Highways and Byways in Sussex Part 33

[Sidenote: THE UCKFIELD ROCKS]

Uckfield is the southern boundary of the rock district of which we saw something at West Hoathly, and it is famous for the sandstone cliffs in the grounds of High Rocks, an estate on the south of the town. The unthinking untidiness and active penknives of the holiday makers made it recently necessary for the grounds to be closed to strangers. Close by, however, just off the road from Uckfield to Maresfield, is a rocky tract that is free to all. It consists of about an acre of grey, sandy boulders, some rising to a height of twenty feet or so, which remind one a little of the _rochers_ in the Forest of Fontainebleau, although on a smaller scale. All are worn with the feet of adventurous boys enjoying one of the best natural playgrounds in the county. Here blackberries come to rich perfection, the sun's ripening warmth being thrown back from the hot sand.

When I first knew Maresfield church, many years ago, its aged vicar rolled out "Thou shalt do no mur-r-r-der" with an accusing timbre that seemed to bring the sin home to all of us. He had also so peculiar a way of p.r.o.nouncing "Albert," that his prayer for our rulers seemed to make an invidious distinction, and ask a blessing, not for all, but for all but Edward, Prince of Wales.

[Sidenote: PURITAN NAMES]

Some of the oddest of the composite pietistic names that broke out over England during the Puritan revolution are to be found in Suss.e.x registers. In 1632, Master Performe-thy-vowes Seers of Maresfield married Thomasine Edwards. His full name was too much for the village, and four years later is found an entry recording the burial of "Vowes Seers" pure and simple. The searcher of parish registers from whose articles in the _Suss.e.x Daily News_ I have already quoted, has also found that Heathfield had many Puritan names, among them "Replenished,"

which was given to the daughter of Robert Pryor in 1600. There was also a Heathfield damsel known as "More-Fruits." Mr. Lower prints the following names from a Suss.e.x jury list in the seventeenth century: Redeemed Compton of Battel, Stand-fast-on-high Stringer of Crowhurst, Weep-not Billing of Lewes, Called Lower of Warbleton, Elected Mitch.e.l.l of Heathfield, Renewed Wisberry of Hailsham, Fly-fornication Richardson of Waldron, The-Peace-of-G.o.d Knight of Burwash, Fight-the-good-fight-of-Faith White of Ewhurst, and Kill-sin Pemble of Withyham. Also a Master More-Fruits Fowler of East Hoathly, for it seems that in such names there was no s.e.x.

Among the curious Suss.e.x surnames found by the student of the county archives who is quoted above are the following:--

Pitchfork Sweetname Lies Devil Slybody Hogsflesh Leper Fidge Backfield Handshut Beatup Breathing Juglery Rougehead Whiskey Hollowbone Punch Wildgoose Stillborne Padge Ann.

Almost every name here would have pleased d.i.c.kens, while some might have been invented by him, notably Fidge and Padge. One can almost see Mr.

Fidge and Mr. Padge drolling it in his pages.

[Sidenote: BUXTED DEER]

From the Maresfield rocks Buxted is easily reached, about a mile due east; but a far prettier approach is through Buxted Park, which is gained by a footpath out of Uckfield's main street. The charm of Buxted is its deer. Suss.e.x, as we have seen, is rich in parks containing deer, but I know of none other where one may be so certain of coming close to these beautiful creatures. Nor can I recall any other deer that are so exquisitely dappled; but that may be because the Buxted deer were the first I ever saw, thirty years ago, and we like to think the first the best. Certainly they are the friendliest, or least timid. The act of going to church is invested at Buxted with an almost unique attraction, since the deer lie hard by the path. Indeed, the last time I went to church at Buxted I never pa.s.sed through the door at all, but sat on a gravestone throughout the service and watched the herd in its graceful restlessness. That was twelve years ago. The other day I watched them again and could see no change. Some of the stags were still as of old almost bowed beneath their antlers, although one at any rate was free, for a keeper who pa.s.sed carried a pair of horns in his hand.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _In Buxted Park._]

[Sidenote: RALPH HOGGE]

The old house at the beginning of the footpath to the church, with a hog in bas-relief on its facade, is known as the Hog House, and is said to have been the residence of Ralph Hogge. Who was Ralph Hogge? Who is Hiram Maxim? Who was Krupp? Who was Nordenfelt? It was Ralph Hogge, iron-master, who in the year 1543 made the first English metal cannon.

So at any rate say tradition and Holinshed. Buxted is otherwise most pacific of villages, sleepy and undiscovered. In the early years of the last century it boasted the possession of a labourer with a memory of amazing tenacity, one George Watson, who, otherwise almost imbecile, was unable to forget anything he had once seen, or any figure repeated to him.

