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A LEISURELY TOUR IN ENGLAND
* * * * * *
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
THE CHARM OF THE ROAD.
_England and Wales._
AN ENGLISH HOLIDAY.
UNTRAVELLED ENGLAND.
OVER FEN AND WOLD.
_London to Lincolnshire and Back._
ON SOUTHERN ENGLISH ROADS.
THROUGH TEN ENGLISH COUNTIES.
ACROSS ENGLAND IN A DOG-CART.
_London to St. Davids and Back._
A TOUR IN A PHAETON.
_Through the Eastern Counties._
A HOLIDAY ON THE ROAD.
_Kent, Sussex, and Surrey._
ON THE BOX SEAT.
_London to Land's End and Back._
A DRIVE THROUGH ENGLAND.
_London to Scotland and Back._
AN OLD-FASHIONED JOURNEY.
With T. HUSON, R.I., R.P.E.
ROUND ABOUT SNOWDON.
* * * * * *
A LEISURELY TOUR IN ENGLAND
* * * * * *
[Illustration]
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO
DALLAS · SAN FRANCISCO
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
TORONTO
* * * * * *
[Illustration: _See page 312._
A MOATED MANOR-HOUSE.
"The place is silent and aware;
It has had its scenes, its joys and crimes,
But that is its own affair."]
A LEISURELY TOUR IN ENGLAND
by
JAMES JOHN HISSEY
Author of
'The Charm of the Road,' 'On the Box Seat,'
'An English Holiday,' 'Over Fen and Wold,' etc.
With Thirty Full-Page Illustrations (and Four Smaller
Ones) from Drawings and Photographs by the Author
Also a Map
Macmillan and Co., Limited
St. Martin's Street, London
1913
Copyright
TO
MY DAUGHTER
MRS. HERBERT MALPAS
PREFACE
Stevenson once took a journey with a donkey, which animal gave him much
trouble. I took my journey in a reliable little motor-car that happily
gave me none. Though I went by car I went leisurely, stopping often
by the way, for full well I realise the reward of loitering, and, as
all wise wanderers can testify, there is such a thing as profitably
loitering, and a joy in it. Had they been of his day Carlyle would
probably have declared that motor-cars "are mostly employed for the
transport of fools best left at home," at least he said so of railways.
With a car, however, you can control the pace, and can stop at your
pleasure; it is an excellent servant, though in truth a bad master.
I went "in search of the picturesque" and I found it, also of the
unfamiliar in a familiar land. If I came to an interesting place, or
happened upon some curious character steeped in the traditions of the
countryside, whose speech was perchance racy of the soil, the matter
of time did not trouble me. Why should it? The day was mine and the
promise of it, my object was not to cover so many miles and make them
meaningless by undue haste, but to linger long enough in pleasant
places, the more remote the more to my mind, so that they could make
their appeal to me and I could gather something of the spirit of
them--a something beyond what the eye merely sees.
"Wise men," says Kingsley, "go a-fishing"; they also go a-travelling,
and I can imagine no touring ground--I write this having wandered far
and wide in foreign lands--more delightful than rural England, away
from the ugliness of modern cities and all that has to do with them. By
not confining myself to the high-road but by seeking the byway and the
lane I got right into the heart of the real, unspoilt country, where
pleasant pastoral scenery, time-honoured homes, quiet farmsteads, old
coaching inns (I hope I have not talked too much of them), peaceful
villages, each with their ancient churches, quaint little market-towns
picturesquely unprogressive, and here and there a ruined abbey or
crumbling castle, grey with years, gladden the eye of the pilgrim.
Places and scenes to be remembered.
Neither speed, by which we miss much, nor reliance on guide-books
formed any part of my programme, for, as Sir Arthur Helps says,
"in travel it is remarkable how much more pleasure we obtain from
unexpected incidents than from deliberate sightseeing." I set forth
for Anywhere by any roads, trusting to fortune for what I might see,
content to know that I should arrive at a good many places.
One confession, perhaps, I may make. My book was mainly written at odd
times and in varying moods during the journey, when the impressions of
people I came across, of places and scenes, were fresh upon me. It is
a first-hand, unvarnished record of experiences, but little altered
or mended since, and I have been minded to leave it so, for the like
reason that I generally prefer an artist's rough sketch and the spirit
of it to his finished picture--for polish is not always an improvement,
sometimes it is but mere gloss.
