England, Picturesque and Descriptive Part 29

[Ill.u.s.tration: TUNBRIDGE CASTLE.]

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

[Ill.u.s.tration: PENSHURST CHURCH.]

To the westward of Tunbridge, and in the Medway Valley, is Penshurst, celebrated as the home of Sir Philip Sidney--a grand, gray old house, built at many periods, begun in the fourteenth century and not completed until a few years ago. It is a pretty English picture within a setting of wooded hills and silver rivers, the pattern from which Sidney drew his description of "Laconia" in _Arcadia_. The buildings, particularly their window-heads, are ornamented with the tracery peculiar to Kent.

The great hall, the earliest of these buildings, has a characteristic open-timber roof, while its minstrel-gallery, fronted by a wainscot screen, is ornamented with the badge of the Dudleys, the "bear and ragged staff." Within these halls are the family portraits of a n.o.ble lineage. Of Mary, daughter of Sir Henry Sidney and heiress of Sir John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, Ben Jonson wrote this epitaph:

"Underneath this sable hea.r.s.e Lies, the subject of all verse, Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother.

Death! ere thou hast slain another Learned and fair and good as she, Time shall throw a dart at thee."

Sir Philip Sidney was her brother, born at Penshurst in 1554. The estate came through various owners, until, in the reign of Henry II., it was granted to Sir William Sidney, who commanded a wing of the victorious English at Flodden. Sir Philip, we are told, would have been King of Poland had not Queen Elizabeth interposed, "lest she should lose the jewel of her times." Algernon Sidney, beheaded on Tower Hill, was his descendant. Penshurst is now held by Baron de l'Isle, to whom it has descended through marriage. On the estate stands the quaint old Penshurst Church with its ivy-covered porch. The Eden River falls into the Medway near Penshurst, and alongside its waters is the well-known castellated residence which still survives from the Tudor days, Hever Castle, where, it is said, Anne Boleyn was born. Sir Geoffrey Boleyn, her great-grandfather, who was Lord Mayor of London in the reign of Henry VI., began Hever Castle, which was completed by his grandson, Anne's father. It was at Hever that King Henry wooed her. The house is a quadrangle, with high pitched roofs and gables and surrounded by a double moat, and is now a farm-house. Here they show the visitor Anne Boleyn's rooms, and also the chamber where her successor, Anne of Cleves, is said to have died, though this is doubted. King Henry, however, seized the estate of Hever from his earlier wife's family, and granted it to his subsequently discarded consort after he separated from her. Northward of Tunbridge, and near Sevenoaks, is Knole, the home of the family of Hon. L. S. Sackville-West, the present British minister at Was.h.i.+ngton. It is one of the most interesting baronial mansions in England, enclosed by a park five miles in circ.u.mference.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HEVER CASTLE.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: GATEWAY OF LEEDS CASTLE.]

Proceeding eastward towards the outskirts of the Weald, we come to Leeds Castle, once the great central fortress of Kent. Standing in a commanding position, it held the road leading to Canterbury and the coast, and it dates probably from the Norman Conquest. Its moat surrounds three islands, from which, as if from the water, rise its walls and towers. This castle is now the residence of Mr. Wykeham Martin and contains many valuable antiquities. Also near the eastern border of the Weald is Tenterden, famous for its church-steeple, which Bishop Latimer has invested with a good story. The bishop in a sermon said that Sir Thomas More was once sent into Kent to learn the cause of the Goodwin Sands and the obstructions to Sandwich Haven. He summoned various persons of experience, and among others there "came in before him an olde man with a white head, and one that was thought to be little lesse than an hundereth yeares olde. When Maister More saw this aged man he thought it expedient to hear him say his minde in this matter, for being so olde a man, it was likely he knew most of any man in that presence and company. So Maister More called this olde aged man unto him, and sayd, 'Father, tell me if ye can what is the cause of this great arising of the sande and shelfs here about this haven, the which stop it up that no s.h.i.+ppes can arrive here. Ye are the oldest man that I can espie in all this companye, so that, if any man can tell any cause of it, ye of likelihode can say most in it, or at leastwise more than any man here a.s.sembled.'--'Yea, forsooth, good master,' quod this olde man, 'for I am wellnigh an hundreth years olde, and no man here in this companye anything neare unto mine age.'--'Well, then,' quod Maister More, 'how say you in this matter? What think ye to be the cause of these shelfs and flattes that stop up Sandwich Haven?'--'Forsooth, syr,'

