The Brighton Road Part 20

From the summit of the downs the Weald is seen, spread out like a pictorial map, the little houses, the little trees, the ribbon-like roads looking like dainty models; the tiny trains moving out of Noah's Ark stations and vehicles crawling the highways like objects in a minature land of make-believe. Looking southward, Brighton is seen--a pillar of smoke by day, a glowing, twinkling light at evening: but for all it is so near, it has very little affected the old pastoral country life of the downland villages. The shepherds, carrying as of yore their Pyecombe crooks, still tend huge flocks of sheep, and the dull and hollow music of the sheep-bells remains as ever the characteristic sound of the district.

Next year the sheep will be shorn, just as they were when the Saxon churls worked for their Norman masters, and, unless a cataclysm of nature happens, they will continue so to be shorn centuries hence.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CLAYTON TUNNEL.]

But the shepherds have ceased to be vocal with the sheep-shearing songs of yore; it seems that their modern accomplishment of being able to read has stricken them dumb. Neither the words nor the airs of the old shearing-songs will ever again awaken the echoes in the daytime, nor make the roomy interiors of barns ring o' nights, as they were wont to do lang-syne, when the convivial shearing supper was held, and the ale hummed in the cup, and, later in the evening, in the head also.

But the Suss.e.x peasant is by no means altogether bereft of his ancient ways. He is, in the more secluded districts, still a South Saxon; for the county, until comparatively recent times remote and difficult, plunged in its sloughs and isolated by reason of its forests, has no manufactures, and the rural parts do not attract immigrants from the s.h.i.+res, to leaven his peculiarities. The Suss.e.x folk are still rooted firmly in what Drayton calls their "queachy ground." Words of Saxon origin are still the staple of the country talk; folk-tales, told in times when the South Saxon kingdom was yet a power of the Heptarchy, exist in remote corners, currently with the latest ribald song from the London halls; superst.i.tions linger, as may be proved by he who pursues his inquiries judiciously, and thought moves slowly still in the bucolic mind.

The Norman Conquest left few traces upon the population, and the peasant is still the Saxon he ever has been; his occupations, too, tend to slowness of speech and mind. The Suss.e.x man is by the very rarest chance engaged in any manufacturing industries. He is by choice and by force of circ.u.mstances ploughman, woodman, shepherd, market-gardener, or carter, and is become heavy as his soil, and curiously old-world in habit. All which traits are delightful to the preternaturally sharp Londoner, whose nerves occupy the most important place in his being. These country folk are new and interesting creatures for study to him who is weary of that acute product of civilisation--the London arab.

[Sidenote: OLD SUSs.e.x WAYS]

Suss.e.x ways are, many of them, still curiously patriarchal. But a few years ago, and ploughing was commonly performed in these fields by oxen.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CLAYTON CHURCH AND THE SOUTH DOWNS.]

Their cottages that, until a few years ago, were the same as ever, have recently been very largely rebuilt, much to the sorrow of those who love the picturesque. They were thatched, for the most part, or tiled, or roofed with stone slabs. A living-room with yawning fireplace and capacious settle was the chief feature of them. The floor was covered with red bricks. When the settle was drawn up to the cheerful blaze the interior was cosy. But many of the most picturesque cottages were damp and insanitary, and although they pleased the artist to look at, it by no means followed that they would have contented him to live in.

Outside, in the garden, grew homely flowers and useful vegetables, and perhaps by the gnarled apple-tree there stood in the sun a row of bee-hives. Suss.e.x superst.i.tion declared that they might, indeed, be purchased, but not for silver:

If you wish your bees to thrive, Gold must be paid for ev'ry hive; For when they're bought with other money, There will be neither swarm nor honey.

The year was one long round of superst.i.tious customs and observances, and it is not without them, even now. But superst.i.tion is shy and not visible on the surface.

In January began the round, for from Christmas Eve to Twelfth Day was the proper time for "worsling," that is "wa.s.sailing" the orchards, but more particularly the apple-trees. The country-folk would gather round the trees and chant in chorus, rapping the trunks the while with sticks:

Stand fast root, bear well top; Pray, good G.o.d, send us a howling crop Ev'ry twig, apples big; Ev'ry bough, apples enow'; Hats full, caps full, Full quarters, sacks full.

These wa.s.sailing folk were generally known as "howlers"; "doubtless rightly," says a Suss.e.x archaeologist, "for real old Suss.e.x music is in a minor key, and can hardly be distinguished from howling." This knowledge enlightens our reading of the pages of the Rev. Giles Moore, of Horsted Keynes, when he records: "1670, 26th Dec., I gave the howling boys 6d.;" a statement which, if not illumined by acquaintance with these old customs, would be altogether incomprehensible.

Then, if mud were brought into the house in the month of January, the cleanly housewife, at other times jealous of her spotless floors, would have nothing of reproof to say, for was this not "January b.u.t.ter." and the harbinger of luck to all beneath the roof-tree?

Saints' days, too, had their observances; the habits of bird and beast were the almanacs and weather warnings of the villagers, all innocent of any other meteorological department, and they have been handed down in doggerel rhyme, like this of the Cuckoo, to the present day:

In April he shows his bill, In May he sings o' night and day, In June he'll change his tune, By July prepare to fly, By August away he must.

If he stay till September, 'Tis as much as the oldest man Can ever remember.

If he stayed till September, he might possibly see a sight which no mere human eye ever beheld: he might observe a practice to which old Suss.e.x folk know the Evil One to be addicted. For on Old Michaelmas Day, October 10th, the Devil goes round the country, and--dirty devil--spits on the blackberries. Should any persons eat one on October 11th, they, or some one of their kin, will surely die or fall into great trouble before the close of the year.

Suss.e.x has neither the imaginative Celtic race of Cornwall nor that county's fantastic scenery to inspire legends; but is it at all wonderful that old beliefs die hard in a county so inaccessible as this has. .h.i.therto been? We have read travellers' tales of woful happenings on the road; hear now Defoe, who is writing in the year 1724, of another proof of heavy going on the highways: "I saw," says he, "an ancient lady, and a lady of very good quality, I a.s.sure 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." All which says much for the piety of this ancient lady. Only a few years later, in 1729, died Dame Judith, widow of Sir Henry Hatsell, who in her will, dated January 10th, 1728, directed that her body should be buried at Preston, should she happen to die at such a time of year when the roads were pa.s.sable; otherwise, at any place her executors might think suitable. It so happened that she died in the month of June, so compliance with her wishes was possible.

x.x.xI

And now to trace the Hickstead and Bolney route from Hand Cross, that parting of the ways overlooking the most rural parts of Suss.e.x. Hand Cross, it has already been said, is in the parish of Slaugham, which lies deep down in a very sequestered wood, where the head-springs issuing from the hillsides are never dry and the air is always heavy with moisture.

"Slougham-c.u.m-Crole" is the t.i.tle of the place in ancient records, "Crole"

being Crawley. It was from its ancient bogs and mora.s.ses that it obtained its name, p.r.o.nounced by the natives "Slaffam," and it was certainly due to them that the magnificent manor-house--almost a palace--of the Coverts, the old lords of the manor--was deserted and began to fall to pieces so soon as built.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE RUINS OF SLAUGHAM PLACE.]

The Coverts, now and long since utterly extinct, were once among the most powerful, as they were also among the n.o.blest, in the county. They were of Norman descent, and, to use a well-worn phrase, "came over with the Conqueror"; but they are not found settled here until towards the close of the fifteenth century, being preceded, as lords of the manor, by the Poynings of Poynings, and by the Berkeleys and Stanleys. Sir Walter Covert, to whose ancestors the manor fell by marriage, was the builder of that Slaugham Place whose ruins yet remain to show his idea of what was due to a landed proprietor of his standing. They cover, within their enclosing walls of red brick, which rise from the yet partly filled moat, over three acres of what is now orchard and meadowland. In spring the apple trees bloom pink and white amid the grey and lichen-stained ashlar of the ruined walls and arches of Palladian architecture, and the lush gra.s.s grows tall around the cold hearths of the roofless rooms. The n.o.ble gateway leads now, not from courtyard to hall, but doorless, with its ma.s.sive stones wrenched apart by clinging ivy, stands merely as some sort of key to the enigma of ground plan presented by walls ruinated in greater part to the level of the watery turf.

The singular facts of high wall and moat surrounding a mansion of Jacobean build seem to point to an earlier building, contrived with these defences when men thought first of security and afterwards of comfort. Some few mullioned windows of much earlier date than the greater part of the mansion remain to confirm the thought.

That a building of the magnificence attested by these crumbling walls should have been allowed to fall into decay so shortly after its completion is a singular fact. Though the male line of the Coverts failed, and their estates pa.s.sed, by the marriage of their womankind, into other hands, yet their alienation would not necessarily imply the destruction of their roof-tree. The explanation is to be sought in the situation and defects of the ground upon which Slaugham Place stood: a marshy tract of land, which no builder of to-day would think of selecting as a site for so important a dwelling. Home as it was of swamps and damps, and quashy as it is even now, it must have been in the past the breeding-ground of agues and chills innumerable.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE ENTRANCE: RUINS OF SLAUGHAM PLACE.]

A true exemplar this of that Suss.e.x of which in 1690 a barrister on circuit, whose profession led him by evil chance into this county, writes to his wife: "The Suss.e.x ways are bad and ruinous beyond imagination. I vow 'tis melancholy consideration that mankind will inhabit such a heap of dirt for a poor livelihood. The county is in a sink of about fourteen miles broad, which receives all the water that falls from the long ranges of hills on both sides of it, and not being furnished with convenient draining, is kept moist and soft by the water till the middle of a dry summer, which is only able to make it tolerable to ride for a short time."