The route that eventually evolved itself is but roughly indicated in my
Sketch Map, for I found it impossible, on a map of so small a scale, to
trace all our devious wanderings, or to note more than a few of the
many places visited. As to the illustrations, in a few cases where my
photographs unfortunately proved failures I have ventured to replace
them with my own drawings; for these--they are but mere brush notes--I
crave a kind indulgence.
If I missed anything worth seeing on the way, I can only plead with
Plato of old that "as it is the commendation of a good huntsman to find
game in a wide wood, so it is no imputation if he hath not caught all."
J. J. HISSEY.
TREVIN TOWERS,
EASTBOURNE.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
Different methods of travel--The old coaching days--Maps _versus_
guide-books--The fortune of the road--The South Downs--Hilly roads--The
price of beauty--The sentimental traveller--A lonely farmstead--Oxen at
work--A quaint old-world village 1
CHAPTER II
A quiet valley--The importance of the unimportant--Moated and haunted
houses--Romances in stone--A farmhouse holiday--A picture-book
village--A matter of Fate--The tomb of Gibbon the historian--A gruesome
happening--Upright burials--An interesting church--A curious epitaph 17
CHAPTER III
An old coaching inn--The resurrection of the road--Far from
anywhere--The charm of the unexpected--A historic milestone--"Mine
host" of past days--Our port-wine drinking ancestors--The lure of the
lane--Village life--Miniature effigy of a knight--The tomb of "the good
Archbishop Leighton"--A church clerk's story 40
CHAPTER IV
Dane Hill--Epitaphs--A wild bit of country--Ashdown
Forest--Exploring--The use of maps--Curious inn signs--A
Tudor home--The Devil's door--A medieval priest and guest
house--Old-fashioned flowers--An ancient interior--Curious
carvings--Roads in the old times--The window and hearth tax 59
CHAPTER V
"Great-upon-Little"--The woods of Sussex--A maze of lanes--Frensham
Pond--A holiday haunt--The legend of the shivering reeds--Rural
inns--Roughing it(?)--Waverley Abbey--The monks of old--The sites
of abbeys--Quiet country towns--Stocks and whipping-post--A curious
font--"A haven of rest" 80
CHAPTER VI
"Mine ease in mine inn"--King John's Castle--Greywell--Country
odours--Hidden beauty-spots--The valley of the Kennett--A remote
spot--Our picturesque villages--The charm of ancientness--Solitude and
genius--Coate--Richard Jefferies' birthplace 100
CHAPTER VII
Wootton Bassett--A quaint market-hall--Old towns--A Roman
road--The spirit of the past--A pre-Elizabethan gate-house--The
Royal Agricultural College--Chat with an antiquary--Norman
doorways--Second-hand book catalogues--Syde--Cotswold houses--Over the
Cotswolds--At a Jacobean inn 121
CHAPTER VIII
The Vale of Evesham--A stormy drive--An angler's inn--A big
fish--Dating from "the flood"!--Fishermen's tales--The joys of "the
gentle craft"--Hotel visitors' books--A "quiet day"--Burford church
and its monuments--The golden age of travel--A fine old half-timber
inn--Ludlow--A Saxon doorway 141
CHAPTER IX
Place names--Bell ringing for lost travellers--A Robber's Grave
and its story--Wild Wales--A picturesque interior--The fascination
of the moors--Machynlleth--A Royal and ancient house--Ten miles of
beauty--Aberdovey--Tramps and their ways--The poetical tramp 161
CHAPTER X
Mallwyd--Falling waters--Dinas Mawddwy--Amongst the moors and
mountains--A wild drive--A farmer's logic--A famous old inn--A
fisherman's tale--A Roman inscribed stone--Brass to old Thomas Parr--A
cruel sport--Wem and its story--A chat with "mine host"--Hawkestone and
its wonders 182
CHAPTER XI
Red Castle--A stately ruin--Old houses and new owners--The joy of
discovery--High Ercall and its story--Mills and millers--The life of
