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.
Leaving Fletching by a leafy lane, we shortly came to a grass-margined
highway, and where the lane and highway met, stood, somewhat back
from the road, a lonely old inn--"The Sheffield Arms" to wit--a
well-preserved example of a modest country hostelry of the easy-going
Georgian era; one that externally shows no signs of alteration since
it first was built, and few are the inns of the period that have not
suffered some change during those changeful years. As our posting and
coach-travelling forefathers saw "The Sheffield Arms" with its long
range of stabling on one side, so it looks to-day, only a little more
time-toned and weather-stained, with less life about it and, what life
there is, less picturesque.
There was no other building in sight on the long, straight, but
undulating stretch of tree-bordered road fronting the inn, excepting
one or two lowly cottages half hidden in woods, so out of direct
observation that they did not lessen the impression of loneliness and
the illusion of remoteness that the place gave. "Miles from Anywhere.
No Hurry," is the legend displayed on the gable of another lonely inn
at Upware in the Fens; it might as well be written on the signboard of
"The Sheffield Arms."
An ancient coaching hostelry of some pretence, that has seen better
days and other ways, that has not been modernised, standing forlorn
by the roadside, but still appearing too proud to mourn its long-lost
prosperity, always makes its appeal to me, for it strikes a pathetic
note. I do not need the building to be picturesque, though I would
prefer it thus, so long as it be not too much decayed, only that it
possess the glamour of age, has entertained travellers of the long ago,
and so made its little history. Then I humour my fancy. Many an old inn
of this kind has a sort of magnetic attraction for the few who indulge
in that despised article, sentiment: Stevenson confessed that he could
never get over his hankering after a room in a wayside tavern in which
to start his tale. There is romance about a lonely and once flourishing
inn, however plain that inn may be--romance that clings to it as surely
as ivy clings to a crumbling ruin. I feel that, in the days gone by,
some eventful happening only waiting to be revealed must have taken
place within the walls of such a one, some romance unrecorded yet.
For real romance lingered long into the coaching age, but steam and
electricity have killed it. Now
Romance beside his unstrung lute,
Lies stricken mute.
Had "The Sheffield Arms" a tale to tell? To me it looked as though it
had, but then it must be remembered the poetry of a place lies as much
in the eyes of the beholder as in the place itself; what is a romance
in building to one is but bricks and mortar to another. We do not all
see alike; a Turner, a David Cox, a Constable would each render the
same landscape differently. Once when admiring an old ivy-covered Tudor
manor-house I ventured to remark to a native on the beauty of it; he
scornfully rejoined, "I see nought in it, it wants pulling down." The
eye is but a lens; it is the mind that really sees and interprets.
"The Sheffield Arms" is well retired from the highway by a wide space
of grassy ground whereon grows a flourishing clump of trees; on the
roadside of this clump stands a large, two-pillared, crossed-top
signpost; from this depends a swinging sign, in the good old-fashioned
way as an inn-sign should--a sign that boldly proclaims the business
of the house, so that even the rushing motorist could hardly pass it
unheeded by. Without the needful sign one would hardly guess that
the shy building was an inn, so little otherwise does it assert its
purpose--and modesty becomes even a building!
There I pulled up beneath the welcome shade of the trees, sought the
cool interior of the hostel and called for a glass of ale, for the day
was hot, and mortal man is sometimes thirsty. The ale was good, and
brought to mind the poet's query:
Say, for what were hop-yards meant,
Or why was Burton built on Trent?
Why, to provide good ale, of course, such as I sampled there that
day. Then I got a-chatting with the landlord in hopes of gleaning
something of the old inn's past story. I found much civility, but to my
disappointment the landlord (whose name of Weller, by the way, was a
reminder of Dickens) had scant information of the kind I sought. Truly
he said it once had been a coaching house: I could have told him that.
[Illustration: OLD COACHING HOSTELRY, SHEFFIELD PARK, SUSSEX.]
[Illustration: AN ANGLER'S MODEST INN.]