quoth he, 'I am an olde man; I think that Tenterton Steeple is the cause of Goodwin Sandes. For I am an olde man, syr,' quod he, 'and I may remember the building of Tenterton Steeple, and I may remember when there was no steeple at all there. And before that Tenterton Steeple was a-building there was no manner of speaking of any flattes or sandes that stopped the haven; and, therefore, I thinke that Tenterton Steeple is the cause of the destroying and decaying of Sandwich Haven.' And even so to my purpose," says Latimer in conclusion, "is preaching of G.o.d's worde the cause of rebellion, as Tenterton Steeple is a cause that Sandwich Haven is decayed." Now this "olde aged man" had some excuse for his theory in the Kentish tradition, which says that the abbot of St.

Augustine, who built the steeple, used for it the stones collected to strengthen the sea-wall of Goodwin Sands, then part of the main land.

The next storm submerged the district, of which the Goodwins are the remains, and thus the steeple caused the quicksands, according to the Kentish theory.

ROCHESTER AND CHATHAM.

Proceeding down the Medway, it flows past the city of Rochester, the river being crowded with vessels and crossed here by a bridge with a swinging draw. Rochester has a fine old cathedral, rather dilapidated, and in part restored, but its chief attraction is the castle towering above the river, its Norman keep forming a tower over seventy feet square and rising one hundred feet high, its masonry disclosing vast strength and impressive ma.s.siveness. Cobham Hall, the residence of Earl Darnley, is near Rochester, standing in a n.o.bly wooded park seven miles in circ.u.mference. Just north of Cobham Park is Gad's Hill, where Charles d.i.c.kens lived. Beyond Rochester the powerful modern defensive work of Fort Pitt rises over Chatham to defend the Medway entrance and that important dockyard. The town is chiefly a bustling street about two miles long. The dockyard is one of the largest in England, and its defensive works, as yet incomplete, will when finished make it a powerful fortress, there being several outlying batteries and works still to complete. The Gun Wharf contains a large park of artillery, and there are barracks for three thousand men extending along the river.

There is also an extensive convict-prison with two thousand inmates, who work upon the dock extension and at making bricks for its construction.

Chatham has several military and naval hospitals. Opposite the dockyard is Upnor Castle, used as a powder-magazine and torpedo-school. This castle, the original defensive work of Chatham, was bombarded by Van Tromp when he came up the Medway in Charles II.'s reign--an audacity for which he was afterwards punished. The suburb of Brompton is completely enveloped by the forts and buildings of the post, contains barracks and hospitals for five thousand men, and is also the head-quarters of the Royal Engineers.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROCHESTER CASTLE.]

CANTERBURY.

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

Leaving the estuary of the Medway, still farther east in Kent, in the vale of the Stour, is the ancient cathedral city of Canterbury, whereof Rimmer says it "is one of the most delightful cities in England for an antiquary." Its cathedral is approached through the quaint narrow street of Mercery Lane, where once stood the Checquers Inn that was the resort of Chaucer's pilgrims. At the end of this lane is the princ.i.p.al entrance to the cathedral close--Prior Goldsmith's Gate, commonly called Christ Church Gate, built in 1517: it was formerly surmounted by turrets, but these have been partly taken down. The arms of Becket are carved upon the gateway, and beyond it rise the gray towers of the venerable cathedral. On the east side of the close is Broad Street, where part of the old city-walls are still preserved. This was the site of St.

Augustine's monastery, and Lanfranc, the first archbishop after the Conquest, rebuilt the cathedral church, which was continued by his successor, Anselm. It was in this church that Becket was murdered in 1170, and "in the glorious choir of Conrad" his corpse was watched by the monks on the following night. This choir was burned down four years later, but afterwards rebuilt. The present cathedral consists of work extending from Lanfranc's time until that of Prior Goldstone in the fifteenth century, thus exhibiting specimens of all the schools of Gothic architecture. Canterbury Cathedral is among the largest churches in England, being five hundred and twenty-two feet long, and its princ.i.p.al entrance is by the south porch. The nave is striking, and in the choir the eye is immediately attracted by its great length, one hundred and eighty feet--the longest in the kingdom--and by the singular bend with which the walls at the eastern end approach each other. The architecture is antique, and the interior produces an impression of great solemnity. The north-western transept is known as the Transept of the Martyrdom, where Becket was slain just after Christmas by four knights in 1170. A small square piece cut out of one of the flagstones marks the spot, and there still remain the door leading from the cloisters by which Becket and the knights entered the cathedral, and the part of the wall in front of which the a.s.sa.s.sinated archbishop fell.