a stone-breaker--Old folk-songs--Haughmond Abbey--Ancient tombs--A
peaceful spot--A place for a pilgrimage 203
CHAPTER XII
An angler's haunt--Ferries and stepping-stones--Curious old
stained-glass window--The ruins of Uriconium--Watling Street--The
Wrekin--Richard Baxter's old home--A Cabinet minister's story--A pretty
village--Buildwas Abbey--Ironbridge--The "Methodists' Mecca" 221
CHAPTER XIII
Madeley Court--Chat with a collier--The miner's rule of life--Charles
II. in hiding--The building of Boscobel--The story of a moated house--A
stirring episode--A startling discovery--A curious planetarium--A
wishing-well--Lilleshall Abbey--"The Westminster Abbey of
Shropshire"--A freak in architecture--Tong Castle--Church clerk-hunting
234
CHAPTER XIV
A wonderful collection of tombs--A tombstone inscription
by Shakespeare--A leper's door--Relics--Manufacturing the
antique--Curiosity shops--The Golden Chapel--"The Great Bell of
Tong"--White Ladies Nunnery--The grave of Dame Joan--Boscobel and its
story--A tradition about The "Royal Oak" 253
CHAPTER XV
A town with two names--An amusing mistake--Abbot's Bromley
and its quaint horn dance--Dr. Johnson doing penance at
Uttoxeter--Burton-on-Trent--The "Hundreds All" milestone--Indoor
wind-dials--Stone-milled flour--The old Globe Room at Banbury--Dick
Turpin's pistol--A strange find 272
CHAPTER XVI
A gruesome carving--Architectural tit-bits--An ancient and
historic hostelry--Chipping Norton--Wychwood--A parson's
story--"Timothying"--Shipton-under-Wychwood--On the Cotswolds--"The
grey old town" of Burford--Two old manor-houses--A new
profession--Highworth--Church relics 293
CHAPTER XVII
Little country towns--The romance of the ferry--"The Bear" at
Woodstock--Curious conditions of tenure--Where the Black Prince
was born--Islip--The mystery of Joseph's Stone--An English
Holland--Boarstall Tower--The ancient town of Brill--"Acres for
Aeroplanes"--Stokenchurch--A quaint hiring fair 316
CHAPTER XVIII
An inn of the old-fashioned sort--A chat with "mine host"--A weird
experience--Ghost stories--An ancient rectory house--A quaint
interior--A haunted passage--Lost in a fog--The game of bowls--An old
posting bill--The siege of Alton church--Ants as weather prophets 334
CHAPTER XIX
The Meon Valley--Warnford--A hidden church--A house "a million years
old"!--A Saxon sun-dial--A ruined home--Corhampton and its Saxon
church--A modern "Naboth's Vineyard"--An out-of-the-world village--A
curious story--Quaint carvings and their legend--A church tower built
by servants 349
CHAPTER XX
A tramp's story--A relic of a famous sea-fight--A tame road--Inn
gardens--New landlords and old traditions--Chichester market-cross--A
wind-swept land--"Dull and dreary Bognor"--A forgotten
poet--Littlehampton--Country sights and sounds--A lulling landscape 363
CHAPTER XXI
Travel in the old days--Sequestered Sussex--Country homes--A mellow
land--A gibbet post and its story--Chiddingly and its church--The
Pelham buckle--Wayside crosses--St. Dunstan's tongs and his anvil--A
curious brass--Iron Stocks--Home again 379
INDEX 397
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
A MOATED MANOR-HOUSE _Frontispiece_
HAUNTED! 20
A SUSSEX FARMSTEAD 24
OLD COACHING HOSTELRY, SHEFFIELD PARK, SUSSEX 42
AN ANGLER'S MODEST INN 42
AN OLD TUDOR HOME, WEST HOATHLY 67
A PRE-REFORMATION PRIEST-HOUSE, WEST HOATHLY 72
"A GOOD HONEST ALEHOUSE" 87
AT "THE QUEEN'S HEAD" 96
AN OLD MILL 108
OLD TOLL-HOUSE ON BATH ROAD 111
THE VILLAGE POST OFFICE 116
SYDE CHURCH 133
GATEHOUSE, STANWAY 138
SAXON DOORWAY, STANTON LACY CHURCH 159
A BIT OF WILD WALES 170
WELSH MOUNTAINS AND MOORLANDS 186
THE RUINED HALL OF MORETON CORBET 208
HAUGHMOND ABBEY, CHURCH DOORWAY 217
HAUGHMOND ABBEY, CHAPTER-HOUSE 218
BUILDWAS ABBEY, LOOKING EAST 229
BUILDWAS ABBEY, LOOKING WEST 230
MADELEY COURT 236
MADELEY COURT, GATEHOUSE 239
LILLESHALL ABBEY 250
FIGURE OF SIR ARTHUR VERNON, TONG CHURCH 257
BOSCOBEL 257
THE PRIEST'S DOORWAY 296
DOORWAY OF THE CROWN INN, SHIPTON-UNDER-WYCHWOOD 303
BABLOCKHYTHE FERRY 318
BOARSTALL TOWER FROM THE MOAT 328
A FOURTEENTH-CENTURY DOORWAY 344
AN OLD-TIME HOME 367
A JACOBEAN DOORWAY 383
A LEISURELY TOUR IN
ENGLAND
CHAPTER I
Different methods of travel--The old coaching days--Maps _versus_
guide-books--The fortune of the road--The South Downs--Hilly
roads--The price of beauty--The sentimental traveller--A lonely
farmstead--Oxen at work--A quaint old-world village.
There are many ways of exploring the country: one may walk, cycle, ride
horseback, or drive a horse in some conveyance, go by crawling caravan
or speedy motor-car--each to his fancy or opportunity. Perhaps there is
no best way of travel. I say this after having sampled all the methods
mentioned, excepting caravanning, for I have tramped it knapsack on
back, and enjoyed the tramping, through Switzerland, Scotland, the Lake
District, Wales, Cornwall, and Devon; I have taken long cycling tours;
I have driven in a phaeton and dogcart from one end of our land to
another; I have ridden about country on horseback with a pack; I have
driven my own motor-car for more miles than I can remember, and without
mishap--so I know, or ought to know, something about the subject, but
I will not venture to lay down any dictum, for "What's one man's meat
is another man's poison." The thing is to see the country, but what is
worth seeing cannot be seen in a hurry.
Walking enthusiasts declare that walking is the only way, and certainly
the pace that binds the pedestrian permits of leisured observation,
almost compels it indeed: therein much virtue lies. Still there are
other ways, and the convenience of a conveyance is not to be despised,
for there are born wanderers, like myself, who have grown old at
the game, and have come to that time of life when they prefer to be
comfortably carried than to carry a load. Then there is the further
comfort of not being unduly stinted in the matter of luggage, for given
a conveyance, even sundry luxuries such as a luncheon-basket, camera,
rugs, sketching materials, fishing-tackle (should an opportunity for
sport occur), a book or two to while away a possibly dull evening, and
a plentiful supply of maps may be taken without inconvenience. To foot
it does not enhance the scenic charms of the way.
Stevenson, who was a great walker, confesses: "It must not be imagined
that a walking tour, as some would have us fancy, is merely a better
or worse way of seeing the country. There are many ways of seeing
landscape quite as good." I am glad to quote Stevenson in this respect,
for I have had it so frequently dinned into me that the only way really
to see the country is afoot. Now I went not afoot, but travelled in my
reliable little motor-car, conveniently little for exploring narrow
lanes and crooked byways; and though I went by car I went leisurely.
Truly there is no poetry about a motor-car; it has not existed long
enough to have gained the halo of romance, so to write of a motor tour
makes any appeal to sentiment impossible. This is a handicap; for
sentiment does count, even in this matter-of-fact world, let wiseacres
say what they will.
Possibly our ancestors saw little romance in the stage-coach or
postchaise; to them they were commonplace affairs; indeed they often
complained bitterly about the former, the misery of the outside seats
in stormy weather and in winter time; moreover, the inside passengers
were generally sadly cramped for want of room; then the coaches
sometimes overturned, and were frequently uncomfortably crowded. We
view those days through rose-coloured spectacles--Time is the romancer.