Such soft and shaky earth as this could not bear the weight of so ponderous a structure as was Slaugham Place: the swamps pulled its masonry apart and rotted its fittings. Despairing of victory over the reeking moisture, its owners left it for healthier sites. Then the rapacity of all those neighbouring folk who had need of building material completed the havoc wrought by natural forces, and finally Slaugham Place became what it is to-day. Its clock-tower was pulled down and removed to Cuckfield Park, where it now spans the entrance drive of that romantic spot, and its handsomely carved Jacobean stairway is to-day the pride and glory of the "Star" Hotel at Lewes.

The Coverts are gone; their heraldic s.h.i.+elds, in company of an architectural frieze of greyhounds' and leopards' heads and skulls of oxen wreathed in drapery, still decorate what remains of the north front of their mansion, and their achievements are repeated upon their tombs within the little church of Slaugham on the hillside. You may, if heraldically versed, learn from their quarterings into what families they married; but the deeds they wrought, and their virtues and their vices, are, for the most part, clean forgotten, even as their name is gone out of the land, who once, as tradition has it, travelled southward from London to the sea on their own manors.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BOLNEY.]

The squat, s.h.i.+ngled spirelet of Slaugham Church and its decorated architecture mark the spot where many of this knightly race lie buried. In the Covert Chapel is the handsome bra.s.s of John Covert, who died in 1503; and in the north wall of the chancel is the canopied altar-tomb of Richard Covert, the much-married, who died in 1547, and is represented, in company of three of his four wives, by little bra.s.s effigies, together with a curious bra.s.s representing the Saviour rising from the tomb, guarded by armed knights of weirdly-humorous aspect, the more diverting because executed all innocent of joke or irreverence.

Here is a rubbing, nothing exaggerated, of one of these guardian knights, to bear me up.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FROM A BRa.s.s AT SLAUGHAM.]

Another Richard, but twice married, who died in 1579, is commemorated in a large and elaborate monument in the Covert Chapel, whereon are sculptured, in an att.i.tude of prayer, Richard himself, his two wives, six sons, and eight daughters.

Last of the Coverts whose name is perpetuated here is Jane, who deceased in 1586.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HICKSTEAD PLACE.]

Beside these things, Slaugham claims some interest as containing the mansion of Ashfold, where once resided Mrs. Matcham, a sister of Nelson.

Indeed, it was while staying here that the Admiral received the summons which sped him on his last and most glorious and fatal voyage. Slaugham, too, with St. Leonard's Forest, contributes a t.i.tle to the peerage, Lord St. Leonards' creation being of "Slaugham, in the county of Suss.e.x."

x.x.xII

This route to Brighton is singularly rural and lovely, and particularly beautiful in the way of copses and wooded hollows, whence streamlets trickle away to join the river Adur. Villages lie shyly just off its course, and must be sought, only an occasional inn or smithy, or the lodge-gates of modern estates called into existence since the making of the road in 1813, breaking the solitude. The existence of Bolney itself is only hinted at by the pinnacles of its church tower peering over the topmost branches of distant trees. "Bowlney," as the countryfolk p.r.o.nounce the name, is worth a little detour, for it is a compact, picturesque spot that might almost have been designed by an artist with a single thought for pictorial composition, so well do its trees, the houses, old and new, the church, and the "Eight Bells" inn, group for effect.

Down the road, rather over a mile distant from Bolney, and looking so remarkably picturesque from the highway that even the least preoccupied with antiquities must needs stop and admire, is Hickstead Place, a small but beautiful residence, the seat of Miss Davidson, dating from the time of Henry the Seventh, with a curious detached building in two floors, of the same or even somewhat earlier period, on the lawn; remarkable for the large vitrified bricks in its gables, worked into rough crosses and supposed to indicate a former use as a chapel. History, however, is silent that point; but, as the inquirer may discover for himself, it now fulfils the twin offices of a studio and a lumber room. The parish church of Twineham, little more than a mile away, is of the same period, and built of similar materials. Hickstead Place has been in the same family for close upon four hundred years, and as an old house without much in the way of a history, and with its ancient features largely retained and adapted to modern domestic needs, is a striking example both of the continuity and the placidity of English life. The staircase walls are frescoed in a blue monochrome with sixteenth-century representations of field-sports and hunting scenes, very curious and interesting. The roof is covered with slabs of Horsham stone, and the oak entrance is original.

Ancient yews, among them one clipped to resemble a bear sitting on his rump, give an air of distinction to the lawn, completed by a pair of eighteenth-century wrought-iron gates between red brick pillars.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NEWTIMBER PLACE.]

Sayers Common is a modern hamlet, of a few scattered houses. Albourne lies away to the right. From here the Vale of Newtimber opens out and the South Downs rise grandly ahead. n.o.ble trees, singly and in groups, grow plentiful; and where they are at their thickest, in the sheltered hollow of the hills, stands Newtimber Place, belonging to Viscount Buxton, a n.o.ble mansion with Queen Anne front of red brick and flint, and an Elizabethan back, surrounded by a broad moat of clear water, formed by embanking the beginnings of a little stream that comes willing out of the chalky bosom of the hills. It is a rarely complete and beautiful scene.