There is an attractive window in this transept, the gift of Edward IV.

The cathedral is full of monuments, and in Trinity Chapel, behind the choir, where Becket had sung his first ma.s.s when installed as archbishop, was the location chosen for his shrine, but it long ago disappeared. Here is also the monument of Edward the Black Prince, with his effigy in bra.s.s, and suspended above it his helmet, s.h.i.+eld, sword-scabbard, and gauntlets. Henry IV. is also buried in Canterbury, with his second wife, Joan of Navarre; Cardinal Pole is entombed here; and in the south-western transept is the singular tomb of Langton, archbishop in the days of Magna Charta, the stone coffin so placed that the head alone appears through the wall. In the crypt was Becket's tomb, which remained there until 1220, and at it occurred the penance and scourging of Henry II. The cathedral has two fine western towers, the northern one, however, not having been finished until recently. The central tower, known as "Bell Harry," rises two hundred and thirty-five feet, and is a magnificent example of Perpendicular Gothic. In the close are interesting remains of St. Augustine's Monastery, including its fine entrance-gate and guest-hall, now part of St. Augustine's College, one of the most elaborate modern structures in Canterbury. The monastery had been a brewery, but was bought in 1844 by Mr. Beresford Hope and devoted to its present n.o.ble object. On the hill above St. Augustine, mounted by the Longport road, is the "mother church of England," St. Martin's, which had been a British Christian chapel before the Saxons came into the island, and was made over to Augustine. The present building occupies the site of the one he erected.

Close to the old city-wall is Canterbury Castle, its venerable Norman keep being now used as the town gasworks. There are many old houses in Canterbury, and its history has been traced back twenty-eight hundred years. It was the Roman colony of Durovernum. Among its quaint houses is the Falstaff Inn, still a comfortable and popular hostelrie, having a sign-board supported by iron framework projecting far over the street.

Adjoining is the West Gate--the only one remaining of the six ancient barriers of the city built by Archbishop Sudbury, who was killed in 1381 by Wat Tyler's rebels. This gate stands on the road from London to Dover, and guards the bridge over a little branch of the Stour; the foundations of the lofty flanking round towers are in the river-bed. The gate-house was long used as a city prison. It was in this weird old city that Chaucer located many of his Canterbury Tales, that give such an insight into the customs of his time. The landlord of the Tabard Inn in Southwark, whose guests were of all ranks, proposed a journey to Canterbury after dinner, he to adjudge the best story any of them told on the road. Chaucer's characters were all cleverly drawn and lifelike, while his innkeeper was a man of evidently high "social status," and, as he himself said, "wise and well taught." The Stour flows on to the sea, whose generally low sh.o.r.es are not far away, with the Isle of Thanet to the northward and London's watering-place of Ramsgate on its outer verge. Here is Pegwell Bay, noted for its shrimps, and a short distance westward from Ramsgate is Osengal Hill, from which there is a fine view, the summit being covered by the graves of the first Saxon settlers of Thanet. To the northward a short distance is the sister watering-place of Margate, near the north-eastern extremity of Thanet and ninety miles from London: its pier is nine hundred feet long. On the extremity of Thanet, about three miles from Margate, is the great lighthouse of the North Foreland.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FALSTAFF INN, CANTERBURY.]

THE CINQUE PORTS.

Off the mouth of the Stour and the Goodwin Sands, and thence down the coast to Dover, is the narrowest part of the strait between England and France. This is a coast, therefore, that needed defence from the earliest times, and the cliff-castles and earthworks still remaining show how well it was watched. The Romans carefully fortified the entire line of cliffs from the Goodwin Sands to Beachy Head beyond Hastings.

There were nine fortresses along the coast, which in later times were placed under control of a high official known as the "Count of the Saxon Sh.o.r.e," whose duty was to protect this part of England against the piratical attacks of the Northern sea-rovers. These fortresses commanded the chief harbors and landing-places, and they marked the position of the famous Cinque Ports, whose fleet was the germ of the British navy.

They were not thus named until after the Norman Conquest, when John de Fiennes appeared as the first warden. The Cinque Ports of later English history were Sandwich, Dover, Hythe, Romney, and Hastings, each of which had its minor ports or "limbs," such as Deal, Walmer, Folkestone, Rye, Winchelsea, and Pevensey, that paid tribute to the head port and enjoyed part of its franchises. The duty of the Cinque Ports was to furnish fifty-seven s.h.i.+ps whenever the king needed them, and he supplied part of the force to man them. In return the ports were given great freedom and privileges; their people were known as "barons," were represented in Parliament, and at every coronation bore the canopy over the sovereign, carrying it on silver staves having small silver bells attached. The canopy was usually afterwards presented to Becket's shrine at Canterbury, and its bearers after the coronation dined in Westminster Hall at the king's right hand. But the glory of these redoubtable Cinque Ports has departed. Dover is the only one remaining in active service; Sandwich, Hythe, and Romney are no longer ports at all; while Hastings is in little better condition. The tides have gradually filled their shallow harbors with silt. Of the "limbs," or lesser ports, two, Winchelsea and Pevensey, are now actually inland towns, the sea having completely retired from them. Such has also been the fate of Sandwich, which in the time of Canute was described as the most famous harbor of England. The coast has greatly changed, the shallow bays beyond the old sh.o.r.e-line, which is still visible, being raised into green meadows. In this way the water-course that made Thanet an island has been closed.

SANDWICH.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE BARBICAN, SANDWICH.]

This silting up began at a remote era, closing one port after another, and Sandwich rose upon their decline. It is the most ancient of the Cinque Ports, and existed as a great harbor until about the year 1500, when it too began to silt up. In a century it was quite closed, traffic had pa.s.sed away, and the town had a.s.sumed the fossilized appearance which is now chiefly remarked about it. Sandwich lingers as it existed in the Plantagenet days, time having mouldered it into quaint condition.

Trees grow from the tops of the old walls, and also intrude upon the deep ditch with its round towers at the angles. Large open s.p.a.ces, gardens, and orchards lie between the houses within the walls of the city. Going through the old gateway leading to the bridge crossing the Stour, a little church is found, with its roof tinted with yellowish lichens, and a bunch of houses below it covered with red, time-worn tiles, and the still and sleepy river near by. This was the very gate of that busy harbor which four centuries ago was the greatest in England and the resort of s.h.i.+ps from all parts of the then known world. Its customs dues yielded $100,000 annually at the small rates imposed, and the great change that has been wrought can be imagined, as the visitor looks out over the once famous harbor to find it a ma.s.s of green meadows with venerable trees growing here and there. Sandwich has no main street, its winding, narrow and irregular pa.s.sage-ways being left apparently to chance to seek out their routes, while a ma.s.s of houses is crushed together within the ancient walls, with church-towers as the only landmarks. These churches give the best testimony to the former wealth and importance of the town, the oldest being that of St. Clement, who was the patron of the seafarers. This church is rather large, with a central tower, while the pavement contains many memorials of the rich Sandwich merchants in times long agone. St. Peter's Church remains only as a fragment; its tower has fallen and destroyed the south aisle. It contains a beautiful tomb erected to one of the former wardens of the Cinque Ports. The old code of laws of Sandwich, which still survives, shows close pattern after the Baltic towns of the Hanseatic League.

Female criminals were drowned in the Guestling Brook, which falls into the Stour; others were buried alive in the "thief duns" near that stream. Close by the old water-gate of Sandwich is the Barbican, and from it a short view across the marshes discloses the ancient Roman town of Rutupiae and the closed-up port of Ebbsfleet, where Hengist and Horsa are said to have first landed. Here was the oyster-ground of the Romans, who loved the bivalves as well as their successors of to-day. Of the walls of the Roman town there still remain extensive traces, disclosing solid masonry of great thickness, composed of layers of rough boulders encased externally with regular courses of squared Portland stone. There are square towers at intervals along these walls, with loopholed apartments for the sentinels. Vast numbers of Roman coins have been found in and around this ancient city, over one hundred and forty thousand, it is said, having come to light, belonging to the decade between 287 and 297, when Britain was an independent Roman island.

Pa.s.sing southward along the coast, we skirt the natural harbor of the Downs, a haven of refuge embracing about twenty square miles of safe anchorage, and bounded on the east by the treacherous Goodwin Sands, where Shakespeare tells us "the carcase of many a tall s.h.i.+p lies buried." It is possible at low water to visit and walk over portions of these shoals. They are quicksands of such character that if a s.h.i.+p strikes upon them she will in a few days be completely swallowed up.

Modern precautions, however, have rendered them less formidable than formerly. The great storm of 1703, that destroyed the Eddystone Lighthouse, wrecked thirteen war-s.h.i.+ps on the Goodwins, nearly all their crews peris.h.i.+ng. As we look out over them from the low sh.o.r.es at Deal and Walmer below Sandwich, or the chalk-cliffs of Dover beyond, a fringe of breakers marks their line, while nearer the coast merchant-s.h.i.+ps at anchor usually crowd the Downs. In Walmer Castle was the official residence of the lord warden of the Cinque Ports, an office that is soon to be abolished, and which many famous men have held. Here lived Pitt, and here died the Duke of Wellington, closing his great career.

DOVER.

Beyond, the coast rises up from the low sandy level, and rounding the South Foreland, on which is a fine electric lighthouse of modern construction, we come to the chalk-cliffs, on top of which are the dark towers of Dover Castle, from whose battlements the road descends to the town along the water's edge and in the valley of the little stream that gives the place its name--the Dour, which the Celts called the Dwr or "water," and the Romans the Dubrae. The great keep of Dover dates from William Rufus's reign, and is one of the many badges left in England of the Norman Conquest. There are earthworks at Dover, however, of much earlier origin, built for protection by the Celts and Romans, and forming part of the chain that guarded this celebrated coast, of which Dover, being at the narrowest part of the strait, was considered the key. But no such Norman castle rises elsewhere on these sh.o.r.es. "It was built by evil spirits," writes a Bohemian traveller in the fifteenth century, "and is so strong that in no other part of Christendom can anything be found like it." The northern turret on the keep rises four hundred and sixty-eight feet above the sea at the base of the hill, and from it can be had a complete observation of both the English and French coasts for many miles. Within the castle is the ancient Pharos, or watch-tower, a Roman work. Over upon the opposite side of the harbor is Shakespeare's Cliff,

"----whose high and bending head Looks fearfully on the confined deep."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE PHAROS, DOVER CASTLE.]

There is no more impressive view in England than that from the Castle Hill of Dover, with the green fields and white chalk headlands stretching far away on either hand fringed by the breakers, the hills and harbors faintly seen across the strait in France, and the busy town of Dover lying at the foot of the cliff. This is half watering-place and half port of transit to the opposite coast. Its harbor is almost entirely artificial, and there has been much difficulty in keeping it open. That there is any port there now at all is due mainly to Raleigh's advice, and there is at present a well-protected harbor of refuge, with a fine pier extending nearly a half mile into the sea, with a fort at the outer end. From the top of the hill there looks down upon this pier the Saluting-Battery Gate of the castle, within which is kept that curious specimen of ancient gunnery known as "Queen Elizabeth's Pocket Pistol."

[Ill.u.s.tration: SALUTING BATTERY.]

Farther down the coast is the ancient "limb" of Dover, which has grown into the rival port of Folkestone. This modern port, created to aid the necessities of travel across the Channel, stands at the north-eastern corner of the Romney Marsh, a district that has been raised out of the sea and is steadily increasing in front of the older coast-line, shown by a range of hills stretching westward from Folkestone. This marsh has made the sea retreat fully three miles from Hythe, whose name signifies "the harbor," though it is now an inland village, with a big church dedicated to St. Leonard, the deliverer of captives, who was always much reverenced in the Cinque Ports, their warlike sailors being frequently taken prisoner. In a crypt under its chancel is a large collection of skulls and bones, many of them bearing weapon scars and cuts, showing them to be relics of the wars. Beyond Hythe the Rother originally flowed into the Channel, but a great storm in the reign of Edward I. silted up its outlet, and the river changed its course over towards Rye, so as to avoid the Cinque port of Romney that was established on the western edge of the marshes to which it gave the name. Romney is now simply a village without any harbor, and of the five churches it formerly had, only the church of St. Nicholas remains as a landmark among the fens that have grown up around it, an almost treeless plain intersected by d.y.k.es and ditches.

RYE AND WINCHELSEA.

[Ill.u.s.tration: OLD HOUSES, RYE.]