I wonder whether our descendants in the far future will ever look back
longingly and lovingly to "the good old motoring days"? Granted that
many motorists rush through the country gathering but "hurrygraphs" on
the way--that is the fault of the man, not the car. It is unfortunate
that at the very beginning of the chronicle of my tour I should feel
a need, perhaps a fanciful one, to make excuse for the mode of taking
it. The car was but a means to an end; let us forget all about it and
consider only the journey wherein my pleasure lay.
I had no programme, no previously prepared plan of route to follow, so
happily escaped the tiresomeness of keeping or endeavouring to keep
to one. All roads are good roads to me, provided they lead through
a pleasant country, and so to enjoyment begotten of contentment:
"I travel not to go anywhere but to go." In a definite itinerary I
find no attraction. Freedom is the essence of a real holiday, and I
would be as free to veer about as a weather-vane that the wind plays
on, free to change my course at the call of any inviting byway or
lane, the beckoning of a beautiful distance, or at any other passing
prompting, or even at the unaccountable mood of the moment; and this
without any feeling of reproach. As to guide-book compulsion to see
this or that, I would have none of it. I took a supply of Bartholomew's
Reduced Ordnance Survey Maps with me on a scale of four miles to the
inch, covering all England and Wales, and these were all the guides
I troubled about: unlike some guides they were reliable, I could do
my own romancing. Thus provided I wandered careless of direction or
destination; these and the distance done each day were but trivial
details unworthy of consideration--the joy of the journey was the thing.
I never knew when I started forth in the morning where the evening
would find me, nor had I any concern so long as the needful inn for
the night materialised; and if the first inn I came to was not to my
liking, with a tireless car, being master of my Fate, I was enabled
to drive on to another more to my mind. That is certainly one of the
advantages of travelling by machine instead of by muscle.
I trusted, as I travelled on, wholly to the fortune of the road,
letting, so to say, the good things come to me, I did not go in search
of them--a delightfully simple method of touring, but it served my
purpose well and saved much map-consulting and asking of the way,
and the vexation of sometimes losing it. My only care was, as far as
possible, to find fresh roads to explore and taverns new wherein to
take my ease.
Certain motorists there be to whom speed and long distances
accomplished alone appeal; these need a whole continent to travel over,
whilst a modest portion of old England, with a bit of wild Wales thrown
in for the sake of varying the scenery, sufficed me. Humboldt once
remarked of a great wanderer that he had "travelled further and seen
less than any one he knew." Now I trust to make clear that though I did
not travel far, I saw a great deal.
I was prepared for any adventures should Fortune so favour me, but
adventures are hardly to be expected in settled lands, beyond, perhaps,
the remote possibility of the motor breaking down at nightfall on
some lonely moor far from human habitation; but nothing of the
kind happened, for my car gave no sort of trouble--not even tyre
trouble--from the start to the finish of the journey. But then it was
driven at a moderate pace, and carefully. The journey was void of
excitement: happily so, for though I have suffered sundry adventures in
my life, I realise they are more enjoyable in the telling than in the
experiencing.
Says Hazlitt, "One of the pleasantest things in the world is going a
journey." There I am wholly with him, but not when he adds, "I like
to go by myself." I am afraid Hazlitt was a selfish man. Then he
continues: "I can enjoy society in a room, but out of doors Nature
is company enough for me.... Instead of a friend in a postchaise, or
in a Tilbury, to exchange good things with, and vary the same stale
topics over again, for once let me have a truce with impertinence."
As to going alone, surely a sympathetic companion by your side, even
though not a word be said at times, only a presence felt, can in no way
lessen the joys of a journey? A companion does away with any sense of
loneliness that is apt at times to come over the solitary wanderer like
a cloud over the bright sunshine; for after all, in spite of certain
philosophers, man is a communicative being. A beautiful scene, or an
interesting place, doubly appeals to me when I have some one near by
to express and share my delight in it. But, in truth, a sympathetic
companion is not always to be had. Now it happened that my wife was
prevented from taking her place in the car--"Excepto quod non simul
esses, caetera laetus," I could only say. No one else was at the moment
available; so perforce I had to take my journey companionless or forgo
it to an indefinite future. The latter alternative was unthinkable; a
lost opportunity is not always recoverable; I trust no future. "Elapsum
semel non ipse possit Jupiter reprehendere," said Phaedrus a long while
ago, to quote the ancients again, and a truth is a truth for all time.