On the road between Maresfield and Crowborough is Heron's Ghyll, the residence of Mr. Fitzalan Hope. It stands to the east of the road, in one of those hollow sites that alone won the word "eligible" from a Tudor builder. Hard by the road is the perfect little Early English Roman Catholic church which Mr. Hope built in 1897, a miracle, in these hurried florid days, of honest work and simple modest beauty. The church being Roman Catholic one may with confidence turn aside to rest a little in its cool seclusion, relieved of the irritating search for the s.e.xton of the national establishment, and freed from his haunting presence and suggestion that the labourer is worthy of more than his hire.

[Sidenote: CLOSED CHURCHES]

While on this subject I might remark that a county vicar describing the antiquities of his neighbourhood in one of the Suss.e.x Archaeological Society's volumes, writes magnanimously: "A debt of grat.i.tude is certainly due to our Roman Catholic predecessors (whatever error might mix itself with their piety and charity) for erecting such n.o.ble edifices, in a style of strength to endure for a late posterity." It seems to me that a very simple way of discharging a portion of this debt would be to imitate the excellent habit of leaving the church doors wide open, as practised by those Roman Catholic predecessors. My own impulse to enter many of the Suss.e.x churches has been princ.i.p.ally antiquarian or aesthetic, but to rest amid their gray coolnesses is a legitimate desire which should be fostered rather than discouraged, particularly as it is under such conditions that the soul even of the stranger whose motive is curiosity is often comforted. The arguments in favour of keeping churches closed are unknown to me. Doubtless they are numerous and ingenious, but, doubtless equally, a locked church is a confession of failure; while to urge that one has but to ask for the key to be able to enter a church is no true reply, since hospitality, whether to the body or the soul, loses in sweetness and effect as it loses in spontaneity.

[Sidenote: TO CROWBOROUGH]

From Heron's Ghyll to Crowborough is a steady climb for three miles, with the heathery wastes of Ashdown Forest on the left and the hilly district around Mayfield on the right.

CHAPTER x.x.xII

CROWBOROUGH AND MAYFIELD

Crowborough the suburban--Rotherfield's three rivers--The extra ribs--Wild flowers and railway companies--The perfect hill--An arid district--St. Dunstan and the Devil--Why Tunbridge Wells waters are chalybeate--St. Dunstan's feats--An unencouraging _memento mori_--Mayfield church--Mayfield street--The diary of Mr. Walter Gale, schoolmaster.

In the spring of this year (1903) the walls and fences of Crowborough were covered with the placards of a firm of estate agents describing the neighbourhood (in the manner of the great George Robins) as "Scotland in Suss.e.x." The simile may be true of the Ashdown Forest side of the Beacon (although involving an unnecessary confusion of terms), but "Hampstead in Suss.e.x" would be a more accurate description of Crowborough proper.

Never was a fine remote hill so be-villa'd. The east slope is all scaffold-poles and heaps of bricks, new churches and chapels are sprouting, and the many h.o.a.rdings announce that Follies, Pierrots, or conjurors are continually imminent. Crowborough itself has shops that would not disgrace Croydon, and a hotel where a Lord Mayor might feel at home. Houses in their own grounds are commoner than cottages, and near the summit the pegs of surveyors and the name-boards of avenues yet to be built testify to the charms which our Saxon Caledonia has already exerted.

But to say this is not to say all. Crowborough may be populous and over-built; but it is still a glorious eminence, the healthiest and most bracing inland village in the county, and the key to its best moorland country. Since Crowborough's normal visitor either plays golf or is contented with a very modest radius, the more adventurous walker may quickly be in the solitudes.

In the little stone house below the forge Richard Jefferies lived for some months at the end of his life.

[Sidenote: ROTHERFIELD]

Crowborough is crowned by a red hotel which can never pa.s.s into the landscape; Rotherfield, its companion hill on the east, on the other side of the Jarvis Brook valley, is surmounted by a beautiful church with a tall s.h.i.+ngled spire, that must have belonged to the scene from the first. This spire darts up from the edge of the forest ridge like a Pharos for the Weald of Kent. The church was dedicated to St. Denis of Paris by a Saxon chieftain who was cured of his ills by a pilgrimage to the Saint's monastery. That was in 792. In the present church, which retains the dedication, is an ancient mural painting representing the martyrdom of St. Lawrence. There is also a Burne-Jones window.

Were it not for Rotherfield both Suss.e.x and Kent would lack some of their waterways, for the Rother and the Ouse rise here, and also the Medway. A local saying credits the women of Rotherfield with two ribs more than the men, to account for their superior height.

