CHAPTER I_Highways and Byways in Sussex

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_Highways and Byways in Sussex_

BY E. V. LUCAS

WITH . ILLUSTRATIONS . BY

FREDERICK L. GRIGGS

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED

ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON

1921

_COPYRIGHT._

_First Edition printed February 1904._

_Reprinted, April 1904, 1907, 1912, 1919, 1921._

[Illustration: _The Barbican, Lewes Castle._ _Frontispiece._]

PREFACE

Readers who are acquainted with the earlier volumes of this series will

not need to be told that they are less guide-books 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 zig-zag thence across

to the east by way of Chichester, Arundel, Petworth, Horsham, Brighton

(I name only the chief centres), Cuckfield, East Grinstead, Lewes,

Eastbourne, Hailsham, Hastings, Rye, and Tunbridge Wells; leaving the

county finally at Withyham, 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 Tunbridge Wells

to Horsham, the Weald strip from Billingshurst to Burwash, the Downs

strip from Racton to Beachy 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. 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. Parish'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. Carlyle's

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 shortcoming. And yet Sussex must be as rich in

good character, pure, quaint, shrewd, humorous or noble, as any other

division of England. In the matter of honouring illustrious Sussex men

and women, the late Mark Antony Lower 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 Rev. A. D. Gordon wrote the history of Harting, and

quite recently the Rev. C. N. Sutton has published his interesting

_Historical Notes of Withyham, Hartfield, and Ashdown 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 the people of Sussex are Mr. Parish's

_Dictionary_, Mr. Egerton's _Sussex Folk and Sussex 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 additions.

E. V. L.

_December 12, 1903._

P.S.--The sheets of the one-inch ordnance map of Sussex are fourteen in

all, their numbers running thus:

_________________________________________________________

| | | | | |

| 300 | 301 | 302 | 303 | 304 |

|___________|___________|_________|__________|___________|

| | | | | |

| 316 | 317 | 318 | 319 | 320 |

|___________|___________|_________|__________|___________|

| | | | |

| 331 | 332 | 333 | 334 |

|___________|___________|_________|__________|

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

In the present edition a number of small errors have been corrected and

a new chapter amplifying certain points and supplying a deficit here and

there has been added. The passage about Stane Street is reprinted from

the _Times Literary Supplement_ by kind permission.

E. V. L.

_April 20, 1904_

CONTENTS

PAGE

CHAPTER I

MIDHURST 1