After all I did not go alone, for I took my faithful fox-terrier with
me. A dog is the best substitute for a human companion; indeed, I
would prefer to travel with a dog of the right sort to venturing with
an untried human companion any day--at least you cannot fall out with
a dog by the way. A dog never worries you with senseless prattle; he
need never be entertained; he never complains of waiting; his patience
is inexhaustible. On the other hand, he is ever ready and only too
delighted to accompany you at any moment on a ramble afoot, or he will
keep faithful guard over your car should you leave it alone by the
wayside; and he will not grumble about his food or his quarters. I took
dog-biscuits with me for my terrier in case of need, but generally
the crumbs that fell from his master's table sufficed him. A dog is
a most unselfish creature; a kind word or a pat perhaps now and then
he craves, and how easily and gladly these are bestowed. One cannot
ever be dull with a dog as companion; so with my dog I started on
my journey. Now, to avoid the too frequent use of the personal and
irritating "I," I crave permission at times to employ the less personal
"we," even if I have to include the dog and the car to justify that
term, or to do so forgetfully without.
It was early one sunshiny morning towards the end of May, with the
pleasant month of June to follow and the promise of it, that I mounted
my car and was off without more ado. I had carefully packed it
overnight to avoid any possible delay, and that nothing needful should
be forgotten in the haste of departure. With my holiday only just
begun, with the little world of all England before me, free to wander
wherever I would, my mind full of anticipated pleasures, I fared forth
in the most enviable of moods. From my home at the foot of the South
Downs I climbed to their breezy summit, taking the old road that leads
westwards over them, having the rolling green downs on one side, and
the glittering sea visible, but a little way off, on the other. Here
one breathes a lighter, purer air, so that the mere fact of breathing
becomes a pleasure.
My journey had a good beginning! By climbing the downs I had raised
my horizon and looked down upon the world, not with a sensation of
superiority, but with a sensation of relief, being lifted for a time
above all its tiresome trivialities and commonplace conventions. I
found myself alone with earth, and sky, and sea, rejoicing in my
loneliness, and I felt the sense of spaciousness of the wide, bright,
overarching sky, of the boundless waters, and of the vast panorama of
rounded hills reaching far away into the dim and dreamy distance, where
the solid land looked as unsubstantial as a cloud.
Broad and bare to the skies
The great Down-country lies,
Green in the glance of the sun,
Fresh with the clean salt air.
My road led me a little inland, for I avoided the tourist-haunted one
that winds over Beachy Head, that grand headland that rises so sheer,
white, and commandingly above the sounding sea. Would one could behold
it in its ancient seclusion! Such spots demand solitude, or they cease
to be impressive. "The fatal gift of fame" has been the headland's
undoing, aided by its proximity to a fashionable watering-place, and
the crowd it attracts from early morning till the sun is setting. They
even sell picture post-cards there and bottled ginger-beer! Need more
be said? Yet I recently read an article in a London paper upon "The
Pleasant Solitude of Beachy Head." Was it written in Fleet Street, I
wonder?
All the roads over the downs are hilly ones; they are for ever either
ascending or descending; their gradients are generally fairly severe,
and their surfaces none of the best. Now and then you come upon a
comparatively level stretch, but not for long. So we soon began a
long descent, only to climb steeply again and to find ourselves on a
wind-swept height with a tiny flint-built church crowning the topmost
ridge of it. Friston church it was marked on our map--an unpretending
building, yet not wanting in dignity, and simple dignity is a rare
quality, as delightful as it is rare. Even some city-surrounded
cathedrals do not attain it. Doubtless its elevated and lonely position
gave the humble little fane a certain poetic charm, for it is not only
the building but its place in the prospect that affects the observer.