Under a hedge half-way between Rotherfield and Jarvis Brook grow the largest cowslips in Suss.e.x, as large as cowslips may be without changing their s.e.x. But this is all cowslip country--from the field of Rother to the field of Uck. And it is the land of the purple orchis too, the finest blooms of which are to be found on the road between Rotherfield and Mayfield; but you must scale a fence to get them, because (like all the best wild flowers) they belong to the railway.

Between Rotherfield and Mayfield is a little hill, trim and conical as though Miss Greenaway had designed it, and perfect in deportment, for it has (as all little conical hills should have) a white windmill on its top. Around the mill is a circular track for carts, which runs nearer the sails than any track I remember ever to have dared to walk on.

Standing by this mill one opens many miles of Kent and Surrey: due north the range of chalk Downs on which is the Pilgrim's Way, between Merstham and Westerham, and in front of that Toy's Hill and Ide Hill and their sandy companions, on the north edge of the Weald.

Mayfield is a city on a hill on the skirts of the hot hop district of which Burwash is the Suss.e.x centre. To walk about it even in April is no exhilaration; but in August one thinks of Sahara. I lived in Mayfield one August and could barely keep awake; and we used to look across at the rolling chalk Downs in the south, between Ditchling and Lewes, and long for their cool, wind-swept heights. They can be hot too, but chalk is never so hot as sand, and a steady climb to a summit, over turf odorous of wild thyme, is restful beside the eternal hills and valleys of the hop district.

[Sidenote: SAINT DUNSTAN]

Mayfield has the best street and the best architecture of any of these highland villages. Also it has the distinction of having done most for mankind, since without Mayfield there would have been no water to cure jaded London ladies and gentlemen at Tunbridge Wells. According to Eadmer, who wrote one of the lives of Dunstan, that Saint, when Archbishop of Canterbury, built a wooden church at Mayfield and lived in a cell hard by. St. Dunstan, who was an expert goldsmith, was one day making a chalice (or, as another version of the legend says, a horseshoe) when the Devil appeared before him. Instantly recognising his enemy, and being aware that with such a foe prompt measures alone are useful, St. Dunstan at once pulled his nose with the tongs, which chanced happily to be red hot. Wrenching himself free, the Devil leaped at one bound from Mayfield to Tunbridge Wells, where, plunging his nose into the spring at the foot of the Pantiles, he "imparted to the water its chalybeate qualities," and thus made the fortune of the town as a health resort. To St. Dunstan therefore, indirectly, are all drinkers of these wells indebted. For other drinkers he introduced or invented the practice of fixing pins in the sides of drinking cups, in order that a thirsty man might see how he was progressing and a bibulous man be checked.

[Sidenote: MAYFIELD]

When consecrating his little church at Mayfield St. Dunstan discovered it to be a little out of the true position, east and west. He therefore applied his shoulder and rectified the error.

The remains of Mayfield Palace, the old abode of the Archbishops of Canterbury, join the church. After it had pa.s.sed into the hands of the crown--for Cranmer made a bargain with the King by which Mayfield was exchanged for other property--Sir Thomas Gresham lived here, and Queen Elizabeth has dined under its roof. The Palace is to be seen only occasionally, for it is now a convent, Mayfield being another of the county's many Roman Catholic outposts. In the great dining-room are the tongs which St. Dunstan used.

The church, dedicated to Mayfield's heroic saint, has one of the broader s.h.i.+ngled spires of Suss.e.x, as distinguished from the slender spires of which Rotherfield is a good example. Standing high, it may be seen from long distances. The tower is the original Early English structure. Four more of the old Suss.e.x iron tomb slabs may be seen at Mayfield. In the churchyard, says Mr. Lower, was once an inscription with this uncomplimentary first line:--

O reader, if that thou canst read,

It continued:--

Look down upon this stone; Death is the man, do you what you can, That never spareth none!

In Mayfield's street even the new houses have caught comeliness from their venerable neighbours. It undulates from gable to gable, and has two good inns. The old timbered house in the middle of the east side is that to which Richard Jefferies refers without enthusiasm in the pa.s.sage which I quote in a later chapter from his essay on Buckhurst Park. In Louis Jennings' _Field Paths and Green Lanes_ the house comes in for eulogy.

Vicar of Mayfield in 1361 and following years was John Wickliffe, who has too often been confused with his great contemporary and namesake, the reformer. And the village claims as a son Thomas May (1595-1650), playwright, translator of Lucan's "Pharsalia," secretary to Parliament and friend of Ben Jonson.

In the Suss.e.x Archaeological Collections is printed the journal of Walter Gale, schoolmaster at Mayfield in the latter half of the eighteenth century, from which a few extracts may be given: