07:21:05 several sixpences. 12th of May, 1673, I went to London, spending there, going and coming, as alibiah parrot in particularibus, thirteen shillings and eight pence. I bought for Anne Brett a gold ring, this being the posy, when this you see, remember me. And at the same time I bought Patrick's Pilgrim, Five Shillings, The Reasonableness of Scripture by Sir Charles Walsley, Two shillings and Sixpence, and a comedy called Epsom Wells. Mr. Moore, having suffered in his tithes,

Starting point is 07:21:42 left the following necessary caution for his successor. Never compound with any parishioner till you have first viewed their land and seen what corn they have upon it that year and may have the next. The next station on this quiet little cross-country line to Lewis is Sheffield Park, the seat of Lord Sheffield. The present pier, one of the patrons of modern Sussex cricket, took a famous team to Australia in 1891 to 2, and it was on his yacht that in 1894 cricket was played in the ice fjord at Spitburgen under the midnight sun,

Starting point is 07:22:21 when Alfred Shaw captured 40 wickets in less than three quarters of an hour. Australian teams visiting England used to open their season with a match at Sheffield Park which contains one of the best private grounds in the country but the old custom has, I fancy, lapsed. In the long winter of 1890 to 1 several cricket matches on the ice were played on one of the lakes in the park with well-known Sussex players on both sides.

Starting point is 07:22:50 Sheffield Park is associated in literature with the name of Edward Gibbon, the historian, who spent much time there in the company of his friend John Baker Holroyd, the first Earl. Gibbon's remains lie in Fletching Church close by. There also lies Peter Dinot, a glover of Fletching, who assisted Jack Cade the Sussex Rebel, whom we meet later, in 1450. While, more history, it was in the woods around Fletching Church that Simor de Montfort encamped before he climbed the hills, as we are about to see, and fought and won.

Starting point is 07:23:24 the Battle of Lewis in 1264. The line passes next between Newick on the east and Chaley on the west. Fate seems to have decided that these villages shall always be bracketed in men's minds, like Beaumont and Fletcher, or Winchelsea and Rye. One certainly more often hears of Newick and Chaley than of either separately. Chaley has a wide, breezy common, from which the line of downs between D. bitchling beacon and Lewis can be seen, perhaps to their best advantage. Immediately to the south and just to the west of Black Cap,

Starting point is 07:24:03 the hill with a crest of trees, is plumped and plain, 600 feet high, where the barons formed their ranks to meet the third Harry in the Battle of Lewis, the actual fighting being on Mount Harry, the hill on Black Cap's east. Across to mark the struggle, cut into the turf of the plain, is still occasionally visible. More noticeable is the V. in spruce furs planted on the escarpment to commemorate the Jubilee of 1887. Plumpton, which is now known

Starting point is 07:24:32 chiefly for its steeple chases, has had in its day at least two interesting inhabitants. One was John Doudany, shepherd, mathematician, and schoolmaster, born here in 1782, who, as a youth, when tending his sheep on Newmarket Hill, dug a study and library in the chalk, and there kept his books and papers. He taught himself, mathematics and languages, even Hebrew, and ultimately became a schoolmaster at Lewis. In his thorough adherence to learning, Doudini was the completest contrast to John Kimber of Chaley, a wealthy farmer with a consuming but unintelligent love of books, who was once, says Horsefield, seen bringing home MacLynn's Bible, a costly work in six volumes, in a sack laid across

Starting point is 07:25:21 the back of a cart-horse. According to the excellent habit of the old Sussex farmers, Mr. Kimber's body was born to the grave in one of his wagons, drawn by his best team. Plumpton Place once had a moat in which legend has it the first carp swam that came into England. The house then belonged to Leonard Maskell, whom Fuller in the worthies erroneously ascribed to Plumstead. In Fuller's own words which no one could better, Leonard Maskell of Plumstead in this county, being much delighted in gardening. Man's original vocation was the first who brought over into England, from beyond the seas, carps and pippins, the one well-cooked, delicious, the other, cordial and restorative.

Starting point is 07:26:07 For the proof hereof we have his own word and witness, and did it, it seems, about the fifth year of the reign of King Henry VIII, Anodomini 1514. The time of his death is, to me, unknown. The credit of introducing carps and pippins has, however, been denied Damascul, who died in 1589 at Farnham Royal, in Buckinghamshire, where he was buried, but we know him beyond question to have been an ingenious experimentalist in horticulture. He wrote and translated several books, among them a treatise on the orchard by a monk of the Abbey of St. Vincent in France. A book of the art of and manner how to plant and graph all sorts of trees, how to set stones, and sow pippins, to make wide trees to grafron.

Starting point is 07:26:57 1572. I take a few passages from a later edition of this work. To colour apples. To have coloured apples with what colour ye shall think good, you shall bore or slope a hole with an auger in the biggest part of the body of the tree, unto the midst thereof, or thereabouts, and then look what colour ye will have them off. First you shall take water and mingle your colour therewith, then stop it up again with a short pin made of the same wood or tree, then wax it round about. You may mingle with the said colour what spice you list, to make them taste thereafter.

Starting point is 07:27:32 Thus may you change the colour and taste of any apple. This must be done before the spring do come. To make apples fall from the tree, if you put fiery coals under an apple tree, and then cast off the powder of brimstone therein, and the fume thereof ascend up and touch an apple that is wet, that apple shall fall incontinent. To destroy Pismirs or ants about a tree, you shall take of the sawdust of oak-wood only, and straw that all about the tree-root, and the next rain that doth come, all the Pismers or ants shall die there. For Irwigs, shoes stopped with hay, and hanged on the tree one night.

Starting point is 07:28:10 They come all in. For to have wrath meddlers two months before others. For to have medlars two months sooner than others, and the one shall be better far than the other, you shall graff them upon a gooseberry tree, and also a frank mulberry tree, and before you do graft them, you shall wet them in hay,

Starting point is 07:28:30 and then graft them. To return to the line, for the excursion to Plumpton has taken us far from the original route, the next station to Newick and Chaley is Barkham Mills, a watery village on the Ouse. The river valley contract, as Lewis is reached, with Morling Hill on the East and Offham Hill on the West, both taking their names from two of the quaint little hamlets by which Lewis is surrounded.

Starting point is 07:28:57 It was at Morling Deanery that the assassins of Thomas A Beckett sought shelter on their flight from Canterbury. The legend records how when they laid their armour on the deanery table, that noble piece of furniture rose and flung the accursed accoutrements to the ground. On Morling Hill is the residence of a Louisville. Louis-Lady, whose charitable impulses, have taken a direction not common among those who suffer for others. She receives into her stable, old and overworked horses, thus insuring for them a sleek and peaceful dotage, enlivened by sugar and carrots, and marked by the kindest consideration.

Starting point is 07:29:38 The pyramidal grave, as of a Saxon chief, of one of these dependents, may be seen from the road. End of Chapter 25. Chapter 26 of Highways and Byways in Sussex. This Librevox recording is in the public domain, recording by Peter Yearsley. Highways and Byways in Sussex by E. V. Lucas. Chapter 26, Lewis. Apart from the circumstances that the curiosities collected by the county's archaeological society are preserved in the castle, Lewis is the Museum of Sussex, for she has managed to

Starting point is 07:30:21 compress into small compass more objects of antiquarian interest than any town I know. Chichester, which is compact enough, sprawls by comparison. The traveller arriving by train no sooner alights from his carriage, but he is on the site of the kitchens of the Clooneyac Priory of St. Pancras, some of the walls of which almost scrape the train on its way to Brighton. That a priory eight hundred years old must be disdeme, before a railway station can be built is a melancholy circumstance. But in the present case the vandalism had its compensation, in the discovery by the excavating navvies

Starting point is 07:31:03 of the coffins of William de Waren and his wife, Gondrada, the conqueror's daughter, the founders of the Priory, which otherwise would probably have been lost ever more. The castle which dominates the oldest part of the town is but a few minutes' stiff climb from the station. Louis's several ancient churches are within hailing distance of each other. The field of her battle, where Simon de Montfort defeated Henry III, is in view from her northwest slopes, while the new Martyr's memorial on the turf above the precipitous escarpment of the cliff, once the scene of a fatal avalanche, reminds one of what horrors were possible in the name of religion in these streets less than 400 years ago.

Starting point is 07:31:48 Here are riches enough, yet Lewis adds to such mementos of an historic past, two jails, one civil and one naval, a racecourse, and a river, and she is an assized town to boot. Once, indeed, Lewis was still better off, for she had a theatre, which for some years was under the management of Jack Palmer, of whom Charles Lamb wrote with such gusto. Added to these possessions she has in Keer Street, the narrowest and steepest thoroughfare down which a king, George IV, ever rode a coach

Starting point is 07:32:25 and four, and a row of comfortable and serene residences. On the way to St. Anne's, more luxuriantly and beautifully covered with leaves than any I ever saw. Much of Lewis in September is scarlet with Virginia Creeper. Although less than half an hour from Brighton by train, and an hour by road, This is yet a full quarter of a century behind it. She would do well jealously to maintain this interval. Lewis was old and grey before Brighton was thought of. Indeed it was, as we have seen, a Lewis man that discovered Brighton, Dr Russell, who lies in his grave in South Malling Church.

Starting point is 07:33:09 Let her cling to her seniority, as a town in the movement, as a contemporary of the Queen of Watering Places, she would cut her poor figure. But it is amusing to think of the old address of a visitor to Brighton at Brighthelmstone near Lewis, and to read the county paper, the Sussex Weekly Advertiser, or Lewis Journal, of a century ago,

Starting point is 07:33:36 with its columns of Lewis News and paragraphs of Brighton correspondence. Lewis will cease to have chart. the moment she modernizes. In the words of the author of Idlehurst, as he looked down on the huddling little settlement from the cliff hill, let us keep a country town or two as preserves for clean atmospheres of body and soul, for the almost lost secret of sitting still. I find myself tangled in half-dreams of a devolution by which, when national amity, shall have become mentionable besides personal pence. London shall attract to herself all the small vice, as she does already most of the great, from the country. All the thrusters after gain,

Starting point is 07:34:25 the vulgar, heavy-fingered intellects, the progressive spouters, the bilezzes, the speculating brigandage, and shall give us back from the foggy world of clubs and cabranks and geniuses, the poets and painters, all the nice and witty and pretty people, to make towns, such as this, conserved and purified, into countryside athensis, to form distinctive schools of letters and art, individual growths, not that universal cockney mind, smoke-ingrained, stage-ridden, convention-throttled, which now masquerades under the forms of every clime and dialects, within reach of a tourist ticket. The customs of Lewis at the end of the Saxon rule,

Starting point is 07:35:17 and the beginning of the Norman, as recorded in the pages of the Doomsday Book, show that residents in the town in those days was not unmixed delight, except perhaps for murderers, for whom much seems to have been done. Thus, if the king wished to send an armament to guard the seas without his personal attendance. Twenty shillings were collected from all the inhabitants,

Starting point is 07:35:43 without exception or respect to particular tenure, and these were paid to the men-at-arms in the ships. The seller of a horse within the borough pays one penny to the mayor. Note, sheriff, end-note, and the purchaser, another. Of an ox, a half-penny, of a man, fourpence, in whatsoever place he may be brought within the race. A murderer forfeits seven shillings and fourpence. A ravisher forfeits eight shillings and fourpence, an adulterer eight shillings and fourpence,

Starting point is 07:36:18 and adulteress the same. The king has the adulterer, the bishop the adulteress. With the conquest, new life came into the town, as into South Sussex generally. The rule of the Debrouses, who dominated so much of the country through which we have been passing, is here no more. The great lord of this district being William de Warenne, who had claims upon William the Conqueror, not only for services rendered in the conquest, but as a son-in-law. When, therefore, the contest was over, some of the richest prizes fell to Earl de Warenne.

Starting point is 07:36:52 Among them was the township of Lewis, whose situation so pleased the Earl that he decided to make his home there. His first action then was to graft upon the existing fortress a new stronghold, the remains of which still stand. Ten years after the victory at Hastings the memory of the blood of the sturdy Saxons, whom he had hacked down at battle, began so to weigh upon de Waren's conscience, that he set out with Gondrada upon an expiatory pilgrimage to Rome. Sheltering on the way in the monastery of St. Per at Cluny, they were so hospitably received

Starting point is 07:37:27 that on returning to Lewis, William and Gundraada built a priory, partly as a form of gratitude and partly as a safeguard for the life to come. In 1078 it was formerly founded on a magnificent scale. Thus Lewis obtained her castle and her priory, both now in ruins, in the one of which William de Waren might sin with a clear mind, knowing that, just below him, on the edge of the water-brooks, was in the other so tangible an expiation. The date of the formation of the priory spoils the pleasant,

Starting point is 07:38:03 St. Legend, which tells how Harold only, badly wounded, was carried hither from battle, and how recovering he lived quietly with the brothers until his natural death, some years later. A variant of the same story takes the English king to a cell near St. John's under the castle, also in Lewis, and establishes him there as an anchorite. But, although, as we shall see when we come to battle the facts were otherwise, all true Englishmen prefer to think of Harold fighting in the midst of his army, killed by a chance arrow shot into the zenith, and lying there until the eyes of Editha of the swan neck lighted upon his dear corpse amid the hundreds of the slain. The de Warennes held Lewis Castle until the 14th century. The Sussex Archaeological Society

Starting point is 07:38:52 now have it in their fostering care. Architecturally it is of no great interest, Although it was once unique in England by the possession of two keeps, nor has it romantic associations like, like Kenilworth, or even Carysbrook. The crumbling masonry was assisted in its decay by no siege or bombardment. The castle has been never the scene of human struggle. Visitors, therefore, must take pleasure chiefly in the curiosities collected in the museum, and in the views from the roof. A few little rooms hold the treasures amassed by the Archaeological Society. Amassed, it may be said, with little difficulty, for the soil of the district is fertile in relics. From Ringma come rusty shield bosses and the mouldering skull of an Anglo-Saxon. From the old Lewis Jail come a lock and a key strong enough to hold Jack Shepherd, and from Horsham Jail a complete set of fetters for ankles and ribs.

Starting point is 07:39:56 lists, once used to cramp the movements of female malefactors. Here, in a case is a tiny bronze symbol that tip to the pretty finger of a Roman seamstress, one only among scores of tokens of the Roman occupation of the county. Flint arrowheads and Celts in profusion take us back to remoter times. A pycombe crook hangs on one wall, and relics of the Sussex ironworks are plentiful. The highest room contains of our best brasses. Outside is an early Sussex plough. In a corner is a beadles staff that once struck terror into the hearts of Sabbath-breaking boys, and near one of the windows is a little brass crucifix from St. Pancras Priory. But nothing, the custodian tells me,

Starting point is 07:40:46 so pleases visitors to this very Catholic collection as the mummied hand of a murderess. Looking down and around from the roof of the keep, you are immediately struck by the wide, shallow hollow in which Lewis lies. It is something the shape of a dairy basin, the gap to the northwest between Morling Hill and Offam, serving for the lip. Nothing could be flatter than the smiling meadows streaked with tiny streams, stretching between Lewis and the coastline to the southeast. With the exception of one symmetrical hillock, just the same thing. just out of the town. Among them curls the lazy ooze. Just beneath you, Lewis sleeps, red-roofed as an Italian town, sending up no hum of activity, listless and immovable, save for a few

Starting point is 07:41:39 spirals of silent smoke. The surrounding hills are very fine, furl-beacon in the far east, Mount Cabern, a noble cone, in the near east, Mount Harry to the west, on whose slope, Henry III, assisted by the fiery Prince Edward, fought the barons. So fiery indeed was this lad that he forgot all about his father, and gave chase to a small detachment of the enemy, catching them up and hewing them down with the keenest enjoyment, while the unhappy Henry was being completely worsted by Demontfort. It was a bloody battle, made up, as old Fabian wrote, of embittered men with hearts full of hatred. Either desire to bring the other out of life."

Starting point is 07:42:27 Great fun was made by the humorists of the time after the battle over the fact that Richard, King of the Romans, Henry's brother, was captured in a windmill in which he had taken refuge. This mill stood near the sight of the Black Horse Inn. In the Baron's Wars by Mr. Blau, the Sussex Antiquary, the whole story is told. Lewis has played but a small part in history since that battle. But as we saw when we were at Rottingdeen, it was one of her cluniac priors that repulsed the French in 1377, and her son, St. Nicholas Pelham, who performed a similar service in 1545 at Seaford.

Starting point is 07:43:11 As the verses on his monument in St. Michael's Church run, What time the French sought to have sacked Seaford! This Pelham did repelum back aboard. The Clooneyac Priory of St. Pancras was dissolved by Henry VIII in 1537. Thomas Cromwell that execrable vandal, not only abolishing the monks, but destroying the buildings, which covered with their garden and fishponds forty acres. The ruins that remain give some idea of the extent of this wonderful priory, another the relic being the adjacent mound on which the calvary stood, probably constructed of the earth

Starting point is 07:43:53 removed for the purpose from the dripping pan, as the hollow circular space is called where Lewis now plays cricket. One very pretty possession of the monks was allowed to stand until quite recent times, the columbarium, which was as large as a church, and contained homes for 3,228 birds. It has now vanished, but an idea of what it was may be gained from the Pigeon House at Alceston, a few miles distant, which belonged to Battle Abbey. The Priory's possessions were granted to Cromwell by Henry VIII, who, tradition asserts, somewhat directly in the face of historical evidence, murdered one of his wives on a winding stair

Starting point is 07:44:38 in the building, and may therefore have been glad to see its demolition. Which wife it was is not stated, but when Cromwell went the way of all this king's favourites, the property was transferred to Anne of Cleaves, who is supposed to have lived in the most picturesque of the old houses on the right-hand side of Southover's Street as you leave at Lewis for the Ouse Valley. Southover Church, in itself a beautiful structure of the grave red type, with a square ivied tower, and the most delicate vein in Sussex, is rendered the more interesting by the possession of the leaden caskets of William de Warenne and Gundrada, and the superb tomb, removed from

Starting point is 07:45:25 Isfield Church, and very ingeniously restored. These relics repose in a charming little chapel built in their honour. A notable man who had association with Lewis was Tom Paine, author of The Right of man. He settled there as an excise man in 1768, married Elizabeth Olive of the same town at St. Michael's Church in 1771, and succeeded to her father's business as a tobacconist and grocer. Payne was more successful as a debater than a businessman. As a member of the White Heart Evening Club, he was more often than any other, the winner of the Headstrong book, an old Greek homer, dispatched the next morning to the most obstinate harangor of the preceding night. It was at Lewis that Tom Payne's thoughts were first turned to the question

Starting point is 07:46:21 of government. He used, thus, to tell the story, one evening, after playing bowls, all the party retired to drink punch. When, in the conversation that ensued, Mr. Verrill, note it should be Verol," end note, observed, alluding to the wars of Frederick that the King of Prussia was the best fellow in the world for a king, he had so much of the devil in him. This striking me with great force, occasioned the reflection that, if it were necessary for a King to have so much of the devil in him, kings might very beneficially be dispensed with. I thought of that historic game of Bowles as I watched four Lewis gentlemen.

Starting point is 07:47:04 playing this otherwise discreetest of games, in the meadow by the castle gate on a fine September evening. Surely, after the historic Plymouth Ho, a lawn in the shadow of a Norman castle is the ideal spot for this leisurely but exciting pastime. The four Lewis gentlemen played uncommonly well with bowls of peculiar splendour, in which a setting of silver glistened as they sped over the turf. After each game one little boy bearing a cloth wiped the bowls while another registered the score. And now I feel that no one can really be said to have seen Lewis unless he has watched the progress of such a game. It remains in my mind as intimate a part of the town and the town's spirit

Starting point is 07:47:54 as the ruins of the Priory, or Keir Street, or the castle itself. The house of Tompane, just off the high street, almost opposite the circular tower of St. Michael's, has a tablet commemorating its illustrious owner. It also has a very curious red carved demon, which otherwise distinguishes it. Lewis was not always proud of Tom Paine, but Cuckfield went farther. In 1793 I learned from the Sussex advertiser for that year, Cuckfield emphasized its loyalty to the Constitution by singing, God save the king in the streets, and burning pain in effigy. Mention of Tom Paine naturally calls to mind his friend and biographer, and my thrice great-uncle,

Starting point is 07:48:44 Thomas Cleo Rickman, the citizen of the world, who was born at Lewis in 1760. Rickman began life as a Quaker, and therefore without his pagan middle name, which he first adopted as the signature to epigrams and scraps of verse in the local paper, and afterwards incorporated in his signature. Rickman's connection with Tom Paine and his own revolutionary habits were a source of distress to his Quaker relatives at Lewis, so much so that there is a story in the family of the citizen being refused admission to a house in the neighbourhood where he had eight impressionable nieces, and when he would visit their father, being entertained instead at the bear. His Bible with skeptical marginal notes is still preserved, with the bad pages

Starting point is 07:49:36 pasted together by a subsequent owner. After roving about in Spain and other countries, he settled as a bookseller in London, and it was in his house and at his table that the rights of man was written. This table, says an article on Rickman in the Wonderful Museum, is prized by him very highly at this time, and no doubt will be deemed a rich relic by some of our irreligious connoisseurs. It was shown at the Tompane exhibition a few years ago. Rickman escaped persecution, but he once had his papers seized. According to his portrait, Cleo wore a hat like a beehive, and he invented a trumpet to increase the sound of a signal gun. His verse is exceedingly poor.

Starting point is 07:50:26 His finest poetical achievement being the epitaph on Thomas Tipper in New Haven Churchyard. Tipper was the brewer of the ale that was known as New Haven Tipper, but he was other things, too. Honest he was, ingenuous, blunt, and kind, and dared what few dare do, to speak his mind. Philosophy and history, well he knew, was versed in physic, and in surgery, too. the best old stingo he both brood and sold, nor did one knavish act to get his gold. He played through life a varied comic part, and knew immortal Udibras by heart. Charles Lamb greatly admired the end of this epitaph. Cleo Rickman died in 1834.

Starting point is 07:51:16 Among other men of note who have lived in Lewis or have had association with it was John Evelyn, the diarist, who had some of his education at Southover Grammar School, Mark Anthony Lowe, the Sussex Antiquary, to whom all writers on the county are indebted. The Reverend T.W. Horsfield, the historian of Sussex, without whose work we should also often be in difficulties. And the Reverend Gideon Mantell, the Sussex geologist, whose collection of Sussex fossils is preserved in the British Museum. In St. Anne's Church, on the hill, lie the bones of a remarkable man, who died at Lewis in the tenth climacteric, in 1613, no less a person than Thomas Twine, MD. In addition to the principles of physics, he comprehended earthquakes, and wrote a book about them. He also wrote a survey of the world. I quote Horsefield's translation of the Florid Latin to his memory. Hippocrates soot-twine lifeless, and his bones slightly covered with earth.

Starting point is 07:52:27 Some of his sacred dust, says he, will be of use to me in removing diseases, for the dead, when converted into medicine, will expel human maladies, and ashes prevail against ashes. Now the physician is absent, disease extends itself on every side, and exalts its enemy is no more. more. Alas, here lies our preserve a twine, the flower and ornament of his age. Sussex deprived of her physician, languished, and is ready to sink along with him. Believe me, no future age will produce so good a physician and so renowned a man as this has. He died at Lewis in 1613, on the 1st of August in the 10th Climacteric. Note, v. 70. End note. Dr. Johnson was once in Lewis on a day's visit to the Shelley's, at the house which bears

Starting point is 07:53:25 their name at the south end of the town. One of the little girls becoming rather a nuisance with her questions, the doctor lifted her into a cherry tree and walked off. At dinner, some time later the child was missed, and a search party was about to set out when the doctor exclaimed, Oh, I left her in a tree! many years the tree was known as Dr. Johnson's cherry tree. Lewis is ordinarily still and leisurely, with no bustle in her steep streets, save on market days, an abode of rest and unhastening feet, but on one night of the year she lays aside her grey mantle and her quiet tones, and emerges a becanti,

Starting point is 07:54:10 robed in flame. Lewis on the 5th of November is an incredible sight. Probably no other town in the United Kingdom offers such a contrast to its ordinary life. I have never heard that Lewis is notably Protestant on other days in the year, that any intolerance is meted out to Roman Catholics on November 4th or November 6th,

Starting point is 07:54:34 but on November the 5th, she appears to believe that the honour of the reformed church, church is wholly in her hands, and that, unless her voice is heard, declaimy against the tyrannies and treacheries of Rome, all the spiritual labours of the Eighth Henry will have been in vain. No fewer than eight bonfire societies flourish in the town, all in a strong financial position. Each of these has its bonfire blazing or smouldering at a street corner, from dusk to midnight, And each, at a certain stage in the evening, forms into procession, and approaching its own fire

Starting point is 07:55:15 by devious roots, burns an effigy of the Pope, together with whatever miscreant most fills the public eye at the moment, such as General Booth or Mr. Kruger, both of whom I have seen incinerated amid cheers and detonations. The figures are not lightly cast on to the flames, but are conducted thither ceremoniously. the bishop of the society, having first passed sentence upon them in a speech bristling with local allusions. These speeches serve the function of a review of the year, and are sometimes quite clever, but it is not until they are printed in the next morning's paper that one can take their

Starting point is 07:55:55 many points. The principle among the many distractions is the rouser, a squib peculiar to Lewis, to which the bonfire boys, note, who are, by the way, in great part, boys only in name, like the postboys of the past, and the cowboys of the present, end note, have given laborious nights throughout the preceding October. The rouser is much larger and heavier than the ordinary squib. It is propelled through the air like a rocket by the force of its escaping sparks, and it bursts with a terrible report. In order to protect themselves from the ravages of the rouser, the people in the streets wear spectacles of wire netting, while the household

Starting point is 07:56:38 board up their windows and lay damp straw on their gratings. Ordinary squibs and crackers are also continuously ignited, while now and then one of the sky-rockets discharged in flights from a procession elects to take a horizontal course, and hurtles head high down the crowded street. So the carnival proceeds until midnight, when the firemen, who have been on the alert all the evening, extinguish the fires. the bonfire societies subsequently collect information as to any damage done, and make it good, a wise course, to which they owe in part the sanction to renew the orgy next year.

Starting point is 07:57:19 Other towns in Sussex keep up the glorious fifth with some spirit, but nowhere in England is there anything to compare with the thoroughness of Lewis. To some extent Lewis may consider that she has reason for the display, for on June the 22nd, 57, ten men and women were tied to the stake and burned to death in the High Street for professing a faith obnoxious to Queen Mary. Chief of these courageous enthusiasts were Richard Woodman and Derek Carver. Woodman, a native of Buxton, had settled at Warburton, where he was a prosperous ironmaster. All went well until Mary's accession to the throne, when the rector of Warburton, who

Starting point is 07:58:05 who had been a Protestant under Edward V. 6th, turned, in Fox's words, head to tail, and preached clean contrary to that which he had before taught. Woodman's protests carried him to imprisonment and the stake. Altogether, Lewis saw the death of sixteen martyrs. End of Chapter 26 Chapter 27 of The Highways and Byways of Sussex This Librivox recording is in the public domain, recording by Peter Yearsley The Highways and Byways of Sussex by E. V. Lucas Chapter 27, the Ouse Valley

Starting point is 07:58:55 The road from Lewis to the sea runs along the edge of the Ouse Levels, just under the bare hills, passing through villages that are little more than homesteads of the sheep farmers, albeit each has its church ifford rodmel south-east pittinghoe and so to newhaven the county's only harbour of any importance since the sea silted up the shore and bar you may be as much out of the world in one of these minute villages as anywhere twice the distance from london and the downs above them are practically virgin soil the brighton horseman or walker takes as a rule a line either to lewis or to new haven rarely venturing in the direction of irford hill high dole hill or telscombe village which nestles three hundred feet high over pittinghoe by day the wagons ply steadily between lewis and the port but other travellers are few. Once evening falls, the world is your own, with nothing but the bleat of sheep and the roar of the French boat trains to recall life and civilization. The air of this valley is singularly clear, producing on fine days a blue effect that is, I believe,

Starting point is 08:00:11 peculiar to the district. In the sketches of a Brighton painter in watercolours, Mr. Clem Lambert, who has worked much at Rodmel, the spirit of the River Valleys of Sussex is reproduced with extraordinary fidelity, and the minimum loss of freshness. Horsefield, rather than have no poetical blossom to deck his page at the mention of the Lewis River, quotes a passage from The Task, here ooze, slow winding through a level plain of spacious meads, with cattle sprinkled o'er, conducts the eye along his sinuous course, delighted. Dr. Johnson's remark that one green field is like another green field,

Starting point is 08:00:56 might one sees be extended to rivers, for Calpa was, of course, describing the ooze at Olney. The first village out of Lewis on the New Haven Road is Kingston, one of three Sussex villages of this name, on the side of the hill, once the property of Sir Philip Sydney. Next is Ifford, with straw blowing free, and cows in its meadows. Next, Rodmel.

Starting point is 08:01:21 Whence, Whiteway Bottom and Breaky Bottom, lead to the highlands above. Next, South-Ease, where the only bridge over the ooze between Lewis and New Haven is to be crossed. A little village, famous for a round church tower, of which Sussex knows but three, one other at St. Michael's, Lewis, and one at Piddinghoe, the next village. The South-Ease rustics were once of independent mind, as may be gathered from the following extract from the manorial customs of South Ease with Heighton, near Lewis, in 1623. Every reaper must have allowed him, at the cost of the Lord or his farmer, one drinking in the morning of bread and cheese, and a dinner at noon, consisting of roast meat and other good vittles, meet for men and women in harvest time, and two drinking in the afternoon, one in the midst of

Starting point is 08:02:20 their afternoon's work, and the other, at the end of their day's work, and drink always during their work as need shall require. Telscombe, the capital of these lonely downs, and as good an objective as the walker who sets out from Brighton, Rottingdeen or Lewis, to climb hills, can ask, is a a charming little shy hamlet, which nothing can harm, snugly reposing in its coom, above Piddingho. Pidingho, pronounced Pidnu, is a compact village at the foot of the hill, but it has suffered in picturesqueness and character by its proximity to the commercial enterprise of New Haven. Hussie, in his notes on the churches of Sussex, suggests that a field north of the village was once the site of a considerable Roman villa, a local sarcasmus, a local sarcasmus,

Starting point is 08:03:12 CREDETTIN-Hoo people with the habit of shewing their magpies. The Downs, when we saw them first, between Midhurst and Chichester formed an inland chain parallel with the shore. Here, and eastward as far as beechy head, where they suddenly cease, their southern slopes are washed by the channel. This companionship of the sea lends them an additional wildness. Sea mists now and then envelop them in a cloud. Seabirds rise and fall above their cliffs.

Starting point is 08:03:45 The roar or sigh of the waves mingles with the cries of sheep. The salt savour of the sea is borne on the wind over the crisp turf. It was, I fancy, among the Downs in this part of Sussex, that Mrs. Marriott Watson wrote the intimately understanding lines which I take the liberty of quoting. On the Downs, Broad and bare to the skies the great down-country lies, green in the glance of the sun, fresh with the clean salt air, screaming the gulls rise from the fresh-turned mould, where the round bosom of the wind-swept wold slopes to the valley fair. Where the pale stubble shines with golden gleam, the silver plowshare cleaves its hard one way

Starting point is 08:04:33 behind the patient team, the slow black oxen toiling through the day, tireless, impassive still, dawning dusk and chill to twilight grey. Far off the pearly sheep along the upland steep follow their shepherd from the wattled fold, with tinkling bell-notes falling sweet and cold as a stream's cadence, while a skylark sings high in the blue, with eager, outstretched wings, till the strong passion of his joy be told.

Starting point is 08:05:07 But when the day grows old, and night cometh fold on fold, dulling the western gold, blackening bush and tree, veiling the ranks of cloud in their pallid pomp and proud that hasten home from the sea. Listen, now and again, if the night be still in our you may hear the distant sea range to and fro, tearing the shingly-born of his bounden track, moaning with hate as he fails and falleth back. The downs are peopled, then. Fugitive, low-browed men start from the slopes around over the murky ground, Crouching they run with rough-wrought bow and spear,

Starting point is 08:05:51 Now seen, now hid, they rise and disappear, lost in the gloom again. Soft on the dewfall damp, scarce sounds the measured tramp of bronze-mailed sentinels, Dark on the darkened fells, guarding the camp. The Roman watch-fires glow red on the dusk, and harsh cries a heron, flitting slow over the valley marsh, where the sea-mist gathers low. Closer, and closer yet draweth the night's dim net, hiding the troubled dead, no more to see or know, but a black waist lying below, and a glimmering blank o'er head. Of New Haven, there is little to say, except that in rough weather, the traveller from France,

Starting point is 08:06:42 very glad to reach it, and on a fine day the traveller from England is happy to leave it behind. In the churchyard is a monument in memory of the officers and crew of the brazen which went down off the town in 1800 and lost all hands save one. On the way to Seaford, which is nearly three miles east, sheltering under its white headland, her preliminary sketch, as one might say for beechy head, we passed the Bishopstone tidemills, once the property of a sturdy and prosperous Sussex autocrat named William Cat, the grower of the best pears in the county, and the first to welcome Louis Philippe, whom he had advised on milling in France, when he landed at New Haven in exile. A good story told of William

Starting point is 08:07:31 Cat by Mr. Lauer in his Worthies of Sussex illustrates not only the character of that sagacious and kindly Martinette, but also of the Sussex peasant, in its mingled independence and dependence, frankness, and caution. Mr. Cat, having unbent among his retainers at a harvest supper, one of them, a little emboldened, perhaps, by draughts of New Haven tipper, thus addressed his master. Give us your hand, sir! I love you, I love you. But, he added, I'm danged if I be'n't afeard of you, though. There was a hermitage on the cliff at Seaford some centuries ago.

Starting point is 08:08:14 In 1372 the hermit's name was Peter, and we find him receiving letters of protection for the unusual term of five years. In the vestry of the church is an old monument bearing the riddling inscription. Also, near this place, lie two mothers, three grandmothers, four aunts, four sisters, four daughters, four granddaughters, three cousins, but six persons. A record in the Seaford Archives runs thus,

Starting point is 08:08:46 December the 24th, 1652, then were all accounts taken and all made even, from the beginning of the world, of the former bailiffs, unto the present time, and there remained the sum of of twelve pounds, sixteen shillings, seven pence. Milborough House, Seaford, was of old called Corsica Hall, having been built, originally at Wellingham near Lewis, and then moved, by a smuggler named Whitfield, who was outlawed for illicit traffic in Corsican wine. He obtained the removal of his outlawry by presenting George the second with a selection of his choicest vintages. Another agreeable story of local corruption is told concerning Seaford's old electioneering days.

Starting point is 08:09:36 It was in 1798 during the candidature of Sir Godfrey Webster of Battle Abbey. Sir Godfrey was one day addressed by Mrs. S. Nothing but Horsefield's delicacy keeps her name from fame. In the following terms, Mr. S, sir, will vote, of course, as he pleases. I have nothing to do or to say about him, But there is my gardener and my coachman, both of whom will I am sure be entirely guided by me. Now they are both family men, Sir Godfrey, and I wish to do the best I can to serve them.

Starting point is 08:10:11 Now, I know you are in great doubt, and that two sure votes are of great value. I'll tell you what you shall do. You shall give me two hundred pounds. Nobody will know anything about it. There will be no danger. No bribery, Sir Godfrey at all. I will desire the men to go and vote for you and Colonel Tarle. and it will be all right, and no harm done.

Starting point is 08:10:34 The bargain, adds Horstfield, was struck, the money paid, the votes given as promised, and the election over the old lady gave the two men thirty pounds apiece, and pocketed the rest for the good of her country. Seaford's neighbouring village, Bishopston, in addition to its tidemills, the only tidemills in Sussex, excepting that at Seidelsham, now disused, possessed once the old oldest windmill in the county. In the very charming little church is buried James Hurdice, author of The Village Curate, whom we shall meet again at Burwash. From Bishopston, we may return to Lewis, either by the road through South Heighton, Tarring Neville,

Starting point is 08:11:18 Itford Farm and Beddingham, or cross the river again at South East, and retrace our earlier steps through Rodmill and Ifford. That is the quicker way. The road through Beddingham is longer, and interesting, rather for the hills above it, than for anything upon it. To these hills we come in the next chapter. End of Chapter 27. Chapter 28 of Highways and Byways in Sussex This Librevox recording is in the public domain, recording by Peter Yearsley. Highways and Byways in Sussex by E. V. Lucas. Chapter 28, Alfriston Alfriston may be reached from Lewis by rail, taking train to Berwick, by road under the hills, or by foot or horseback over the hills.

Starting point is 08:12:17 By road you pass first through Beddingham, a small village where it is said was once a monastery, then by a southern detour to West Furl, a charming little village with a great park, which bears the same relation to Furl Beacon that Wiston Park does to Chanktonbury Ring. The tower in the east serves to provide a good view of the wield for those who do not care to climb the beacons 700 feet and get a better. The little church is rich in interesting memorials of the Gages, who have been the Lords of Firl for many a long year. In the house is a portrait of Sir John Gage, the trusted friend of Henry VIII, Edward V. and Mary, and as constable of the tower, the jailer, but a man. a very kind one, of both Lady Jane Grey and the Princess Elizabeth, afterwards Good Queen Bess.

Starting point is 08:13:12 In Harrison Ainsworth's Romance, the Constable of the Tower, Sir John Gage is much seen. Sir John was succeeded at Ferl by his son Sir Edward, who, as High Sheriff of Sussex, was one of the judges of the Sussex martyrs, but who, even Fox admits, exercised courtesy to them. Sir Edward's son Sir John Gage was the second husband of the Lady Manelope Darcy, Mr. Hardy's heroine, whose portrait we saw at Parham, who, being courted as a girl by Sir George Trenchard, Sir John Gage, and Sir William Hervey, promised she would marry all in turn, and did so. Sir George left her a widow at seventeen. To Sir John Gage she bore nine children. Returning from Furl to the High Road, we come next, by following for a little a left turn, to Selmiston,

Starting point is 08:14:08 the village where Mr. W. D. Parrish, the rector for very many years, collected most of the entertaining examples of the Sussex dialect, with which I have made so free in a later chapter. The church is very simple and well cared for, with some pretty south windows, the small memorial tablets of brass which have been letting. into the floor, symmetrically among the tiles, seemed to me a happier means of commemoration than mural tablets, at least for a modest building such as this. In losing your way in this neighbourhood, do not ask the passer-by for Selmiston, but for Simpson, for Selmiston, pronounced as spelt, does not exist. Sussex men are curiously intolerant of the phonetics of orthography. Bright Helmstone was called Brighton from the first, although only in the last century was the spelling

Starting point is 08:15:03 modified to agree with the sound. Chalvington, the name of a village north of Selmiston, is a pretty word, but Sussex declines to call it other than Chawton. Furl becomes feral, Lewis is almost Luz, but not quite. Heathfield is Heffel. It is characteristic of a Sussex man that he always knows best. Though all the masters of all the colleges should assemble about him and speak reasoningly of Selmiston, he would leave the Congress as incorrigible and self-satisfied a simpsonian as ever. Many years ago, Selmiston Churchyard possessed an empty tomb, in which the smugglers were wont to store their goods until a favourable time came to set them on the road. Any objections that those in authority might have had were silenced by an occasional tub,

Starting point is 08:16:02 but of this more in the next chapter. And so we come to Alfriston, but as I said the right way was over the hills, ascending them either at Idford, crossing the ooze at South-Ease, or by that remarkable Coombe, one of the finest in Sussex, with an avenue leading to it, which is gained from a lane south of Beddingham. Furl Beacon's lofty summit is halfway between Beddingham and Alfriston, and from this height, with its magnificent view of the weald, we descend steadily to the Kukmere Valley, of which Alfriston is the capital. Alphriston, which is now only a village street,

Starting point is 08:16:45 shares with Chichester the distinction of possessing a market cross. Alfriston's specimen is, however, sadly mutilated, a mere relic, whereas Chichester's is being made more splendid as I write. Alpherson also has one of the oldest inns in the county, the star, finer far in its way than any of Chichester's 70 and more. But Ainsworth was wrong in sending Charles II thither in Ovington Grange. It is one of the inns that the merry monarch never saw. The star was once a sanctuary, within the jurisdiction of the abbot of battle, for persons flying from justice, and it is pleasant to sit in the large room upstairs over the street, and think of fugitives pattering up the valley, with fearful backward glances, and hammering at the old door.

Starting point is 08:17:40 One Beryl, in the reign of Henry VIII, having stolen a horse at Lid in Kent, took reference. refuge here. The inn in those days was intended chiefly for the refreshment of mendicant friars. In 1767 the landlord was, according to a private letter, as great a curiosity as the house. I wish we had some information about him, for the house is quaint and curious indeed, with its red lion sentinel at the side, figurehead from a Dutch wreck in Kukmere Haven, and its carvings inside and out. The old and the new mingled very oddly when I was lately at Altristan. Hearing a familiar sound as of a battle-door and a ball in one of the rooms,

Starting point is 08:18:25 I opened the door and discovered the landlord and a groom from the racing stables nearby in the throes of the most modern of games amid surroundings absolutely medieval. The size of the grave and commanding church, which has been called the Cathedral of the South Downs, Alone proves that Alfriston was once a vastly more important place than it now is. Legend says that the foundations were first cut in the meadow known as Savine Croft. There day after day the builders laid their stones, arriving each morning to find them removed to the tie, the field where the church now stands.

Starting point is 08:19:07 At last, the meaning of the miracle entered their heads, and the church was erected on the new site. Its shape was determined by the slumbers of four oxen, who were observed by the architect to be sleeping in the form of a cross. Poinings Church under the Dyke Hill near Brighton was built it has been conjectured by the same architect. Within the Cathedral of the South Downs, which is a 14th century building,

Starting point is 08:19:34 is a superb east window, but it has no coloured glass. The register, beginning with 1504, is perhaps the oldest in England. Hard by the church is the simple little clergy house, unique in England, I believe, dating from pre-Reformation times. It has lately been very carefully restored.

Starting point is 08:19:57 Alfriston once had a scholar in the person of Thomas Chown, of Frogfirl, the old house on the road to Seaford, about a mile beyond the village. Chown, who died in 1639, and was buried in Alfriston, is thus touched off by fuller thomas tune isquire living at alfriston in this county set forth a small manual entitled collectiones teologicarum conclusiom indeed many have much opposed it as what book meeteth not with opposition though such as dislike must commend the brevity and clearness of his positions for mine own part i am glad to see a lay gentleman so able and industrious. Chown's great-great-grandson, an antiquary, one night left some books too near his

Starting point is 08:20:50 library fire. They ignited, and Frog-Firl Place was in large part destroyed. It is now only a fragment of what it was, and is known as Burnt House. An intermediate dweller at Frog-Firl was one Robert Andrews, who, when unwell, seems to have been attended by William Benbrigg. Miss Florence A. Pagdon, in her agreeable little history of Alfriston, from which I have been glad to borrow, prints two of Mr. Ben Briggs' letters of kindly but vague advice to his patient. Here is one. Mr. Andrews. I have sent you some things which you may take in the manner following, viz, of that in the

Starting point is 08:21:34 bottle marked with a plus, you may take of the quantity of a spoonful or so, now and then, And at night take some of those pills, drinking a little warm beer after it, and in the morning take two spoonfuls of that in blank. Bottle, fasting an hour after it, and then you may eat something. You may take also of the first, and every night a pill, and in the morning. I hope this will do you good, which is the desire of him who is your loving friend, William Bembrigg. once had a race meeting of its own. The course is still to be seen on the southern slope of Furl Beacon, and it also fostered cricket in the early days.

Starting point is 08:22:20 A famous single-wicket match was contested here in 1787, between four men whose united ages amounted to 297 years. History records that the game was played with great spirit and activity. Mr. Lauer records in 1870 that the largest pair of, and the largest apple ever known in England, were both grown at Alfriston, but, possibly the record has since been broken. The smallest church in Sussex is, however, still to Alfriston's credit, for Lullington Church on the hillside, just across the river and the fields to the east of Alfriston Church,

Starting point is 08:23:03 may be considered to belong to Alfriston without any violence to its independence. As a matter of fact, the church was once bigger, the Chancellor alone now standing. What Charles Lamb says of Hollington Church in Chapter 26 of this book would be more fitting of Lullington. We have come to Alfriston from Lewis, proposing to return there, but it might well be made a centre, so much fine hill country does it command. Alfriston to Seaford direct, over the hills and back of the cliffs and the Cucmere Valley. Alfriston to Eastbourne, crossing the Cuckmere at Littlington, and beginning the ascent of the hills at West Dean,

Starting point is 08:23:46 Alfriston to Lewis over Furl Beacon, Alfriston to Newhaven, direct, Alfriston to Jevington and Willingdon. All these routes cover good down country, making the best of primitive rambles by day, and bringing one at evening back to the star. This medieval inn in the best of primitive villages. Few persons, however, are left who will climb hills, even grass hills, if they can help it. Hence this council is likely to lead to no overcrowding of four-down, the camp, Five Lordsborough, South Hill, or Furl Beacon. I might here, perhaps, be allowed to insert some verses upon the new locomotion, since they bear upon this question of walking in remote places, and were composed to some extent in Sussex byways in the spring of 1903.

Starting point is 08:24:43 A song against speed. Of speed the savor and the sting, none but the weak deride. But ah, the joy of lingering about the countryside. The swiftest wheel, the conquering run, we count no privilege, beside acquiring in the sun the secret of the hedge. Where is the poet, fired to the, To sing the snails discrete degrees, A rhapsody of sauntering, A gloria of ease, Proclaiming theirs the baser part, Who consciously forswear the delicate and gentle art of never getting

Starting point is 08:25:23 There. To get there first! Tis time to ring the knell of such an aim. To be the swiftest! Riches bring so easily that fame. To shine a highway-neigh- meteor, devourer of the map, a vulgar bliss to choose before repose in nature's lap. Consider, too, how small a thing the highest speed you gain, a bee can frolic on the wing around

Starting point is 08:25:53 the fastest train. Think of the swallow in the air, the salmon in the stream, and cease to boast the records rare of paraffin and steam. Most, most of all, when come. comes the spring. Again, to lay, as now, her hand benign and quickening on meadow, hill, and bower, should speed's enchantment lose its power. For none who would exceed, the mother speaks, a mile an hour, my heart aright, can read. The turnpike from the car to fling, as from a yacht the sea, is doubtless as in-spiriting as aught on land, can be. I grant the glory, the romance, but look behind the veil. Suppose that while the motor pants, you miss the nightingale. To return to Alfriston, there are two brief excursions

Starting point is 08:26:56 possible in the vehicles that are glanced at in the foregoing verses, which ought to be described here, to Alcyston and to Wilmington. Alceston is a little hamlet under the east slope of firl beacon, practically no more than a farmhouse, a church, and dependent cottages. It is on a road that leads only to itself and to the hill, as the signboards say hereabout. It is perhaps as nearly forgotten as any village in the county, and yet I know of no village with more unobtrusive charm. The church, which has no vicar of its own, being served from Selmiston, a mile away, stands high amid its graves. The whole churchyard having been heaped up and ramparted, much as a castle is.

Starting point is 08:27:46 In the hollow to the west of the church is part of the farmyard. A pond, a vast barn, with one of the noblest red roofs in these parts, and the ruins of a stone pigeon-house of great age and solidity, buttressed and built as if for a siege, in curious contrast to the gentle, pretty purpose for which it was intended. Between the church and the hill, and almost adjoining it, is the farmhouse, where the church keys are kept, a relic of Alsist and Grange, once the property of Battle Abbey, with odds and ends of its past life still visible, and a flourishing fig tree at the back, heavy with fruit when I saw it under a September sun. The front of the house looks due east, across a cross of valley of corn to Berwick Church on a corresponding mound, and beyond Berwick to the downs above

Starting point is 08:28:38 Wilmington, and at the foot of the garden, on the top of the grey wall above the moat, is a long, narrow terrace of turf, commanding this eastern view, a terrace meet for Benedict and Beatrice to pace, exchanging raillery. In Berwick Church, by the way, is a memorial to George Hall, a former rector, of whom it is said that his name speaks all learning, humane and divine, and that his memory is precious both to the muses and the graces. The Reverend George Hall's works seem, however, to have vanished. Wilmington, northeast of Alfriston, occupies a corresponding position to that of Alcyston in the northwest, but having a lion in the shape of the long man, it has,

Starting point is 08:29:29 lost its virginal bloom. Wilmington is providing tea and ginger beer, while Alceston nurses its unsullied inaccessibility. The long man is a rude figure cut in the turf by the monks of the Benedictine Priory that once flourished here, the ruins of which are now incorporated, like Alcystyn Grange, in a farmhouse on the east of the village. At least, it is thought by some antiquaries that the effigy is the work of the monks. Others, pronounce it druidical. The most alluring of several theories, indeed, would have the figure to represent Pol or Balder, the sun-god, pushing aside the doors of darkness, Polegate, or Bol's Gate, nearby, being brought in as evidence.

Starting point is 08:30:16 End of Chapter 29 of Highways and Byways in Sussex. This Libreiboriborix recording is in the public domain, recording by Peter Yearsley. Highways and Byways in Sussex by E. V. Lucas. Chapter 29. Smuggling Alfriston's place in history was won by its smugglers. All Sussex smuggled, more or less, but smuggling may be said to have been Alphriston's industry. Cuckmere Haven, close by, offered unique advantages. It was retired, The coast was unpopulated. The roadway inland started immediately from the beach.

Starting point is 08:31:06 The valley was in friendly hands. The paths and contours of the hills were not easily learned by revenue men. Nature from the first clearly intended that Alphriston men should be too much for the excise. Smuggling was predestined. Farmers, shepherds, oslers, what you will, that is respectable, these Alphriston men might be by day, and when the moon was bright, but when the darks came round, they were smugglers every one. Chief of what was known nearly a hundred years ago as the Alphriston gang was Stanton Collins,

Starting point is 08:31:45 who lived at Market Cross House. Collins employed his men not only in assisting him in smuggling, but for other purposes removed from that calling by a wide gulf. Thus, when Mr. Betts, the Minister of the Lady Huntingdon Chapel at Alphriston, was high-handedly suspended by the chief trustee of the chapel, on account of his opposition to that gentleman's proposed union with his deceased wife's sister. It was Collins's gang, who invaded the chapel, ejected the new minister, replaced Mr. Betts in the pulpit, and mounted guard round it,

Starting point is 08:32:22 while he continued the service. Mr. Betz was equal to the occasion. He gave out the hymn, God moves in a mysterious way, Collins terrorized the countryside for some years, except upon the score of personal bravery and humorous audacity I doubt if his place is quite on the golden roll of smugglers, and was at length brought within the power of the law for sheep-stealing, and sentenced to seven years. The last of his gang, Bob Hall, died in the workhouse at Eastbourne in 1895, aged 94. Sussex may always be proud of her best smugglers. There were brutal scoundals among them,

Starting point is 08:33:05 such as the men that murdered Chaiter, and were executed at Chichester in 1748. Note, the report may be read in Mr. H. L. Stevens's State Trials, Volume 4, end note. But the ordinary smuggler was often a fine, rebellious fellow, courageous, resourceful, and gifted with a certain grim humour that led him, as we have seen, to hide his tubs as often in the belfry or the churchyard as anywhere else, and enough knowledge of character to tell him when he might secure the silence of the vicar with an obletary keg. The Sussex clergy seemed to have needed very little encouragement to omit smuggling from the decalogue. It is, I think, the late Mr. Coker Egerton of Burwash, who tells of a Sussex

Starting point is 08:33:53 parson feigning illness a whole Sunday, on hearing suddenly in the morning that a cargo hard-pressed by the revenue, had in despair been lodged among his pews. But the classical passage on this subject comes from Cornwall, from the pen of R. S. Hawker, the vicar of Morwenstow, and the author of The Song of the Western Men. He was not himself a smuggler, but his parishioners had no scruples, and his heart was with the braver side of the business. It was full sea in the evening of an autumn day,

Starting point is 08:34:26 when a traveller arrived where the road ran along by a sandy beach, just above high watermark. The stranger who was a native of some inland town, and utterly unacquainted with Cornwall and its ways, had reached the brink of the tide just as a landing was coming off. It was a scene not only to instruct a townsman, but also to dazzle and surprise. At sea just beyond the billows lay the vessel, well moored with anchors at stem and stern. Between the ship and the shore boats, laden to the gunwale, passed to and fro. Crowds assembled on the beach to help the cargo ashore. On the one hand a boisterous group surrounded a keg with the head knocked in,

Starting point is 08:35:06 for simplicity of access to the good cognac, into which they dipped whatever vessel came first to hand. One man had filled his shoe. On the other side they fought and wrestled, cursed and swore. Horrified at what he saw, the stranger lost all self-command, and oblivious of personal danger, began to shout, "'What horrible sight! Have you no shame? Is there no magistrate at hand? Can not any justice of the peace be found in this fearful country?' "'No, thanks, Peter God,' answered a hoarse, gruff voice. "'None within eight miles.'

Starting point is 08:35:38 "'Well then,' screamed the stranger, "'is there no clergyman hereabout? Does no minister of the parish live among you on this coast?' "'I, to be sure there is,' said the same deep voice. "'Well, how far off does he live? Where is he?' That's he, sir, yonder with the lantern. And sure enough, there he stood on a rock, and poured with pastoral diligence the light of other days on a busy congregation. The clergy, however, did not always know how useful they were.

Starting point is 08:36:10 The Reverend Webster Whistler of Hastings records that he was awakened one night to receive a votive cask of brandy, as his share of the spoil, which, to his surprise his church tower had been harboring. A commoner method was to leave the gift, the tithe, silently on the doorstep. Revenue officers have perhaps been placated in the same way. Smuggling, in the old use of the word, is no more. The surreptitious introduction into this country of German cigars, odour cologne, and Taushnitz novels, does not merit the term.

Starting point is 08:36:45 A revised tariff, having removed the necessity for smuggling, the game is over. For that is the reason of the disappearance of the smuggler. rather than any increased vigilance on the part of the Coast Guard. The records of smuggling show that the difficulties offered to the profession by the government were difficulties that existed merely to be overcome. Perhaps fiscal reform may restore the old pastime. The word smuggler arouses in the mind the figure of a bold and desperate mariner searching the coast for a signal that all is safe to land his cargo.

Starting point is 08:37:20 But, as a matter of fact, the men who ran the greatest, risks were not the marine smugglers at all, but the land smugglers, who received the tubs on the shore and conveyed them to a hiding-place, preparatory to the journey to London, whither the major part was perilously taken. Such were the Alfreston smugglers. These were the men who fought the revenue officers, and had the hair's breadth escapes. These were the men whose houses were watched, whose every movement was suspected, who needed to be wily as the serpent, and to know the country inch by inch. Not that the sea smuggler ran no risks. On the contrary, he was continually in danger from revenue cutters and the Coast Guard's boats. Bloody fights in the channel

Starting point is 08:38:05 were by no means rare. He was often in peril from the elements. His endurance was superb. He had to be a sailor of genius, ready for every kind of emergency. But the land smuggler was more vulnerable than the sea smuggler. His rewards were smaller, and his operations were. were less simple. There is a vast difference between a dark night at sea and a dark night on land. Once the night fell the sea was the smuggler's own. He was invisible, inaudible. But the land was not less the revenue officers. The land smuggler had to show his signal light. He had to roll casks over the beach. He had to carry them into security. His horse's hoofs could not be stilled as oars are muffled. His wheels bit noisily into the road.

Starting point is 08:38:52 He was liable to be stopped at any turn, and he ran these risks from the coast right into London. I doubt if the land smuggler has had his due of praise. Sometimes the land smuggler had to be land smuggler and sea smuggler too, for many of the ships never troubled to make a landing at all. They sailed as near the shore as might be, and then sank the tubs, which were always lashed together and kept on deck in readiness to be thrown overboard, in case of the approach of a cutter. The position of the mooring, having been conveyed to the Confederates on shore, the vessel

Starting point is 08:39:26 was at liberty to return to France for another cargo, leaving the responsibility of fishing up the tubs and getting them to shore and away wholly with the land smuggler. An old pamphlet entitled The Trials of the Smugglers at the Assizes held at East Grinstead, March the 13th, 14th, 15th and 16th, 1748 to 9, gives the following information about the duties and pay of the land smugglers at that day. Each man is allowed half a guinea time, and his expenses for eating and drinking. A horse found him, and the profits of a dollop of tea, which is about thirteen pounds weight, being the half of a bag.

Starting point is 08:40:06 Which profit, even from the most ordinary of their teas, comes to twenty-four or twenty-five shillings, and they would always make one journey, sometimes two, in a week. But these men would be underlings. There were, I take it, land-smugglers in control of the operation. who shared on a more lordly scale with their brethren in the boat. On all the routes employed by the land smugglers were certain cottages and farmhouses where tubs might be hidden. Houses still abound supplied with unexpected recesses

Starting point is 08:40:37 and vast cellars where cargoes were stored on their way to London. In many cases, in the old days, these houses were haunted, to put forth the legend of a ghost, being the simplest way not only of accounting for such, nocturnal noises, as might be occasioned by the arrival or departure of smugglers and tubs, but also of keeping inquisitive folks at bay. Only a little while ago, during alterations to an old cottage high on the hills near my home in Kent, corroboration was given to a legend crediting the place with being a smuggler's halfway house,

Starting point is 08:41:12 by the builder's discovery of a cavern under the garden communicating with the cellar. For the gaining of such fastnesses, the hollow ways of Sussex were maintained. Parson Darby's smuggling successor in Mr. Horace Hutchinson's Sussex romance, a friend of Nelson, thus described them to the hero of Withiam. The sun strikes hot enough. Would you like to ride in the shade a while? Immensely, I replied, if I saw the shade. Keep after me, then, said he, but the Rhone will. You need not trouble. In a moment on his great big horse he was forcing his way down what had looked to me no more than a rabbit run through the roadside bushes.

Starting point is 08:41:53 For a while I had noticed the road seemed flanked by a mass of boschage, below it on the right-hand side. Into this and downward the man crammed his horse, squeezing his legs into the horse's flank. I followed closely, and in a yard or two found myself in a deep lane or cutting, very thickly overgrown, so that only occasional gleams of sunshine crept in through the leafage. We rode, as he had promised, in a most pleasant shade. The floor of this lane, or passage, was not of the smoothest, and we went at a foot-space only, and in Indian file. What is the meaning of it all? I asked him.

Starting point is 08:42:31 Well, said he, you have heard, I suppose, of the hollow ways, as they are called of Sussex, this is one. They were in their origin lanes, I take it, and perhaps the only means of getting about the country the rains in this sandy soil washing down gradually deepened and deepened them folk grew to use the new roads as they were made leaving the lanes unheeded to be overgrown here and there certain base fellows of the lewders commonly called smugglers may have deepened them further and improved on what nature had begun so well with the results that you can ride many a mile mole-like if you know your way from the sea-coast from the sea-coast northard, never showing your face above ground at all. That is what it means, he ended. Smuggling was in the blood of the Sussex people. As the Cornishman said to Mr. Hawker, why should the king tax good liquor? Why, indeed. Everyone sided with the smugglers both on the

Starting point is 08:43:28 coast and inland. A burwash woman told Mr. Egerton that as a child, after saying her prayers, she was put early to bed with the strict injunction. Now mind, is the gentleman come along, don't you look out of the window. The gentleman were the smugglers, and not to look at them was a form of negative help, since he that has not seen a gentleman cannot identify him. Another Burwash character said that his grandfather had fourteen children, all of whom were brought up to be smugglers. These would, of course, be land smugglers, Burwash being on a highway, convenient for the gentleman between the coast and the capital. End of Chapter 29.

Starting point is 08:44:16 Chapter 30 of Highways and Byways in Sussex This Librevox recording is in the public domain, recording by Peter Yearsley. Highways and Byways in Sussex by E.V. Lucas. Chapter 30, Glind and Ringma One of the pleasantest short walks from Lewis takes one over Mount Cabern to Glind, from Glind to Ringma, and from Ringma over the hills to Lewis again. The path to Mount Cabern winds upward, just beyond the turn of the road to glined, under the cliff.

Starting point is 08:44:51 Cabern is not one of the highest of the downs, a mere 490 feet, whereas furl beacon across the valley is upwards of 700. But it is one of the friendliest of them, for on its very summit is a deep, grassy hollow, relic of ancient British fortification, where on the windiest day one may rest in that perfect peace that comes only after climbing. Cayburn is not unique in this respect. There is, for example, a similar hollow in the hill above Kingly Vale, but Cabern has a deeper cavity than any other that I can recall. On the roughest day thus cupped,

Starting point is 08:45:30 one may hear, almost see, the gale go by overhead. And on such a mild spring day as that when I was last there, towards the end of April, there is no such place in which to lie and listen to the lark. If one were asked to name an employment consistent with perfect idleness, it would be difficult to suggest a better than that of watching a lark, melting out of sight into the sky, and then finding it again. This you may do in Cairns Hollow as nowhere else. The song of the lark thus followed by eye and ear, for song and bird become one, passes,

Starting point is 08:46:14 naturally into the music of the spheres. There exist in the universe, only yourself, and this cosmic Twitter. The Lewis golfers of both sexes pursue their sport some way towards Cabern, and in the valley below the volunteers fire at their butts. But I doubt if the mountain proper will ever be tamed. Picnics are held on the summit on fine summer days, but for the greater part of the year it belongs to the horsemen, the shoestowns. shepherd and the lark. Mount Caburn gave its title to a poem by William Hay of Glindbourne House in 1730, which ends with these lines, in the manner of an epitaph, upon their author. Here lived the man, who to these fair retreats first drew the muses from their ancient seats,

Starting point is 08:47:08 though low his thought, though impotent his strain, yet let me never of his song complain, For this the fruitless labour recommends, he loved his native country and his friends. William Hay, 1695 to 1755, was author also of a curious essay on deformity, which Charles Lamb liked, and of several philosophical works, and was a very diligent member of Parliament. Descending Cabern's eastern slope, and passing at the foot the mellowest barn roof in the County, beautifully yellowed by weather and time, we come to Glynde, remarkable among Sussex villages for a formal Grecian Church that might have been ravished from a Surrey-Thameside village and set down here, so little resemblance has it to the indigenous Sussex House

Starting point is 08:48:03 of God. As a matter of fact, it was built in 1765 by the Bishop of Durham, the Bishop being Richard Trevor, of the family that then owned Glyndt Place, which is hard by the Church. a fine Elizabethan mansion, a little sombre, and very much in the manner of the great houses in the late S. E. Waller's pictures, the very place for a clandestine interview, or midnight elopement. The present owner, a descendant of the Trevers and of the famous John Hamden, enemy of the Star Chamber and shipmoney, is Admiral Brand. The man's most famous inhabitant was John Elman, 1753 to 1832, the breeder of sheep, who farmed here from

Starting point is 08:48:48 1780 to 1829, and was the village's kindly autocrat, and a true father to his men. The last of the patriarchs, as he might be called, Elman lodged all his unmarried labourers under his own roof, giving them when they married enough grassland for a pig and a cow, and a little more for cultivation. He built a school for the children of his men, and permitted no licensed house to exist in Glynd. Not that he objected to beer, on the contrary, he considered it the true beverage for farm labourers, but he preferred that they should brew it at home. It was John Elman who gave the Southdowne sheep its fame, and brought it to perfection. The most interesting account of Southdown sheep is to be found in Arthur Young's general view

Starting point is 08:49:36 of the agriculture of the county of Sussex, which is one of those books that, beginning their lives as practical, instructive, and somewhat dry manuals, mellow as the years go by, into human documents. Taken, sentence by sentence, Young has no charm, but his book has, in the mass, quite a little of it, particularly if one loves Sussex. He studied the country carefully, with special emphasis upon the domain of the Earl of Egremont, an agricultural refurb. former of much influence, whom we have met as a collector of pictures and the friend of painters. For the Earl not only brought Turner into Sussex with his brushes and palate, but introduced a plough from Suffolk, and devised a new light wagon. The other hero of Young's book is

Starting point is 08:50:24 necessarily John Elman, whose flock at Glyndt he subjected to close examination. Thomas Elman of Shoreham, John's cousin, he also approved as a breeder of sheep, but it is John that stood nighest the Earl of Egremont on Young's ladder of approbation. John Elman's sheep were considered the first of their day, equally for their meat and their wool. I will not quit from Young to any great extent, lest vegetarian readers exclaim, but the following passage from his analysis of the South Down Type must be transplanted here, for its pleasant carnal vigour. The shoulders are wide, they are round and straight in the barrel, broad upon the loin and hips, shut well in the twist, which is a projection of flesh in the inner part of the thigh that gives a fullness when viewed behind, and makes a south-down leg of mutton remarkably round and short, more so than in other breeds.

Starting point is 08:51:20 John Elman by no means satisfied all his fellow-breeders that he was right. His neighbour at Glynd, Mr Morris, differed from him in the matter of crossing, and his cousin Thomas had other views on many points touching the flock. In the following passage Arthur Young expresses the extent to which individuality in sheep-breeding may run. The south-down farmers breed their sheep with faces and legs of a colour, just as suits their fancy. One likes black, another sandy, a third speckled, and one and all exclaim against white. This man concludes that legs and faces with an inclination to white are infallible signs of tenderness, and do not stand against the severity of the weather with the same hardiness as the darker breed, and they allege that these sorts will fall off in their flesh. A second will set the first right, and pronounce that in a lot of weathers those that are soonest and most fat are white-faced,

Starting point is 08:52:18 that they prove remarkably good milkers, but that white is an indication of a tender breed. Another is of opinion that by breeding the lambs too black, the wool is injured, and likewise apt to be tainted with black and spotted, especially about the neck and not saleable. A fourth breeds with legs and faces as black as it is possible, and he too is convinced that the healthiness is in proportion to blackness, while another says that if the south-down sheep were suffered to run in a wild state, they would in a very few years become absolutely black.

Starting point is 08:52:54 All these are the opinions of eminent breeders, In order to reconcile them, others breed for speckled faces, and it is the prevailing colour. It is told that when the Duke of Newcastle used to pass through Glyne on his way from Halland House near East Hothley to Bishopstone, the peal of welcome was rung on ploughshairs since there was but one bell. Ringma, which lies about two miles north of Glynde, is not in itself a village of much beauty. Its distinction is to have provided William Penn with a wife, Guleleelma Springett, daughter of Sir William Springett, a Puritan, whose bust is in the church and who died at the siege of Arndel Castle.

Starting point is 08:53:39 The great Quaker thus took to wife the daughter of a soldier. When Guleleelma Penn died at the age of 50, her husband wrote of her, She was a public as well as a private loss, for she was not only an excellent wife and mother, but an entire and constant friend of a more than common capacity and greater modesty and humility, yet most equal and undaunted in danger, religious as well as ingenuous, without affectation, an easy mistress and good neighbour, especially to the poor, neither lavish nor penurious, but an example of industry as well as of other virtues,

Starting point is 08:54:18 therefore our great loss, though her own eternal gain. Ringma Church, I might add, is a monument to Mrs. Geoffrey, nay, Maney, wife of Francis Geoffrey of South Malling, with another beautiful testimony to the character of a good wife. Wise, modest, more than can be marshalled here, her many virtues would a volume fill, for all heaven's gifts in many single set, in Geoffrey's Mene altogether met. Brighammer was long famous for its mud and bad roads. Defoe, or another, says in the tour through Great Britain, I travelled through the dirtiest, but in many respects the richest and most profitable country

Starting point is 08:55:08 in all that part of England. The timber I saw here was prodigious, as well in quantity as in bigness, and seemed in some places to be suffered to grow only because it was so far from any navigation that it was not worth cutting down and carrying away. In dry summers, indeed, a great deal is conveyed to Maidstone and other places on the Medway, and sometimes I have seen one tree on a carriage, which they call in Sussex a tug, drawn by twenty-two oxen, and even then it is carried so little away and thrown down and left for other tugs to take up and carry on, that sometimes it is two or three years before

Starting point is 08:55:42 it gets to Chatham. For if once the rain comes on it stirs no more that year, and sometimes a whole summer is not dry enough to make the road passable. Here I had a sight which, indeed, I never saw in any part of England before, namely that, going to a church at a country village, not far from Lewis, I saw an ancient lady, and a lady of very good quality, I assure you, drawn to church in her coach by six oxen, nor was it done in frolic or humour, but from sheer necessity, the way being so stiff and deep that no horses could go in it. The old lady was not singular in her method of attending service,

Starting point is 08:56:22 for another writer records seeing Sir Herbert Springett, father of Sir William, drawn to church by eight oxen, a determination to get to his pew at any cost that led to the composition of the following ballad, which is now printed for the first time. The ride to church A true son of the Church of England Epitaph on Sir Herbert Springett in Ringma Church.

Starting point is 08:56:49 Let others sing the wild career of Turpin, Gilpin, Paul Revere. A gentler pace is mine, but here, the raindrops fell, splash, thud, till half the countryside was flood, and Ringma was a waste of mud. The sleepy ooze had grown a sea, where here and there a drowning tree cast up its arms beseechingly, and cattle that in fairer days beside its banks were wont to graze, now viewed the scene in mild a maze, and huddled on an island mound sent forth so dolorous a sound, as made the sadness more profound.

Starting point is 08:57:31 And then, at last, one Sunday broke when villagers delighted, woke to find the sun had flung its cloak of leaden-coloured cloud aside, all jubilant they watched him ride, for sea the land was glorified. The morning pulsed with youth and mirth. It was as though upon the earth a new and gladder age had birth. The lark exulted in the blue, triumphantly the rooster crew. The chimneys laughed, the sparks up-flew.