The inn, I imagine, after the coming of the railway suffered from long
neglect, left stranded high and dry, as it was, on a travel-forsaken
road, its profitable posting and coaching custom gone, and with little
else to depend upon: how it existed at all during that stagnant period
is a wonder. Who would ever then have dreamt of the resurrection of the
road that the motor-car has brought about? How the landlords of the
half-forsaken country inns must have rubbed their hands with glee to
find custom, and profitable custom too, come again their way. It was a
miracle; so they refurbished their ancient houses and blessed the car
that others cursed. In this respect, at any rate, the motor has done
good service, for a quiet country inn is a boon to the traveller who
does not always care to seek his rest in crowded noisy towns. There was
a long time, after the coaches had disappeared, when it was the rarest
thing to find a decent rural inn, and the best of these existed for the
sake of fishermen; they were unfortunately few, but mostly excellent,
for the fisherman loves good cheer--so does his fellow-sportsman the
motorist.
At the first glance the interior of the ancient hostelry did not appear
inviting. I found my way into a large, cheerless apartment, erst, I
imagined, the coffee-room; truly there were flowers on the table,
and a door stood open wide on to a little garden where sweet-scented
roses grew whose perfume was wafted into the chamber, but there was
no carpet on the floor, and bare boards, though clean and stained a
warm hue, are noisy to the tread and comfortless to the eye. I was
not impressed, for though one despises luxury, one looks for comfort.
Then I jokingly asked the maid, who put in a sudden appearance on the
scene, if they ever had any visitors stopping there: thought I, it is
a needless query. To my surprise she replied, "We often have motoring
parties for the night, and sometimes they stay a day or two; would you
like to see our rooms?" I thought I would; I expected to find musty
chambers, four-poster beds, and forbidding antiquated furniture, but I
found bedrooms scrupulously clean, neat, and simply but sufficiently
furnished; I have slept in rooms less comfortable and less clean at
expensive town hotels. There was, too, a large but cosy sitting-room
supplied with really easy chairs, and--who would have thought it?--a
good bathroom! Upstairs the old inn was clean and comfortable, and the
not-too-exacting traveller might take his ease there with much content:
indeed I almost wished I had been belated and compelled to do so.
It is always a delight to me to stay at a real old-fashioned country
inn, far from anywhere: I love the peace of it. The country is as
tranquil as ever, but the towns are, alas! more noisy. Would Dr.
Johnson care to "walk down" his beloved Fleet Street to-day, I wonder,
with all the twentieth-century bustle of it? De Quincey, too, dearly
loved the quiet country inn; writing in 1802, of a walking tour he
took, he remarks, "Happier life I cannot imagine than this vagrancy
... and towards evening a courteous welcome in a rustic inn. It has
often struck me that a world-wearied man, who sought for the peace of
monasteries separated from their gloomy captivity--peace and silence
such as theirs combined with the large liberty of nature--could not do
better than revolve amongst these modest inns."
At the rear of "The Sheffield Arms" the country looked inviting with
its green meadows and big branching trees, and noticing a footpath
I was tempted to take a stroll. I had not wandered far when to my
surprise I came upon a deep, rock-girt, and shady glen of much charm;
at the head of this I caught a glimpse of a large still sheet of
silvery water, a lake in miniature, for it was perhaps a quarter of
a mile in length or more, of generous width also, and from its sides
rose, steeply and abruptly, hills, wooded to the skyline--wooded hills
that doubled themselves on its mirror-like surface. I have seldom come
so suddenly upon so lovely a spot without a hint of what was to be
revealed; in truth the scenery gave no suggestion of this, and, as a
rule, Sussex lacks the enlivening presence of water. There was a joy in
the discovery of that beauty-spot; nothing more delicious of the kind
have I ever seen.
Good things that come of course far less do please
Than those that come by sweet contingencies.
Possibly this sheet of water was artificial, though it had purely a
natural look, for it may have been one of the numerous "hammer-ponds"
constructed long ago for the service of an iron mill or mills in
the now almost forgotten days when Sussex was the Black Country of
England, when the present peaceful and pastoral land, as Camden says,
"resounded with the noise of busy hammer-mills beating upon the iron,"
and its pure air was polluted with the smoke of many furnaces and
forges of which Sheffield possessed its share. Sussex wood-smelted
iron was reckoned the toughest in the world, and iron ore still
abounds in the county; it was the failure of fuel for smelting, owing
to the exhaustion of the forests and the near proximity of iron and
coal in the North, that caused the decay of the extensive Sussex iron
industry, not the lack of ore--a fortunate happening as far as the
beauty of the land is concerned. Reminders of the period may be found
in the many place-names on the map, such as "Steelforgeland," "Furnace
Farm," "Cinder Hill," "Hammerfield," and numerous others of a similar
nature. Those ancient iron-masters have left their gracious mark in
the land by the many beautiful homes, standing yet, that they built
for their convenience and enjoyment in the days of their prosperity:
they built not only houses, they built pictures in stone, in brick, in
half-timber, delightful to look upon; perhaps "they built better than
they knew." Amongst the many in half-timber Middle House at Mayfield is
a good example, and of those in stone Batemans, near Burwash, the home
of Rudyard Kipling, is another.
At the end of the lakelet I discovered a picturesque water-mill--grey
and old, with a weatherboard upper story, and a red-tiled,
lichen-laden, uneven roof, silvery and golden--its dark green wheel
revolving round in a leisurely fashion to the droning of the ancient
machinery within, and the quiet splash of water without. A ready-made
picture awaiting the artist to paint it, if he has not already done
so. Somehow the sounds of water and wind-driven machinery seem to me
to be different in quality to that of steam-driven machinery with
its insistent noise: water and wind are natural powers, and both
water-mills and windmills with their adjuncts are picturesque objects
to the eye, but I know no steam-mill that is not ugly. In the days
before steam became the almost universal power, and the modern builder
and engineer had not disfigured the country with their assertive
erections, how doubly beautiful England must have been! Would that
photography had been invented ages ago, then we might possibly have had
photographs of Elizabethan England preserved to us, so that we might
better judge of its picturesqueness than by descriptions and drawings
not always to be trusted.
I know of no other pleasanter stretch of highway in all England than
those few miles on either hand of "The Sheffield Arms"; on both
sides of it are spacious grassy margins left to nature, and they
extend as far as the eye can see, and the sum of them would come to
a considerable acreage. On these wide wastes grow big oaks and other
trees; especially noticeable are numerous clumps of Scotch firs that,
with their tall red trunks and twisted branches high above, give quite
a character to the roadscape, if I may employ so odd a term; besides
which brambles, heather, bracken, gorse, and other wild growing things
flourish on them at their own sweet will. An ideal spot for a wayside
picnic, where one might choose a secluded nook near to the road, yet
hidden from it. Here at least no "hungry nobility have swallowed up all
the land except the King's Highway." There was not a soul in sight; the
vacant road impressed me with the same sense of loneliness as does a
house deserted, for I looked for life and found none.
On a slight rise, a little away from the road and not far from the inn,
I espied a tall, shapely, solitary stone pillar, weather-stained and
worn, backed by a tangle of greenery. This aroused my curiosity, so
off I set to solve its purport--and discovered a glorified milestone,
manifestly erected in days somewhat remote; the lettering on it was, in
parts, wasted away and so difficult to decipher, but I managed to make
out certain of the names and figures, and this is what I noted:
Miles.