The unpicturesque coast is thrust out into the sea to the point at Dungeness where the lighthouse stands a beacon in a region full of peril to the navigator; and then the coast again recedes to the cove wherein is found the quaint old town of Rye, formerly an important "limb" of the Cinque port of Hastings. It has about the narrowest and crookedest streets in England, and the sea is two miles away from the line of steep and broken rock along which "Old Rye" stretches. The ancient houses, however, have a sort of harbor, formed by the junction of the three rivers, the Rother, Brede, and Tillingham, and thus Rye supports quite a fleet of fis.h.i.+ng-craft. Thackeray has completely reproduced in _Denis Duval_ the ancient character of this place, with its smuggling atmosphere varied with French touches given by the neighborhood of the Continent. Rye stands on one side of a marshy lowland, and Winchelsea about three miles distant on the other side. The original Winchelsea, we are told, was on lower ground, and, after frequent floodings, was finally destroyed by an inundation in 1287. King Edward I. founded the new town upon the hill above. It enjoyed a lucrative trade until the fifteenth century, when, like most of the others, its prosperity was blighted by the sea's retiring. The harbor then became useless, the inhabitants left, the houses gradually disappeared, and, the historian says, the more ma.s.sive buildings remaining "have a strangely spectral character, like owls seen by daylight." Three old gates remain, including the Strand Gate, where King Edward nearly lost his life soon after the town was built. It appears that the horse on which he was riding, frightened by a windmill, leaped over the town-wall, and all gave up the king for dead. Luckily, however, he kept his saddle, and the horse, after slipping some distance down the incline, was checked, and Edward rode safely back through the gate. There is a fine church in Winchelsea--St. Thomas of Canterbury--within which are the tombs of Gervase Alard and his grandson Stephen. They were the most noted sailors of their time, and Gervase in 1300 was admiral of the fleet of the Cinque Ports, his grandson Stephen appearing as admiral in 1324. These were the earliest admirals known in England, the t.i.tle, derived from the Arabic _amir_, having been imported from Sicily. Gervase was paid two s.h.i.+llings a day. At the house in Winchelsea called the "Friars" lived the noted highwaymen George and Joseph Weston, who during the last century plundered in all directions, and then atoned for it by the exercise of extensive charity in that town: one of them actually became a churchwarden.

HASTINGS AND PEVENSEY.

The cliffs come out to the edge of the sea at Winchelsea, and it is a pleasant walk along them to Hastings, with its ruined castle, the last of the Cinque Ports. This was never as important a port as the others, but the neighboring Suss.e.x forests made it a convenient place for s.h.i.+pbuilding. The castle ruins are the only antiques at Hastings, which has been gradually transformed into a modern watering-place in a pretty situation. Its eastern end, however, has undergone little transition, and is still filled with the old-fas.h.i.+oned black-timber houses of the fishermen. The battle of Hastings, whereby William the Conqueror planted his standard on English soil, was fought about seven miles inland. His s.h.i.+ps debarked their troops all along this coast, while St. Valery harbor in France, from which he sailed, is visible in clear weather across the Channel. William himself landed at Pevensey, farther westward, where there is an old fortress of Roman origin located in the walls of the ancient British-Roman town that the heathen Saxons had long before attacked, ma.s.sacring the entire population. Pevensey still presents within these walls the Norman castle of the Eagle Honour, named from the powerful house of Aquila once possessing it. The Bayeux Tapestry depicts the landing of William at Pevensey, which was a "limb"

of Hastings. Its Roman name was Anderida, the walls enclosing an irregular oval, the castle within being a pentagon, with towers at the angles. Beyond it the Suss.e.x coast juts out at the bold white chalk promontory of Beachy Head.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HURSTMONCEUX CASTLE.]

A short distance inland from Pevensey is the great Suss.e.x cattle-market at Hailsham, where the old Michelham Priory is used as a farm-house and its crypt as a dairy. Not far away is Hurstmonceux Castle, a relic of the times of Henry VI., and built entirely of brick, being probably the largest English structure of that material constructed since the Roman epoch. Only the sh.e.l.l of the castle remains, an interesting and picturesque specimen of the half fortress, half mansion of the latter days of feudalism. The main gateway on the southern front has flanking towers over eighty feet high, surmounted by watch-turrets from which the sea is visible. The walls are magnificently overgrown with ivy, contrasting beautifully with the red brick. Great trunks of ivy grow up from the dining-room, and all the inner courts are carpeted with green turf, with hazel-bushes appearing here and there among the ruined walls.

A fine row of old chestnuts stands beyond the moat, and from the towers are distant views of Beachy Head, its white chalk-cliffs making one of the most prominent landmarks of the southern coast.