Starting point is 08:58:02 And rolling westward out of sight, like billows of majestic height, the downs, transfigured in the light, seemed such a garb of joy to wend. So young and radiant an air, God might but just have set them there. Sir Hubert Springett, Ringma's squire, no better man in all the Shire. He too was filled with kindling fire, which, working in him, did incite the worthy and capacious knight to doughty deeds of appetite. Sir Herbert's lady watched her lord range mightily about the board which she of her abundance stored. The Lady Barbara, for whom the blossoms of the simple-room diffused their friendliest perfume,

Starting point is 08:58:49 than who none quicklier heard the call of true distress, and left the hall eager to do her gentle all, when village patients needed aid, and oh, the rich March-Pain she made, and oh, the rare quince marmalade! Just as the squire was satisfied the noise of feet was heard outside, a "'Come in!' Sir Herbert cried. And lo! John Grigg in Sunday smock, begged pardon, pulled an oily lock, explained the muds above the hock. "'No horse could draw, sir,' he said. "'Hugh!' quothed the squire, and scratched his head. "'Then yoke the oxen in instead!'

Starting point is 08:59:30 A lesser man would gladly turn his chair to fire again, and learn how fancifully logs can burn, grateful for such immunity from Parson, not the squire, for see, true son of England's church, was he. So as he ordered was it done. The oxen came forth, one by one, their wide horns glinting in the sun, and to the coach were yoked, then dressed as squires should be, in glorious best, with wonderful brocaded vest. Out came Sir Herbert took his seat, waved,

Starting point is 09:00:08 Barbara, farewell my sweet! And off they started, all complete. Although they drew so light a load for them, so heavy was the road, John Grigg was busy with his goad. The cottagers in high delight ran out to see the startling sight, and make abasance to the night. While floated through the liquid air, and o'er the sunlit meadows fair,

Starting point is 09:00:32 the throbbing belfries called to prayer. At last, and after many a lurch that shook Sir Herbert in his perch, John Grigg drew up before the church. Moreover, not a minute late! The villagers around the gate were filled with wonder at his state, and promptly, though twas sabbath-tied, "'Three cheers for Squire! Array!' they cried. Such was Sir Hubert Springett's ride. Sad is the sequel, sad but true, for while in sermon time. A few deep snores resounded from the pew reserved for squire. By others there, the Tenth Commandment, men declare, was being broken past repair, for thinking how they had to

Starting point is 09:01:18 roam through weary wastes of sodden loam, ere they could win to fire and home. In spite of Parsons' fervid knox upon his cushion orthodox, they coveted their neighbour's ox. Oxen are now rarely seen on the Sussex roads, but on the hillsides a few of the farmers still plough with them, and may it be long before the old custom is abandoned. There is no pleasanter or more peaceful sight than looking up that of a wide-horned team of black oxen, smoking a little in the morning air, drawing the plough through the earth, while the ploughman whistles and the ox-herd goad in hand utters his Saxon grunts, of incitement or reproof. The black oxen of the hills are of Welsh stock, the true Sussex ox being red. The cues, as their shoes are called, may still be seen on the walls of a smithy here and there. Shewing oxen is no joke, since to protect the smith from their horns, they have to be thrown down.

Starting point is 09:02:22 Their necks are held by a pitchfork and their feet are tied together. Sussex roads were terrible until comparatively recent times. An old rhyme credits Sausex with dirt and mire, and Dr. Burton, the author of the Ityrsasexiensis, humorously found in it a reason why Sussex people and beasts had such long legs. Come now, my friend, he wrote in Greek. I will set before you a sort of problem in Aristotle's fashion. Why is it that the oxen, the swine, the women, and all other animals,

Starting point is 09:02:58 are so long-legged in Sussex? May it be from the difficulty of pulling the feet out of so much mud by the strength of the ankle, that the muscles get stretched, as it were, and the bones lengthened. When in 1703 the King of Spain visited the Duke of Somerset at Petworth, he had the greatest difficulty in getting here. One of his attendants has put on record the perils of the journey. We set out at six o'clock in the morning, at Portsmouth, to go to Petworth, and did not get out of the coaches, save only when we were overturned or stuck fast in the mire,

Starting point is 09:03:34 till we arrived at our journey's end. It was hard service for the prince to sit fourteen hours in the coach that day, without eating anything, and passing through the worst ways that I ever saw in my life. We were thrown but once, indeed, in going, but both our coach which was leading, and His Highness's body-coach would have suffered very often, if the nimble boers of Sussex had not frequently poised it, or supported it with their shoulders, from Godalming almost to Petworth, and the nearer we approached the Dukes, the more inaccessible it seemed to be. The last nine miles of the way cost six hours' time to conquer.

Starting point is 09:04:15 To return to Ringma, it was there that Gilbert White studied the tortoise. Note, see Letter 13 of the Natural History of Selborne. End note. The house where he stayed still stands, and the rookery still exists. These rooks, wrote the naturalist, retire every morning all the winter from this rookery, where they only call by the way, as they are going to roost in deep woods. At the dawn of day they always revisit their nest trees, and are preceded a few minutes by a flight of doors, that act, as it were, as their harbingers.

Starting point is 09:04:52 An intermediate owner of the house where Gilbert White resided, which then belonged to his aunt, Rebecca Snoke, ordered all nightingales to be shot on the ground that they kept him awake. While at Ringma, if a glimpse of very rich parkland is needed, it would be worthwhile to walk three miles north to Plashets, which combines a vast tract of wood with a small, Park, notable at once for its trees, its break fern, its lakes, and its water fell. But, if one would gain it by rail, Isfield is the station.

Starting point is 09:05:31 End of Chapter 30. Chapter 31 of Highways and Byways in Sussex. This Librevox recording is in the public domain, recording by Peter Yearsley. Highways and Byways in Sussex by E. V. Lucas, Chapter 31, Uckfield and Buxed Uckfield, on the line from Lewis to Tunbridge Wells, is our true starting point for the high, sandy and rocky district of Crobra, Rotherfield and Mayfield.

Starting point is 09:06:06 But we must visit on the way Isfield, a very pretty village on the Ouse and its Iron River tributary. Isfield is remarkable for the remains of Isfield Place, once the home of the Shurlees. Reader's note, spelled S-H-U-R-E-Y-S, End reader's note, connected only by marriage with the Shirley's, S-H-I-R-L-E-E-Y-S, of Wiston. The house can never have been so fine as Slawn Place, but it is evident that abundance also reigned here, as there. Over the main door was the motto, Non Minor is Firtis Quam Querererita Tueri, which Worsefield

Starting point is 09:06:48 whimsically translates, Catch is a good dog, but hold fast, is a better. In the Shirley Chapel, one of the sweetest spots in Sussex, are brasses and monuments to the family, notably the canopied altar tomb to Sir John Shirley, who died in 1631, his two wives, Jane Shirley of Whiston and Dorothy Boyer, nay, Goring, of Cuckfield, and nine children, who kneel prettily in a row at the foot. Of these children it is said in the inscription that some were called into heaven, and the others into several marriages of good quality. While of Dorothy surely it is prettily recorded, this, as we have seen being a district rich in exemplary wives, that she had a merit beyond most of her time, her pity was the clothing of the poor,

Starting point is 09:07:43 and all her minutes were but steps to heaven. Our county has many fine monuments, but I think that this is the most charming of all. At Framfield, two miles east of Uckfield, which we may take here, we again enter the iron country, and for the first time see Sussex hops, which are grown largely to the north and east of this neighbourhood. Framfield has a Tudor church, and no particular interest. In 1792, 11 out of 15 persons in Framfield, whose United Ages amounted to 1,034 years, offered through the county paper to play a cricket match with an equal number of the same age from any part of Sussex, but I do not find any record of the result.

Starting point is 09:08:31 Nor can I find that anyone at Framfield is proud of the fact that here, in 1834, was born Richard Ralph, the orator and poet, son of Sussex peasants. In England his name is scarcely known, and in America, where his work was done, it is not common knowledge that he was by birth and parentage English. Ralph was the friend of man, liberty, and John Brown. He fought against slavery in the war, and helped the cause with some noble verses, and he died miserably, by his own hand in 1878,

Starting point is 09:09:06 leaving these lines beside his body. Dermortuous Nielnisibonum, when for me this end has come and I am dead, And the little, voluble, chattering doors of men peck at me curiously. Let it then be said, by someone brave enough to speak the truth, here lies a great soul killed by cruel wrong. Down all the balmy days of his fresh youth to his bleak, desolate noon, with sword and song and speech that rushed up hotly from the heart, he wrought for liberty, till his own wound

Starting point is 09:09:42 he had been stabbed, concealed with painful art through wasting years mastered him, and he swooned, and sank there where you see him lying now, with the word failure written on his brow. But say that he succeeded, if he missed world's honours and worlds plaudits, and the wage of the world's deft lackeys, still his lips were kissed daily by those high angels who assuaged the thirstings of the poets, for he was born unto singing, and a burthen lay mightily on him,

Starting point is 09:10:17 and he moaned because he could not rightly utter to the day what God taught in the night. Sometimes, nevertheless, power fell upon him, and bright tongues of flame and blessings reached him from poor souls in stress, and benedictions from black pits of shame, and little children's love, and old men's prayers, and a great hand that led him under him, unawares. So he died rich. And if his eyes were blurred with big films, silence he is in his grave. Greatly he suffered, greatly too, he erred, yet broke his heart in trying to be brave. Nor did

Starting point is 09:11:00 he wait till freedom had become the popular shibboleth of courtier's lips. He smote for her, when God himself seemed dumb, and all his arching skies were in eclipse. He was a weary, but he fought his fight, and stood for simple manhood, and was joyed to see the august broadening of the light, and new earths heaving heavenward from the void. He loved his fellows, and their love was sweet, plant daisies at his head and at his feet. Uckfield's main street is divided sharply into two periods, from the station to the road leading to the church all is new, beyond all is old. The town is not interesting in itself, but it commands good country, and has a good inn, the maiden's head. It is also a good specimen of the quieter market town of the past, with a brewery, hiding behind

Starting point is 09:11:55 a wonderful tree braced with kindly iron bands, a watermill down by the railway, and several solid, comfortable houses for the doctor and the lawyer and the brewer and the parson, with ample gardens behind them. Uckfield was once the home of Jeremiah Markland, the great classic, who acted as tutor here to Edward Clark, son of the famous William Clark, rector of Buxted, and father of Edward Daniel Clark, the traveller. It is agreeable to remember that Fanny Burney passed through the town with Mrs. Thrail in 1779, although she found nothing to interest her.

Starting point is 09:12:32 Uckfield is the southern boundary of the Rock District, of which we saw something at West Hothely, and it is famous for the sandstone cliffs in the grounds of high rocks, an estate on the south of the town. The unthinking, untidiness and active penknives of the holiday-makers make it recently necessary for the grounds to be closed to strangers. Close by, however, just off the road from Uckfield to Mearsfield, is a rocky tract that is free to all. It consists of about an acre of grey sandy boulders, some rising to a height of twenty feet or so, which remind one a little of the roche in the forest of Fontainebleau, although on a smaller scale. All are worn with the feet of adventurous boys enjoying one of the best natural playgrounds in the county. Here Blackberry's come to rich perfection, the sun's ripening warmth being thrown back from the hot sand.

Starting point is 09:13:27 When I first knew Mearsfield Church many years ago, it's age. Vicar rolled out, Thou shalt do no murder, with an accusing timbre that seemed to bring the sin home to all of us. He had also so peculiar a way of pronouncing Albert, that his prayer for our rulers seemed to make an invidious distinction, and ask a blessing not for all, but for all but Edward, Prince of Wales. Some of the oddest of the composite, pietistic names that broke out over England,

Starting point is 09:14:01 during the Puritan Revolution, are to be found in Sussex registers. In 1632, Master, Perform thy vows! Sears, of Mearsfield, married Thomassine Edwards. His full name was too much for the village, and four years later is found an entry recording the burial of Vows, Sears, pure and simple. The searcher of parish registers from whose articles in the Sussex Daily News I have already quoted, has also found that Heathfield had many Puritan names, among them

Starting point is 09:14:35 replenished, which was given to the daughter of Robert Pryor in 1600. There was also a Heathfield damsel known as More Fruits. Mr. Lowe prints the following names from a Sussex jury list in the 17th century, redeemed Compton of Battle, Stand Fast on High, Stringer of Crowhurst, Weep-not, Billing of Lewis, called Lower of Warburton, elected Mitchell of Heathfield, renewed Wisbury of Halesham, Fly fornication, Richardson of Waldron, the Peace of God Knight of Burwash, Fight the good fight of Faith, White of Ewhurst, and Kill Sin, Pemble, of Withiam. Also a master, More Fruits, Fowler, of East Hothley, for it seems that in such names there was no sex.

Starting point is 09:15:29 Among the curious Sussex surnames found by the student of the county archives, who is quoted above, are the following. Pitchfork, devil, leper, hand shut, jugglery, hollow bone, stillborn, sweet name, sly body, fidge, beat up, rouge head, punch, padge, lies, hogs flesh, backfield, breathing, whiskey, wild goose, Anne. Almost every name here would have pleased Dickens. While some might have been invented by him, notably Fidge and Padge, one can almost see Mr Fidge and Mr. Padge drawing it in his pages. From the Mearsfield Rocks, Buxton is easily reached, about a mile due east, but a far prettier approach is through Buxted Park, which is gained by a footpath out of Uckfield's main street.

Starting point is 09:16:25 The charm of Buxted is its side. deer. Sussex, as we have seen, is rich in parks containing deer, but I know of none other, where one may be so certain of coming close to these beautiful creatures. Nor can I recall any other deer that are so exquisitely dappled, but that may be because the buxtage deer were the first I ever saw thirty years ago, and we like to think the first, the best. Certainly they are the friendliest, or least timid. The act of going to church is, is invested at Buxted with an almost unique attraction, since the deer lie hard by the path. Indeed, the last time I went to church at Buxted I never passed through the door at all,

Starting point is 09:17:08 but sat on a gravestone throughout the service, and watched the herd in its graceful restlessness. That was twelve years ago. The other day I watched them again, and could see no change. Some of the stags were still, as of old, almost bowed beneath their antlers. Although one One at any rate was free, for a keeper who passed, carried a pair of horns in his hand. The old house at the beginning of the footpath to the church, with the Hogg in Bathra Leaf on its facade, is known as the Hogg House, and is said to have been the residence of Ralph Hogg. Who was Ralph Hogg? Who is Hieromaxim? Who was Crup? Who was Nordenfelt? It was Ralph Hogg, ironmaster, who in the year 1543 made the first English, English metal canon, so at any rate say tradition and Hollinshead. Buxted is otherwise most pacific of villages, sleepy and undiscovered.

Starting point is 09:18:08 In the early years of the last century it boasted the possession of a labourer with a memory of amazing tenacity, one George Watson, who, otherwise almost imbecile, was unable to forget anything he had once seen, or any figure repeated to him. On the road between Mearsfield and Crobra is Herons Gill, the residence of Mr. Fitz-Alan Hope. It stands to the east of the road in one of those hollow sites that alone won the word eligible from a Tudor builder. Hard by the road is the perfect little early English Roman Catholic Church, which Mr. Hope built in 1897, a miracle in these hurried, florid days of honest work and simple, modest beauty.

Starting point is 09:18:53 The Church being Roman Catholic, one may with confidence turn aside to rest a little in its cool seclusion, relieved of the irritating search for the sexton of the national establishment, and freed from his haunting presence and suggestion that the labourer is worthy of more than his hire. While on this subject I might remark that a county vicar describing the antiquities of his neighbourhood in one of the Sussex Archaeological Society's volumes, writes Magnus, Magnus, A debt of gratitude is certainly due to our Roman Catholic predecessors whatever error may mix itself with their piety and charity, for erecting such noble edifices, in a style of

Starting point is 09:19:35 strength to endure for a late posterity. It seems to me that a very simple way of discharging a portion of this debt would be to imitate the excellent habit of leaving the church doors wide open as practiced by those Roman Catholic predecessors. My own impulse to enter many of the Sussex churches as being principally antiquarian or aesthetic, but to rest amid their grey coolness is a legitimate desire which should be fostered rather than discouraged, particularly as it is under such conditions that the soul, even of the stranger whose motive is curiosity, is often comforted.

Starting point is 09:20:15 The arguments in favour of keeping churches closed are unknown to me. Doubtless they are numerous and ingenious, but doubt to doubt to be. unbutless equally, a locked church is a confession of failure. While to urge that one has but to ask for the key to be able to enter a church is no true reply, since hospitality, whether to the body or the soul, loses in sweetness and effect as it loses in spontaneity. From Heron's Gill to Crobra is a steady climb for three miles,

Starting point is 09:20:46 with the heathery wastes of Ashdowne Forest on the left, and the hilly district around Mayfield on the right. End of Chapter 31 Chapter 32 of Highways and Byways in Sussex This Librevox recording is in the public domain Recording by Peter Yearsley Highways and Byways in Sussex by E.V. Lucas Chapter 32, Crobara and Mayfield

Starting point is 09:21:18 In the spring of this year, 1903, the walls and fences of Cropora were covered with the placards of a firm of estate agents, describing the neighbourhood in the manner of the great George Robbins as Scotland in Sussex. The simile may be true of the Ashdowne Forest side of the beacon, although involving an unnecessary confusion of terms, but Hampstead in Sussex would be a more accurate description of Krober proper. Never was a fine remote hill, so be villared.

Starting point is 09:21:53 The east slope is all scaffold poles and heaps of bricks, churches and chapels are sprouting, and the many hoardings announce that follies, Pieroes or conjurers are continually imminent. Crobara itself has shops that would not disgrace Croydon, and a hotel where a Lord Mayor might feel at home. Houses in their own grounds are commoner than cottages, and near the summit the pegs of surveyors and the nameboards of avenues yet to be built, testify to the charms which our Saxon Caledonia has already exerted. But to say this is not to say all. Crobra may be populous and overbuilt, but it is still a glorious eminence, the healthiest and

Starting point is 09:22:41 most bracing inland village in the county, and the key to its best moorland country. Since Crobara's normal visitor either plays golf or is contented with a very modest the more adventurous walker may quickly be in the solitudes. In the little stone house below the forge, Richard Jeffries lived for some months at the end of his life. Crowbra is crowned by a red hotel which can never pass into the landscape. Rotherfield, its companion hill on the east, on the other side of the Jarvis Brook Valley, is surmounted by a beautiful church with a tall, shingled spire that must have belonged to the scene from the first. This spire darts up from the edge of the forest ridge like a pharaoh for

Starting point is 09:23:28 the wheeled of Kent. The church was dedicated to St. Denis of Paris by a Saxon chieftain, who was cured of his ills by a pilgrimage to the saint's monastery. That was in 792. In the present church which retains the dedication is an ancient mural painting representing the martyrdom of St. Lawrence. There is also a Bern-Jones window. Were it not for Rotherfield, both Sussex and Kent would lack some of their waterways, for the Rother and the Ouse rise here, and also the Medway. A local saying credits the women of Rotherfield with two ribs more than the men, to account for their superior height.

Starting point is 09:24:11 Under a hedge halfway between Rotherfield and Jarvis Brook grow the largest cow-slips in Sussex, as large as cow-slips may be without changing their sex. But this is all cow-slip country, from the field of Rother to the field of Uck, and it is the land of the purple orchis too, the finest blooms of which are to be found on the road between Rotherfield and Mayfield. But you must scale a fence to get them, because, like all the best wild flowers, they belong to the railway. Between Rotherfield and Mayfield is a little hill, trim and conical, as though Miss

Starting point is 09:24:48 Greenaway had designed it, and perfect in deportment. for it has, as all little conical hills, should have, a white windmill on its top. Around the mill is a circular track for carts, which runs nearer the sails than any track I remember ever to have dared walk on. Standing by this mill one opens many miles of Kent and Surrey, due north, the range of chalkdowns on which is the pilgrim's way, between Mercham and Westerham, and in front of that Toys Hill and Ide Hill, and this, sandy companions, on the north edge of the wheeled. Mayfield is a city on a hill on the skirts of the Hot Hop district of which Burwash is the Sussex Centre. To walk about it, even in April,

Starting point is 09:25:36 is no exhilaration, but in August one thinks of Sahara. I lived in Mayfield one August and could barely keep awake, and we used to look across at the rolling chalk downs in the south, between ditchling and Lewis, and long for their cool, windswept heights. They can be hot, too, but chalk is never so hot as sand, and a steady climb to a summit over turf, odorous of wild time, is restful beside the eternal hills and valleys of the Hop district. Mayfield has the best street and the best architecture of any of these Highland villages. Also it has the distinction of having done most,

Starting point is 09:26:19 mankind since, without Mayfield, there would have been no water to cure jaded London ladies and gentlemen at Tunbridge Wells. According to Edmer, who wrote one of the lives of Dunstan, that saint when Archbishop of Canterbury built a wooden church at Mayfield and lived in a cell hard by. St Dunstan, who was an expert goldsmith, was one day making a chalice, or, as another version of the legend says, a horseshoe, when the devil appeared before him. Instantly recognising his enemy, and being aware that, with such a foe, prompt measures alone are useful, St. Dunstan at once pulled his nose with the tongs, which chanced happily to be red-hot. Rinching himself

Starting point is 09:27:05 free, the devil leapt at one bound from Mayfield to Tunbridge Wells, where, plunging his nose into the spring at the foot of the pantiles, he imparted to the water its calibiae, qualities, and thus made the fortune of the town as a health resort. To St. Dunstan, therefore, indirectly, are all drinkers of these wells indebted. For other drinkers, he introduced or invented the practice of fixing pins in the side of drinking cups, in order that a thirsty man might see how he was progressing, and a bibulous man be checked. When consecrating his little church at Mayfield, St. Dunstan discovered its to be a little out of the true position, east and west. He therefore applied his shoulder

Starting point is 09:27:52 and rectified the era. The remains of Mayfield Palace, the old abode of the Archbishops of Canterbury, join the church. After it had passed into the hands of the crown, for Cranmer made a bargain with the king by which Mayfield was exchanged for other property. Sir Thomas Gresham lived here, and Queen Elizabeth has dined under its roof. The palace is to be seen only occasionally, for it is now a convent, Mayfield being another of the county's many Roman Catholic outposts. In the great dining-room are the tongs which St. Dunstan used. The church, dedicated to Mayfield's heroic saint, has one of the broader shingled spires of Sussex, as distinguished from the slender spires of which Rotherfield is a good example. Standing high,

Starting point is 09:28:40 it may be seen from long distances. The tower is the original early English structure. or more of the old Sussex iron tomb-slabs may be seen at Mayfield. In the churchyard, says Mr. Lauer, was once an inscription, with this uncomplimentary first line, O reader, if that thou canst read, it continued, look down upon this stone, death is the man, do you what you can, that never spareth none. In Mayfield's street, even the new houses have caught comeliness from their venerable neighbours. It undulates from gable to gable, and has two good inns.

Starting point is 09:29:24 The old timbered house in the middle of the east side is that to which Richard Jeffries refers without enthusiasm in the passage which I quote in a later chapter from his essay on Buckhurst Park. In Louis Jennings, field paths and green lanes, the house comes in for eulogy. Vicar of Mayfield in 1361 and following years was John Wickcliffe, who has too often been confused with his great contemporary and namesake, the reformer, and the village claims as a son, Thomas May, 1595 to 1650, playwright, translator of Lucan's Farsalia, Secretary to Parliament, and Friend of Ben Johnson.

Starting point is 09:30:07 In the Sussex archaeological collections is printed the journal of Walter Gale, schoolmaster at Mayfield in the latter half of the 18th century, from which a few extracts may be given. 1750. I found the greatest part of the school in a flow by reason of the snow and rain coming through the leads. The following extemporary verse I set for a copy, Abandon every evil thought, for they to judgment will be brought.

Starting point is 09:30:39 In passing the Star, I met with Mr. Eastwood. We went in and spent tuppence apiece. I went to Mr. Sawyers. One of his daughters said that she expected a change in the weather, as she had last night dreamed of a deceased person. The editor remarks that this superstition still lingers or did fifty years ago in the wheel of Sussex. Walter Gale adds,

Starting point is 09:31:04 I told them in discourse that on Thursday last the town clock was heard to strike three in the afternoon, twice, once before the chimes. went, and a second time, pretty nearly a quarter of an hour after. The strikes at the second striking seemed to sound very dull and mournfully. This, together with the crickets coming to the house at Lawton, just at our coming away, I look upon to be sure presage of my sister's death. A year later, my mother, to my great unhappiness, died in the eighty-third year of her age, agreeable to the testimony I had of a death in our family on the tenth of May,

Starting point is 09:31:42 last. Mr. Rogers came to the school, and brought with him the four volumes of Pamela, for which I paid him four shillings sixpence, and bespoke duck-poems for Mr. Kine, and a caution to swearers for myself. Sunday I went to church at Hothley, text from St. Matthew, take no thought, saying, What shall we eat, and what shall we drink, or wherewithal shall we be clothed? And I went to Joneses, where I spent tuppence, and there came Thomas Cornwall, and treated me with a pint of tuppany. Mr. James Kyn came, we smoked a pipe together, and we went and took a survey of the fair. We went to a leisure-domain show, which we saw with tolerable approbation.

Starting point is 09:32:30 May the 28th gave attendance at a cricket-match, played between the Gamesdeset Burwash and Mayfield, to the advantage of the latter. A series of quarrels with Old Kent occupy much of the diary. Old Kent, it seems, used to enter the school-house and vilify the master, not, I imagine, without cause. Thus, he again called me upstart, runagate, beggarly dog, clinched his fist in my face, and made a motion to strike me, and declared he would break my head. He did not strike me, but withdrew in a wonderful heat, and ended all with his head.

Starting point is 09:33:08 General Maxim, the greater scholar, the greater rogue. Mr. Gale was removed from the school in 1771 for neglecting his duties. End of Chapter 32. Chapter 33 of Highways and Byways in Sussex. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Peter Yearsley. Highways and Byways in Sussex by E.V. Lucas. Chapter 33

Starting point is 09:33:42 Heathfield and the Lies There are two Heathfields, the old village with its pleasant Sussex Church and ancient cottages, close to the park gates, and the new brick-and-slate town that has gathered around the station, and the natural gas works. The park lies between the two, remarkable among Sussex parks for the variety of its trees, and the unusual proportion of them. The spacious lawns which are characteristic of the parks in the south, here on Heathfield's Sussex undulations, give place to heather, fern, and trees.

Starting point is 09:34:20 I never remember to have seen a richer contrast of greens than in early spring looking west from the house between the masses of dark evergreens that had borne the rigours of the winter, and the young leaves just breaking through. Heathfield's park is, I think, the loveliest in Sussex, lying as it does. on a southern slope, with its opulence of foliage, its many rushing burns, the source of the kukmere, its hidden ravines and deep silent tarns, and its wonderful view of the downs and the sea. The park once belonged to the dacres of Hurst-Monsso, whom we are about to meet. Traces of the original house dating probably from Henry the Seventh's reign are still to be seen

Starting point is 09:35:06 in the basement. Upon this foundation was imposed a new building towards the end of the 17th century. The park was then known as Bailey Park. A century later, George Augustus Elliot, afterwards Lord Heathfield, the hero of Gibraltar and earlier of Cuba, acquired it with his Havana prize money. After Lord Heathfield died in 1790, the park became the property of Francis Newbury, son of the bookseller of St. Paul's Churchyard. The present owner, Mr. Alexander, has added greatly to the house. Gibraltar Tower, on the highest point of the park, was built by Newbury in honour of his predecessor. From its summit a vast prospect is visible, and forty churches it is said may be counted. I saw but few of these. In the east, similarly elevated is seen the brightling needle. Mr. Alexander's

Starting point is 09:36:04 has gathered together in the tower a number of souvenirs of old English life, which make it a Lewis Castle Museum in Little. Here are stocks, horn glasses, drinking vessels, rush-light holders, leather bottles, and one of those quaint wooden machines for teaching babies to walk. An old manuscript history of the tower in Mr. Alexander's possession contains at least one passage that is perhaps worth noting, as it may help to clear up any confusion that exists in connection with Lord Heathfield's marriage. A lady to whom his lordship meant to be united, says the historian, and who would certainly

Starting point is 09:36:46 have been his wife, had not death stepped in, is the sister of a lady of whom his lordship was extremely fond, but she, dying about ten years ago, he transferred his affections to the other, who is about 35 years of age. A Heathfield worthy of a hundred years ago was Sylvan Harmer, chiefly a stone cutter. He cuts a stone for the tower, but also the modular in clay of some very ingenious and pretty bass relief designs for funeral urns,

Starting point is 09:37:19 notably a group known as charity. The following scene from the second part of Henry VI, although Shakespeare places it in Kent, belongs to a little hamlet known as Cade Street, close to Heathfield. Scene 10, Kent, Iden's Garden, enter Cade. Cade. Fie on ambition, fie on myself, that have a sword, and yet I'm ready to famish. These five days have I hid me in these woods, and durst not peep out, for all the country is laid for me. But now am I so hungry that if I might have a lease of my life for a thousand,

Starting point is 09:38:00 years, I could stay no longer. Wherefore, on a brick wall, have I climbed into this garden, to see if I can eat grass, or pick a sallet another while, which is not amiss to cool a man's stomach this hot weather. And I think this word sallet was born to do me good for many a time, but for a salet my brain-pan had been cleft with a brown bill, and many a time when I have been dry and bravely marching, it hath served me instead of a quart-pot to drink in. and now the word Salat must serve me to feed on. Enter Iden with servants, behind. Iden.

Starting point is 09:38:38 Lord, who would live turmoiled in the court, and may enjoy such quiet walks as these? This small inheritance my father left me, contenteth me, and worth a monarchy. I seek not to wax great by others waning, or gather wealth I care not with what envy, S suffices that I have maintains my state And sends the poor well-pleased from my gate

Starting point is 09:39:04 Cade Here's the lord of the soil Come to seize me for astray For entering his fee simple without leave Ah villain thou wilt betray me And get a thousand crowns of the king By carrying my head to him But I'll make thee eat iron like an ostrich

Starting point is 09:39:20 And swallow my sword like a great pin Ere thou and I part Iden Why rude companion Whatsoe'er thou be, I know thee not, Why then should I betray thee? Is it not enough to break into my garden, And like a thief to come to rob my grounds, Climbing my walls in spite of me, the owner, but thou wiltst brave me with these saucy terms? Cade, brave thee? I, by the best blood that ever was broached, and beard thee too.

Starting point is 09:39:50 Look on me well, I have eat no meat these five days, yet come thou and thy five men, and if I do not leave you all as dead as a door-nail, I pray God I may never eat grass more. Iden. Nay, it shall ne'er be said while England stands that Alexander Iden, an esquire of Kent, took odds to combat a poor famished man. Oppose thy steadfast, gazing eyes to mine. See if thou canst out face me with thy looks. Set limb to limb, and thou art farther lesser, thy hand is but a finger to my fist,

Starting point is 09:40:24 thy leg a stick compared with this truncheon my foot shall fight with all the strength thou hast and if mine arm be heaved in the air thy grave is digged already in the earth as for words whose greatness answers words let this my sword report what speech forbears cade by my valour the most complete champion that ever i heard steel if thou turn the edge or cut not out the burly-boned clown in chines of beef, ere thou sleep in thy sheath, I beseech Jove on my knees thou mayest be turned to hobnails. They fight. Cade falls. Oh! I am slain, famine, and no other hath slain me. Let's ten thousand devils come against me, and give me but the ten meals I have lost, and I defy them all. Whither, garden, and be henceforth a burying place to all that do dwell in this house, because the unconquered soul of Cade is fled. Iden.

Starting point is 09:41:32 Is it Cade that I have slain, that monstrous traitor? Sword, I will hallow thee for this thy deed, and hang thee o'er my tomb when I am dead. Near shall this blood be wiped from my point, but thou shalt wear it as a herald's coat, to emblaze the honour that thy master got. Cade Iden Farewell and be proud of thy victory Tell Kent from me

Starting point is 09:41:58 She hath lost her best man And exhort all the worlds to be cowards For I that never feared any Am vanquished by famine Not by valour Dies That was on July the 12th 1450 Cade did not die at once

Starting point is 09:42:19 But on the way to London whither he was conveyed in a cart. On the 16th, his body was drawn and quartered and dragged through London on a hurdle. One quarter was then sent to Blackheath, the other three to Norwich, Gloucester, and Salisbury. Cade's head was set up on London Bridge. Iden was knighted.

Starting point is 09:42:40 A pillar was erected at Cade Street by Newbury on the piece of land that he possessed nearest to the probable scene of the event. Near this spot was slain the notorious, Rebell Jack Cade by Alexander Iden, Esquire, is the inscription. Slaughter Common near Heathfield is said to be the scene of a more wholesale carnage. Heathfield people claiming that there, Kaidwalla, in 635, fought the Saxons, and killed Iadwein, King of Northumbria.

Starting point is 09:43:15 Sylvan Harmer, in his manuscript history of Heathfield, is determined that Heathfield shall have the credit of the fray. But, as a matter of fact, if Slaughter Common really took its name from a battle, it was a very different one, for Kydwaller and Eadwin met not at Heathfield, but Hatfield Chase, near Doncaster. It is at Heffel-Cuckoo Fair on April the 14th, Heffel being Sussex for Heathfield, that tradition states the old woman lets the cuckoo out of her basket, and starts him on his course through the summer months. A local story tells of a Heathfield man who had a quarrel with his wife and left for ditchling. After some days he returned, remarking,

Starting point is 09:43:58 I've had enough of foreign parts, nothing like Old England yet. If anyone walking from Heathfield towards Burwash is astonished to find a railway inn, let him spend no time in seeking a station, for there is none within some miles. This inn was once the labour in vain, with a signboard representing two men hard at work, scrubbing a nigger till the white should gleam through, then came a scheme to run a line to Eastbourne, midway between the present Heathfield line and the Burwash Line, and Enterprise dictated the changing of the sign to one more in keeping with the times. The railway project was abandoned, but the inn retains its new style.

Starting point is 09:44:44 Warburton, a village in the Iron Country, two miles south of Heathfield, is famous for its association with Richard Woodman, the Sussex Martyr, who is mentioned in an earlier chapter. His house and foundry were hard by the churchyard. The wonderful door in the church tower, a miracle of intricate bolts and massive strength, has been attributed to Woodman's mechanical skill, and the theory has been put forward that he made this door for his own strongroom, and it was afterwards moved to the church. Another story says that he was imprisoned in the church tower before being taken for trial. Warburton has the following terse and confident epitaph upon Anne North,

Starting point is 09:45:25 wife of the vicar, who died in 1780. Through death's rough waves her bark serenely trod, her pilots Jesus and her harbour God. From Horam Road Station, next Heathfield on the way to Halesham, we can walk across the country to East Hothley, and thence to chidingly and thence to Chiddingly and Hellingly, where we come to the railway again. Note, East Hoseley, Chiddingly and Hellingly, says a local witticism. Three lies, and all true, end note. East Hothely stands high in not very interesting country, nor is it now a very interesting

Starting point is 09:46:06 village, but it is remarkable for an admirably conducted inn, and a church unique, in my experience of old churches, in its interior, for a prettiness. that is little short of aggressive. Whatever paint and mosaic can do to remove plain white surfaces has been done here, and the windows are gay with new glass. Were the building a new one, say at Serbiton, the effort would be harmonious, but, in an old village in Sussex, it seems a mistake. Colonel Thomas Lunsford, of Wiley, now no more, near East Hothley,

Starting point is 09:46:45 A cavalier and friend of Charles I was notoriously a consumer of the flesh of babes. How he won such a reputation is not known, but it never left him. Houdibras mentions his tastes. In one ballad of the time he figures as Lunsford that eateth of children, and in another recording his supposed death he is found with a child's arm in his pocket. After a stormy but courageous career, he died in 1691, innocent of cannibalism. It was this Lunsford who fired at his relative Sir Nicholas Pelham of Halland, as he was one day entering East Hothley Church. The huge bullet, the outcome of a long feud, missed Nicholas and lodged in the church door,

Starting point is 09:47:36 where it remained for many years. It cost Lunsford £8,000 and outlawry. Halland, one of the seats of the Pelham's, about a mile from the village, was just above Terrible Down, a tract of wild land on which, according to local tradition, a battle was once fought so fiercely that the soldiers were up to their knees in blood. In the neighbourhood it is, of course, called Tarbal Down. Local tradition also states of a certain piece of woodland attached to the glebe of this parish, called breeches wood, that it owes its name to the circumstance that an East Hothely

Starting point is 09:48:16 lady, noticing the vicar's breeches to be in need of mending, presented to him and his successors the wood in question as an endowment to ensure the perpetual repair of those garments. Halland House no longer exists, but in the days of the great Duke of Newcastle, who died in 1768, it was famous for its hospitality and splendour. We meet with traces of of its influence in the frequent inebriation after visits there of Mr. Thomas Turner, a Mercer and General Dealer of East Hothley, who kept a diary from 1764, recording some of his lapses and other experiences. A few passages from the extracts quoted in the Sussex archaeological collections may be given. My wife read to me that moving scene of the funeral of Miss Clarissa Harlow.

Starting point is 09:49:09 Oh, may the supreme being give me grace to lead my life in such a manner as my exit may in some measure be like that divine creatures. This morn my wife and I had words about her going to Lewis to-morrow. Oh, what happiness must there be in the married state when there is a sincere regard on both sides, and each party truly satisfied with each other's merits. But it is impossible for tongue or pen to express the, uneasiness that attends the contrary. Sunday, August the 28th, 1756, Thomas Davy, at our house in the evening,

Starting point is 09:49:48 to whom I read five of tillots and sermons. October the 28th, Thomas Davy came in the evening, to whom I read six of tillots and sermons. This day went to Mrs. Porter's, to inform them the livery lace was not come, when, I think Mrs. Porter treated me with as much imperious and scornful usage as if she had been, what I think she is, more of a Turk and infidel than a Christian, and I an abject slave. I went down to Mrs. Porter's and acquainted her that I would not get

Starting point is 09:50:21 her gown before Monday, who received me with all the affability, courtesy, and good humour imaginable. Oh, what a pleasure would it be to serve them? Was they always in such a temper? It would even induce me, almost, to forget to take a just profit. We supped at Mr. Fuller's, and spent the evening with a great deal of mirth till between one and two. Thomas Fuller brought my wife home upon his back. I cannot say I came home sober, though I was far from being bad company. The curate of Lawton came to the shop in the forenoon, and he, having brought some things of me, and I could wish he had paid for them, dined with me, and also stayed in the afternoon till he got in liquor,

Starting point is 09:51:07 and being so complacent as to keep him company, I was quite drunk. How do I detest myself for being so foolish? In the even, read the twelfth and last book of Milton's Paradise Lost, which I have now read twice through. Mr. Bannister, having lately taken from the smugglers, a freight of brandy,

Starting point is 09:51:30 entertained Mr. Carman, Mr. Fuller, and myself in the even, with a bowl of punch. Although the Pelham's owned Halland, their principal seat was at Lawton, two or three miles to the south. Of that splendid Tudor mansion, little now remains but one brick tower, in the vault of the church,

Starting point is 09:51:50 which has been much restored, no fewer than forty Pelham's repose. Chittingly Church presents the completest contrast to East Hothley's over-decorated, yet accessible face. that could be imagined. Its door is not only kept shut, but a special form of locked bar seems to have been invented for it, and on the day that I was last there the Churchyard Gate was padlocked too. The spire of White Stone, visible for many miles, a change from the customary oak shingling of Sussex, has been bound with iron chains that suggests the possibility of imminent dissolution, while within the building is gloomy and time-stained. If at East Hothely the church gives the impression of a too complacent prosperity, here we have precisely the reverse. The state of the Jefferet Monument behind a row of rude railings

Starting point is 09:52:50 is in keeping. In the Jefferay Monument, by the way, the statues at either side stand on two circular tablets, which are not unlike the yellow cheeses of Alcmar. It was possible this circumstance that led to the myth that the Jefferais, too proud to walk on the ground, had on Sundays a series of cheeses ranged between their house and the church, on which to step. Their house was Chittingly Place built by Sir John Jefferay, who died in 1577. Remains of this great mansion are still to be seen. It was during Sir John's time that Chittingly had a vicar, William Tittleton, sufficiently flexible to retain the living under Henry VIII. Edward the 6th, Mary and Elizabeth.

Starting point is 09:53:39 Here in the 18th century lived one William Elphick, a devotee of bell-ringing, who computed that altogether he had rung Chiddingley's triple bell for 8,76 hours, which is six hours more than a year, and who travelled upwards of 10,000 miles to ring the bells of other churches. Mark Anthony Lauer, most interesting of the Sussex archaeologists, to whom these pages have been much indebted, was born at Chidingly in 1813. Mr. Egerton, in his Sussex folk and Sussex ways, tells the story of a couple down Chidingly Way, who agreed upon a very satisfactory system of danger signals when things were not quite well with either of them. Whenever the husband came home a little contrary, he wore his hat on the back of his head, and then she never said a word,

Starting point is 09:54:39 and if she came in a little cross and crooked, she threw her shawl over her left shoulder, and then he never said a word. A little to the east of Hellingly is Amberstone, the scene in 1814 of a pretty occurrence. Alexander, the Tsar of all the rushes, traveling from Brighton to Dover with his sister, the Duchess of Aldenborough, saw Nathaniel and Mary Rickman of Amberstone standing by their gate. From their dress he knew them to be Quakers, a sect in which he was much interested. The carriage was therefore stopped, and the Tsar and his sister entered the house. They were taken all over it, praised its neatness, ate some lunch,

Starting point is 09:55:23 and parted with the kindest expressions of goodwill, the Tsar shaking hands with the Quaker, and the Duchess kissing the Quakeress. A few minutes on the rail bring us to Halesham, an old market town, whose church, standing on the ridge which borders Pevensey level, on the west, is capped with pinnacles like that of East Grinstead. Walking a few yards beyond the church one comes to the edge of the high ground, with nothing before one but miles and miles of the meadowland of this Dutch region, green and moist and dotted with cattle. Halesham's principal value to the traveller is that it is the station for Hurst-Monsso, whither, however, we are to journey by another route. Otherwise the town exists principally, in order that bullocks and sheep may change hands once a week. Halesham's cattle market covers three acres, and on market days the wayfarers in the

Starting point is 09:56:23 streets need the agility of a piccadour. We ought, however, to see Mitchell and Priory, while we are here. It lies two miles to the west of Halesham in the Kukmere Valley, now a beautifully placed farmhouse, but once a house of Augustinian cannons founded in the reign of Henry III. Here one may see the old, monkish fish stews, so useful on Fridays in perfection. The moat, where fish were probably also court, is still as it was, and the fine old three-storied gateway and the mill, belonging to the monks, stand to this day. The priory, although much in ruins, is very interesting, and well worth seeing and exploring with a reconstructive eye.

Starting point is 09:57:12 A little further west is the Dicca, or rather the two Dicca's, Upper Dicca and Lower Dicca, large commons between Arlington in the south and Chiddingly in the north. Here are some of the many pottery works for which Sussex is famous. End of Chapter 33 Chapter 34 of Highways and Byways in Sussex. This Librevox recording is in the public domain, recording by Peter Yearsley. Highways and Byways in Sussex by E. V. Lucas. Chapter 34, Eastbourne.

Starting point is 09:57:55 Eastbourne is the most select or least demonstration. a classic of the Sussex watering places. Fashion does not resort thither as to Brighton in the season, but the crowds of excursionists that pour into Brighton and Hastings are comparatively unknown at Eastbourne, which is, in a sense, a private settlement, under the patronage of the Duke of Devonshire. Hastings is of the people. Brighton has a character almost continental. Eastbourne is select.

Starting point is 09:58:26 Lawn tennis and golf are its staple products. One played on the very beautiful links behind the town hard by Compton Place, the residents of the Duke, the other in Devonshire Park. It is also an admirable town for horsemanship. Eastbourne has had small share in public affairs, but in 1741 John Hamilton Mortimer, the painter,

Starting point is 09:58:50 sometimes called the Salvatore Rosa of England, was born there. From a memoir of him which horsefield prints, I take passages. Bred on the sea coast, and amid a daring and rugged race of hereditary smugglers, it had pleased his young imagination to walk on the shore when the sea was agitated by storms, to seek out the most sequestered places among the woods and rocks, and frequently and not without danger, to witness the intrepidity of the contraband adventurers, who, in spite of storms and armed excise men,

Starting point is 09:59:24 pursued their precarious trade at all hazards. In this way he had, from boyhood, become familiar with what amateurs of art call Salvatore Rosa-looking scenes. He loved to depict the sea chafing and foaming, and fit to swallow navigation up, ships in peril and pinnaces sinking, bandity plundering, or reposing in caverns, and all such situations as are familiar to pirates on water and outlaws on land. Of his eccentricities, while laboring under the delusion that he could not well be a genius without being un-sober and wild, one specimen may suffice.

Starting point is 10:00:05 He was employed by Lord Melbourne to paint a ceiling at his seat of Brockett Hall, hearts, and taking advantage of permission to angle in the fish-pond, he rose from a carousal at midnight, and seeking a net, and calling on an assistant painter for help, dragged the preserve, and left the whole fish gasping on the bank in rows. Nor was this the worst. When reproved mildly and with smiles by Lady Melbourne, he had the audacity to declare that her beauty had so bewitched him that he knew not what he was about. To plunder the fish-pond and be impertinent to the Lady was not the way to obtain patronage. The impudent painter collected his pencils together and returned to London to enjoy his inelegant pleasures and ignoble company.

Starting point is 10:00:55 Horsfield states that, A custom far more honored by the breach than the observance heretofore existed in the manner of Eastbourne, in compliance with which, after any lady or respectable farmer or tradesman's wife was delivered of a child, certain quantities of food and of beer were placed in a room adjacent to the sacred edifice. When, after the second lesson was concluded, the whole agricultural portion of the worshippers marched out of church and devoured what was prepared for them. This was called

Starting point is 10:01:26 Sops and Ale. John Taylor, the water poet whom we saw at Goring, the prey of fleas and the law, made another journey into the county between August the 9th and September 3rd, 1653, and, as was usual with him, wrote about it in doggerel verse. At Eastbourne, he found a brew called Eastbourne Rug. No cold can ever pierce his flesh or skin of him who is well lined with Rug within. Rug is a lord beyond the rules of law. It conquers hunger in a greedy moor,

Starting point is 10:02:04 and in a word of all drinks potable, rug is most puissant, potent, notable. Rug was the capital commander there, and his lieutenant-general was strong beer. possibly it was in order to contest the supremacy of rug which one may ask for in eastbourne to-day in vain that new haven tipper sprang into being the martello towers which pit built during the napoleonic scare at the beginning of last century begin at eastbourne where the cliffs cease and continue along the coast into kent they were erected probably quite as much to assist in allaying public fear by a tangible and visible symbol of defence, as from any idea that they would be a real service in the event of invasion. Many of them have now disappeared. Eastbourne's glory is Beechy Head, the last of the

Starting point is 10:03:02 downs, which stop dead at the town and never reappear in Sussex again. The range takes a sudden turn to the south at Falkington, whence it rolls straight for the sea, Beechy Head being the ultimate eminence. Note, the name Beechy has by the way nothing to do with the beach, it is derived probably from the Norman's description, Bo Sheff. End note. About Beechy Head one has the South Downs in perfection. The best turf, the best prospect, the best loneliness, and the best air. Richard Jefferies, in his fine essay, The Breeze on Beechy Head, has a rapturous word to say of this air. Poor Jefferies, destined to do so much for the health of others, and so little for his own.

Starting point is 10:03:53 But the glory of these glorious downs is the breeze. The air in the valleys immediately beneath them is pure and pleasant, but the least climb, even a hundred feet, puts you on a plane with the atmosphere itself, uninterrupted by so much as the treetops. It is air without admixture. If it comes from the south, the waves refine it, if inland the wheat and flowers and grass distill it. The great headland and the whole rib of the promontory is wind-swept and washed with air. The billows of the atmosphere roll over it. The sun searches out every crevice amongst the grass,

Starting point is 10:04:32 nor is there the smallest fragment of surface which is not sweetened by air and light. Underneath the chalk itself is pure, and the turf thus washed by wind and rain, sun-dried and dew-scented, is a couch prepared with time to rest on. Discover some excuse to be up there always, to search for stray mushrooms. They will be stray, for the crop is gathered extremely early in the morning, or to make a list of flowers and grasses, to do anything, and if not, go always without any pretext.

Starting point is 10:05:08 Lands of gold have been found, and lands of spices and precious merchandise, but this is the land of health. Seated near the edge of the cliff, one realizes, as it is possible, nowhere else do realize, except, perhaps at Dover, the truth of Edgar's description of the headland in King Lear. It seems difficult to think of Shakespeare exploring these or any downs, and yet the scene must have been in his own experience. Nothing but actual sight could have given him the line about the crows and chuffs.

Starting point is 10:05:43 Come on, sir! Here's the place! Stand still! How fearful and dizzy it is To cast one's eyes so low. The crows and chuffs that wing the midway air Show scarce so gross as beetles. Halfway down hangs one that gathers samphire, dreadful trade.

Starting point is 10:06:02 Methinks he seems no bigger than his head. The fishermen that walk upon the beach appear like mice, And yond tall anchoring bark diminished to her cock. Her cock, a boy, almost too small. for sight. The murmuring surge that on the unnumbered idle pebbles chafs cannot be heard so high. I'll look no more, lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight topple-down headlong. Chuffs are rare at Beechy Head, but Jackdaws and gulls are in great and noisy profusion, and this reminds me that it was on Beechy Head in September 1886 that the inspiration

Starting point is 10:06:44 of one of the most beautiful bird poems in our language came to its author, the ode to a sea-mew of Mr. Swinburne. I quote five of its haunting stanzas. We sons and sires of seamen, whose home is all the sea, what place man may we claim it, but thine, whose thought may name it. Free birds live higher than free men, and gladly are ye than we, we, we sons and sires of seamen, whose home is all the sea. For you the storm sounds only more notes of more delight than earth's in sunniest weather. When heaven and sea together join strengths against the lonely lost bark

Starting point is 10:07:30 born down by night, For you the storm sounds only more notes of more delight. The lark knows no such rapture, Such joy, no nightingale, as sways the songless measure wherein thy wings take pleasure. Thy love may no man capture, thy pride may no man quail, the lark knows no such rapture, such joy, no nightingale. And we, whom dreams emboldened,

Starting point is 10:08:02 we can but creep and sing, and watch through heaven's waste hollow the flight no sight may follow to the utter born beholden Of none that lack thy wing And we, whose dreams emboldened, We can but creep and sing. Ah, well, were I forever, Wouldst thou change lives with me,

Starting point is 10:08:27 And take my songs wild honey, And give me back thy sunny, wide eyes That weary never, And wings that search the sea, Ah, well were I for ever, Wouldst thou change lives with me? The old lighthouse on beechy head, the bell too, which first flung its beams abroad in 1831,

Starting point is 10:08:51 has just been superseded by the new lighthouse built on the shore under the cliff. Near the new lighthouse is Parson Darby's hole, a cavern in the cliff, said to have been hewed out by the Reverend Jonathan Darby of East Dean as a refuge from the tongue of Mrs. Darby. Another account credits the parson with the wish to provide a sanctuary for shipwrecked sailors, whom he guided thither on stormy nights by torches. In a recent Sussex story by Mr Horace Hutchinson called A Friend of Nelson,

Starting point is 10:09:24 we find the cave in the hands of a powerful smuggler, mysterious, and accomplished as Lavengro, some years after Derby's death. A pleasant walk from Eastbourne is to Burling Gap, a great smuggling centre in the the old days, where the downs dip for a moment to the level of the sea. Here at low tide one may walk under the cliffs. Richard Jeffries in the essay from which I have already quoted has a beautiful passage of reflections beneath the great bluff. The sea seems higher than the spot where I stand, its surface on a higher level, raised

Starting point is 10:10:01 like a green mound, as if it could burst in and occupy the space up to the foot of the cliff in a moment. It will not do so, I know, but there is an infinite possibility about the sea. It may do what it is not recorded to have done. It is not to be ordered. It may overleap the bounds human observation as fixed for it. It has a potency unfathomable. There is still something in it not quite grasped and understood, something still to be discovered,

Starting point is 10:10:30 a mystery. So the white spray rushes along the low broken wall of rocks. The sun gleams on the flying fragments of the wave, again it sinks, and the rhythmic motion holds the mind, as an invisible force holds back the tide. A faith of expectancy, a sense that something may drift up from the unknown, a large belief in the unseen resources of the endless space out yonder, soothes the mind with dreamy hope. The little rules and little experiences, all the petty ways of narrow life. are shut off behind by the ponderous and impassable cliff, as if we had dwelt in the dim light of a cave,

Starting point is 10:11:14 but coming out at last to look at the sun, a great stone had fallen and closed the entrance, so that there was no return to the shadow. The impassable precipice shuts off our former selves of yesterday, forcing us to look out over the sea only, or up to the deeper heaven. These breadth draw out the soul. We feel that we have wider thoughts than we knew. The soul has been living, as it were, in a nutshell, all unaware of its own power, and now suddenly finds freedom in the sun and the sky.

Starting point is 10:11:50 Straight, as if sawn down from turf to beach, the cliff shuts off the human world, for the sea knows no time and no era. You cannot tell what century it is from the face of the sea. A Roman trirem, suddenly rounding the white edge line of chalk, born on wind and oar from the Isle of White, towards the grey castle at Pevensey. Already old in olden days, would not seem strange. What wonder could surprise us, coming from the wonderful sea.

Starting point is 10:12:23 The road from Burling Gap runs up the valley to East Dean and Friston, two villages among the downs. Parson Darby's Church at East Dean is small, and not particularly interesting, but it gave Horsfield, the county historian, the opportunity to make one of his infrequent jokes. There are three bells, he write, and if discord's harmony not understood, truly harmonious ones. Horsefield does not note that one of these three bells bore a Latin motto, which being translated

Starting point is 10:12:58 signifies, surely no bell beneath the sky can send forth better sound. than I. The East Dean Register contains a curious entry which is quoted in Gross's Ollio, edition 1796. Agnes Payne, the daughter of Edward Payne, was buried on the first day of February. Joanne Payne, the daughter of Edward Payne, was buried on the first day of February. In the death of these two sisters last mentioned is one thing worth recording and diligent to be noted. The elder sister called Agnes, being very sick unto death, speechless, and, as was thought, past hope of speaking, after she had Lyon twenty-four hours without speech,

Starting point is 10:13:47 at last upon a sudden, cried out to her sister to make herself ready, and to come with her. Her sister, Joanne, being abroad about other business, was called for, who, being come to her sick sister, demanding how she did, she very loud, or earnestly, bade her sister make ready. She stayed for her, and could not go without her. Within half an hour after, Joanne was taken very sick, which, increasing all the night upon her, her other sister still calling her to come away. In the morning they both departed this wretched world together. Oh, the unsearchable wisdom of God, how deep are his judgments and his ways past finding out, testified by diverse, old and honest persons yet living, which I myself have heard their father, when he was alive,

Starting point is 10:14:43 report. Arthur Pollynd, Vicar, Henry Homewood John Pupp, Churchwardens. Friston Church is interesting, for it contains one of the most beautiful monuments in Sussex, Worthy to be remembered with that to the Shirley's at Isfield. The family commemorated is the Selwyn's, and the monument has a very charming dado of six kneeling daughters and three babies, laid neatly on a tasseled cushion under the reading-desk. A quaint conceit impossible to be carried out successfully in these days, but pretty and fitting enough then.

Starting point is 10:15:19 Of the last of the Selwyns, Ultimus Selwynoram, who died aged twenty in seventeen o four, it is said with that exquisite simplicity of exaggeration, of which the secret also has been lost, that, for him, the very marble might weep. Friston Place, the home of the Selwyns, has some noble timbers, and a curious old donkey-well in the garden. West Dean, which is three miles to the west, by a bleak and lonely road amid hills and valleys, is just a farmyard, with remains of very ancient architecture among the barns and ricks. The village, however, is more easily reached from Alfriston than Eastbourne. End of Chapter 34 Chapter 35 of Highways and Byways in Sussex. This Librevox recording is in the public domain.

Starting point is 10:16:21 Recording by Peter Yearsley. Highways and Byways in Sussex by E. V. Lucas. Chapter 35, Pevensey and Hurst-Monsau Pevensey Castle behaves as a castle should. It rises from the plain, the only considerable eminence for miles. It has noble grey walls of the true romantic hue and thickness. It can be seen from the sea, over which it once kept guard. It has a history rich in assailants and defenders. There is, indeed nothing in its disfavour, except the proximity of the railway,

Starting point is 10:16:58 which has been allowed to pass nearer the ruin than dramatic fitness would dictate. Let it, however, be remembered that the railway through the St. Pancras Priory at Lewis led to the discovery of the coffins of William de Warenne and Gondrada, and also that in Mr. Kipling's phrase, romance, so far from being at enmity with the iron horse, brought up the 9.15. Pevensey, which is now divided from the channel by marshy fields, with, nothing to break the flatness but Martello Towers. Thirteen may be counted from the walls.

Starting point is 10:17:34 Was like Bramber Castle in the West, now also an inland stronghold once washed and surrounded by the sea. The sea probably covered all the ground as far inland as Halesham. Pevensey, Horsey, Rikney, and the other eyes on the level, being then islands, as their termination suggests. There is now no doubt but that Pevensey was the Andorida of the Romans, a city on the borders of the great forest of Anderida that covered the Weald of Sussex, Andias wheeled, as it was called by the Saxons.

Starting point is 10:18:09 But before the Romans a British stronghold existed here. This, after the Romans left, was attacked by the Saxons, who slew every Briton that they found therein. The Saxons in their turn, being discomfited. The Normans built a Newcastle within the old walls, with Robert de Moriton, half-brother of the conqueror, for its lord. Thus the castle, as it now stands, is in its outer walls Roman, in its inner Norman. Unlike certain other Sussex fortresses, Pevensey has seen work. Of its Roman career we know nothing, except that the inhabitants seem to have dropped a large number of coins, many of which have been dug up. The Saxons, as we have seen, massacred the Britons at and a reader very thoroughly. Later, in 1042, Swain, son of Earl Godwin, swooped on Pevensey's port

Starting point is 10:19:01 in the Danish manor, and carried off a number of ships. In 1049, Earl Godwin and another son, Harold, made a second foray, carried off more ships, and fired the town. On September the 28th, 1066, Pevensey saw a more momentous landing, destined to be fatal to this marauding Harold, For on that day, William, Duke of Normandy, soon to become William the Conqueror, alighted from his vessel accompanied by several hundred Frenchmen in black chain armour. His representation of the landing is one of the designs in the Bayouet tapestry. The embroiderers take no count of William's fall as he stepped ashore, on ground now grazed upon by cattle, an accident deemed unlucky, until his ready wit explained as he rose with sanded fingers.

Starting point is 10:19:52 See, I have seized the land with my hands." Pevensey's later history included sieges by William Rufus in 1088, when Odo, Bishop of Bayeur, supporter of Robert, was the defender. By Stephen in 1144, the fortress being held by Maud, who gave in eventually to famine, by Simon de Montfort and the Barons in 1265, and by the supporters of Richard of York in 1399, when Lady Pellam defended it for the Rose of Lancaster. A little later Edmund, Duke of York, was imprisoned in it, and was so satisfied with his jailer that he bequeathed him twenty pounds. Queen Joan of Navarre, wife of Henry IV, was also a prisoner here for nine years.

Starting point is 10:20:41 In the year before the Armada, Pevensey Castle was ordered to be either rebuilt as a fortress or raised to the ground, but fortunately neither instruction was carried out. The present owner of Pevensey Castle is the Duke of Devonshire, who, by virtue of the possession, is entitled to call himself Dominus Aquile, or Lord of the Eagle. Pevensey has another and gentler claim to notice. Many essayists have said pleasant and ingenious things about the art of letter-writing, but none of them mentions the part played by Pevensey in the English development of that agreeable accomplishment.

Starting point is 10:21:20 Yet the earliest specimen of English letter-writing that exists was penned in Pevensey Castle. The writer was Joan Crownall, Lady Pelham, wife of Sir John Pelham, who, as I have said, defended the castle in her Lord's absence, against the Yorkists. And this is the letter penned, I write in 1903, 504 years ago. It has no postscript. My dear Lord, I recommend me. me to your high lordship, with heart and body, and all my poor might. And with all this I thank you, as my dear Lord, dearest and best beloved of all earthly

Starting point is 10:22:03 lords. I say for me, and thank you, my dear Lord, with all this that I said before of your comfortable letter that you sent me from Pontifract, that came to me on Mary Magdalene's day, for by my troth I was never so glad as when I heard by your letter that you were strong enough with the grace of God, for to keep you from the malice of your enemies. And, dear Lord, if it like to your high lordship, that as soon as ye might, that I might hear of your gracious speed which God Almighty continue and increase. And, my dear Lord, if it like you to know my fare, I am here laid by in manner of a siege,

Starting point is 10:22:40 with the County of Sussex, Surrey, and a great parcel of Kent, so that I may not go out, nor no victuals get me, but with much hard. Wherefore, my dear, if it like you by the advice of your wide counsel, for to set remedy of the salvation of your castle, and withstand the malice of the shires aforesaid, and also that you be fully informed of the great malice workers in these shires, which have so despitefully wrought to you and to your castle, to your men, and to your tenants, for this country have they wasted for a great while. farewell my dear lord the holy trinity keep you from your enemies and soon send me good tidings of you written at pevensey in the castle on st jacob's day last past by your own poor j pelham to my true lord

Starting point is 10:23:35 in the town of pevensey once lived andrew bauder who entered this world at cuckfield a thorn in the side of municipal dignity the dogberryish dictum I am still but a man, although mayor of Pevensey, remains a local joke, and tradition has kept alive the prowess of the Pevensey jury, which brought a verdict of manslaughter, against one who was charged with stealing breeches. Both jokes of Andrews. Baud's House, whither it is said Edward VIII once came on a visit to the jester, still stands. The oak room in which Andrew welcomed the youthful king is shown at a cost of Thruppence-Ber, head, and you may buy pictorial postcards and German wooden toys in the wits' front parlour. Before leaving Pevensey, I must say a word of Westham, the village which adjoins it.

Starting point is 10:24:31 Westham and Pevensey are practically one, the castle intervening. Westham has a vicar, whose interest in his office might well be imitated by some of the other vicar of the county, his noble church, one of the finest in Sussex, with a tower of superb strength and dignity, is kept open, and just within is a table on which are a number of copies of a little penny history of Weston, which he has prepared, and for the payment of which he is so eccentric as to trust to the stranger's honesty. The tower, which the vicar tells us is six hundred years old, he asks us to admire for its utter carelessness and scorn of smoothness and finish, or any of the tricks of modern buildings.

Starting point is 10:25:16 Westham Church was one of the first that the Conqueror built, and remains of the original Norman structure are still serviceable. The vicar suggests that it may very possibly have stood a siege. In the jam of the south door of the Norman Wall is a sundial, without which one might say no church is completely perfect. In the tower dwell unmolested, a colony of owls, six of whom once attended a reading-in service, and, seated side by side on a beam, listened with unwavering attention to the thirty-nine articles.

Starting point is 10:25:54 They were absent on my visit, but a small starling, swift and elusive as a spirit, flitted hither and thither quite happily. In the churchyard is the grave of one Ailes Cressel, oddest of names, and among the epitaphs is this upon a Mr. Henty. Learn from this mystic sage to live or die. Well did he love at evening's social hour the sacred volumes treasure to apply. The remembrance of his excellent character alone reconciles his afflicted widow to her irreparable loss. The church contains a memorial to a young gentleman named Fagg,

Starting point is 10:26:37 who, having lived to adorn human nature by his exemplary manners, was untimely. snatched away, aged 24. In the neighbourhood of Westham is a large rambling building known as Priest House, which, once a monastery is now a farm, many curious relics of its earlier state have lately been unearthed. In Pevensey Church, which has none of the interest of Westham, a little collection of curiosities relating to Pevensey, a constable's staff, old title deeds, seals and so forth, is kept in a glass case. If Pevensey is all that a castle ought to be, in shape, colour, position and past,

Starting point is 10:27:23 Hurst-Monseau is the reverse, for it lies low, it has no swelling contours, it is of red brick instead of grey stone, and never a fight has it seen. But any disappointment we may feel is the fault, not of Hurst-Monsau, but of those who named it Castle. Were it called Hurst-Monsso House or Place or Manor or Grange, all would be well. It is this use of the word castle, which in Sussex has a connotation excluding red brick, that has done Hurst-Monson injustice, for it is a very imposing and satisfactory ruin, quite as interesting architecturally as Pevensey, or indeed any of the ruins that we have seen. Hurst-Monsto Castle stands on the very edge of Pevensey level, the only considerable structure

Starting point is 10:28:15 between Pevensey and the mainland proper. In the intervening miles there are fields and fields, through which the old haven runs, plaintive plovers above them, bemoaning their lot, and brown cows tugging at the rich grass. On the first hillock to the right of the castle, as one fronts the south, rising like an island from this sea of pasturage is Hurst-Monso Church, whose shingled spire shoots into the sky, a beacon to travellers in the level. It is a pretty church with an exterior of severe simplicity. Between the chancel and the chantry is the large tomb covering the remains of Thomas Fines,

Starting point is 10:28:56 second Lord Dacre of Hurst Monsor, who died in 1534, and Sir Thomas Dacre his son, surmounted by life-size stone figures, each in full armour. with hands proudly raised, and each resting his feet against the Fines' wolf-dog. In the churchyard is the grave of Julius Hare, once vicar of Hurst Monceau, and the author, with his brother Augustus, of Guesses at Truth. Carlisle's John Sterling was Julius Hare's first curate here. Hurst-Monso Castle was once the largest and handsomest of all the commoners' houses in the county, Sir Roger Defines, a descendant of the John Defines who married Maud, last of the DeMonsso,

Starting point is 10:29:43 in the reign of Edward II, built it in 1440. Though the manor-house of the de Monso on the site of the present castle lacked the imposing qualities of Roger Defines's stronghold, it was hospitable, spacious, and luxurious. Edward I first spent a night there in 1302. One of the de Monso was on the side of Demontfort in the Battle of Lewis, and the first of them to settle in England married Edith, daughter of William de Warenne and Gundrada of Lewis Castle. How thorough and conscientious were the workmen employed by Roger Defines, and how sound were their bricks and mortar, may be learned by the study of Hurst Monso Castle today. In many parts the walls are absolutely uninjured, except by tourists. The floors, however, have long since returned to nature, who has put forth her energies

Starting point is 10:30:39 without stint to close the old apartments with greenery. Ivy, of astonishing vigour, grows here, populous with jackdaws, and trees and shrubs spring from the least likely spots. The castle in its old completeness was practically a little town. From east to west its walls measured two hundred and six and a half feet, from north to south two hundred and a quarter. Within them on the ground floor were larders, laundries, a brew-house, a bake-house, cellars, a dairy, offices, a guard-room, pantries, a distillery, a confectionery room, a chapel, and beneath a dungeon. Between these were four open courts.

Starting point is 10:31:23 Upstairs round three sides of the Green Court, were the Bird Gallery, the Armour Gallery, and the Green Gallery, and Lord's Apartments, and Ladies' Apartments, capable of quoth quartering an army to quote a writer on the subject. On each side of the entrance, gained by a drawbridge, was a tower, the watch-tower, and the signal tower. In the reign of Elizabeth, a survey of Hurst Monceau was taken, which tells us that in the park were two hundred deer, four fair ponds stocked with carp and tench, a fair warren of Conies, a heronery of 150 nests and much game.

Starting point is 10:32:05 The Defines, or Dacres, as they became, had also a private fishery in Pevensey Bay, seen from the watchtower as a strip of blue ribbon. In addition, Hurst Monceau had a ghost, who inhabited the drummer's hall, a room between the towers over the porter's lodge, and sent forth a mysterious tattoo. Sometimes he left his hall this devilish musician, and strode along the battlements, drumming and drumming, a terrible figure nine feet high. Most people were frightened, but there were those who said that the drummer was nothing more nor less than a gardener in league with the Pevensey smugglers, whose notes rattled out on

Starting point is 10:32:47 the parchment, rolled over the marsh and gave them the needful signal. Most Monceau once had a very real tragedy. The third Lord Dacre, one of the young nobleman who took part in the welcoming of Anne of Cleaves when she landed in England, preparatory to her becoming the wife of Henry VIII, was so foolish one night in 1541 as to accompany some of his roistering companions to the adjacent park of Sir Nicholas Pelham, near Hellingly, intent on a deer-stealing jest. three gamekeepers rose up and a bloody battle ensued, in which one John Busbrigg bit the dust. Pelham was furious and demanded justice, and Lord Dacre, though he had taken no part in the fray, was held responsible.

Starting point is 10:33:37 Three of his friends were hanged at Tyburn, and, in spite of all the influence that was brought to bear, he also was executed. The next Dacre of importance married the Lady Anne Fitzroy, a now that was to bear. natural daughter of Charles II, and was made Earl of Sussex. Financial losses compelling him to sell Hurst Monceau, a lawyer named George Naylor bought it in 1708, leaving it on his death to the Right Reverend Francis Hare, Bishop of Chichester. It remained in the family as a residence until, in 1777, an architect pronounced it unsafe, and the interior was converted into materials for the new Hurst-Monso place in the park to the north-west. Since then, nature has had her way with it.

Starting point is 10:34:26 Horace Walpole's visit, as described in one of his letters, gives us a little idea of of Hurst Monceau in the middle of the 18th century, a little before it became derelict. The chapel is small and mean. The Virgin and seven long-leen saints, ill done, remain in the windows. There have been four more, but they seem to have been removed for light, and we actually found St. Catherine and another gentlewoman with a church in her hand, exiled into the buttery. There remain two odd cavities with very small wooden screens on each side the altar,

Starting point is 10:35:01 which seem to have been confessionals. The outside is a mixture of grey brick and stone that has a very venerable appearance. The drawbridges are romantic to a degree, and there is a dungeon that gives one a delightful idea of living in the days of sockage and under such goodly ten years. They showed us a dismal chamber, which they called Drummer's Hall, and suppose that Mr. Addison's comedy is descended from it. In the windows of the gallery over the cloisters, which leads all round to the apartments,

Starting point is 10:35:33 is the device of the fineses, a wolf holding a baton with a scroll, Leroy-Vin, an unlucky motto, as I shall tell you presently, to the last peer of that line. The estate is two thousand a year and so compact as to have but 17 houses upon it. We walked up a brave old avenue to the church, with ships sailing on our left hand the whole way. Hurst Monceau is famous not only for its castle, but for its trugs, the wooden baskets that gardeners carry, which are associated with Hurst Monce, as crooks once were with Pichome, and the shepherd's vast green umbrellas on cane frames with Lewis.

Starting point is 10:36:16 End of Chapter 35 Chapter 36 of Highways and Byways in Sussex This Librevox recording is in the public domain Recorded by Peter Yearsley Highways and Byways in Sussex by E.V. Lucas Chapter 36, Hastings Brighton, as we have seen, was made by Dr. Russell. It was Dr. Bailey, some years later,

Starting point is 10:36:48 who discovered the salubrious qualities of Hastings. In 1806, when the Duke of Wellington, then Major General Wellesley, was in command of 12,000 soldiers encamped in the neighbourhood, and was himself living at Hastings' house, the population of the town was less than 4,000. Today, with St. Leonard's and dependent suburbs, Hastings covers several square miles. With the exception of the little red and grey region

Starting point is 10:37:18 known as Old Hastings between Castle Hill and East Hill, the same charge of, a lack of what is interesting, can be brought against Hastings as against Brighton. But whereas Brighton has the downs to offer, Hastings is backed by country of far less charm. Perhaps her greatest merit is her proximity to Winchellsea and Rye. Hastings, once one of the proudest of the Sink Ports, has no longer even a harbour, its pleasure yachts, which carry excursionists on brief channel voyages, having to be beached just like rowing boats. The ravages of the sea which have so transformed the coastline of Sussex have completely changed

Starting point is 10:38:01 this town, and from a stately seaport she has become a democratic watering-place. Beneath the waves lie the remains of an old priory, and possibly of not a few churches. Haines has been very nigh to history more than once, but she has escaped the actual making of it. Even the great battle that takes its name from the town was fought seven miles away, while the Duke of Normandy, as we have seen, landed as far distant as Pevensey, ten miles in the west, but he used Hastings as a vitling centre. Again and again in its time, Hastings has been threatened with invasion by the French, who

Starting point is 10:38:41 did actually land in 1138 and burned the town. And one Sunday morning in 1643, Colonel Morley of Gly, the Parliamentarian, marched in with his men and confiscated all arms. But, considering its warlike mean, Hastings has done little. Nor can the seaport claim any very illustrious son. Titus Oates, it is true, was curate of All Saints Church in 1644, his father being vicar, and among the inhabitants of the old town was the mother of Sir Cloud's house. shovel, the admiral. A charming account of a visit paid to her by her son is given in de la Prins' diary. I heard a gentleman say, who was in the ship with him about six years ago,

Starting point is 10:39:27 that as they were sailing over against the town of Hastings in Sussex, Sir Cloudley called out, pilot, put near, I have a little business on shore. So he put near, and Sir Cloudsley and this gentleman went to shore in a small boat, and having walked about half a mile, Sir Cowsley came to a little house in All Saints Street. Come, says he, my business is here. I came on purpose to see the good woman of this house. Upon this they knocked at the door, and out came a poor old woman, upon which Sir Cloudsley kissed her, and then, falling down on his knees begged her blessing, and calling

Starting point is 10:40:03 her mother, who had removed out of Yorkshire hither. He was mightily kind to her, and she to him, and after that he had made his visit he left her ten guineas, and took his leave with tears in his eyes, and departed to his ship. Hastings had a famous rector at the beginning of the last century in the person of the Reverend Webster Whistler, who combined with the eastern benefice that of New Timber, near Hurst Pierpoint, and managed to serve both to a great age. He lived to be 84, and died full of vigour in 1831. In 1817, following upon a quarrel with the Squire, the new timber living was put up for auction in London.

Starting point is 10:40:48 Mr. Whistler decided to be present, but anonymous. The auctioneer mentioned in his introduction the various charms of the benefice, ending with the superlative advantage that it was held by an aged and infirm clergyman with one foot in the grave. At this point the proceedings were interrupted by a large and powerful figure in clerical costume, springing on the table and crying out to the company, Now, gentlemen, do I look like a man tottering on the brink of the grave? My left leg gives me no sign of weakness. And as for the other, Mr. auctioneer, if you repeat your remarks, you will find it very much at your service.

Starting point is 10:41:26 The living found no purchaser. Mr. Whistler had a Chinese indifference to the necessary end of all things, which prompted him to use an aged yew tree in his garden that had long given him shade, but must now be felled, as material for his coffin. This coffin he placed at the foot of his bed as a chest for clothes until its proper purpose was fulfilled. Hastings was also the home of Edward Capell, a Shakespeare editor of the 18th century. Capel, who is said to have copied out in his own hand the entire works of the poet, no fewer than ten times, was the designer of his own house, which seems to have been a miracle of discomfort. He was an eccentric of the

Starting point is 10:42:13 the most determined character, so much so that he gradually lost all friends. According to Horsfield, the spirit of nicety and refinement prevailed in it, his house, so much during his lifetime that when a friend a baronet called upon him on a tour, he was desired to leave his cane in the vestibule, lest he should either dirt the floor with it or soil the carpet. One does not think naturally of old Sussex customs in connection with this town, so thoroughly urban as it now is, and so largely populated by visitors, but I find in the Sussex archaeological collections the following interesting account by a Hastings alderman of an old harvest ceremony in the neighbourhood. At the head of the table one of the men occupied the position of chairman, in front

Starting point is 10:43:04 of him stood a pale, clean as wooden staves and iron hoops could be made by human labour. At his right sat four or five men who led the singing. Grave as judges were they. Indeed, the appearance of the whole assembly was one of the greatest solemnity, except for a moment or two when some unlucky white failed to turn the cup over, and was compelled to undergo the penalty in that case made and provided. This done all went on as solemnly as before. The ceremony, if I may call it so, was this.

Starting point is 10:43:34 The leader or chairman, standing behind the pail with a tall horn cup in his hand, filled it with beer from the bale. The man next to him, on the left, stood up, and holding a hat with both hands by the rim, crown upwards, received the cup from the chairman, on the crown of the hat, not touching it with either hand. He then lifted the cup to his lips by raising the hat, and slowly drank off the contents.

Starting point is 10:43:59 As soon as he began to drink, the chorus struck up this chant, I've been to Plymouth and I've been to Dover, I have been rambling boys all the world over, over and over and over and over, drink up your liquor and turn your cup over. Over and over, and over, the liquors drinked up, and the cup is turned over. The man drinking was expected to time his draft so as to empty his cup at the end of the fourth line of the chant. He was then to return the cup to the perpendicular, still holding the hat by the brim, then to throw the cup into the air, and reversing the hat to catch the cup in it as it fell.

Starting point is 10:44:37 If he failed to perform this operation, the fellow workmen, who were closely watching him, made an important alteration in the last line of their chant, which in that case ran thus, The liquors drinked up, and the cup ain't turned over. The cup was then refilled, and the unfortunate drinker was compelled to go through the same ceremony again. Everyone at the table took the cup and turned it over in succession, the chief shepherd keeping the pail constantly supplied with beer. The parlour guests were, of course, invited to turn the cup over with the guests of the kitchen, and went through the ordeal with, more or less, of success.

Starting point is 10:45:16 For my own part, I confess that I failed to catch the cup in a hat at the first trial, and hats to try again. The chairman, however, mercifully gave me only a small quantity of beer the second time. The civic life of Hastings would seem to encourage literature, for I find also in one of the Archaeological Society's volumes, the following pretty lines by John Collier, mayor of Hastings in 1719, 22, 30, 37 and 41, on his little boy's death.

Starting point is 10:45:49 Oh, my poor son, oh, my tender child, my unblown flower and now appearing sweet, if yet your gentle soul flies in the air and is not fixed in doom perpetual, hover about me with your airy wings and hear your father's lamentation. Hastings has two advantages over both Brighton and Eastbourne. It can produce a genuine piece of antiquity, and, seen from the sea, it has a picturesque quality

Starting point is 10:46:21 that neither of those towns possesses. Indeed, under certain conditions of light, Hastings is magnificent, with the craggy castle hill in its midst surmounted by its imposing ruin. The smoke of the town rising and spreading, shrouds the modernity of the sea-front, and the castle on its commanding height seems to be brooding over the shores of old romance. Brighton has no such effect as this. Of the castle,

Starting point is 10:46:49 little is known. It was probably built on the site of Roman fortifications by the Compte Doe, who came over with the Conqueror. The first tournament in Britain is said to have been held there with Adela, daughter of the Conqueror, as Queen of Beauty. After the castle had ceased to be of any use as a stronghold, it was still maintained as a religious house. It is now a pleasure resort. The ordinary visitor to Hastings is, however, more interested by the caves in the hill below, originally made by diggers of sand, and afterwards used by smugglers. Before branching out from Hastings into the country proper, I might mention two neighbouring points of pilgrimage. One is Hollington Rural Church, on the hill

Starting point is 10:47:35 behind the town, whither, sooner or later, everyone walks. It is a small church in the midst of a crowded burial ground, and it is difficult to understand its attraction, unless, by the poverty of other objectives. I should not mention it, but that it is probably the church to which Charles Lamb, bored by Hastings itself, wended his way one day in 1825. He describes it in terms more fitting to, say, Lullington Church near Alphriston. or St. Olavs at Chichester, in no fewer than three of his letters. This is the best passage, reveling in a kind of inverted exaggeration,

Starting point is 10:48:14 as written to John Bates-Dibdin at Hastings in 1826. Let me hear that you have clambered up to lover's seat. It is as fine in that neighbourhood as Juan Fernandez, as lonely, too, when the fishing-boats are not out. I have sat for hours staring upon the shipless sea. The Salt Sea is never so grand as when it is left to itself. One cock-boat spoils it. A sea-mew or two improves it,

Starting point is 10:48:43 and go to the little church, which is a very Protestant, Loretto, and seems dropped by some angel for the use of a hermit, who was at once parishner and a whole parish. It is not too big. Go in the night, bring it away in your portmanteau, and I will plant it in my garden. It must have been erected in the very infancy of British

Starting point is 10:49:03 Christianity, for the two or three first converts. Yet hath it all the appurtenance of a church of the first magnitude, its pulpit, its pews, its baptismal font, a cathedral in a nutshell. Seven people could crowd it like a Caledonian chapel. The minister that divides the word there must give lumping pennyworths. It is built to the text of two or three assembled in my name. It reminds me of the grain of mustard seed. If the Glebe land is but, you know, it is built. It is proportionate, it may yield two potatoes. Tithes out of it could be no more split than a hair. Its first fruits must be its last, for it would never produce a couple. It is truly the straight and narrow way, and few there be of London visitants, that find it. The still small voice

Starting point is 10:49:53 is surely to be found there, if anywhere. A sounding-board is merely there for ceremony. It is secure from earthquakes, not more from sanctity than size, for twould feel a mountain thrown upon it no more than a taper-worm wood. Go and see, but not without your spectacles. The lover's seat mentioned in the first sentence of the above passage is at Fairlight, about two miles east of Hastings. The seat is very prettily situated, high in a ledge in Fairlight Glen. Horsefield shall tell the story that gave the spot its fascinating name. A beautiful girl at Rye gained the affections of Captain Blancel. Blanche. Then, in command of a cutter in that station, her parents disapproved the connection and

Starting point is 10:50:38 removed her to a farmhouse, near the lover's seat, called the Warren House. Hence she contrived to absent herself night after night when she sought this spot, and by means of a light made known her presence to her lover, who was cruising off in expectation of her arrival. The difficulties thus thrown in their way increased the ardour of their attachment, and marriage was determined upon at all hazards. Hollington Church was, and is that, the place most sought for on these occasions in this part of the country, it has a romantic air about it, which is doubtless peculiarly impressive. There are, too, some other reasons why so many matches are solemnised here, and all combined to make this the place selected by this pair.

Starting point is 10:51:20 It was expected that the lady's flight would be discovered and her object suspected, but in order to prevent a rescue, the cutter's crew positively volunteered and acted as guards on the narrow paths leading through the woods to the church. However, the marriage ceremony was completed before any unwelcome visitors arrived, and reconciliation soon followed. Bex Hill has now become so exceedingly accessible by conveyance from Hastings, that it might perhaps be mentioned here as a contiguous place of interest, but of Bex Hill till lately a village, or Bex Hill on Sea, watering-place,

Starting point is 10:51:58 with everything handsome about it, there is little to see. say. Both the tide of the channel and of popularity seem to be receding. In land there is some pretty country. End of Chapter 36. Chapter 37 of Highways and Byways in Sussex. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Peter Yearsley. Highways and Byways in Sussex by E. V. Lucas. Chapter 37, Battle Abbey. The principal excursion from Hastings is, of course, to battle, with a company of discreetly satisfied Normans, Les Souvenier Normand, recently travelled, to view with tactfully chastened enthusiasm the scene of the triumph of 1066, to erect a memorial, and to perplex the old ladies of battle

Starting point is 10:53:00 who provide tea. Except on one day of the week, visitors to battle must content themselves with tea, of which there is no stint, and a view of the gateway, for the rule of showing the abbey only on Tuesdays is strictly enforced by the American gentleman who now resides on this historic site. But the gateway could hardly be finer. The battlefield was half a mile south of the abbey on Tellam Hill, where, in Harold's day, was a hoary apple tree. We have seen William landing at Pevensey on September the 28th, 1066.

Starting point is 10:53:36 Thence he marched to Hastings, to steal food, and thence, after a delay of a fortnight, to some extent spent in fortifying Hastings, and also in burning his boats, he marched to Tellham Hill. That was on October the 13th. On the same day Harold reached the neighbourhood, with his horde of soldiers and armed rustics, and both armies encamped that night only a mile apart, waiting for the light to begin the fray. The Saxons were confident and riotous, the Normans hopeful and grave. According to Wace, all night the Saxons might be seen carousing, gambling, and dancing and singing.

Starting point is 10:54:19 Bubli, they cried, and Wasail, and Laticum, and drink hale, and drink to me! At daybreak in the Norman camp, Bishop Odo celebrated High Mass, and immediately after was hurried into his armour to join the fight. As the Duke was arming, an incident occurred but for which Battle Abbey might never have been built. His suit of mail was offered him wrong-side out. The superstitious Normans, standing by, looked sideways at each other, with sinking misgiving. They deemed it a bad omen.

Starting point is 10:54:53 But William's face betrayed no fear. If we win, he said, and God send we may, I will found an Abbey here, for the salvation of the souls of all who fall in the engagement. Before quitting his tent he was careful that those relics on which Harold had sworn never to oppose his efforts against England's throne should be hung around his neck. So the two armies were ready, the mounted Normans, with their conical helmets gleaming in the hazy sunlight, with kite-shaped shields, huge spears and swords, and the English, all on foot, with heavy axes and clubs. But theirs was a defensive part, the Normans hatched to begin. It fell to the lot of a wild troubadour named Tayafer to open the fight.

Starting point is 10:55:44 He galloped from the Norman lines at full speed. singing a song of heroes, then checked his steed, and tossed his lance thrice in the air, thrice catching it by the point. The opposing lines silently wondered. Then he flung it at a luckless Saxon, with all the energy of a madman, spitting him as a skewer spits a lark. Tai Fier had now only his sword left. This also he threw thrice into the air, and then seizing it with the grip of death, he rode straight at the side. Saxon troops, dealing blows from left to right, and so was lost to view. Thus the Battle of Hastings began.

Starting point is 10:56:26 "'On them in God's name!' cried William, and chastise these English for their misdeeds. "'Dear Ed!' his men screamed, spurring to the attack. "'Out! out!' barked the English. "'Holy cross! God Almighty!' The carnage was terrific. It seemed for long that the English were and they would in all likelihood have prevailed in the end had they kept their position. But William feigned a retreat, and the English crossed their valum in pursuit. The Normans at once turned their horses and pursued, and butchered the unprepared enemy,

Starting point is 10:57:03 singly in the open country. A complete route followed. The false step was decisive. Not till night, however, did Harold fall. He upheld his standard to the last. hedged about by a valiant bodyguard who resisted the Normans till every sign of life was battered out of them. The story of the vertically discharged arrow is a myth. An eyewitness thus described Harold's death.

Starting point is 10:57:33 An armed man, said he, came in the throng of the battle, and struck him on the ventaille of the helmet, and beat him to the ground, and as he sought to recover himself a knight beat him down again, striking him on the thick of the thigh down to the bone. so died harold on the exact sight of the high altar of the abbey and so passed away the saxon kingdom that night william who was unharmed though three horses were killed under him had his tent set up in the midst of the dead and there he ate and drank in the morning the norman corpses were picked out and buried with due rites the saxons were left to rot according to the carmen William I first had Harold's body wrapped in purple linen and carried to Hastings, where it was buried on the cliff, beneath a stone inscribed with the words,

Starting point is 10:58:27 By the order of the Duke, you rest here, King Harold, as the guardian of the shore and the sea. Mr. Lauer was convinced of the truth of that story, but William of Malmesbury said that William sent Harold's body to his mother, the Countess Geitha, who buried it at Waltham, while a third account shows us Editha of the swan neck, Harold's wife, wandering through the blood-stained grass, among the fallen English, until she found the body of her husband, which she craved leave to carry away. William, this version adds, could not deny her. Fuller writes in the worthies, concerning the wonders of Sussex, expect not here I should insert what William of Newbury writeth, to be recounted rather amongst the

Starting point is 10:59:17 untruths, than wonders. That is, that in this county not far from Bataii Abbey, in the place where so great a slaughter of the Englishman was made, after any shower presently sweateth forth very fresh blood out of the earth, as if the evidence thereof did plainly declare the voice of blood their shed, and crieth still from the earth unto the Lord. This is as true as that in white chalky countries, about Baldock in Hertfordshire, after rain, run rivulets of milk, neither being anything less than the water discoloured, according to the complexion of the earth thereabouts. The conqueror was true to his vow, and the Abbey of St. Martin was quickly begun. At first there was difficulty about the stone, which was brought all the way from

Starting point is 11:00:08 cane quarries, until, according to an old writer, a pious matron, dreamed that stone in large quantities was to be found near at hand. Her vision leading to the discovery of a neighbouring quarry, the work proceeded henceforward with exceeding rapidity. Although the first abbot was appointed in 1076, William the Conqueror did not live to see the Abbey finished. Sixty monks of the Order of St. Benedict came to battle from the Abbey of Marmontier in Normandy to form its nucleus. It was left to William Rufus to preside over the consecration of battle, which was not until February 1095, when the ceremony was performed amid much pomp. William presented to the Abbey his father's coronation robe, and the sword

Starting point is 11:00:57 he had wielded in the battle. Several wealthy manners were attached, and the country round was exempted from tax, while the abbots were made superior to Episcopal control, and were endowed with the right to sit in Parliament and a London house to live in during the session. Indeed, nothing was left undone that could minister to the pride and power of the new house of God. The Abbey of St. Martin was quadrangular, standing in the midst of a circle nine miles round. Within this were vineyards, stewponds, and rich land. Just without was a small street of artisans' dwellings, where were manufactured all things requisite for the monk's material well-being.

Starting point is 11:01:43 The church was the largest in the country, larger even than Canterbury. It was also a sanctuary, any sentenced criminal who succeeded in sheltering therein, receiving absolution from the abbot. The high altar, as I have said, was erected precisely on the spot where Harold fell, a spot on which one may now stand and think of the past. Battle Abbey was more than once visited by Kings. In twelve hundred John was there, shaking like a cold. quicksand. He brought a piece of our Lord's sepulchre, which had been rested from Palestine by Richard

Starting point is 11:02:19 the Lionheart, and laid it with tremulous hands on the altar, hoping that the magnificence of the gift might close heaven's eyes towards sins of his own. In 1212 he was at Battle Abbey again, and for the last time in 1213, seeking maybe to find in these silent cloisters some forgetfulness of the mutterings of hate and scorn that everywhere followed him. Just before the Battle of Lewis, Henry III galloped up, attended by a bodyguard of overbearing horsemen, and levied large sums of money to assist him in the struggle. After the battle he returned, a weary refugee, but still rapacious.

Starting point is 11:03:05 These visits were not welcome. It was different when Edward II slept there on the night of August the 28th, 1324. Alan de Ketbury, the abbot, was bent on showing loyalty at all cost, while the neighbouring lords and squires were hardly less eager. The abbot's contribution to the kitchen included twenty score and four loaves of bread, two swans, two rabbits, three pheasants, and a dozen capons. William de Etchingham sent three peacocks, twelve bream, six muttons, and other delicacies, and Robert Aitland, four rabbits, six swathens, and other delicacies, and Robert Aikland, four rabbits, six swans. ones, and three herons. In 1331, Abbott Hameau and his monks kept at bay a body of French marauders who had landed at Rye, until the country gentleman could assemble and repulse them utterly. Then followed two peaceful centuries. But afterwards came disaster, for in 1558 Thomas Cromwell

Starting point is 11:04:09 sent down two commissioners to examine into the state of the Abbey, and report thereon to the zealous defender of the faith. The commissioners found nineteen books in the library, and rumors of monkish debauchery without the walls. "'So beggary a house,' wrote one of the officers, "'I never see!' Battle Abbey was therefore suppressed, and presented to Sir Anthony Brown, upon whom, as we saw in the first chapter, the Curse of Cowdery was pronounced by the last departing monk. To catalogue the present features of Battle Abbey is to vulgarise it. One comes away with confused memories of grey walls embraced by white clematis and red rose,

Starting point is 11:04:57 gloomy underground caverns with double rows of arches, where the brothers might not speak, benignant cedars blessing the turf with extended hands, fragrant limes waving their delicate leaves, an old rose garden with fantastic beds, a long yew walk, where the brothers might meditatively pace, turning perhaps an epigram, regretting, perhaps, the world. Nothing now remains of the refectory

Starting point is 11:05:28 where, of old, forty monks, fed like one, except the walls. It once had a noble roof of Irish oak, but that was taken to Cowderay, and perished in the fire there, together with the Abbey Roll. One of the Abbey's first charms is the appropriateness of its gardens. They too are old.

Starting point is 11:05:51 In the cloisters, for instance, there are wonderful box borders. Turner painted Battle Abbey the spot where Harold fell, with a greyhound pressing hard upon a hair in the foreground, and a scotch fur Italianated into a golden bough. The town of Battle has little interest. In the church is a brass to touch. Thomas Alphrey and his wife Elizabeth. Thomas Alphrey, whose soul,

Starting point is 11:06:20 according to his epitaph, in active strength did pass, as ne'er was found his peer. One would like to know more of this, Samson. The tomb of Sir Anthony Brown is also here, but it is not so imposing as that of his son, the first Viscount Montague, which we saw at Eastbourne.

Starting point is 11:06:39 In the churchyard is the grave of Isaac Engel, the oldest butler on record. who died at the age of 120, after acting as butler at the Abbey for 95 years. From battle one may easily reach Normanhurst, the seat of the Brassies, and Ashburnham Park, just to the north of it, a superb, undulating domain, with lakes, an imposing mansion, an old church, break fern, magnificent trees, and a herd of deer, all within its confines. Of the church, however, I can say nothing, for I was there on a very hot day, the door was locked, and the key was at the vicarage ten minutes distant at the top of a hill.

Starting point is 11:07:27 Churches that are thus controlled must be neglected. Ashburnham Place once contained some of the finest books in England, and is still famous for its relics of Charles I, but strangers may not see them. The best Sussex iron was smelted at Ashburnham Furness, north of the park, near Penhurst. Ashburnham Forge was the last to remain at work in the county. Its last surviving labourer of the neighbourhood died in 1883. He remembered the extinguishing of the fire in 1813, or 1811, the casting of firebacks being the final task.

Starting point is 11:08:08 Penhurst, by the way, is one of the most curiously remote villages in East Sussex, with the oddest little church. I walked to Ashburnham from Ninfield, a clean, breezy village on the hill overlooking Pevensey Bay, with a locked church, and iron stocks by the side of the road. It is stated somewhere that at that corner of Crouch Lane that leads to Lundford Cross,

Starting point is 11:08:34 and so to Bexhill and Hastings, was buried a suicide in 1675. At how many, Crossroads in Sussex and elsewhere does one stand over such graves. One may return to Hastings by way of Catsfield, which has little interest, and Crowhurst, famous for the remains of a beautiful manor house, and a yew tree supposed to be the oldest in Sussex. It is curious that Crowhurst in Surrey is also known for a great yew. End of Chapter 37

Starting point is 11:09:13 Chapter 38 of Highways and Byways in Sussex This Librevox recording is in the public domain Recording by Peter Yearsley Highways and Byways in Sussex by E.V. Lucas Chapter 38, Winchell C. and Rye In the opinion of many good judges, Sussex has nothing to offer

Starting point is 11:09:42 so fascinating as Winchell C. and rye, and in certain reposeful moods, when the past seems to be more than the present or future, I can agree with them. We have seen many ancient towns in our progress through the county, Chichester, around her cathedral spire, Arndel, beneath her grey castle, Lewis, among her hills, but all have modern blood in their veins. Winchelsea and Rye seem wholly of the past. Nothing can modernize them.

Starting point is 11:10:18 Rye approached from the east is the suddenest thing in the world. The traveller leaves Ashford in a southeastern train, amid all the circumstances of ordinary travel. He passes through the ordinary scenery of Kent. The porters call Rye, and in a moment he is in the Middle Ages. is only a few yards from its station. Winchelsea, on the other hand, is a mile from the line, and one has time on the road to understand one's surroundings. It is important that the traveller who wishes to experience the right medieval thrill should come to Winchelsea

Starting point is 11:10:56 either at dusk or at night. To make acquaintance with any new town by night is to double one's pleasure, for there is a first joy in the curious, half-seen strangeness of the streets and houses, and a further joy in correcting by the morrow's light the distorted impressions gathered in the dark. To come for the first time upon Winchellsea at dusk, whether from the station or from Rye, is to receive an impression almost, if not quite, unique in England, since there is no other town throned like this upon a green hill to be gained only through massive gateways. the station one would enter at the pipewell gate, from Rye by the Strand Gate. The strand

Starting point is 11:11:45 approach is, perhaps a shade finer and more romantically unreal. Winchelsea and Rye are remarkable in being not only perched each upon a solitary hillock in a vast level or marsh, but in being hillocks in themselves. In the case of Winchelsea there are trees and green spaces to boot, but Rye and its hillock are one. Every inch is given over to red brick and grey stone. They are true cities of the plain. Between them are three miles of flat meadow, where, among thousands of sheep, stands the grey rotundity of Camber Castle. All this land is polder, as the Dutch call it, yet not reclaimed from the sea by any feet of engineering, as about the Helder, but presented by Neptune as a free

Starting point is 11:12:38 and not too welcome gift to these ancient boroughs, possibly to equalise his theft of acres of good park at Selsey. Once a sink-port of the first magnitude, Winchelsea is now an inland resort of the antiquary and the artist. Where fishermen once dropped their nets, shepherds now watch their sheep, where the marauding French were wont to rush in with sword and torch, tourists now toil with camera and guide-book. The light above the sheep levels changes continually. At one hour Rye seems but a stone's throw from Winchelsea. At another she is miles distant.

Starting point is 11:13:23 At a third she looms twice her size through the haze, and Camber is seen as a fortress of old romance. Rye stands where it has always stood, but the original Winchelsey is no more. It was built two miles south-southeast of Rye, on a spot since covered by the sea, but now again dry land. At Old Winchellsea William the Conqueror landed in 1067, after a visit to Normandy. In 1138, Henry II landed there, while the French landed often, sometimes disastrously and sometimes not. In those days Winchelsea had seven hundred householders and fifty in twelve fifty, however, began her downfall.

Starting point is 11:14:15 Hollinshead writes, On the first day of October, twelve fifty, the moon upon her change, appearing exceeding red and swelled, began to show tokens of the great tempest of wind that followed, which was so huge and mighty, both by land and sea, that the like had not been lightly known, and seldom, or rather, never heard of by men then alive. The sea, forced contrary to his natural course, flowed twice without ebbing, yielding such a roaring that the same was heard not without great wonder, a far distance from the shore. Moreover, the same sea appeared in the dark of the night to burn, as if it had been on fire, and the waves to strive and fight together, after a marvellous sort, so that the mariners

Starting point is 11:15:09 could not devise how to save their ships, where they lay at anchor, by no cunning or shift which they could devise. At Heartburn, three tall ships perished without recovery, besides other smaller vessels. At Winchelsea, besides other hurt that was done, in bridges, mills, breaks, and banks, there were three hundred houses and some churches drowned with the the high rising of the water course. The Winchellsea people, however, did not abandon their town. In 1264 Henry III was there on his way to the Battle of Lewis, and later Eleanor, wife of Henry's conqueror, Demontfort, was there too, and, encouraged by her kindness to them,

Starting point is 11:15:54 the Winchell Sea men took to active sea piracy, which De Montfort encouraged. In 1266, however, Prince Edward, who disliked, piracy, descended upon the town and chastised it, bloodyly. While on February 4, 1287, a greater punishment came, for during another storm the town was practically drowned, all the flat land between pet and hithe being inundated. New Winchelsea, the Winchell Sea of today, was forthwith begun under royal patronage on a rock near Ikelsham, the north and east sides of which were washed by the sea. A castle was set there,

Starting point is 11:16:37 and gates, of which three still stand, pipe well, strand, and new, rose from the earth. The Greyfriars Monastery and other religious houses were reproduced as at Old Winchelsea, and a prosperous town quickly existed. New Winchelsea was soon busy.

Starting point is 11:16:56 In 1350, a battle between the English and Spanish fleets was waged off the town, an exciting spectacle for the court, who watched from the high ground. Edward III, the English king, when victory was his, rode to Etchingham for the night. In 1359 three thousand Frenchmen entered Winchelsea and set fire to it, while in 1360 the Sinkport's navy sailed from Winchelsea and burned loose. Such were the reprisals of those days.

Starting point is 11:17:29 In 1376 the French came again, and were repulsed. by the abbot of battle, but in 1378 the abbot had to run. In 1448 the French came for the last time, the sea having become very shallow, and a little later the sea receded altogether, Henry VIII suppressed the religious houses, and Winchell's heyday was over. She is now a quiet, aloof settlement of pleasant houses and gardens. prospers and idle. Rye might be called a city of trade, Winchelsea of repose. She spreads her hands to the sun, and is content. Winchelsea's church stands, as a church should,

Starting point is 11:18:21 in the midst of its green acre, fully visible from every side, the very antipodes of Rye. Large as it now is it was once far larger, for only the chancel and side aisles from The glory of the church is the canopied tomb of Gervais Allard, Admiral of the Sink Ports, and that of his grandson Stephen Allard, also admiral, both curiously carved with grotesque heads. The roof beams of the church, timber from wrecked or broken ships, are of an integrity so thorough that a village carpenter who recently climbed up to test them blunted all his tools in the enterprise.

Starting point is 11:19:03 All that remains of the Grey Friars Monastery may now be seen, on Mondays only, in the estate called the Friars, the shell of the chapel's choir, prettily covered with ivy. Here once lived in the odour of perfect respectability, the Brothers Western, who, country gentlemen of quiet habit at home, for several years ravaged the coach roads elsewhere as highwaymen, and were eventually hanged at Tyburn. Their place in literature is, of course, Dennis Duval, which Thackeray wrote in a house on the north of the churchyard, and which is all of Winchelsea and Rye compact,

Starting point is 11:19:46 as the author's letter to Mr. Greenwood, editor of Cornhill, detailing the plot, in the person of Dennis himself, go to show. Thus, I was born in the year 1764, at Winchelsea, where my father was a grocer and clerk of the church. Everybody in the place was a good deal connected with smuggling. They used to come to our house a very noble French gentleman called the Count de la Mott, and with him a German, the Baron de Lutelot.

Starting point is 11:20:17 My father used to take packages to Ostend and Calais for these two gentlemen, and perhaps I went to Paris once, and saw the French queen. The squire of our town was Squire West End, of the Priory, who, with his brother, kept one of the genteelest houses in the country. He was churchwarden of our church, and much respected. Yes, but if you read the annual register of 1781, you'll find that on the 13th of July the sheriffs attended at the Tower of London to receive custody of a de la motte, a prisoner charged with high treason.

Starting point is 11:20:53 The fact is, this Alsatian nobleman being in difficulties in his own country, where he's had commanded the regiment, Subis, came to London, and under pretence of sending Prince to France and Ostend supplied the French ministers with accounts of the movements of the English fleets and troops. His Gobetine was Lertelot, a Brunswicker, who had been a crimping agent, then a servant, who was a spy of France and Mr. Franklin, and who turned King's evidence on Lamotte and hanged him. This Lurtolou, who had been a crimping agent for German troops during the American War, then a servant in London during the Gordon riots, then an agent for a spy, then a spy over a spy, I suspect to have been a consummate scoundrel

Starting point is 11:21:39 and doubly odious from speaking English with a German accent. What if he wanted to marry that charming girl who lived with Mr. Weston at Winchellsey? Ha! I see a mystery here! What if this scoundrel going to receive his pay from the English admiral, with whom he was in communication at Portsmouth, happened to go on board the Royal George, the day she went down. As for George and Joseph Weston of the Priory, I am sorry to say they were rascals too.