Stonehenge in a farm field, away from the wild and open plain that
surrounds it, would lose much of its impressiveness; it has lost some
of it already by being railed in. A castle in a hollow, as many were
built to secure the services of a moat, is not the same to the eye
as a castle boldly dominating the landscape from some overhanging
crag. Bodiam's ruined Castle, set in a wooded valley, is beautiful
but not impressive; on the other hand, Carreg Cennin Castle in South
Wales, though inferior in size and much poorer a ruin, is singularly
impressive, standing as it does isolated on the top of a perpendicular
precipice of rock. That is the sort of castle I pictured to myself and
used to draw in fancy when I was a boy.
Facing the primitive church, with our road and a pond between, we
noticed, what is fast becoming a thing of the past, an old wooden
windmill, its sails hurtling round apace in the brisk breeze. The
miller, white with flour dust, gazed lazily at us from out a window of
his aged and picturesque mill: the wind was his willing slave doing
his work for him and working hard that day, why therefore should he
not laze and rejoice? The hum of his mill wheels grinding their best
must have been as music to his ears. All winds that blow are good
for the miller; the sailor is not so fortunate, but to the miller it
matters not from what quarter the breezes come, so long as they come.
I have been told by a meteorological authority that the wind average
for England is eight hours out of the twenty-four. I should imagine
that the winds upon the open downs greatly exceed that, and a good,
refreshing, salt savour they bring with them, and so a sentiment of the
sea and its mystery.
The wide and restful greenery of the downs appeals to and gratifies the
eye. In a less moist climate than ours the downs would be but parched
and barren ground: blame our climate as we may, and the frequent rains
that the prevailing west winds bring, it is these frequent rains that
give our homeland its rich verdure and charming mellowness which so
attracts the foreigner from sunnier climes. Beauty demands its price,
and considering the wealth of beauty granted us I hardly think we ought
greatly to begrudge the price of it.
On the downs the eye is free to rove unchecked over miles and miles of
this greenery even to the most distant horizon; that is another delight
of them. Their rolling masses, no height being much greater than
another, might be likened to some gigantic ocean suddenly arrested in a
mighty storm and converted, by some magic, into good dry land, and here
and there the white chalk showing might serve for the foam of crested
waves arrested also: at least such a fancy came to me as I looked over
their sloping sides, their gentle rises and falls, billowy down beyond
billowy down in an apparently endless succession. The very green of
them, though not translucent, distantly reminded me of the green of the
mid-Atlantic rollers raised by a gale that for some time had ceased to
blow so that their surface is comparatively smooth and not fretted by
wind-driven lines. There is an indescribable vacancy about the downs
that suggests the impressive vacancy of the sea, the boundlessness of
it. But each man sees things with his own eyes, and to some my fancies
may seem far-fetched; they were, but still they pleased me, for I am a
sentimental traveller.
From our elevated road, some distance on, the curious little village of
West Dean was revealed to us, a huddle of roofs and a tiny fane hidden
in a hollow of the hills--"a cup full of beauty." We looked right down
upon it and over its grey church tower and over the lichen-laden uneven
roofs of its few dwellings--roofs all covered with golden lichen,
gloriously golden in the bright sunshine; I have never seen roofs so
completely thus covered before, and then I realised what a beautifier,
even on a large scale, the lowly lichen can be. The village had the
rare look of remoteness, so detached was it from the outer world by
the wide and folding downs, so far from rail and frequented road. We
determined to visit it when we reached the valley by the long descent
which followed and idle there a time.
At the foot of the descent we found a large and lone old-fashioned
farmstead surrounded by a colony of flint-built barns and out-houses;
the little slothful river Cuckmere seeking its way to the sea,
with many windings, ran close by. The grey old farmstead with its
weather-stained walls, the tranquil, reedy river below, the bare and
silent downs beyond, struck a note of intense quietness. A peacefulness
profound brooded over this out-of-the-world spot: it might have been
a hundred miles from anywhere. A picture, too, it made, effective in
its breadth and simplicity. There we rested for an hour or more, just
because it pleased us so to do. We travelled in search of peace and
found it in a land
Where little lost Down churches praise
The God who made the hills.
Near to the old farm we noticed a yoke of black, long-horned, but
meek-eyed oxen slowly drawing a waggon up the steep slope of the
hillside.
The slow, black oxen toiling through the day
Tireless, impassive still,
From dawning dusk and chill
To twilight grey.