Westminster Bridge 39
East Grinstead 10
Lewes 10
Brighthelmstone 17
There were further inscriptions, but these were all I copied. Brighton
being given as Brighthelmstone shows how far back the stone was
placed there--those were the days when people directed their letters
"Brighthelmstone, near Lewes." I learnt afterwards that this milestone
was erected by a former Earl Sheffield in order to settle the frequent
disputes that arose with the postboys as to distances to his park and
the inn. "Private travellers," as those who posted about country were
called, had need of well-filled purses, for in addition to the charge
for posting that ranged, according to Leigh's _Road Book_ (sixth
edition of 1837), from 1s. to 1s. 9d. per mile, the postillion expected
and demanded a further 3d. a mile for himself, and more if he could
extort it; besides which the traveller frequently felt under the moral
compunction "to take something for the good of the house" during the
delay of changing horses.
On the arrival and departure of the postchaise the old-fashioned
landlord was always in polite evidence, willing to drink the
traveller's health at the traveller's expense--it was the custom of the
age. What constitutions the men of those days must have had, whether
of high or low degree! Men then there were who could drink their two,
or even three, bottles of port at night, and rise the next morning
apparently none the worse for it. When I was a youth I visited a
country squire, one of the last of the old race, and I well remember
that after dinner he drank his two bottles of port, excepting a glass
that was given to me; at the finish he was "as sober as a judge," and
the next morning, early, he was out with the hounds.
Leaving the old inn we took a narrow lane opposite to it, for it had
a pleasant look; the highway too was pleasant enough, but we thought
the lane the more likely to lead to some out-of-the-way spot and have
more picturesque possibilities: the highways serve the towns, the
byways the villages and the countryside, so always take to a lane when
you can if you desire to discover the secreted beauty of the land.
Our lane led us through a green and old-world country with no hint of
modern ugliness or aught but tranquillity about it, a tranquillity that
hardly seemed of our bustling day. The lane was long, but not too long
for us, and very winding; possibly our lanes follow the old primitive
tracks of past days when the early inhabitants, to avoid a swamp, soft
ground, or a wood, simply deviated this way and that in search of
firmer footing; even, it may be, these early inhabitants followed on
the earlier track of wild animals. Small wonder our lanes are often
so wandering--delightfully wandering, for therein lies their special
charm: who can tell what a lane may do, or what surprise each bend of
it may have in store for the traveller? Then a crooked lane controls
the pace, you cannot go fast on it, so time is compulsorily afforded to
see and absorb all that is worth seeing; the lane is for the loiterer,
though few there be who care to loiter nowadays, so the lane is almost
forsaken except by country folk and rural lovers. Some one somewhere
says, who or where I cannot now remember, nor am I sure if I have the
quotation right, but this is the drift of it, "The lane is a work of
genius, the highway that of the engineer." The lane is to the highway
as old wine is to new; there is a finer flavour about it, a rarer
charm; it leads to half-forgotten places and quiet scenes--
Where the wheels of Life swing slow,
And over all there broods the peace
Of centuries ago.
At last, after many windings and some climbings, our lane brought us
to the remote and pleasant village of Horsted Keynes, set on a hill
and surrounded by woods. If one goes in search of these out-of-the-way
spots they are apt to escape one; it is the good fortune of the true
wanderer to discover them--that is the reward of desultory travel.
Stopping the car in the wide village street, a goodly portion of the
youthful population promptly surrounded it. "A motor-car, a motor-car,"
I heard them call out to each other, as though the sight of one was
somewhat rare; perhaps but few motorists find, or lose, their way
there. To travel and escape other cars and the morning paper is a
feat even in rural England. Then apropos of nothing one of the boys
explained, "That's the way to the church, down that narrow road." "I
did not ask the way to the church," I responded; "why did you point it
out?" "Well, I thought as how you came to see it; there's nothing else
to see here." There was not, except one or two rather pretty cottages.
There before us, a little down a narrow road, stood the ancient church
with its tall shingle steeple, curiously slight. I strolled up to the
silent fane of Sunday devotion for the sake of a walk and to get a
better glimpse of the old-fashioned cottages on the way, each with
its little garden gay with flowers. Then I glanced inside the church.