Starting point is 11:22:11 They were tried for robbing the Bristol Mail in 1780, and being acquitted for want of evidence were tried immediately after on another indictment for forgery. Joseph was acquitted, but George was capitally convicted. But this did not help poor George. Joseph. Before their trials, they and some others broke out of Newgate, and Joseph fired at and wounded a porter who tried to stop him on Snow Hill, for this he was tried and found guilty on the black act, and hung along with his brother. Now, if I was an innocent participator in

Starting point is 11:22:48 Delamot's treasons, and the Western's forgeries and robberies, what pretty scrapes I must have been in. I married the young woman, whom the brutal Lurtolo would have had for himself, and lived happy ever after. And again, my grandfather's name was Duval. He was a barber and Perucille, by trade, and elder of the French Protestant Church at Winchelsea. I was sent to board with his correspondent, a Methodist grocer at Rye. These two kept a fishing-boat, but the fish they caught was many and many a barrel of Nance Brandy. which we landed, never mind where, at a place to us well known. In the innocence of my heart, I, a child, got leave to go out fishing. We used to go out at night, and meet ships from the French

Starting point is 11:23:37 coast. I learnt to scuttle a marlin spike, reef a lee scupper, keel-haul a bowsprit, as well as the best of them. How well I remember the jabbering of the Frenchman, the first night as they handed the kegs over to us. One night we were fired into by His Majesty's revenue-cutter links. I asked what those balls were fizzing in the water, etc. I wouldn't go on with the smuggling being converted by Mr. Wesley, who came to preach to us at Rye, but that is neither here nor there. It was under the large tree of the west wall of the churchyard that in 1790 John Wesley preached his last outdoor sermon, afterwards walking through that poor skeleton of ancient Winchell Sea, as he called it.

Starting point is 11:24:25 Rye, like Winchelsea, has had a richer history than I can cope with. She was an important seaport from the earliest times, and among other of our enemies who knew her value were the Danes, two hundred and fifty of whose vessels entered the harbour in the year eight hundred and ninety-three. Later the French continually menaced her, hardly less than her sister Sinkport, but Rye bore so little malice that during the persecutions in France in the 16th century she received hundreds of Huguenot refugees, whose descendants still live in the town. Many monarchs have come hither, among them Queen Elizabeth in 1573, dubbing Rye,

Starting point is 11:25:11 Rye Royal, Winchelsey, Little London. Rye has had at least one notable son, John Fletcher, the dramatist, associate of Francis and perhaps of Shakespeare, and author of The Faithful Shepherdess. Fletcher's father was vicar of Rye. The town also gave birth to a curious father, son and grandson, all named Samuel Jake. The first, born in 1623, the author of the Charters of the Sink Ports, 1728, was a lawyer, a bold, nonconformist, a preacher, an astrologer, and an alchemist, whose library contained works in 15 languages, but no copy of Shakespeare or Milton. He left a treatise

Starting point is 11:26:01 on the Elexia of Life. The second, at the age of 19, was, somewhat acquainted with the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, rhetoric, logic, poetry, natural philosophy, arithmetic, geometry, cosmography, astronomy, astronomy, astrology, physics, dialing, navigation, calligraphy, stenography, drawing, heraldry, and history. He also drew horoscopes, wrote treatises on astrology and other sciences, suffered, like his father, for his religion, and when he was 29, married Elizabeth Hartshorn, aged thirteen and a half. They had six children. The third Samuel Jake was famous for constructing a flying machine, which refused to fly, and nearly killed him. Rye also possessed an unknown poet.

Starting point is 11:26:55 On a blank leaf in an old book in the town's archives is written this poem in the hand of Henry VIII's time. What greater grief may have true lovers to annoy than absent for to separate them from their desired joy. What comfort rest them then, To ease them of their smart, But for to think and mindful be of them they lay. love in heart, and eke that they assured be, each to another in heart, that nothing shall them

Starting point is 11:27:32 separate, until death that do them part, and though the distance of the place do sever us in twain, yet shall my heart thy heart embrace till we do meet again. The church, the largest in Sussex, dominates rye from every point, and so tightly are the houses compressed that from the plain the spire seems to be the completion not only of the church, but of the town too. The building stands in what is perhaps the quietest and quaintest church square in England, possessing beyond all question the discreetest of pawnbroker's shops, marked by three brass balls that positively have charm. The church is cool and spacious with noble plain window,

Starting point is 11:28:21 and one very pretty little one by Byrne Jones, and some very interesting architectural features. Too little care seems, however, to have been spent upon it at some previous time. The verger shows, with a pride little short of proprietary, a mahogany altar, said to have been taken from one of the vessels of the Armada, and, therefore oddly inappropriate for a Church of England's service, and the tomb of one Alan Grebel, who happened to be able to be able to happen One night in 1742, to be wearing the cloak of his brother-in-law, the mayor, was killed in mistake for him by a sanguinary butcher named Breeds. Breeds, who was hanged in chains for his crime, remains perhaps the most famous figure

Starting point is 11:29:08 in the history of Rye. Externally, Rye Church is magnificent, but the pity of it is that its encroaching square deprives one of the power to study it as a whole. Among the details, however, are two admirable flying buttresses. The clock, over the beautiful north window, which is said to have been given to the town by Queen Elizabeth, is remarkable for the two golden cherubs that strike the hours, and the pendulum that swings in the central tower of the church, very nigh the preacher's head. Rise eight bells bear the following inscription. To honour both of God and King, our voices. shall in concert ring, may heaven increase their bounteous store, and bless their souls

Starting point is 11:29:58 for evermore. Whilst thus we join in joyful sound, may love and loyalty abound. You people all who hear me ring, be faithful to your God and king. Such wondrous power to music's given it elevates the soul to heaven. If you have a judicious ear, you'll own my voice is sweet and clear. Our voices shall with joyful sound make hills and valleys echo round. In wedlock bands all you who join, with hands your hearts unite. So shall our tuneful tongues combine, to lord the nup to your right. You ringers, all who prize your health and happiness, be sober, merry, wise, and you'll the same possess. Mostly less interesting than the church are the by-street of Rye so old and simple and quiet and right,

Starting point is 11:30:59 particularly perhaps Mermaid Street with its beautiful hospital. In the High Street, which is busier, is the George Inn, the rare possessor of a large assembly room with a musician's gallery. One only of Rye's gates is standing, the land gate, but on the south rampart of the town is the Iper Tower, called wipers by the prosaic inhabitants, a relic of the twelfth century, guarding Rye once from perils by sea, and now from perils by land. Standing by the tower, one may here below shipbuilders busy at work, and observe all the low-pulsed life of the river.

Starting point is 11:31:41 A mile or so away is Rye Harbour, and beyond it the sea. Thus the intervening space runs a little train with its freight of golf players. In the east stretches Romney Marsh to the hills of Folkestone. Extremes meet in Rye. When I was last there the passage of the land gate was made perilous by an approaching panhard. The monastery of the Augustine Friars on Conduit Hill had become a Salvation Army barracks, And in the doorway of the little 14th-century chapel of the Carmelites, now a private

Starting point is 11:32:18 house, in the church square, a perambulator waited. Moreover, in the stately red house at the head of Mermaid Street, the author of The Awkward Age prosecutes his fascinating analyses of twentieth-century temperaments. Among the industries of rye is the production of an ingenious variety of pottery, achieved by affixing to ordinary vessels of earthenware a veneer of broken pieces of china, usually fragments of cups and sources, indefinite patterns that sometimes reach a magnificence, almost Persian. For the most part the result is not perhaps beautiful, but it is always gay, and the rye-potter

Starting point is 11:33:04 who practices the art deserves encouragement. I saw last summer a piece of similar wear in a cottage on the banks of the Etric, but, Whether it had travelled thither from Rye, or whether Scotch artists work in the same medium, I do not know. Mr. Gasson, the artificer, the dominating name of Gasson, is to Rye, what that of Scylla is to Zermat, charges a penny for the inspection of the four rooms of his house, in which his pottery, his stuffed birds, and other curiosities are collected. The visit must be epoch-making in any life. Never again will a broken teacup be to any of Mr. Gasson's patrons merely a broken teacup.

Starting point is 11:33:49 Previously it may have been that and nothing more. Henceforward, it is valuable material, which having completed one stage of existence, is like the good Buddhist, entering upon another of increased radiance. More, broken china may even become the symbol of rye. between hastings and winchelsea are the villages of guestling pet and icelsham the last two on the edge of the level of these icelsham is the most interesting icelsham is the most interesting guestling having recently lost its church by fire and pet church being new pet stands in a pleasant position at the end of the high ground with nothing in the east but pet level and the sea only a mile away at very low tide the remains the remaining of a submerged forest were once discernible, and may still be. Icklesham also stands on the ridge, further north, overlooking the level and the sea,

Starting point is 11:34:51 with Winchellsea not two miles distant in the east. The church is a very fine one, with a most interesting Norman tower in its midst. The church warden's accounts contain some quaint entries. 1732. Paid for the Stokes. four pounds ten shillings, eightpence, three farthings. 1735. January the 13th, paid for a pint of wine and for eight pound of mutton for Goodman Rowe and Goodman Winch,

Starting point is 11:35:24 and Goody suitors, for their being with Goody in her fits. Three shillings. 1744, February the 29th, paid Goody Taylor for going to Winchellsey, for to give her Arthur Davy, affidavit. one shilling and sixpence seventeen forty six april the twenty sixth gave the ringers for rejoicing when the rebels was beat fifteen shillings this refers to collodon there are two sides in every battle how de burns his lines run dramosy more dramosy day a wayful day it was to me for there i lost my father dear my father dear and brethren three one of the iklshelsham gravestones, standing over the grave of James King, who died age 17, has this complacent couplet. God takes the good, too good on earth to stay, and leaves the bad, too bad to take away.

Starting point is 11:36:26 Two miles to the west of Ikelsham at Snailham, close to the present railway, once stood the home of the Cheney's, a family that maintained for many years a fierce feud with the oxen-bridges of breed, whither we soon shall come. A party of Cheney's once succeeded in catching an oxenbridge asleep in his bed, and killed him. Old Place farm, a little north of Ikelsham, between the village and the line, marks the site of Old Place, the mansion of the Finches, earls of Winchelsea. The mainland proper begins hard by Rye, on the other side of the railway, where Rye Hill carries the London Road out of sight. This way lie Pladen, Iden, and Peasmuch.

Starting point is 11:37:13 Pladen, with a slender spire, of a grace not excelled in a county notable, as we have seen, for graceful spires, but, a little overweighted, perhaps, by its cross, within whose church is the tomb of a Flemish brewer, named Zachtmans, calling for prayers for his soul. Iden, with a square tower, and a stair turret, a village taking its name from that family of which Alexander Iden, slayer of Jack Cade, was a member, its home being at moat, now non-existent,

Starting point is 11:37:48 and Peasmarsh, whose long modest church, crowned by a squat spire, may be again seen, like the swan upon St Mary's Lake, in the water at the foot of the churchyard. at Peasmarsh was born a poor artificial poet named William Paterson, in whose works I have failed to find anything of interest. The two most interesting spots in the hilly country, immediately north of the Brede, north of Winchalcy, are Udimore and Bred. Concerning Udimore Church, which externally has a family resemblance to that of staining, it is told that it was originally planned to rise on the other side of the little river Rhee.

Starting point is 11:38:35 The builders began their work, but every night saw the supernatural removal of the stones to the present sight, while a mysterious voice uttered the words, O'er the Mere, O'er the Mier. Hence, says the legend, the present position of the fain, and the beautiful name Udimore, or Oa the Mere, which, of course, becomes the main. Adima among the villagers. From Udimor one reaches breed by turning off the high road, about two miles to the east, but it is worthwhile to keep to the road a little longer, and entering Gilly Wood on the right explore as wild and beautiful a ravine as any in the county, and on the breed by-road it

Starting point is 11:39:23 is worthwhile also to turn aside again in order to see breed place. This house, like all the old mansions, it is of the 15th and 16th centuries, is set in a hollow, and is sufficiently gloomy in appearance and surroundings to lend colour to the rumour that would have it haunted. A rumour originally spread by the smugglers who for some years made the house their headquarters. An underground passage is said to lead from Breed Place to the church, a good part of a mile distant. But, as is usual, with underground passages, the legend has been held so dear that no one seems to have ventured upon the risk of disproving it. Amid these medieval surroundings, the late Stephen Crane, the American writer, conceived some

Starting point is 11:40:11 of his curiously modern stories. One of the original owners, the Oxen Bridges, like Colonel Lunsford of East Hothley, was credited by the country people with an appetite for children. Nothing could compass his death, but a wooden saw, with which, after a drunken bout, the villagers severed him in Stubbs Lane, by groaning bridge. Not all the family, however, were bloodthirsty, for at least two John Oxen Bridges of the 16th century were divines, one a canon of Windsor, the other a grave and reverent preacher. The present vicar of Breed, the village on the hill.

Starting point is 11:40:54 above Bred Place, has added to the natural antiquities of his church several alien curiosities, chief among them being the cradle in which Dean Swift was rocked. It is worth a visit to breed church, to be persuaded that that matured Irishman ever was a baby. End of Chapter 38. Chapter 39 of Highways and Byways in Sussex. This Librevox recording is in the public domain, recording by Peter Yearsley. Highways and Byways in Sussex by E. V. Lucas, Chapter 39, Robertsbridge. Robertsbridge is not in itself a particularly attractive place, but it has a good inn,

Starting point is 11:41:46 and many interesting villages may be reached from it, the little light railway that runs from the town to Tenterdon, along the Rother Valley, making the exploration of of this part of Sussex, very simple. Horace Walpole came to difficulties here about during his Sussex journey. His sprightly and heightened account is in one of the letters. The roads grew bad beyond all badness, the night dark beyond all darkness. Our guide frightened beyond all frightfulness. However, without being at all killed, we got up, or down, I forget which, was so dark, a famous precipice called Silver Hill, and about ten at night arrived at a wretched village called Rotherbridge. We had still six miles hither, but determined to stop, as it would

Starting point is 11:42:37 be a pity to break our necks, before we had seen all we had intended. But alas, there was only one bed to be had. All the rest were inhabited by smugglers, whom the people of the house called Mountie Banks, and with one of whom the lady of the den told Mr. Schute he might be lie. We did not at all take to this society, but, armed with lynx and lantorns, set out again upon this impracticable journey. At two o'clock in the morning we got hither to a still worse inn, and that crammed with excise officers, one of whom had just shot a smuggler. However, as we were neutral powers, we have passed safely through both armies hitherto, and can give you a little farther history of our wandering through these mountains, where the young gentlemen are forced

Starting point is 11:43:25 to drive their curricles with a pair of oxen. The only morsel of good road we have found was what even the natives had assured us were totally impracticable. These were eight miles to Hurst Monceau. A pretty memento of the Cistercian Abbey here, of which small traces remain on the bank of the river, has wandered to the Bodleon, in the shape of an old volume containing the inscription. This book belongs to St. Mary of Roberts Bridge. Whoever shall steal or sell it, let him be Anathema Maranatha. Since no book was ever successfully protected by anything less tangible than a chain,

Starting point is 11:44:09 it came into other hands. Underneath being written, I, John Bishop of Exeter, know not where the aforesaid house is, nor did I steal this book, but acquired it in a lawful way. On the suppression of the Abbey of Robertsbridge by Henry VIII, the lands passed to Sir William Sydney, grandfather of Sir Philip. Salehurst, just across the river from Robertsbridge, has a noble church, standing among trees on the hillside, the hill which Walpole found so precipitous. Within, the church is

Starting point is 11:44:46 It's not perhaps quite so impressive as without, but it has monuments appertaining probably to the Cull Peppers, once a far-reaching aristocratic Sussex family, which we met first at Ardingly, and which is now extinct, or existent only among the peasantry. The first station on the Rother Valley Light Railway is Bodiam, only a few steps from Bodiam Castle, sitting serenely like a bird on the waters of her moat. This building, in appearance and form, fulfills most of the conditions of the castle, and, by retaining water in its moat, perhaps wins more respect than if it had stood a siege. Local tradition indeed credits it with that mark of active merit, but history is silent.

Starting point is 11:45:35 It was built in the 14th century by Sir Edward Dalingruge, a hero of Cressy and Pouchtier. It is now a ruin within, but, as Mr. Griggs's drawing, externally in fair preservation, and a very interesting and romantic spectacle. Below Bodiam is Ewhurst, and a little further east, close to the Kentish border, Northiam. Euthurst has no particular interest, but Northiam is a village apart. Knowing what we do of Sussex's speech we may be certain that Northeam is not pronounced by the native as it is spelt.

Starting point is 11:46:13 Norghum is its local style, just as Udiam is Ajum, and Bodiam, Bodium. But, though he will not give Northiam its pleasant syllables, the Northiam man is proud of his village. He has a couplet, O rare Norghum, thou dost far exceed, Beckley, Peas-marsh, Udimor and breed. Northeum's superiority to these pleasant spots is not absolute, but there are certain points in which the couplet is sound. For example, although Breed Place has no counterpart in Northyam, and although beside Udimore's lovely name, Northium has an uninspired prosaic ring, yet Norem is alone in the possession of Queen Elizabeth's Oak, the tree beneath which that monarch whom we have seen

Starting point is 11:47:03 on a progress in West Sussex, partook in 1573, of a banquet on her way to Rye. The fair came from the kitchen of the timbered house hard by, then the residence of Master Bishop. During the visit Her Majesty changed her shoes, and the discarded pair is still treasured at brickwall, the neighbouring seat of the Fruens, the great family of Northiam for many generations. The shoes are of green damask silk, with heels two and a half inches high, and pointed toes. The queen was apparently so well satisfied with her repast that on her return journey three days later, She dined beneath the oak once more, but she changed no more shoes. Brickwall, which is occasionally shown, is a noble old country mansion, partly Elizabethan

Starting point is 11:47:55 and partly Stuart. In the church are many Fruan memorials, the principle of which are in the Fruen Mausoleum, a comparatively new erection. Accepted Fruan, Archbishop of York, was from Northiam. In a field near the Rother at Northiam was discovered in the year 1822, a Danish vessel, which had probably sunk in the 9th century in some wide waterway, now transformed to land, or shrunk to the dimensions of the present stream. Her preservation was perfect.

Starting point is 11:48:29 Horsfield thus describes the ship. Her dimensions were from head to stern 65 feet, and her width, 14 feet, with cabin and and Fauxhall, and she appears to have originally had a whole deck. She was remarkably strongly built. Her bill-pieces and keels measured two feet over, her crossbeams, five in number, eighteen inches by eight, with her other timbers in proportion, and in her corking was a species of moss peculiar to the country in which she was built. In the cabin and other parts of the vessel were found a human skull, a pair of goat's horns attached to a part of the cranium, A dirt, or poignard, about half an inch of the blade of which had wholly resisted corrosion,

Starting point is 11:49:15 several glazed and ornamental tiles of a square form, some bricks which had formed the fire-hath, several parts of shoes, or rather sandals, fitting low on the foot, one of which was apparently in an unfinished state, having a last remaining in it, all of them very broad at the toes, Two earthen jars and a stone mug, all of very ancient shape, a piece of board exhibiting about thirty perforations, probably designed for keeping the lunar months, or some game or amusement, with many other antique relics. Four miles west of Robertsbridge, uphill and down, is Brightling, whose needle standing on Brightling down, 646 feet high, is visible from most of the eminences in this part of

Starting point is 11:50:06 The Obelisk, together with the neighbouring observatory, was built on the site of an old beacon by the famous Jack Fuller. Famous no longer, but in his day, he died in 1834, aged 77, a character both in London and in Sussex. He was big and bluff and wealthy, and the squire of Rose Hill. He sat for Sussex, from 1801 to 1812, and was once carried from the house. by the sergeant at arms and his minions for refusing to give way in a debate, and calling the speaker the insignificant little fellow in a wig. His election cost him twenty thousand pounds, plus thirty thousand pounds subscribed by the county. When Pitt offered him a peerage, he said, No, I was born Jack Fuller, and Jack Fuller I'll die. When he travelled from Rose Hill to

Starting point is 11:51:04 London, Mr. Fuller's progresses were almost regal. The coach was provisioned as if for Arctic exploration, and coachman and footmen alike were armed with swords and pistols. Honest Jack, as Mr. Lauer remarks, put a small value upon the honesty of others. Mr. Fuller had two hobbies, music and science. He founded the Fullerian professorships, which he called his two children, and contributed liberally to the royal institution, and his musical parties in London were famous. But whether it is true that when the Breitling Choir dissatisfied him,

Starting point is 11:51:45 he presented the church with nine bassoons, I cannot say. John Fuller has a better claim to be remembered in Sussex by his purchase of Bodiam Castle when its demolition was threatened, and by his commission to Turner to make pictures in the rape of Hastings, five of which were engraved and published in folio form in 1819, under the title Vues in Sussex. One of these represents the Brightling Observatory, as seen from Rose Hill Park. As a matter of fact, the observatory being of no interest is almost invisible, although Mr. Reinegal, A-R-A, who supplies the words to the pictures, calls it the most important

Starting point is 11:52:28 point in the scene. Furthermore, he says that the artist has expressed a shower proceeding from the left corner. Another picture is the veil of Ashburnham, with the house in the middle distance, beechy head beyond, and in the foreground wood gutters carrying wood in an ox-wagon. The hole, says Mr. Reineagle, A-R-A, is happily composed, if I may use the term. He then adds, the eye of the spectator, on looking at this beautifully painted scene, roves with an eager delight from one hill to another, and seems to play on the dappled woods, till arrested by the seat of Lord Ashburnham. Other pictures in the folio are Pevensey Bay from Crowhurst Park, a very beautiful scene, Battle Abbey, and the Vale of Heathfield, painted from a point above the road,

Starting point is 11:53:21 with Heathfield House on the left, the tower on the right, the church in the centre in the middle distance, and the sea on the horizon, an impressive but not strictly veracious landscape. In Brightling Church is a bust to John Fuller, with the motto, Utile Nihilquod non-onestum. A rector in Fuller's early days was William Haley,

Starting point is 11:53:47 who died in 1789, a zealous antiquary. his papers relating to the history of sussex are now like those of sir william burrell in the british museum our next village is burwash three miles in the north built like all the villages in this switchback district on a hill we are now indeed well in the heart of the fatiguing country which we touched at mayfield where one eminence is painfully one only to reveal another one may be as parched on a road in the sussex hop country as in the Arabian desert. The eye, however, that is tired of hop-poles and hills, can find sweet gratification in the cottages. Sussex has charming cottages from end to end of her territory, but I think the hop district on the Kentish side has some of the prettiest.

Starting point is 11:54:44 Blackberries, too, may be set down among the riches of the Sand Hill villages. In Richard Geoffrey's essay, the Keffrey's essay, the Keatsy, countryside, Sussex, in Field and Hedro, describing this district of the country, is an amusing passage touching superstitions of these parts, picked up during hopping. In and around the kiln, I learned that if you smash a frog with a stone, no matter how hard you hit him, he cannot die till sunset. You must be careful not to put on any new article of clothing for the first time on a Saturday, or some severe punishment will ensue. One person put on his new boots on a Saturday and on Monday broke his arm. Some still believe in herbs and gather

Starting point is 11:55:33 wood-betany for herb tea, or eat dandelion leaves between slices of dry toast. There is an old man living in one of the villages who has reached the age of 160 years, and still goes hop-picking. Ever so many people had seen him, and knew all about. him, an undoubted fact, a public fact, but I could not trace him to his lair. His exact whereabouts could not be fixed. I live in hopes of finding him in some obscure hole, yet. Many little hamlets are holes, as frog-hole, fox-hole. What an exhibit for London! Did he realise his own value he would soon come forth? I joke, but the existence of this antique person is firmly believed in. Burwash is one of the few Sussex villages that has been made the subject of a book.

Starting point is 11:56:28 The Reverend John Coker Egerton's Sussex Folk and Sussex Ways, from which I have already occasionally quoted, was written here, around materials collected during the author's period as rector of Burwash. Mr. Egerton was curate of Burwash from 1857 to 1862, and from 1865 to 1866. when he became rector, and remained in the living until his death in 1888. His book is a kindly collection of shrewd and humorous sayings of his Sussex parishioners, anecdotes of characteristic incidents, records of old customs now passing or passed away, the whole fused by the rector's genial personality. It is to Burwash and Mr. Egerton that we owe some characteristic scraps of Sussex's

Starting point is 11:57:21 philosophy. Thus, Mr. Egerton tells us of an old conservative whose advice to young men was this, mind you don't never have nothing in no way to do with none of their newfangled schemes. Another Sussex cynic defined party government with grim impartiality. Politics are about like this. I've got a sow in my yard with twelve littlins, and they litlands can't all feed at once, because there isn't room enough. So I shut six on them out of the yard while the other six be sucking, and the six, as we shut out,

Starting point is 11:57:58 they just do make a hem of a noise till they be let in, and then they be just as quiet as the rest. The capacity of the Sussex man to put his foot down and keep it there is shown in the refusal of Burwash to ring the bells when George IV, then Prince of Wales,

Starting point is 11:58:16 passed through the village on his return to Brighton from a visit to Sir John Laid at Etchingham. The reason given being that the first gentleman in Europe, when rung in on his way to Sir John's, had said nothing about beer. This must have been during one of the prince's peculiarly needy periods, for the withholding of strong drink from his friends was never one of his failings. Another Burwash radical used to send up to the rectory with a message that he was about to gather fruit, and the rector must send down for the tithe. The rector's man would go down, and receive one gooseberry from a basket of ten, all that was to be gathered that day.

Starting point is 11:59:03 Another Burwash man posed his vicar more agreeably and humorously in another manner, Finding him a little in liquor, the pastor would have warned him against the habit, but the man was too quick. How was it? he asked the vicar, with well-affected or real concern, that whenever he had had too much to drink, he felt more religious than at any other time. The Burwash records indeed go far to redeem Sussex men from the epithet, Silly, which is traditionally theirs. Concerning this old taunt, I like the rector's remarks in Idlehurst. The phrase, he says, is better after all than canny old Kamelan, or calling ourselves free and enlightened citizens,

Starting point is 11:59:50 or heirs to all the ages. But suppose Sussex are silly as you like. The country wants a large preserve of fallow brains. You can't manure the intellect for close cropping. Isn't it Renan who attributes so much to solid Breton stupidity? in his ancestors. I notice that Mr. H. G. Wells, in his very interesting book, Mankind in the Making, is in support of this suggestion. The Idlehurst Rector, in contrasting Londoners with Sussex folk, continues, The Londoner has all his strength in the front line.

Starting point is 12:00:25 One can never tell what reserves the countrymen may not deploy in his slow way. Some old satirist of the county had it that, the crest of the true Sussex peasant is a pig cushion, with the motto, I want be drove. I give this for what it is worth. It is to be doubted if any county has a monopoly of silliness. The fault of Sussex people rather is to lack reserves, not of wisdom, but of effort. You see this in cricket, where although the Sussex men have done some of the most brilliant things in history of the game, even before the days of their Oriental ally, they have probably made a greater number of tame attempts to cope with difficulties than any other eleven. For the staying of a

Starting point is 12:01:21 rot, Sussex has had but few qualifications. The cricket test is not everything, but character tells there just as in any other employment. Burwash, however, must be exempted from this particular charge, for whatever its form may be now, its eleven had once a terrible reputation. I find in the county paper for 1771 an advertisement to the effect that Burwash, having challenged all its neighbours without effect, invites a match with any parish whatsoever in all Sussex. Mr. Egerton was not the first parson to record the manners of the Burwash parishioner, the Reverend James Hurdice, curate there towards the end of the preceding century, and afterwards professor of poetry at Oxford, we saw his grave at Bishopstone, had written a blank verse

Starting point is 12:02:15 poem in the manner of Cooper, with some of the observations of Crabbe, entitled The Village Curate, which is a record of his thoughts and impressions in his Burwash days. One could hardly say that the Village Curate would bear reprinting at the present time. We have moved too far from its pensiveness, and an age that does not read the task, and only talks about crab, is hardly likely to reach out for herds. But within its limits, the village curate is good, alike in its description of scenery, its reflections, and its satire. The Burwash donkey race is capital. Then comes the ass race. Let's not wisdom frown if the grave class.

Starting point is 12:03:02 look on, and now and then bestow a smile, for we may see Al-Keynor, in this untoward race, the ways of life. Are we not, asses all? We start and run, and eagerly we press to pass the goal, and all to win a bobble, a laced hat. Was not great walsy such? He ran the race, and won the hat. What ranting politician, what prating lawyer, what ambitious? clerk, but is an ass that gallops for a hat. For what do princes strive, but golden hats, for diadems, whose bare and scanty brims will hardly keep the sunbeam from their eyes? For what do poets strive? A leafy hat, without crown or brim, which hardly screens the empty noddle from the fist of scorn, much less repels the critic's thundering arm. And here and there,

Starting point is 12:04:02 Intoxication, too, concludes the race. Who wins the hat? Gets drunk? Who wins a laurel, mitre, cap, or crown? Is drunk as he? So Alexander fell. So Hamann, Caesar, Spencer, Walsey, James. I find in the Sussex paper for 1792 the following contribution to the history of Burwash. A hint to great and little men. Last Thursday morning, A butcher and a shopkeeper of Burwash in this county went into a field near that town with pistols to decide a quarrel of long-standing between them. The lusty knight of the Cleaver, having made it a practice to insult his antagonist, who is a very little man, the great disparity between them in size rendered this the only

Starting point is 12:04:54 eligible alternative for the latter. The butcher took care to inform his wife of the intended meeting, in hopes that she would give the constable's timely notice thereof. But the good woman not having felt so deeply interested in his fate as he expected, to make sure he sent to the constable himself, and then marched reluctantly to the field, where the little-spirited shopkeeper was parading with a considerable reserve of ammunition, lest his first fire should not take place.

Starting point is 12:05:22 Now the affrighted butcher proceeded slowly to charge his pistols, alternately looking towards the town and his impatient adversary. This man of blood, all pale and trembling, at last, began to despair of any friendly interference, when the constable very seasonably appeared, and forbade the duel to his great joy, and the disappointment of the spectators. Burwash had another great man, of whom it is not very proud. Fuller shall describe him. Henry Burwash, so named, saith my author, which is enough for me.

Starting point is 12:06:01 my discharge, from Burwash, a town in this county. He was one of noble alliance, and when this is said, all is said to his commendation, being otherwise neither good for church nor state, sovereign nor subjects, covetous, ambitious, rebellious, injurious. Say not what makes he here, then, among the worthies, for though neither ethically nor theologically, yet historically, he was remarkable, affording something for our information, though not imitation. He was recommended by his kinsman, Bartholomew de Badalisma. Note, Baron of Leeds in Kent, end note, to King Edward II, who preferred him, Bishop of Lincoln. It was not long before falling into the king's displeasure.

Starting point is 12:06:50 His temporalities were seized on, and afterwards on his submission, restored. Here, instead of new gratitude, retaining his old grudge, He was most forward to assist the Queen in the deposing of her husband. He was twice Lord Treasurer, once Chancellor, and once sent over Ambassador to the Duke of Bavaria. He died Anno Domini, 1340. Such as Mind to be Merry may read the pleasant story of his apparition, being condemned after death to be Viridis Viridarius, a green forester, because in his lifetime he had violently enclosed other men's grounds into his post.

Starting point is 12:07:29 Park. Surely such fictions keep up the best park of popery, purgatory, whereby their fairest game and greatest gain is preserved. Etchingham, the station next Robertsbridge, is famous for its church windows, and its brasses to the Etchinghams of the past, an illustrious race of Sussex barons. Among the brasses is that of William de Etchingham, builder of the church, who died in The inscription in French runs, I was made and formed of earth, and now I have returned to earth. William de Etchingham was my name, God have pity on my soul, and all you who passed by pray to him for me.

Starting point is 12:08:16 Certainly no church in Sussex has so many interesting brasses as these. A moat once surrounded the gods' acre, and legend had it that at the bottom was a great bell, which might never be drawn forth until six yoke of white oxen were harnessed to it. Pity that the moat was allowed to run dry, and the harmless fiction exposed. Sir John Laid, diminutive associate of George IV in his young days, and, afterwards, coming upon disaster, coachman to the Earl of Anglesea, once lived at Hermia Hall nearby. As we have seen, the first gentleman in Europe visited him there, and it was there one day that, in default of other quarry, Sir John's gamekeeper only being able to produce a solitary pheasant, the prince and his host shot ten geese as they swam across a pond, and laid them at the feet of Lady Laid. Sir John was the hero of the following exploit, recorded in the press in October 1795.

Starting point is 12:09:22 A curious circumstance occurred at Brighton on Monday, Seren night. Sir John laid, for a trifling wager, undertook to carry Lord Chumley on his back, from opposite the pavilion twice round the stain. Several ladies attended to be spectators of this extraordinary feat of the dwarf carrying the giant. When his lordship declared himself ready, Sir John desired him to strip. Strip! exclaimed the other, why surely you promised to carry me in my clothes? by no means replied the baronet i engaged to carry you but not an inch of clothes so therefore my lord make ready and let us not disappoint the ladies after much laughable altercation it was at length declared that sir john had won his wager the peer declining to exhibit in poorest naturrilibus tishurst and wadhurst which may be reached either by road or rail from robertsbridge or etchingham both stand high very near the can

Starting point is 12:10:22 Tentish border. To the east of Hurst Green, on the road thither, a hamlet disproportionate and imposing, possessing in the George Inn a relic of the days when the coaches came this way, is Seacock's Heath, now the residence of Lord Goshen, but once the home of George Gray, a member of the terrible Hawkehurst gang of smugglers. Ticehurst has a noble church, very ingeniously restored, with a square tower, some fine windows, old glass, a vestry curiously situated over the porch, and an interesting brass. The Bell Inn in the village is said to date from the 15th century. At Wadhurst are many iron grave slabs and a graceful slender spire. The massive door bears the date 1682. A high village in good accessible country, discovery seems to be upon it. London is not so near as at Crobberra, but one may almost hear the jingling of the cabs.

Starting point is 12:11:36 End of Chapter 39. Chapter 40 of Highways and Byways in Sussex This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Peter Yearsley. Highways and Byways in Sussex by byways in Sussex by E. V. Lucas Chapter 40, Tunbridge Wells I have made Tunbridge Wells our last centre, because it is convenient, yet as a matter of strict topography,

Starting point is 12:12:08 the town is not in Sussex at all, but in Kent. In that it is built upon hills, Tunbridge Wells is like Rome, and in that its fashionable promenade is under the limes, like Berlin. But in other respects it is merely a provincial English inland pleasure town, with a past, rather arid and except under the bracing conditions of cold weather, very tiring in its steepnesses.