You seldom see such a sight nowadays, and only rarely on the South
Downs or the lonely Cotswolds. Presently the oxen stopped for the
waggon to be loaded, and we took the opportunity of having a chat with
their driver, a sunburnt man clad in a faded grey suit, and having the
soft speech and courteous manner that so often marks the Sussex folk.
"Oxen," said he, "beat horses at work any day on these hills. I would
not care to drive horses if I could drive oxen; they are a bit slow
perhaps, but not lazy; they don't want so much urging as horses; I
never has any trouble with them, I have just to give them a reminder
with my stick now and then and that is all; you don't need a whip
with oxen." I noticed that the stick he held was a long one of hazel,
just a thin stick and nothing more, and I noticed that the yokes were
fashioned of wood with a heavy cross-bar at the top, and these joined
each pair of oxen together, being kept in position by a slight rounded
wooden collar below.[1]
[1] Since writing the above I noted the following paragraph in my
morning paper: "A team of draught oxen in Sussex was disposed of near
Lewes. The wooden yoke was purchased by the Mayor of Brighton for
presentation to the Brighton Museum." A future generation may need
the aid of a Commentator to understand the agricultural operations of
to-day and the recent past.
Oxen, the driver explained to me, pull from the top of their necks and
not by the collar as horses do; yet on lifting a yoke I saw no signs of
worn hair, only a smoothness where the yoke touched. Oxen, I learnt,
were broken in to draught work at two years old and kept at it from
five to six years, after which they were fattened for the market. Their
beef was somewhat tough, as might be expected, and chiefly bought by
certain institutions. Oxen, I further learnt, were cheaper to keep than
horses, as they were fed mainly on hay, chaff, and roots; whilst horses
needed oats. So I travelled and picked up odd bits of information.
Then we sought out West Dean, prepared to tramp there if no road were
available, for West Dean we were determined to see. Unexpectedly
we discovered a narrow lane that led to it, the downs rising sheer
above on either hand, leaving just room for the lane and a little
clear-running stream which we followed up to the village.
A quaint village it proved to be, to use a term too often misapplied,
one that surely has no counterpart in all the land. Picturesque it
could hardly be called; but though I prize both the picturesque and
quaint, the quaint pleases me the better because it is so much the rarer.
Its tiny church has an uncommon tower--a strong structure, well suited
to its purpose, but devoid of disturbing decoration that too often
fails to decorate and serves but to vex the eye; otherwise, though
ancient enough, the church is not noteworthy; still the simple shapely
tower gives it a certain charm and character; and character, whether in
man or building, is a thing to be desired.
Facing the churchyard we discovered a most interesting relic of past
times when religion was more to the fore than it is to-day. This was a
pre-Reformation priest-house of the fourteenth century or thereabouts,
an austere building of thick rough masonry, deep and narrow arched
windows, and a great chimney-stack at one end, a building probably
erected in this remote spot by the travelling monks who had not to
live in it. I have, here and there, come upon an ancient fourteenth or
fifteenth-century priest-house, for they have not all been improved
away. There is one at Alfriston, another at West Hoathly--both in
Sussex,--and another at Muchelney in Somerset, but these are all
half-timbered buildings fairly lighted, and have not the solid, gloomy
look of the prison-like structure at West Dean, the windows of which
were originally probably of horn, or even possibly mere open spaces
with shutters.
One would imagine, being so close to the sea with the river
conveniently at hand, that West Dean must have its smuggling
traditions: those free traders of old would hardly have overlooked so
handy a spot; but if such traditions there be, we could glean nothing
about them, for we saw not a soul in the place to speak to; the only
living thing we observed was a chicken that apparently had lost itself.
Never before have I been in a village with such a forgotten look; there
the changeful centuries bring no change. Our car stood unnoticed by the
side of a tall and broken flint wall that enclosed a weed-grown garden,
wherein stood a great, round, and roofless pigeon-cote; not a face at a
window did we see. West Dean took no note of our coming or our going.
We drove into, and drove out of, a village asleep, and not even the hum
of our engines or the sound of our horn awoke it. There brooded over
all a sense of silence and solitude like that of the central sea.