I had not been there more than a minute or two before the clerk made
his appearance, somewhat out of breath in his haste to discover me
before I departed. "I saw as how you were a stranger," said he, "and
thought perhaps you would like me to show you over the church." So are
strangers' movements noted in quiet places. In many an out-of-the-world
village the coming of a stranger arouses an astonishing amount of
interest; his coming, his movements, his business, his going, are
subjects of discussion and watching. How uneventful and unexciting
must the lives of the sleepy villagers be that so small a matter
should claim their special attention; little wonder that the younger
generation among them seeks the town as a relief from the dull monotony
of its existence. How to make village life attractive is the problem,
and a pretty stiff problem too. Village halls and reading-rooms do not
solve it--the average villager scorns them; he, or she, much prefers
to idle out-of-doors doing nothing, contentedly or discontentedly,
varied by an occasional visit to the public-house. It is not an ideal
existence. What the villager needs is a wider interest in life. "Back
to the land" is a vain cry till country life is made less dull and
more desirable; but if the country in the winter-time is dull to some,
is not the town also dreary to others with its yellow fogs and muddy
streets? I am writing of the poor man who throngs the town where labour
is over-supplied and leaves the country where it is required. So the
shires are deserted and the slums crowded. I am no politician, I detest
politics as I do the devil--if they are not one and the same thing--but
from what I have seen and heard, from the many talks I have had with
the countryman lowest down in the social scale, I do feel that only
the pride of possession of his freehold cottage with a little garden
attached, or some small holding, will ever attract him back from the
town to the land. A garden to tend keeps a man's idle hours pleasantly
employed, and keeps him too away from the public-house. In the same way
I still more strongly feel that the loss of the sturdy yeoman farmer,
tilling his own little freehold, on which son succeeded father in the
good old days, is a disaster to the country. To do "yeoman's service"
had a pregnant meaning once; now it has none, for the yeoman has gone,
gone to other lands to forward their prosperity. He was foremost in the
fight on many a hard-fought field: he it was who helped to turn the
scale at Crecy and Agincourt, and his reward has been to be improved
(!) out of existence.
But I have forgotten I was with the clerk in the church. I am afraid
that at first I rather resented his intrusion, but after all he
turned out an obliging fellow, amusing too without the thought of
such a thing, so I forgave him. "It's an interesting old church," he
exclaimed. How familiar I am with that phrase, so often have I heard
it; it is the stock phrase of most clerks by which he introduces
himself to you, with the inevitable tip in view. But there he was, not
to be disregarded, and with a smile on his face; he might have looked
more serious, I thought, for I fancy he was sexton too. I don't know
why, but his smile annoyed me; however, I let him have his way. "It's a
very old church," he went on, "but it has been restored." "Do you know,
I've already discovered that," I retorted. "'Deed, sir, then I suppose
you be one of those learned antiquated gentlemen who understands
architecture. Now I think I can show you something that will interest
you. I likes to meet learned antiquities; I'm a bit of an antiquity
myself." He was!
Then he led the way to the chancel, and there he pointed out to me on
the north wall under a small canopied recess the miniature effigy of a
cross-legged Knight-Templar, with his foot resting on the usual lion
in miniature too--a very curious and interesting monument, the like
of which I have not seen before; the recumbent figure is beautifully
carved and in a good state of preservation. But why so brave and bold
a knight--it is a matter of faith with me that those knights of old
were all both brave and bold--should have such a miniature monument I
could not conceive. It perplexed even the learned clerk to account for
this strange departure from the usual life-sized effigies of warriors
who are supposed to sleep peacefully below their "stone pictures."
It could not have been want of pence, for the carving was too well
done; it could hardly have been want of space. Why, then? There was,
unfortunately, no inscription on the monument, so what the knight's
name was, or what daring deeds he may have done, or when he died, I
cannot say, but I guessed that the tomb was of about the time of Edward
I. Then the clerk told me the tale of a learned "antiquity" who had
come from afar especially to inspect this monument (so the fame of it
has spread abroad, though I had never heard of it before), and this
learned authority had declared, after carefully examining the belt
of the effigy, that the date of the monument was 1227. How he could
arrive at so exact a date I could not imagine, for after hearing this
statement I critically examined the belt but could discover no figures
thereon; and the carving in itself is surely not enough to go by. Still
my guide stuck to his story.
There were other things of minor interest the clerk pointed out to
me--the headless brass to a woman, once on the floor but now on the
wall; an old stone slab with a finely carved and raised cross, without
inscription, also built into the wall; and a number of nail holes in
the fine oak roof, showing where laths had at one period been nailed
to it to support a plaster ceiling! But I discovered for myself a
mural tablet on the chancel wall to a Mrs. Sapphira Lightmaker, "a
devout woman and a mother in Israel, widow indeed, who notwithstanding
sollicitations to a 2nd marriage, lived to 44 years." What was the
import of this? Are unsought-for "sollicitations to a 2nd marriage"
likely to shorten life?
Then the clerk asked if I knew that "the good Archbishop Leighton
is buried here?" I was not aware of it; the clerk knew more than I
did, and the fact appeared to please him. "I thought perhaps I could
tell you something you didn't know," said he. I felt complimented,
for his remark showed that in his opinion I possibly was not wholly
ignorant about other things. "Where is his tomb?" I asked. "Out in the
churchyard," was the reply; "but it was not always out in the cold;
at one time the ground was covered by a chapel, but the chapel either
fell or was pulled down." Wherever you go in England you come upon
history: at Fletching I came upon the tomb of Gibbon; here, on that
of Archbishop Leighton, and both in remote out-of-the-world villages
reached only by devious lanes.
We went without to see the tomb, a portion of the epitaph on which
runs, "In an age of religious strife he adorned the doctrine of God."
But the saintly Archbishop has a second, and an older, monument (it is
not often, indeed I do not remember such a thing before, that one finds
two monuments of different ages close together to the same person). The
older monument is in the shape of a slab set against the chancel wall,
and bears the following Latin inscription:
Depositum
Roberti Leightvn
Archiepiscopi Glasguensis
Apud Scotas
Qui Obij xxv. die Junij
Anno Dmi 1684.
Aetatis suae 74.
"Do you know," exclaimed the clerk, "I was showing this monument to
an old lady one day who appeared to take a great interest in it, for
she told me she had been recently reading about the Archbishop; then
suddenly she said, 'I suppose you knew him well, being the clerk here.
Do tell me exactly what he was like.' Now that's a true story." "What
reply did you make?" queried I. "'Madam,' I said, 'do I really look
over two hundred years old?'"
It may be remembered that the Archbishop used often to say that he
thought "an inn the fittest place to die in, it looking like a pilgrim
going home, to whom the whole world was an inn, and who was weary of
the noise and the confusion of it." And he had his wish, for he died at
the Bell Inn, Warwick Lane, London. Curiously enough, Cicero, centuries
before, expressed himself much in the same way, for thus he wrote: "Ex
vita discedo, tanquam ex hospitio, non tanquam ex domo."
As I was leaving, the clerk told me that about a mile away, in a wild
and wooded country, was Broadhurst, where the good Archbishop spent
the last years of his life. "It's a funny tumble-down old building,"
he said, "and it used to have a moat right round it, but that's filled
up; the road to it is very rough and rutty; a farmer has it now." I
know not how it was, but though an ancient and picturesque home has an
unfailing attraction for me, yet in this case I somehow neglected going
just that little out of my way to see what I understood to be one.
Truly "a very rough and rutty road" is not good for tyres, or car, but
I could have walked it: why this did not occur to me at the time now
passes my comprehension; it must have been a temporary lapse of sanity.
Even geniuses have such lapses, for it is recorded of Sir Isaac Newton
that he cut two holes in his study door, a large and a small one, for a
favourite cat and her kitten to enter by! As to Broadhurst, I can only
console myself that possibly (as Dr. Johnson once remarked of a place)
"it is worth seeing, but not going to see."