Starting point is 12:12:37 No wonder the small Victoria and smaller pony carriage so flourish there. The healthful properties of Tunbridge Wells were discovered, as I record a little later, in 1606, but it was not until Henrietta Maria brought her sweet hither in 1630 that the success of the new cure was assured. Afterwards came Charles II and his court, and Tunbridge Wells was made, and thenceforward to fail to visit the town at the proper time each year, although one had the poorest hut to live in the while, was to write oneself down a boor. A more sympathetic patron was Anne, who gave the first stone, basin for the spring, hence Queen's Well, and whose subscription of £100

Starting point is 12:13:26 pounds led to the purchase of the Pantiles that paved the walk now bearing that name. Subsequently it was called the Parade, but to the older style everyone has very sensibly reverted. Tunbridge Wells is still a health resort, but the waters no longer constitute a part of the hygienic routine. Their companion element air is the new recuperative. Not that the spring at the foot of the pantiles is wholly deserted. On the contrary the presiding old lady does quite a business in filling and cleaning the little

Starting point is 12:14:00 glasses. But those visitors that descend her steps are impelled rather by curiosity than ritual, and many never try again. Nor is the trade in Tumbridge Ware, inlaid work in coloured woods, what it was. A hundred years ago there was hardly a girl of any pretensions to good form, but kept her pins in a Tunbridge box. The pantiles are still the resort of the idle, but of the anonymous, rather than the famous variety. Our men of Mark and great chams of literature, who once flourished here in the season,

Starting point is 12:14:37 go elsewhere for their recreation and renovation. Abroad for choice, Tumbridge Wells now draws them no more than Bath. But in the 18th century, a large print was popular containing the portraits of all the illustrious intellectuals as they lounged on the pantiles, with Dr. Johnson and Mr. Samuel Richardson, among the chief lions. The residential districts of Tumbridge Wells, its mounts, pleasant, Zion and Ephraim, with their discreet and prosperous villas, suggest to me only Mr. Meredith's irreproachable, diviny ladies. In one of these well-ordered houses must they have lived and sighed over Victor's tangled life, surrounded by laurels and laburnum. The lawn either cut yesterday or to be cut

Starting point is 12:15:32 today. The semicircular drive a miracle of gravel unalloyed, a pan of water for Tasso beside the dazzling step. Receding at a hundred years the same author People's Tunbridge Wells again, for it was here in its heyday that Chloe suffered. On Rust Hall Common is the famous toad Rock, which is to Tumbridge Wells what Thorwoulson's Lion is to Lucerne

Starting point is 12:16:01 and the Leaning Tower to Pisa. Lucerne's Lion emerged from the stone under the sculptor's mallet and chisel, but the Rust Hall monster was evolved by natural processes, and it is a toad only by courtesy. An inland rock is, however, to most English people, so rare an object that Rustall has almost as many pilgrims as Stonehenge. The toad is free. The high rocks, however, which are a mile distant, cannot be inspected by

Starting point is 12:16:32 the curious for less than sixpence. One must pass through a turnstile before these wonders are accessible. In themselves having insufficient drawing power, as the dramatic critics say, a maze has been added, together with swings, a seesaw, arbors, a croquet-lorn, and all the proper adjuncts of a natural phenomenon. The effect is to make the rocks appear more unreal than any rocks ever seen upon the stage. Freed from their pleasure-garden surroundings, they would become beautifully wild and romantic, And tropically un-English. But as it is, with their notice-boards and bridges, they are disappointing, except of course

Starting point is 12:17:18 to children. They are no disappointment to children. Indeed, they go far to make Tumbridge Wells a children's wonderland. There is no kind of dramatic game to which the high rocks would not make the best background. rocks, because more remote and free from labels and tea-rooms, are those known as Penn's rocks, three miles in the south-west, in a beautiful valley. Eriage, whither all visitors to Tumbridge-Welz must at one time or another drive, is the seat of the Marquis of Abergavenny, whose imposing a tied like a dressing-gown with heavy tassels is embossed on every cottage for miles around.

Starting point is 12:18:05 In character the park resembles Ashburnham, while in extent it vies with the great parks of the south-west, Arndel, Goodwood and Petworth, but it has none of their spacious coolnesses. Yet Erich Park has joys that these others know not of. Break Fern, four feet high, and the conical hill on which stands Saxonbury Tower, jealously guarded from the intruding traveller by the stern fiat of Mr. Macbeen, steward. Sussex is a paradise of notice boards. There is a little district near Forest Row where the staple industry must be the prosecuting of trespassers. And one has come ordinarily to look upon these monitions without active resentment. But when the Caledonian descends from his native heath

Starting point is 12:18:54 to warn the Sussex man off Sussex's ground, more to warn the Saxon from his own bury, the situation becomes acute. By taking, however, the precaution of asking, at a not too adjacent cottage for permission to ascend the hill, one may circumvent the Scottish prosecutor. The hill is very important ground in English history, as the following passage from Sir William Burrell's manuscript in the British Museum testifies. In Eridge Park are the remains of a military station of the Saxon invaders of the country,

Starting point is 12:19:31 which still retains the name of Saxonbury Hill. It is on the high ground to the right as the traveller passes from Frant to Mayfield. On the summit of this hill, from whence the cliffs of Dover may be seen, are to be traced the remains of an ancient fortification. The foss is still plainly discernible, enclosing an area of about two acres.

Starting point is 12:19:53 From whence there is but one outlet. The apex of the hill within is formed of a strong compact body of stone, brought hither from a distance, on which, doubtless, was erected some strong military edifice. This was probably one of the stations occupied by the Saxons under Ella, their famous chief, who, at the instance of Hengist, King of Kent, invaded England towards the close of the 5th century. It is said that they settled in Sussex, whence they issued in force to attack the important British station of Andorida, or Andred Keaster. Antiquaries are not agreed as to the precise sense.

Starting point is 12:20:31 situation of this military station, some imagining it to have been at Newenden on the borders of Kent, others at Pevensey or Hastings in Sussex. The country, from the borders of Kent to those of Hampshire, comprises what was called the forest of Andreds-Wailed, now commonly called the Weald, was formerly full of strongholds and fastnesses, and was consequently well calculated for the retreat of the ancient Britons from before the regular armies of the Romans, as well as for the establishment of points of attack by the succeeding invaders who coped with them on terms somewhat reversed.

Starting point is 12:21:10 The attack of the Saxons on Anderida was successful, and the consequence was their permanent establishment in Sussex and Surrey, from which time they probably retained a military station on this hill. There is likewise within the park a place called Dane's Gate. This was doubtless a part of a military way, and as it would appear that the last successful invaders would occupy the same strong posts which had been formed by their predecessors, this Dane's gate was probably the military communication between Crobara, undoubtedly a Danish station, and Saxonbury Hill. The view from Saxonbury extends far in each quarter, embracing both lines of downs, north and south. The long, low, irregular front of Eridge Castle is two or three miles to the northwest, with its lake before it.

Starting point is 12:22:06 Queen Elizabeth stayed at Erich for six days in 1573 on her progress to Northiam, where we saw her dining and changing her shoes. Lord Burleigh, who accompanied her, found the country hereabouts dangerous and worse than in the peak. It was another of the guests at Erich that made Tunbridge well. For had not Dudley, Lord North, when recuperating there in 1606, discovered that the devil-slavered, Calibiate water of the neighbourhood was beneficial, the spring would not have been enclosed, nor would other of London's fatigued young bloods have drunk of it.

Starting point is 12:22:47 Enough remains of Bayham Abbey, five miles south-east of Tumbridge Wells, to show that it was once a very considerable monastery. The founder was Sir Robert Detour. one of the knights of Richard Cur de Lyon, famous for cracking many crowns with his Fouchon, and the founder also of Comwell Abbey at Goudhurst, not far distant. Edward I and Edward II were both entertained at Bayham, while a fortunate visit from St Richard, Bishop of Chichester, put the Abbey in possession of a bed on which he had slept, which cured all them that afterwards lay in it.

Starting point is 12:23:27 Between Bayam and Goudhurst is Lamberhurst on the boundary. The church and part of the street are, indeed, in Kent. Lamberhurst's boast is that its furnaces were larger than any in Sussex, and that they made the biggest guns. The old iron railings around St Paul's are said to have come from the Lamberhurst ironworks, 2,500 in all, each five feet six inches in height, with seven gates. The Lamberhurst canon not only served England, but some, it is whispered, found their way to French privateers and were turned against their native land.

Starting point is 12:24:07 Sweetest of spots in the neighbourhood of Tumbridge Wells is Withiam, in the west, lying to the north of Ashdowne Forest, a small and retired village, with a charming church, a good inn, the Dorset Arms, duckings, a superb piece of old Sussex architecture, Old Buckhurst, an interesting ruin, new Buckhurst's magnificent park, and some of the best country in the county. Once the South Down District is left behind, I think that Withiam is the jewel of Sussex. Moreover, the proximity of the wide high spaces of Ashdowne Forest seems to have cleared the air. No longer is one conscious of the fatigue that appertains to the Triangle Hill District between Tumbridge Wells, Roberts, Bridge and Uckfield.

Starting point is 12:24:56 William is notable historically for its association with the great and sumptuous Sackville family, which has held Buckhurst since Henry II, and of which the principal figure is Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, first Earl of Dorset, who was born here in 1536, Queen Elizabeth's Lord Treasurer and part author of Gorbadock. After him came Robert Sackville, second Earl, who founded Sackville College at East Grinstead, and then Richard, the third Earl, famous for the luxury in which he lived at Knoll in Kent and Dorset House in London.

Starting point is 12:25:37 Among this nobleman's retinue was a first footman, rejoicing, I hope, in the superlatively suitable name of Acton Curvet, a name to write a comedy around. Richard Sackville, the fifth Earl, was a more domestic peer, of whom we have some intimate and amusing glimpses in the memorandum books and diaries which he kept at knoll thus henry mattock for scolding to extremity on sunday the twelfth of october sixteen sixty one without cause threepence Henry Mattock, for disposing of my cast linen without my order, threepence. Robert Verrill, for giving away my money, sixpence! Lastly, we come to Charles Sackville.

Starting point is 12:26:28 Sixth Earl, that admirable Crichton, the friend of Charles II and the patron of poets, who spent the night before an engagement in the Dutch War, in writing the sprightly verses, to all you ladies now on land, wherein occurs this agreeable fancy. Then if we write not by each post, Think not we are unkind, Nor yet conclude our ships are lost, By Dutchmen or by wind,

Starting point is 12:26:56 Our tears will send a speedy away, The tide shall bring them twice a day. The king with wonder and surprise Will swear the seas grow bold, Because the tides will higher rise than ere they did of old, but let him know it is our tears bring floods of grief to Whitehall stairs. Upon the sixth Earl of Dorset's monument in Withiam Church is inscribed Pope's epitaph, beginning

Starting point is 12:27:24 Dorset, the grace of courts, the muses pride, patron of arts, and judge of nature died, the scourge of pride, though sanctified or great, of fox in learning, and of knaves in state. Yet soft his nature, though severe his lay, his anger, moral, and his wisdom gay. The church is very prettily situated on a steep mound, at the western foot of which is a sheet of water, at the eastern foot the village. So hidden by trees is it, that approaching Withiam from Hartfield one is unconscious of its proximity. The glory of the church is the monument in the Sackville Chapel, to Thomas Sackville, Young youngest son of the fifth Earl of Dorset, there is nothing among the many tombs which we have

Starting point is 12:28:15 seen more interesting than this, although for charm it is not to be compared with, say, the Shirley Monument at Isfield. The young man reclines on the tomb. At one side of him is the figure of his father, and at the other of his mother, both lifelike and life-size, dressed in their ordinary style. The attitudes being extremely natural, the total effect of his mother. is curiously realistic. On the sides of the tomb in Bass Relief

Starting point is 12:28:45 are the figures of the six brothers and six sisters of the youth, some quite babies. The sculptor was Kaius Kibba, Kali Kibba's father. Other monuments are also to be seen in the Sackville Chapel, but that which I have described is the finest.

Starting point is 12:29:03 Had Withiam Church not been destroyed by fire in 1663, in a tempest of thunder and light, It would now be second to none in Sussex in interest and the richness of its tombs, for in that fire perished in the Sackville Isle, now no more, on the northern side, other and perhaps nobler Sackville monuments. The vaults where many Sackville's lie were not, however, injured. In the Sackville Chapel is a large window recording the genealogy of the family, which is now

Starting point is 12:29:38 represented by Earl de la Waugh, at the foot of which are the words in Latin, The noble family of Sackville here awaits the resurrection. Withiam has three of the bells of John Whelet, an itinerant bell-founder at the beginning of the 18th century. His method was to call on the vicar and ask if anything were wanted, and if a bell was cracked, or if a new one was desired, he would dig a mound in a neighbouring field, build a fire, collect his metal, and perform the task on the spot. Waylett's business might be called the higher tinkering. Sussex has some forty of his bells.

Starting point is 12:30:17 He cast the staining peel in 1724, and earlier in the same year he had made a stay at Lewis, erecting a furnace there, as Benvenuto Cellini tells us he used to, and remedying defective peals all round. Among others, he recast the old treacherous. and made a new treble for Mayfield. It seems to have been universally thirsty work. The Churchwarden's papers contain an account for beer in connection with the enterprise. For beer to the ringers. When the bell founder was here, two shillings and sixpence. When the bell was weighed, three shillings and sixpence. When the bell was loaded, two shillings.

Starting point is 12:31:00 In carrying the bell to Lewis and back again, one pound ten shillings. when the bell was weighed and hung up three shillings for beer to the officers and several others are hanging up the bell eighteen shillings in beer to the ringers when the bell was hung six shillings and sixpence the withyam churchwardens also expended three shillings and sixpence on beer when wheylit came to spread thirst abroad i find also among the entries from the parish account-book which mr sutton the vicar prints in his Historical notes on Withiam are very interesting and informing book, the following items. 1711. April the 20th, paid to Goody Sweetman for beer had at the books making, two shillings and sixpence. August the 19th paid to Edward Groombridge for digging a grave and ringing the knell for Goody Hammond, two shillings and sixpence.

Starting point is 12:31:59 August the 26th paid to Sweetman for beer at the writing of books for digging a grave for for the window tax, two shillings. August the 15th, paid to Sweetman for beer at the choosing of surveyor, December the 26th, five shillings. 1714 paid to good wife sweetman for beer when the bells were put to be cast, two shillings and sixpence. Buckhurst, one of the seats of Lord de la Waire, is a splendid domain with the most perfect golf greens I ever saw, but no dear.

Starting point is 12:32:36 of them having been exiled a few years since. The previous home of the Sackville's was Old Buckhurst in the valley to the west, of which only the husk now remains. One can see that the mansion was of enormous extent, and the walls were so strongly built that when an attempt was recently made to destroy and utilize a portion for road mending, the project had to be abandoned, on account of the hardness of the mortar. One beautiful tower, out of six, still stands. An underground passage which is said variously to lead to the large lake in Buckhurst Park,

Starting point is 12:33:14 to the church, and to Bolbroke at Hartfield, has never been explored farther than the first door that blocks the way, nor have the seven cord of gold rumoured to be buried near the house come to light. It was of Duckings, the beautiful timbered farmhouse, of which Withiam is justly proud, that Jefferies thus wrote in his essay on Buckhurst Park. Our modern architects try to make their rooms mathematically square, a series of brick boxes one on the other, like pigeonholes in a bureau, with flat ceilings and right angles in the corners, and are said to go through a profound education before they can produce these wonderful

Starting point is 12:33:57 specimens of art. If our old English folk could not get an arched roof, then they loved to have it pointed, with polished timber-beams in which the eye rested, as in looking upwards through a tree, their rooms they liked of many shapes, and not at right angles in the corners, nor all on the same dead level of flooring. You had to go up a step into one, and down a step into another, and along a winding passage into a third, so that each part of the house had its individuality. To these houses life fitted itself, and grew to them. They were not mere walls, but became part of existence. A man's house

Starting point is 12:34:40 was not only his castle. A man's house was himself. He could not tear himself away from his house. It was like tearing up the shrieking mandrake by the root, almost death itself. Now we walk in and out of our brick boxes, unconcerned, whether we live in this villa or that, here or yonder. Dark beams inlaid in the walls support the gables. Heavier timber placed horizontally forms, as it were, the foundations of the first floor. This horizontal beam has warped a little in the course of time, the alternate heat and cold of summers and winters that make centuries. Up to this beam, the lower wall is built of brick set to curve of the the timber, from which circumstance it would appear to be a modern insertion. The beam, we may be

Starting point is 12:35:32 sure, was straight originally, and the bricks have been fitted to the curve which it subsequently took. Time, no doubt, ate away the lower work of wood, and necessitated the insertion of new materials. The slight curve of the great beam adds, I think, to the interest of the old place, for it is a curve that has grown and was not premeditated. It has grown, like the best of bow of a tree, not from any set human design. This too is the character of the house. It is not large nor overburdened with gables, not ornamental, nor what is called striking in any way, but simply an old English house, genuine and true.

Starting point is 12:36:16 The warm sunlight falls on the old red tiles. The dark beams look the darker for the glow of light, the shapely cone of the hop Oast rises at the end. There are swallows and flowers, and ricks and horses, and so it is beautiful because it is natural and honest. It is the simplicity that makes it so touching, like the words of an old ballad. Now at Mayfield there is a timber house which is something of a show-place, and people go to see it, and which certainly has many more lines in its curves and woodwork, but yet did not appeal to me, because it seemed too purposely ornamental. A house designed to look well, even age has not taken from its artificiality.

Starting point is 12:37:06 Neither is there any cone nor cart-horses about, why even a tall shanticleer makes a home look homely. I do like to see a tall, proud shanticleer strutting in the yard, and barely giving way as I advance, almost ready to do battle with a stranger, like a mastiff, so I prefer the simple old home by Buckhurst Park. The forest of which Ashdowne Forest was a part, extended once in unbroken, sombre density, from Kent to Hampshire, a distance of 120 miles. It was known to the Romans as Silver Anderida,

Starting point is 12:37:46 giving its name to Andorida, or Pevensey, on the edge of it. To the Saxons it was Andriaz wild. Wolves, wild boar, and deer, then roamed its dark recesses. Our ash-down forest, all that now remains of this wild track, was for long a royal hunting-ground. Edward III granted it to John of Gaunt, who, there's no doubt, often came hither for sport. It is supposed that he built a chapel near Nutley.

Starting point is 12:38:17 Chapel Wood marks the site, where, on one occasion at least, John Wycliffe, the Reformer, officiated. At Forest Row, as we have seen, the later lords who hunted here built their lodges and kept their retainers. There are no longer any deer in the forest. The modern sportsman approaches it with a clique, where his forerunner carried a bow. A hundred years ago, in the smuggling days, it was a very dangerous region. Hartfield, the village next to Withiam in the west, is uninteresting, but it has a graceful church, and at Boulbrook, once the home of the Dalingruges, whom we met at Bodium, and later of the Sackvilles, are the remains of a noble brick mansion. The towered gateway still stands, and it is not

Starting point is 12:39:08 difficult to reconstruct in the mine's eye the house in its best period. Of old cottage architecture, Hartfield also has a pretty example in Litchgate Cottage by the churchyard. Castle Field, north of the village, probably marks the site of an ancient castle, or hunting lodge, of the Barons of Pevensey. That there was good hunting in these parts, the name Hartfield itself goes to prove. Between Withiam and Hartfield in the north, and Crobara Beacon and Witch, cross in the south, is some of the finest open country in Sussex, where one may walk for hours and meet no human creature. Here are silent, desolate woods, the five hundred-acre wood, under Crowborough, chief of them, and vast wastes of undulating heath, rising here

Starting point is 12:40:05 and there to great heights, crowned with fir-trees, as at Gill's lap. A few enclosed estates interrupt the forest's open freedom, but nothing can tame it. Sombre dark heather gives the prevailing note, but between Old Lodge and Pippinford Park, I once came upon a green and luxuriant valley that would not have been out of place in Tyrol, while there is a field near Chuck Hatch, where in April one may see more dancing daffodils than ever Wordsworth did. And here we leave the county. End of Chapter 40. Chapter 41 of Highways and Byways in Sussex.

Starting point is 12:40:58 This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Peter Yearsley. Highways and Byways in Sussex bywis by E.V. Lucas. Chapter 41. The Sussex dialect. The body of the Sussex dialect is derived from the Saxon. Its accessories can be traced to the Kelcexicon. to the Norse, thus rape, a division of the county is probably an adaptation of the Icelandic

Starting point is 12:41:26 and to the French, some hundreds of Huguenots having fled to our shores after the edict of Nantes. The Hastings fishermen, for example, often say Boko for plenty, and frapp to strike. While in the Rye neighbourhood where the Huguenots were strongest, such words as Disabil, meaning untidy, undressed, and Peter Grevis, from Petit Grief, meaning fretful, are still used. But Saxon words are, of course, considerably more common. You meet them at every turn. A Sussex auctioneers list that lies before me, a catalogue of live and dead farming stock to be sold to Homestead under the South Downs, is full of them. So blunt and sturdy they are these ancient, primitive terms,

Starting point is 12:42:17 of the soil. Lot 1. Pitch prong, two half-pitch prongs, two four spines spuds, and a road-ho. Lot 5. Five short prongs, flint-spud, dung, drag, two turnip pecks, and two shovels. Lot nine, six hay-rakes, two scyths and sneeths, cross-cut saw, and a sheep-hook. Lot 39, corn-chest, open-tub, milking-stool and hog-form. Lot 43, bushel measure, shall and strike Lot 100, Rick Borer Lot 143, 8 knaves and 7 fellows Lot 148, 6 dirt boards and pair of wood haims

Starting point is 12:43:02 Lot 152, Wheelwright's Samson Lot 174 set of Thil harness Lot 201 3 plow bolts, 3 tween LOT 204, sundry harness and whippances. Lot 208. Tickle plough, lot 222. Iron turn wrist, pronounced, turn riced, plough.

Starting point is 12:43:30 Lot 242, nine-tine scarifier. Lot 251, Clod Crusher. Lot 252, Hay-Tedder. From another catalogue, more rammer-logs. these abrupt and active little words might be called, but at one, as lot four, flint spud, two drain scoops, bull-lead, and five dibbles. Lots ten, dung-rake and dung-devil, lot eleven, four juts and a zinc skip. Farm labourers are men of little speech, and it is often needful that voices should carry far, hence this crisp and forcible reticence.

Starting point is 12:44:15 The capillary of the countryside undergoes few changes, and the noises, today made by the ox-herd who urges his black and smoking team along the hillside, are precisely those that Pears Plowman himself would have used. Another survival may be noticed in objuration. A Sussex man swearing by Job, as he often does, is not calling in the aid of the patient sufferer of Ur, but Job, the Anglo-Saxon Jupiter. a few examples of sussex speech mainly drawn from mr parrish's dictionary of the sussex dialect will help to add the true flavour to these pages mr parrish's little book is one of the best of its kind that it is more than a contribution to etymology a very few quotations will show mr parrish lays down the following general principles of the sussex tongue a before double d becomes r whereby ladder and a ladder and a

Starting point is 12:45:16 Adder are pronounced Lada and Arda. A before double L is pronounced like O. Fallow and tallow become Fola and Tola. A before T is expanded into E.A. Rate, mate, plate, gait are pronounced Riet, meet, piet, geet. A before C.T becomes E as satisfaction. for satisfaction. E before C.T. becomes A, and affection, effect, and neglect are pronounced

Starting point is 12:45:55 affaction, effect, and neglect. Double E is pronounced as I, in such words as sheep, weak, called ship and wick, and the sound of double E follows the same rule, in field for field. Having pronounced E as I, the Sussex people in the most impartial manner pronounce I as E-E, and thus mice, hive, dive, become meese, heave and deave. I becomes E in pet for pit, spet for spit, and similar words. I-O- and O-I change places respectively, and violet and violent become voilet and voilent, while boiled and spoiled are bileed and spiled. O before N is expanded into OA in such words as pony, don't, bone, which are pronounced

Starting point is 12:46:55 Pony, doant, boon. O before R is pronounced as A, as carne and marning for corn and mourning. O also becomes A in such words as rad, crass and crap, for rod, cross, and crop. o u is elongated into owl a o u in words like hound pound and mound pronounced hound pound and mound the final o w as in many other counties is pronounced e r as folla for fallow the peculiarities with regard to the pronunciation of consonants are not so numerous as those of the vowels but they are very decided and seem to admit of less variation. Double T is always pronounced as D, as little for little, etc., and the T.H is invariably D, thus the, the, becomes D, and these them theirs, these dem, dares. D in its turn is occasionally changed into TH, as in Fother, for fodder. The final SP in such words as wasp, clasp, and harps, are reversed to whops, claps and harps.

Starting point is 12:48:20 Words ending in ST have the addition of a syllable in the possessive case and the plural, and instead of saying that some little birds had built their nests near the posts of Mr. West's gate, a Sussex boy would say, The birds had built their nests near the posters of Mr. West's geert. Roughly speaking, Sussex has little or no doubt. dialect absolutely its own, for the country speech of the West is practically that also of Hampshire, and of the East, that of Kent. The dividing line between East and West, Mr. Crips of Staining tells me, is the Adour, once

Starting point is 12:49:00 an estuary of the sea, rather than the stream it now is, running far inland and separating the two Sussexes with its estranging wave. Mr. Parrish's pages supply the following words and examples of their use, chosen almost at random. Adon. Have done, leave off. I am told on good authority that when a Sussex damsel says, Oh, do a done! She means you to go on, but when she says, A done, do, you must leave off immediately. Crownation, coronation. I was married, the day the crownation was. when there was a bullock roasted hole up at Fowrell Park.

Starting point is 12:49:45 Furl, I don't know, as ever I eat anything so pretty in all my leaf. But I never got no further than Fawall Crossways all neat. No more didn't a good many. Dentical, dainty. My master says that this here Prussian, query Persian. Cut, what you gave me is a deal too denticle, for her a poor. man's cut. He wants one as will catch de Mese and keep herself. Dunermenny. I do not know how many. There was a ton of many people come to see that girt-hog of mine when she was took bad, and they all

Starting point is 12:50:28 gov it in as she was took with the information. We did all as ever we could, Farah. There was a bottle of stuff what I had from the doctor at time my leg was so bad, and we took and mix it in with some milk, and give it to her lukewarm, but known as we could give her, didn't seem to do her any good. Foreigner, a stranger, a person who comes from any county but Sussex. I have often heard it said of a woman in this village who comes from Lincolnshire that she has got such a good notion of work that you'd never find out but what she was an English woman, without you as to hear her talk.

Starting point is 12:51:10 frenchy a foreigner of any country who cannot speak english the nationality being added or not as the case seems to require thus an old fisherman giving an account of a swedish vessel which was wrecked on the coast a year or two ago finished by saying that he thought the french frenches take em all in all were better than de swedish frenchies for he could make out what they were driving at but he was all at sea with de others heart condition said of ground i've got my garden into pretty good heart at last and if so be as there weren't quite so many spars and greybirds and roberts and one thing and other i dunno but what i might get a tidy lot of sass but dere tain't no use what you do as long as there's so much varmint about hill the south down country is always spoken of as the hill by the people in the weald he's gone to the hill harvesting ink-horn inkstand fetch me down de ink-horn mistis i be goin to put my hand to this here partition to parliament tis agin de romans mistis for if so be as the romans get the up an hand on us we shall all be burned it and bloodshed and have our bibles took away from us and there'll be a hem set out just about certainly extremely i just about did enjoy myself up at the Christiane Palace on de Forrester's day. But there was a terrible girt crowd.

Starting point is 12:52:48 I should think there must have been two or three hundred people, a scrooge it about. No, used as a substantive for knowledge. Poor fella. He has got no no what's endeavour, but his sister is a nice knowledgeable girl. Lamentable, very. This word seems to admit of three degrees of comparison, which are indicated by the accentuation. Thus, positive, lamentable, as usually pronounced. Comparative, larmentable.

Starting point is 12:53:21 Superlative, lamentable. Master Chucks, he says to me, says he, "'Tis larmentable, pretty weather, Master Crocombe. Larmentable,' says I. Lada, corruption of ladder. Master's got a lodge down on the land yonder, and as I was going across another day morning, to fetch a larder we keeps there.

Starting point is 12:53:45 A lawyer catched hold on me, And scratched my face. Note, lawyer, a long bramble full of thorns. So called, because, When once they gets a hold on you, You don't easy get shut of em. End note. Little, diminutive of little.

Starting point is 12:54:04 I never see one of these here good men There's so much talk about in de papers, only once, and that was up at Smithell's show. I'd done her many years ago. Prime Minister, they told me he was, up at Lannan. A little, lear, miserable, skinny-looking chap as ever I see. Dysraeli, I imagine. Why, I says, we don't count our minister to be much,

Starting point is 12:54:29 but he's a deal primer-looking than what you'ren't be. Lonesd, alone. Will you lend mudder to lonesd of a little tea? Master, pronounced Mass. The distinctive title of a married labourer. A single man will be called by his Christian name all his life long, but a married man, young or old, is Mass, even to his most intimate friend and fellow workmen,

Starting point is 12:54:57 as long as he can earn his own livelihood. But as soon as he becomes past work, he turns into the old gentleman, leaving the breadwinner to rank as master of the household. Mass is quite a distinct title from Mr., which is always pronounced Muss, Thus, Mus Smith is the employer, Mas Smith is the man he employs. The old custom of the wife, speaking of her husband as her master,

Starting point is 12:55:24 still lingers among elderly people, but both the word and the reasonableness of its use are rapidly disappearing in the present generation. It may be mentioned here that they say in Sussex that the rosemary will never blossom, except where the mystus is master. Maybe, and mayhap, perhaps. Maybe you know's Miss Pilbeam.

Starting point is 12:55:48 No? Don't you? Well, he was a very singler man, was Mas Pilbeam. A very singler man, he says to his mistress one day. He says, tis a long time, says he, since I've took a holiday. So, cardinaly, next morning, he laid a bed till pretty nice seven o'clock. And then he breakfasts. And then he goes.

Starting point is 12:56:11 down to the shop and buys four ounces a baccar, and he sets himself down on de maximon, and there he set, and there he smoked, and smoked, all the whole day long. For, says he, tis a long time since I've had a holiday. Ah, he were a very single man, a very singler man indeed. Queer to puzzle. It has queered me for a long time, to find out who that man is. And my mistress, she's been quite in a quirk over it. He don't seem to be quaint with nobody, and he don't seem to have no business, and for

Starting point is 12:56:52 all that he's always to and throw, to and throw, forever lasting." Rennels. Muss Reynolds is the name given to the Fox. When I was first told that Mus Reynolds come along last night he was spoken of so intimately that I supposed he must be some old friend, and expressed to hope that he had been hospitably received. He helped himself, was the reply, and thereupon followed the explanation, illustrated by an exhibition of mutilated poultry.

Starting point is 12:57:25 Short, tender. A rat-catcher once told me that he knew many people who were in the habit of eating barn-fed rats, and he added, When derin a pudding, you couldn't tell them from a chick. They e'et so short and pretty. Shruck. shrieked an old woman who was accidentally locked up in a church where she was slumbering in a high pew said i shruck till i could shruck no longer but no one combed so i up and tulled upon the bell spanel to make dirty footmarks about a floor as a spaniel dog does i goose into de kitchen and i says to my mistress i says twas o'was of a sard-day de old sow's hem-hornery i says

Starting point is 12:58:12 Well, says she, there ain't no call for you to come spanling about my clean kitchen. Any more for that, she says. So I goos out and didn't say now, Far you can never make no sense of women folks of a Saturday. Surely, there are few words more frequently used by Sussex people than this. It has no special meaning of its own, but it is added at the end of any sentence to which particular emphasis is required to be given.

Starting point is 12:58:42 Tidious, excessive, very, I never did see such tedious bad stuff in all my life. Mr. Parrish might here be supplemented by the remark that his definition explains the use of the word by Old Walker, as related by Niren, when bowling to Lord Frederick Bo Clark. Oh, he said, that was tedious near you, my lad. Unaccountable, a very favourite adjective which does duty on all. all occasions in Sussex, a countryman will scarcely speak three sentences without dragging in this word. A friend of mine who had been remonstrating with one of his parishioners for abusing the parish

Starting point is 12:59:24 clerk beyond the bounds of neighbourly expression received the following answer. You be quite right, sir. You be quite right. I've no ought to have said what I did, but I don't mind telling you to your head what I've said many times behind your back. We've got a good shepherd, I says. an excellent shepherd but he's got an unaccountable bad dog valiant veillon french stout well-built what did you think of my friend who preached last sunday master piper ah he was a valiant man he just did stand over de pulpit why you bein't nothing at all to him see what a noble paunch he had

Starting point is 13:00:08 YARBS, herbs. An old man in East Sussex said that many people set much store by the doctors, but for his part he was one for the Yabs, and Paul Podgham was what he went by. It was not for some time that it was discovered that by Paul Podgam he meant the polypodium fern. Such are some of the pleasant passages in Mr. Parrish's book. In Mr. Coker Egerton's Sussex folk and Sussex Ways is an immediate. Using example of gender in Sussex, the son, by the way, is always she or her to the Sussex peasant, as to the German savant, but it is not the only unexpected feminine in the county. Mr. Egerton gives a conversation in a village school, in which the master bids Tommy blow his

Starting point is 13:00:57 nose. A little later he returns and asks Tommy why he has not done so. Please, sir, I did blow her, but her wouldn't bide blowed. In the foregoing examples Mr. Parrish has perhaps made the Sussex labourer a thought too epigrammatic, a natural tendency in the illustrations to such a work. The following narration of adventure from the lips of a south-down shepherd, which is communicated to me by my friend Mr. C. E. Clayton of Holm Bush, is nearer to the normal loquacity of the type. I mind one day I'd been to buy some lambs,

Starting point is 13:01:36 and coming home in de dark, over de Bostel, I gets to a field, and I knows there was a geert, And I kept beating the hedge, with my stick, To find the geert, and at last I found her, And I goes to get over'n, And t'was one o'ad these here, Gert Ponds, Full of foul water, I'd mistook for the geert, And so in I went, all over my head,

Starting point is 13:01:59 And I tumbles out again, middling sharp, And I slips, cause twas so slubby, And in I goes again, And I do think I should have been drowned'd, if it weren't for them a stick, and I was that frightened, and there was some bullocks close by, and I frightened them splashing about, and they began to run around, and that frightened me, and dear, well, I was all wet through and grabby, and when I got home, I looked like one a d'esier watercrest men, but I kept my peep in my mouth all the time. I didn't lose them.

Starting point is 13:02:33 The late Mr. F. E. Sawyer, another student of Sussex dialect, has remarked. on the similarity between Sussex provincialisms and many words which we are accustomed to think peculiarly American. One cause may be the two hundred Sussex colonists taken over by William Penn, who, as we have seen was at one time Squire of Waminghurst. In recent years we have gathered from the works of American comic writers and others many words which at first have been termed vulgar Americanisms, but which, on closer examination, have proved to be good old Anglo-Saxon and other terms which had dropped out of notice amongst

Starting point is 13:03:12 us, but were retained in the new world. Take for instance two southern words, probably Sussex, quoted by Ray 1674, squirm. Artemis Ward describes brother Uriah of the Shakers as squirming like a speared eel, and curiously enough Ray gives to squirm to move nimbly about after the manner of an eel. It is spoken of eel. Another word is sass, for source, also quoted by Artemis Ward, Mrs. Phoebe Earl Gibbons, an American lady, in a clever and instructive article in Harper's magazine on English farmers, but in fact describing the agriculture, etc., of Sussex in a very interesting way, considers

Starting point is 13:03:58 that the peculiarities of the present Sussex dialect resemble those of New England more than of Pennsylvania. She mentions, as Sussex phrases used in New England, you hadn't ought to do it, and you shouldn't ought. Be you, for are you? I see him, for I saw. You have a crock on your nose, for a smut, nother for neither, passel for parcel, and a pucker for a fuss. In addition, she observes that Sussex people speak of the fall for autumn and guess and reckon like genuine Yankees. So far, Mr. Sawyer, Sussex people also, I might add, disremember, as Huck Finn used to do. I should like to close the list of examples of Sussex's speech by quoting a few verses from the Sussex version of the

Starting point is 13:04:55 Song of Solomon which Mr. Lowe prepared for Prince Lucien Buonaparte some forty years ago. The experiment was extended to other southern and western dialects, the collection making a little book of curious charm and homeliness. Here is the fourth chapter. 1. Lookie, you be pretty, my love. Looky, you be pretty. You've got dove's eyes, A deen your locks. Your hair is like a flock of goats that appear from Mount Gilead. Two, your teeth be like a flock a ship, just shared, that come. up from the shipwash, every one of them bears twines, and near a one among them is barren. 3. Your lips be like a threader scarlet, and your speech is comely. Your temples be like a

Starting point is 13:05:49 bayet of a pomegranate, the din your locks. 4. Your nick is like the tarahdhaefed, Built for an armory, what they hung a thousand bucklers on, all shields of mighty men. Five, your two breasts be like two young rose, what be twins, that feed among the lilies. Six, till the daybreak, and the shadows go away, I'll get me to the mountain of myrrh and to the hill of frankincense. 7. You be him purty, my love. There ain't a spot in you. 8. Come along with me from Lebanon, my spouse. With me from Lebanon. Look from the top of Amana, from the top of Shenier and Herman, from the lion's dens, from the mountain at the Leopards.

Starting point is 13:06:50 9. You've stole away my heart, my sister, my spouse. You've stole away my heart with one of your eyes, with one chain of your neck. 10. How fair is your love, my sister, my spouse? How much better is your love than wine? And the smell of your intents than all spices. 11. Your lips, oh my spouse, drap like the honeycomb. There's honey and milk under your tongue,

Starting point is 13:07:28 and the smell of your garments is like the smell of Lebanon. 12. A fenced garn is my sister, my spouse. A spring shut up, a fountain sealed. Thirteen. Your plants be an archered of pomegranates. Would pleasant. pleasant fruits, camphire and spikinad. 14. Spicanard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon would all trees of frankincense, mure and the alas would all be the best of spices. 15. A fountain of garlands, a well of living waters, and strains from Lebanon.

Starting point is 13:08:16 16. Wake, O Northwyn, and come, y'-south! Blow upon my garne, that the spices of it may flow out. Let, my beloved, come into his garne, and ate his pleasant fruits. End of Chapter 41. Chapter 42 of Highways and Byways in Sussex. This Librevox recording is in the public domain, recording by Peter Yearsley. Highways and Byways in Sussex by E. V. Lucas, Chapter 42, being a postscript to the second edition. It almost necessarily follows that in a book such as this, which, in brief compass, attempts to take some account of every interesting or charming spot in a large tract of country, it must be certain omissions. To the stranger the survey may seem adequate, but it is a hundred to one that a reader whose home is in Sussex will detect a flippancy or a want of true insight in the treatment of his own

Starting point is 13:09:29 village, nor, rightly, does he sit silent under the conviction. I find that with the keenest desire to be just in criticism I have been unfair to several villages. I have been unfair, for example, to Burpham, which lies between Arundel and Amberley, and of which nothing is said, and more than one reader has discovered unfairness to East Sussex. For this, the personal equation is perhaps responsible. A West Sussex man, try as he will, cannot have the same enthusiasm for the other side of his county as for his own. For me, the sun has always seemed to rise over beechy head. the most easterly of our downs.

Starting point is 13:10:15 The call for a second edition has, however, enabled me to set right a few errors in the body of the book, and in this additional chapter, to amplify and fortify here and there. The result must necessarily be disconnected, but a glance at the index will point the way to what is new. Concerning Oldworth in Tennyson's poetry, there is the exquisite stanza to General Hamley,

Starting point is 13:10:40 You came and looked and loved the view, long known and loved by me, Green Sussex, fading into blue, with one grey glimpse of sea. Green Sussex, fading into blue, it is the motto for every down summit, south or north. With reference to Shelley and Sussex, my attention has been drawn to an interesting account of Field Place by Mr. Hale White, the author of the Mark Rutherford novels, in an old Macmillan's magazine, says Mr. White, Den Park, at Horsham, might easily have suggested, more easily perhaps than any part of the country near Field Place, the well-known semi-chorus in the Prometheus, which begins, The path through which that lovely twain have passed, by cedar, pine, and yew,

Starting point is 13:11:34 and each dark tree that ever grew is curtained out from heaven's wide blue. The Prometheus, however, was written when Horsham was well-nigh forgotten by its author. Owing to a curious lapse of memory, I omitted to say that Sompting, near Worthing, should be famous as the home of Edward John Trelawney, author of The Adventures of a Younger Son, and the friend of Shelley and Byron. In his sumpting garden, in his old age, Trelawney grew figs, equal, he said, to those of his dear Italy, and lived again his vigorous, picturesque, notable life. Sussex thus owns not only the poet of Adonais, but the friend who rescued his heart from the flames that consumed his body on the shores of the Gulf, and bearing it to Rome, placed over its resting place in the Protestant cemetery, the words from the tempest his own happy choice, nothing of him that doth fade, but doth suffer a sea change into something rich and strange.

Starting point is 13:12:44 The old man, powerful and capricious to the last, died at something in 1881, within a year of ninety. His body was removed to Gotha for cremation, and his ashes lie beside Shelley's heart in Rome. Among the wise men of Lewis, I ought not to do not to do that. have overlooked William Durrant Cooper, 1812 to 1875, a shrewd Sussex enthusiast and antiquary, who, as long ago as 1836, printed at his own cost a little glossary of the country's provincialisms. The book, publicly printed in 1853, was, of course, superseded by Mr. Parish's

Starting point is 13:13:25 admirable collection, but Mr. Cooper showed the way. One of his examples of the use of the West Sussex pronoun, N, Un, or Um, might be noted, especially as it involves another quaint confusion of sex. En and Un stand for him, her or it, um, for them. Thus, a blackbird flew up and her killed him, that is to say he killed it. Among the Harleian manuscripts at the British Museum is the account of a supernatural visitation to Rye in 1607. The visitants were angels, their fortunate entertainer, being a married woman. She, however, by elapsed in good breeding, undid whatever good was intended for her. And after that appeared unto her two angels in her chamber, and one of them having a white fan in her hand did let the same fall, and she stooping to take

Starting point is 13:14:21 it up. The angel gave her a box on the ear, rebuking her that she a mortal creature should presume to handle matters appertaining to heavenly creatures. It was an error to omit from Chapter 17, all reference to Frederick William Robertson, Robertson of Brighton, who, from 1847 until 1853, exerted his extraordinary influence from the pulpit of Trinity Chapel, opposite the post office, and from his home at nine Montpelier Terrace. Of Robertson's quickening religion, I need not speak, but it is interesting to know that much of his magnetic eloquence was the result of the meditations which he indulged in his long and feverish rambles over the downs.

Starting point is 13:15:08 His favourite walk was to the dyke, before exploitation had come upon it, and he loved also the hills above Rottingdeen. Robertson, says Arnold's memoir, would walk any man off his legs. As the saying goes, he not only walked, he ran, he leaped, he bounded, He walked as fast and as incessantly as Charles Dickens,

Starting point is 13:15:29 and, like Dickens, his mind was in a state of incessant activity all the time. There was not a bird of the air or a flower by the wayside that was not known to him. His knowledge of birds would have matched that of the collector of the Natural History Museum in his favourite Dyke Road. Robertson often journeyed into Sussex on little preaching or lecturing missions. He found the auditors of Hurst Pierpoint very bucolic. and his family were fond of the retirement of Lindfield. On one occasion Robertson brought them back himself, writing afterwards to a friend that

Starting point is 13:16:04 in that village he strongly felt the beauty and power of English country scenery and life to calm, if not to purify, the hearts of those whose lives are habitually subjected to such influences. Mr. Arnold's book, I might add, has some pleasant pages about Sussex and Brighton in Robertson's day, with glimpses of Lady Byron, his ardent devotee, and that old Shoreham of Canon Mosley. And here I might mention that for a very charming account of a still earlier Brighton, though not the earliest, the reader should go to a little story called Roundabout a Brighton coach office, which was published a few years ago.

Starting point is 13:16:46 It has a very fragrant old-world flavour. To Chichester, I should have recorded, belongs a Sussex saint. St. Richard, Bishop of Chichester in the 13th century, and a great man. In 1245 he found the Sussex Sea an Orgian stable, but he was equal to the labour of cleansing it. He deprived the corrupt clergy of their benefices with an unhesitating hand, and upon their successors and those that remained, he imposed laws of comeliness and simplicity. His reforms were many and various. He restored hospitality to its high place among the duties of rectors. He punished absentees. He excommunicated usurers. While, a revolutionist indeed, priests who spoke indistinctly or at too great a pace were suspended. Also, I doubt not, he was hostile to locked churches. Furthermore, he advocated the crusades like another Peter the Hermit.

Starting point is 13:17:47 Richard's own life was exquisitely thoughtful and simple. An anecdote of his brother, who assisted him in the practical administration of the diocese, helps us to this side of his character. You give away more than your income, remarked this, Alman a brother one day. Then sell my silver, said Richard. It will never do for me to drink out of silver cups, while our Lord is suffering in his poor.

Starting point is 13:18:10 Our father drank heartily out of common crockery, and so can I. Sell the plate. Richard penetrated on foot to the uttermost corners of his diocese to see that all was well. He took no holiday, but would often stay for a while at Tarry. near Worthing, with Simon, the parish priest and his great friend. Tradition would have Richard the planter of the first of the Tarring figs, and, indeed, to

Starting point is 13:18:36 my mind, he is more welcome to that honour than St. Thomas A Beckett, who competes for the credit, being more a Sussex man. In his will Richard left to Sir Simon de Taring, sometimes misprinted Faring, his best poultry and a commentary on the Psalms. The bishop died in 1253, and he was at once canonised. To visit his grave in the nave of Chichester Cathedral, it is now in the south transept, was a sure means to recovery from illness, and it quickly became a place of pilgrimage. April the 3rd was set apart in the calendar as Richard's Day, and very pleasant must have

Starting point is 13:19:15 been the observance in the Chichester streets. In 1297 we find Edward I, giving Lovell the harper six shillings and sixpence, and sixpence, for singing the saint's praises. But Henry VIII was to change all this. On December the 14th, 1538, it being, I imagine, a fine day, the defender of the faith, signed a paper ordering Sir William Goring and William Ehrnelly, his commissioners, to repair to chitz the cathedral and remove the bones, shrine, etc., of a certain bishop, which they call St Richard to the Tower of London. That the commissioners did their work we know from their

Starting point is 13:19:56 account for the same, which came to £40. In the Reformed Prayer Book, however, Richard's name has been allowed to stand among the Black Letter Saints. Under Chichester, I ought also to have mentioned John William Bergen, 1813 to 1888, Dean of Chichester for the last 12 years of his life, and the author of that admirable collection of half-length appreciations, the lives of twelve good men, one of whom, Bishop Wilberforce, lived within call at Woolavington, under the shaggy escarpment of the Downs,

Starting point is 13:20:32 some ten miles to the north-east. Dean Bergon thus happily touches off the bishop in his South Down retreat. But it was on the charms of the pleasant landscape which surrounded his Sussex home, that he chiefly expatiated on such occasions, leaning rather heavily on some trusty arm. I remember how he leaned on mine, while he tapped with his stick the bowl of every favourite tree which came in his way.

Starting point is 13:20:57 By the by, every tree seemed a favourite, and had something to tell of its history and surpassing merits. Every farmhouse, every peep at the distant landscape, every turn in the road, suggested some pleasant remark or playful anecdote. He had a word for every man, woman, and child he met, for he knew them all. The very cattle were greeted as old acquaintances, and how he did delight in discussing

Starting point is 13:21:25 the flora of his neighbourhood, the geological formations, every aspect of the natural history of the place. A very properly indignant friend has reminded me of the claims of Burpham in the following words. Two miles up the Aran Valley from Arendel is Burpam, a pretty village on the west edge of the Downs, and overhanging the river. Between South Stoke and Arndall, the old course of the Aron run in wide curves, and in modern times a straight new bed has been cut under Arndall Park and past the Black Rabbit, making with the old curves the form of the letter B, Burpum, lies at the head of the lower loop of the B,

Starting point is 13:22:05 and while there is plenty of water in the loop, to row up with the flood-tide and down with the ebb, the straight mainstream diverts nearly all the holiday traffic and leaves Burpum the most peaceful village within 50 miles of London. The seclusion is the more complete because the roads from the south end in the village, and there is no approach by road from east or west or north. The church contains a leper's window, and passengers by the railway can see, to the right of the red roofs of the village and over the line of low chalk cliffs, a white path still calls the leper's path, which winds away to the lonely hollows of the downs. A curious feature of Burpum is a high rampart of earth running east from the cliff by the river, which, according to local tradition, was constructed in the days of the Danish pirates.

Starting point is 13:22:52 It is said to be doubtful whether the rampart was erected by the Saxon villagers for their own protection, or by the Danes as their first stronghold on the rising ground, after they had sailed up the Aran from Little Hampton. The fine name of the neighbouring Warning Camp Hill, from which there is a great outlook over the flat country past Arndale Castle, to Chich's the Cathedral and the cliffs of the Isle of Wight, suggests memories of the same period. Of the little retiring church of St. Botolph, Hardham, lying among low meadows between Burpham and Pulborough, I ought also to have spoken,

Starting point is 13:23:29 for it contains perhaps the earliest complete series of mural painting in England. The church dates from the 11th century, and the paintings, says Mr Philip Manoring Johnson, who has studied them with the greatest care, cannot be much less old. The subjects are the enunciation, the Nativity, the appearance of the star, the magi presenting their gifts, and so forth, with one or two less familiar themes added, such as Herod conferring with his counsellors,

Starting point is 13:23:57 and the torments of hell. There are the remains also of a series of Moralities, drawn from the parable of Deves and Lazarus, and of a series illustrating the life of St. George. The little church, which perhaps has every right to call itself the oldest picture gallery in England should not be missed by any visitor to Pulbara. At West Whittering in the Manhood Peninsula, a little village on which the sea has hostile designs, is still performed at Christmas, a time-honoured play, the actors of which are half a dozen boys or men known as the Tiptears. Their words are not written but are transmitted orally from one generation of players to another.

Starting point is 13:24:41 Mr. J. I. C. Boja, however, has taken them down for the SAC. subject, once again, as in some of the Hardham mural paintings, is the life of St. George, here called King George, and the play has the same relation to drama that the Hardham frescoes have to a picture. I quote a little. Third man, noble captain. In comes I, the noble captain, just lately come from France, with my broad sword and jolly Turk, Dirk, I will make King George dance. Fourth Man, King George, by St. George. In comes I, King George,

Starting point is 13:25:20 that man of courage bold. With my broad sword and sphere, spear, I have won ten tons of gold. I fought the fiery dragon and brought it to great slaughter, and by that means I wish to win the king of Egypt's daughter. Neither unto thee will I bow or bend.

Starting point is 13:25:38 Stand off, stand off, I will not take youth to be my friend. Noble captain, Why, sir, why have I done you any kind of "'Wrong?' King George. "'Yes, you saucy man, so get you gone.' "'Nobble captain.

Starting point is 13:25:52 "'You saucy man, you draw my name. "'You ought to be stabbed, you saucy man.' "'King George, stab or stabs, the least is my fear. "'Point me the place and I will meet you there.' "'Nobel captain, the place I point is on the ground, "'and there I will lay your body down, across the water at the hour of five.' "'King George, done, sir, done. "'I will meet you there.

Starting point is 13:26:16 If I am alive I'll cut you, I will slay you, all for to let you know that I am King George over Great Britain now." Fight. King George wounds the noble captain. Until the close is almost reached, the west-wittering tip-tears preserve the illusion of medieval mummery, but the concluding song transports us to the sentiment of the modern musical. Its chorus runs with some callousness. We never miss a mother till she's gone. Her portraits all we have to gaze upon. We can fancy see her there. Sitting in an old armchair, we never miss her mother till she's gone. Mark Anthony Loews Contributions to Literature

Starting point is 13:27:01 1845 contains a pleasant essay on the South Downs which I overlooked when I was writing this book, but from which I now gladly take a few passages. It gives me, for example, a pendant to William Blake's description of a fairy's funeral on page 64, in the shape of a description of a fairy's revenge, from the lips of Master Fowington, a friend of Mr. Lauer, who was one that believed in Pharisees, as Sussex calls fairies, as readily and unreservedly as we believe in wireless telegraphy. Mass Fowington had indeed two very good reasons for his credulity. One was that the Pharisees are mentioned in the Bible, and therefore must exist, the other

Starting point is 13:27:44 was that his grandmother, who was a very truthful woman, had seen them with her own eyes time and often. They was little folks, not more than a foot high, and used to be uncommon fond of dancing. They jowned hands and formed a circle, and danced upon it till the grass came three times as green there as it was anywhere else. That's how these here rings come upon the hills. Leastways, so they say, but I don't know nothing about it. Natai, for I never seen none Though to be sure it's very hard to say how them rings do come if it isn't the Pharisees that makes them. Besides, there's our old story that we always sing at Harvest Supper, where it comes in, we'll drink and dance like Pharisees.

Starting point is 13:28:23 Now I should like to know why it's put like that, ear in the song, if it ain't true. Master Farrington's story of the fairy's revenge runs thus. An old brother of my wife's Gert-grandmother see some Pharisees once, and it would have been a power better if so be he hadn't never seen him, or leastways never offended him. I'll tell you how it happened. James Meppum, that was his name.

Starting point is 13:28:48 James was a little farmer, and used to thresh his own corn. His barns stood in a very elenge, lonesome place. A goodish bit from the house, and the Pharisees used to come there a night's, and thresh out some wheat and wuts for him, so that the heap of threshed corn was generally bigger in the morning than what he left it over.

Starting point is 13:29:08 night. Well, you see, Mass Meppum thought this a little odd, and didn't know rightly what to make, and, so being an out-and-out, bold chap, that didn't fear man nor devil, as the saying is, he made up his mind that he'd go over some night to see how t'was managed. Well, accordingly, he went out rather airily in the evening, and laid up behind de Moe, for a long while, till he got rather tired and sleepy, and thought, twaunt no use of watching no longer. It was getting pretty handy to midnight, and he thought how he'd go home to bed. But just as he was upon the move, he heard an odd sort of a sound coming towards the barn, and so he stopped to see what it was. He looked out at a distra, and what should he catch

Starting point is 13:29:52 sighton, but a couple of little chaps about eighteen inches high, or dareaway, coming into the barn without opening the doors. They pulled off their jackets and began to thresh, with two little frails, as they had brung Wadham at the hammer of a rate. Must Mepham would have been fronting if they had been bigger, but as they was such tedious little fellas, he couldn't hardly help bust in right out a laughing. How so never, he pushed a handful of straw in his mouth, and so managed to keep quiet, a few minutes of looking at them,

Starting point is 13:30:23 thump, thump, thump, thump, as regular as a clock. At last they got rather tired and left off to rest themselves, and one an um said in a little squeaking voice, as it might have been a mouse, talking, I say, puck, I twit, do you twet?

Starting point is 13:30:39 At that, Gems couldn't contain himself no-how but set up a loud ho-ho, and jumping up from the straw hollered out, I'll twet you,

Starting point is 13:30:47 you little rascals! What business are you got in my barn? Well, upon this, the Pharisees picked up the frails and cut away right by him, and as they passed by him, he felt such a queer pain

Starting point is 13:30:58 in the head, as if somebody had given him a lamentable hard thump, with a hammer that knocked him down as flat as a flounder. How long he laid there he never rightly knowed, but it must have been a goodish bit, for when he come to, t'was getting delight. He couldn't hardly contrive to doddle home,

Starting point is 13:31:16 and when he did, he looked so tedious bad that his wife sent for the doctor directly. But bless you, that want no use, and old James Mepham knowed it well enough. The doctor told him to keep up his spirits, being t'was only a fit he had had from being a most smothered with the handful of, a straw and kipping his laugh down. But James knowed better.

Starting point is 13:31:36 "'Tay ain't no use, sir,' he says he, to the doctor. "'The cuss of the Pharisees is upon me, and all the stuff in your shop can't do me no good.' And Masmeppin was right, for about a year afterwards. He died, poor man. Sorry enough that he'd ever interfered with things that didn't concern him. Poor old fellow. He lays buried in the churchyard, over there, over yender, leastways, so I've heard my wife's mother say, under de bank, just where the bed of snowdrops grows.

Starting point is 13:32:07 All who know the downs must know the fairies or Pharisees rings, into which one so often steps. Science gives them a fungoid origin, but Shakespeare, as well as Master Farrington's grandmother, knew that Obron and Titania's little people alone had the secret. Further proof is to be found in the testimony of John Aubrey, the Wiltshire Antiquary,

Starting point is 13:32:30 who records that Mr Hart, curator at Yatton Canel, in 1633 to four, coming home over the Downs one night, witnessed with his own eyes, an innumerable quantity of pygmies, dancing round and round, and singing, making all manner of small odd noises. A word ought to have been said of the quiet and unexpected dewponds of the Downs, upon which one comes so often and always with a little surprise. Perfect rounds they are, reflecting the sky they are so near like circular mirrors set in a white frame. Gilbert White, who was interested in all interesting things, mentions the unfailing character of a little pond near Selborne,

Starting point is 13:33:17 which, though never above three feet deep in the middle, and not more than 30 feet in diameter, yet affords drink for 300 or 400 sheep, and for at least 20 head of cattle beside. He then asks, having noticed that in May, 1775, when the ponds of the valley were dry, the ponds of the hills were still little affected. Have not these elevated pools some unnoticed recruits, which in the night-time counterbalance the waste of the day? The answer which white supplies is that the hill ponds are recruited by dew. Persons, he writes, that are much abroad and travel early and late,

Starting point is 13:33:58 such as shepherds, fishermen, etc., can tell what prodigious fogs prevail in the night on elevated downs, even in the hottest part of summer, and how much the surfaces of things are drenched by those swimming vapours, though to the senses all the while little moisture seems to fall. Kingsley has a passage on the same subject, in his essay, The Air Mothers, for on the high chalk downs, you know, where farmers make a sheep pond, They never, if they are wise, make it in the valley, or on a hillside, but on the bleakest top, of the very highest down. And there, if they can once get it filled with snow and rain in winter, the blessed dews

Starting point is 13:34:41 of night will keep some water in it all the summer through, while ponds below are utterly dried up. There is, however, another reason why the highest points are chosen, and that is that the chalk here often has a capping of red clay, which holds the wall. water. To the smuggling chapter might have been added, again with Mr. Lauer's assistance, a few words on the difficulties that confronted the London revenue officers in the Sussex humour. To be confounded by too swift a horse or too agile a runner was all in the night's work, but to be hoodwinked and bamboozled by the deliberate, stealthy southern fun must have been

Starting point is 13:35:23 eternally galling. The Sussex joker grinds slowly and exceeding small, but the flower is his. There was Nick Kossum, the blacksmith. The words are a shepherds talking to Mr. Lauer. He was a sad plague to them. Once he made an exciseman run several miles after him to take away a keg of yeast he was a carrying to ditchling. Another time as he was a going up New Bostle,

Starting point is 13:35:51 an excise man who knew him of old saw him carrying a tub of Hollands. So he says, says he, Master Kossum, I must have that tub of yours, I reckon. Worse luck, I suppose you must, says Nick in a civil way, though it's rather again the grain to be robbed like this, but, however, I am a-going-your-road, and we can walk together. There's no law again in that, I expect. Oh, certainly not, says the other, taking of the tub upon his shoulders. So they chatted along quite friendly and chuck-er-like, till they came to a cross-road, and Nick wished the excise man good-bye. After Nick had got a little way, he turned around all of a sudden

Starting point is 13:36:26 and called out, Oh, there's one thing I forgot. Here's a little bit of paper that belongs to the keg. Paper? Says the excisement. Why, that's a permit, says he. Why didn't you show me that when I took the Hollands? Oh, says Nick, as saucy as Heinz.

Starting point is 13:36:41 Why, if I'd done that, says he, you wouldn't have carried my tub for me all this way, would you? The story at the end of Chapter 19 of the clerk in Old Shoreham Church, whose loyalty was too much for his ritualism, may be capped by that of a South Down-Class in the east of the county, whose seat in church commanded a view of the neighbourhood. During an afternoon service one Sunday, a violent gale was raging, which had already unroofed several barns. The time came, says Mr. Lauer, for the psalm before the sermon, and the clerk rose to

Starting point is 13:37:15 announce it. Let us sing to the praise and glop, please, sir, Marcinobi's mill is blowed down. Another word on Sussex millers. John Oliver, the Hervey of High Down Hill, had a companion in eccentricity in William Coombs of New Haven, who, although active as a miller to the end, was for many years a stranger to the inside of his mill, owing to a rash statement one night, that if what he asseverated was not true, he would never enter his mill again. It was not true, and henceforward, until his death, he directed his business from the top step. Such is the Sussex tenacity of purpose. Coombs was married at West Dean, but not fortunately. On the way to the church a voice from heaven calls to him,

Starting point is 13:38:06 William Coombs, William Coombs, if so be that you marry Mary, you'll always be a miserable man. Coombs, who had no false shame, often told the tale, adding, And I be a miserable man. Coombs' inseparable companion was a whole. horse, which bore him and his merchandise to market. In order to vary the monotony of the animal's own god-given hue, he used to paint it different colours, one day yellow and the next pink, one day green and the next blue, and so on. But this cannot have perplexed the horse so much as

Starting point is 13:38:45 his master's idea of mercy, for when its back was overloaded, not only with sacks of flour, but also with coombs, that humanitarian, experiencing a pang of sympathy and exclaiming, the merciful man is merciful to his beast, would lift one of the sacks onto his own shoulders. His marsy, however, did not extend to dismounting. Our Sussex droll, Andrew Bord, when he invented the wisdom of Gotham, invented also the charity of Coombs. But the story is true. Coombs must not be considered typical of Sussex, nor can the tricyclist of Chaley be called typical of Sussex. The weary man who was overtaken by a correspondent of mine on the acclivity called the King's Head Hill, toiling up its steepness on a very old-fashioned,

Starting point is 13:39:38 solid-tired tricycle. He had the brake hard down, and when this was pointed out to him, he replied shrewdly, "'Hey, master, but her might go backards!' Such whimsical excess of caution, such thorough calculation of all the chances is not truly typical, nor is the miller's oddity truly typical, and yet if one set forth to find humorous eccentricity, humorous suspicion, and humorous cautiousness at their most flourishing, Sussex is the county for the search. It ought to be known that those Londoners who would care to reach Sussex by Roman Road have still Stain Street at their service. With a little difficulty here and there, a little freedom with other people's land, the Walker is still able to travel from London to Chichester,

Starting point is 13:40:28 almost in a beeline, as the Romans used. Stain Street, which is a southern continuation of Irming Street, pierced London's wall at Billingsgate, and that would therefore be the best starting point. The modern traveller would set forth down the Borough High Street, as the Canterbury Pilgrims did, crossing the track of Watling Street near the Elephant and Castle, and so on the present high road for several not-too-interesting miles.

Starting point is 13:40:54 along Newington Butts and Kennington Park Road, up Clapham Rise and Ballam Hill, and so on through Tooting, Morden, North Cheam and Yule. So far all is simple and a little prosaic, but at Epsom, difficulties begin. The road from Epsom Town to the racecourse climbs to the east of the Durdands, and strikes away south-west on its true course again exactly at the inn. The point to make for, as straight as may be, passing between Ashstead on the right and Langley Bottom Farm on the left, is the 30-acre's barn right on the site. Then direct to Leatherhead down, through Birch Grove, over Mickleham down, and so to the high road again at Juniper Hall.

Starting point is 13:41:40 Part of the track on this high ground is still called Irming Street by the country folk. Part is known as Pebble Lane, where the old Roman road metal has come through. The old street probably followed the present road fairly closely, with a slight deviation. near the Burford Bridge Inn, as far as Box Hill Station, whence it took a bee-line to the high ground at Minnick Wood by Anstieberry, four miles distant, a little to the west of Holmwood. This, if the line is to be followed, means some deliberate trespassing, and a scramble through dorking churchyard, which is partly on the site. Hitherto the Roman engineer has wavered now and then, but from Minnickwood to Tolhurst Farm,

Starting point is 13:42:21 fifteen miles to the south, the line is absolute. Two miles below Ockley, where it is called Stone Street, at Halehouse Farm, the road must be left again, but after three miles of footpath, field and wood, we hit it once more just above Dedisham, on the road between Guilford and Horsham, and keep it all the way to Pulborough, through Billingshurst, thus named, as I have said, like Billingsgate, after Bellinas, Stain Street's engineer. At Pulbara, we must cut across country to the camp by Hardham, over water meadows that are too often flooded, and thence through other fields, arable and pasture, to the hostel on Bignar Hill, which once was Stain Street. Passing on the right, Mr. Tupper's farm, and the field which contains the famous

Starting point is 13:43:10 Bignor pavements, relic of the palatial residence of the governor of the province of Regnum in the Romans Day, or better still, pausing there, as Roman officers faring to Regnum, certainly would, in the hope of a cup of Felernian. The track winding up Bignor Hill is still easily recognisable, and from the summit half Sussex is visible. The flat, blue-wheeled in the north, Black Downs dark escarpment in the north-west, Arndel's shaggy wastes in the east,

Starting point is 13:43:42 the sea and the plain in the south, and the rolling turf of the Downs all around. Henceforward the road is again straight, nine unfaltering miles to Chichester, which we enter by St. Pancras and East Street. For the first four miles, however, the track is over turf and among woods, earthen wood on the right and northward on the left, and after a very brief spell of hard road again, over the side of Halnaker down. But from Halnaker to Chichester it is turnpike once more, with the saver of the channel, meeting one all the way, and Chichester's spire a friendly beacon and earnest of the contiguous

Starting point is 13:44:24 delights of the dolphin, where one may sup in an assembly-room, spacious enough to hold a Roman century. Or one might reverse the order, and walk out of Sussex into London, by the Roman way, or better still, through London, and on by Irming Street to the wall of Antoninus. merely to walk to London and their stop is nothing. Merely to walk from London is little, but to walk through London, there is glamour in that. To come bravely up from the sea at Boscham through Chichester, over the downs, to the sweet domestic, peaceful green-wield,

Starting point is 13:45:04 over the downs again and plunge into the grey city, perhaps at night, and out again on the other side into the green again, and so to the north, left, right, left, right, just as the clanking Romans did, that would be worth doing and worth feeling. The best knower of Sussex of recent times has died since this book was printed, one who knew her footpaths and spinneys, her hills and farms, as a scholar knows his library. John Horn of Brighton was his name, a tall, powerful man even in his old age, He was above 80 at his death, with a wise, shrewd head stored with old Sussex memories,

Starting point is 13:45:51 hunting triumphs, the savour of long solitary shooting days accompanied by a muzzle-loader and single dog, such days as Knox describes in Chapter 5. Historic cricket matches, stories of the Sussex oddities, the long-headed country lawyers, the Quaker autocrats, the wild farmers, the eccentric squires, characters of favourite horses and dogs. Such was the mobility of his countenance and his instinct for drama

Starting point is 13:46:23 that he could bring before you visibly any animal he described. Early railway days he had ridden in the first train that ran between Brighton and Southwick. Fear struggles over rights of way, reminiscences of Old Brighton before a hundredth part of its present

Starting point is 13:46:42 streets were made, and all the other body of curious law for which one must go to those whose minds dwell much in the past. Coming of Quaker stock as he did, his memory was good and well-ordered, and his observation quick and sound. What he saw, he saw, and he had the unusual gift of vivid, precise narrative, and a choice of words that a literary man should envy. A favourite topic of conversation between us was the best foot-root between two given points, such as staining and worthing, for example, or Lewis and Shoreham, seated in his little room, with its half-a-dozen sporting prints on the wall, and a scene or two of Old Brighton. He would, with infinite detail, removing all possibility of mistake, describe the itinerary, weighing the merits of alternative

Starting point is 13:47:35 paths with profound solemnity, and proving the wisdom of every departure from the more obvious track. Were Sussex obliterated by a tidal wave, and were a new county to be constructed on the old lines, John Horn could have done it. Of his talk I found it impossible to tire, and I shall never cease to regret that circumstances latterly made visits to him very infrequent. Towards the end his faculties now and then were a little dimmed, but the occlusion carried compensation with it. To sit with an old man, and, being mistaken by him for one's own

Starting point is 13:48:15 grandfather, to be addressed as though half a century had rolled away, is an experience that I would not miss. To the end, John Horne dressed as the country gentleman of his young days had dressed. He might have stepped out of one of Alkin's pictures, for he possessed also the well-nourished complexion, the full forehead, and the slight frown. fringe of whiskers, which distinguished Alkin's merry sportsman. His business, taking him deep into the county among the farms, he was always in walking trim, with an umbrella crooked over one arm, his other hand, grasping the obtuse angled handle of a ground-ash stick. These sticks, of which he had scores, he cut himself, his eye never losing its vigilance as he passed through a copse.

Starting point is 13:49:03 Under the handle, about an inch from the end, he screwed a steel peg, so that the stick when it was not required might hang upon his arm, while a long stout pin with a flat brass head was also inserted, in case his pipe needed cleaning out. Thus furnished with umbrella and stick, pipe, and a sample of his merchandise, John Horne in his wide collar, his ample coat with vast pockets over the hips, his tight trousers, and his early Victorian headgear, has been these fifty years, a familiar figure in the wheeled, as he passed from farm to farm at a steady gate, his interested glances falling this way and that, noting every change, and perhaps a little resenting it, for he was of the old Tory school, and his genial salutation ready

Starting point is 13:49:56 for all acquaintances. But he is now no more, and Sussex is the poorer, and the historian of Sussex poorer still. I believe he would have liked this book, but how he would have shaken his wise head over its omissions. End of Chapter 42 and the End of Highways and Byways in Sussex by-ways by-ways by-ways by by E. V. Lucas

Classic Audiobook Collection - Highways and Byways in Sussex by E. V. Lucas ~ Full Audiobook [history]

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.