Seaward Sussex Part 11

The Transitional church was rebuilt in 1867 from the materials of the older church, two miles away at Church Norton, where the chancel still remains among its old mossy tombs. Each stone and beam was placed in the same position on the new site. The old chancel at Church Norton contains a battered tomb to John Lewes and his wife (1537). Near-by is a mediaeval rectory, once a priory, dating from the fourteenth century, very quaint and picturesque.

We now follow the line of the light railway. At Sidlesham, the first halt, is a restored Early English church containing a fine old chest.

Note the curious epitaphs within and also on the gravestones in the churchyard, and, not least, the queer names that accompany them:--"Glue," "Gravy," "Earwicker" etc.

From the station a footpath may be taken to Pagham and what is left of the harbour of that name. Here there was until late years a curious phenomenon known as the "Hushing Well." A rush of air would burst through the water in the harbour at the time of the incoming tide. The "well" was destroyed by draining operations which also caused the disappearance of large numbers of rare water fowl and aquatic insects, though the naturalist will still be repaid by a visit to this lonely coast and its immediate surroundings. A short time ago the sea made an entrance, but without reconstructing the old conditions. It is no longer practicable to walk along the coast to Bognor.

Pagham Church is an interesting Early English building dedicated to St.

Thomas of Canterbury and erected by a successor to St. Augustine's Chair. Note a slab in the chancel with Lombardic lettering and the old gla.s.s in the east window. The scanty remains of the episcopal palace may be seen southeast of the church.

From Hunston Halt a walk of about a mile westwards leads to another remote and straggling village, North Mundham. In the restored church is a Saxon font and certain curious sculptures may be seen outside the door. From here it is only two miles to Chichester, pa.s.sing Rumboldswyke church, which has interesting features, including Roman brickwork in the chancel arch.

The Portsmouth road, in three miles from Chichester, reaches Walton, where a turning to the left leads in another mile to Bosham, certainly the most interesting relic of the past in West Suss.e.x. Bosham (p.r.o.n.

_Bozam_) to-day seems existent solely in the interest of artists; it is certainly the most besketched place on the South Coast and is rarely, in fine weather, without one or more easels on its quiet quay. The best loved hours of the day for the painting or sketching fraternity--those of low tide, when every boat lies at a different angle--will be the most unpopular for the ordinary visitor, who will be eager for the friendly smoke-scented parlour of the inn as a refuge from the flavour of the malodorous flats; at low tide Bosham is certainly picturesque, at the full she is comely and clean.

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

The harbour, from British, through Roman, Saxon and Norman times to the later middle ages, was one of the princ.i.p.al entrances to and exits from this county. It was on several occasions harried by the Danes and, as depicted on the Bayeux Tapestry, Harold left here on that visit which was to have such dire consequences for himself and his line, and such untold results on the history of the nation-to-be. The great Emperor of the North--Knut--was a frequent visitor to the creek in his dragon-prowed barque. His palace, also the home of Earl G.o.dwin and Harold, is supposed to have been on the northeast of the church, where a moat is still in existence. It is here that the incident recorded in every school reader, the historic rebuke to sycophantic courtiers, is said to have taken place.

The church is of venerable antiquity. The tower has certain indications which point to its being Saxon work. The chancel arch may be still older in its base, and some authorities suggest that the lower portions are actually the remains of the basilica erected in the time of Constantine, on the site of which the church now stands. The east portions of the chancel are Early English and once formed the chapel of a college founded by William Warlewaste, Bishop of Exeter (1120). Note the figure in the north wall, said to be that of the daughter of Knut who died here while on a visit to Earl G.o.dwin. The effigy is, however, of much later date. The fine arcaded font is placed upon high steps against a column. At the east end of the south aisle the floor is raised over an Early English crypt or charnel-house, the entrance to which is close to a canopied tomb. This tomb is that of Herbert of Bosham, secretary to Becket, who wrote the _Book of Becket's Martyrdom_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BOSHAM MILL.]

The church was restored in 1865 and during this work the most interesting discovery was made of the traditional burial place of Knut's daughter. How often has a local tradition, accepted as fact by the peasant, but looked upon as an idle tale by his educated superior, proved to have more than a grain of truth in it and sometimes to be a very circ.u.mstantial record of actualities, and fully supported by antiquarian research. The exact position of the grave is shown by the figure of a Danish raven painted upon a tile, and a stone slab with an inscription upon it placed by the children of Bosham in 1906.

One of the ancient bells was stolen by Danish pirates; the story goes that when half way to the open sea a storm arose which swamped the boat in consequence of the great weight of the metal on board. On high festivals of the Church, a Bosham man will tell you, its sound can be heard from the waves mingling with the chimes of the modern bells of the tower. As a matter of fact the echo of the peal, thrown back by the woods of West Itchenor, is, in certain favourable conditions of the atmosphere, distinctly like a second chime, and might deceive a stranger into thinking that another church lay across the water.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BOSHAM. THE STRAND.]

A most interesting fact recorded by the Venerable Bede is that when Wilfrid of York came here in 681 he found a religious house ruled by a monk named Dicul. It was this monk who had converted King Ethelwalch before Wilfrid arrived. The existence of this tiny community in the midst of hostile tribes, over two hundred years after the extinction of Christianity in the south, is a matter of high romance in the history of the faith in Britain.

There are two other isolated bits of Suss.e.x on the south of the high road to Emsworth, the first containing the small hamlet of Chidham with a beautiful little Early English church; the next is occupied by West Thorney. Here is another church of the same period with a Transitional tower and a Norman font. This peninsula was until quite recently an island and the home of innumerable sea fowl.

Emsworth is almost entirely in Hampshire and therefore outside our limits, but we can well make it the starting place for the last corner of seaward Suss.e.x unexplored.

Westbourne, one mile north of Emsworth, has a fine Transitional church with a large number of monuments and an imposing avenue of yews. At Racton to the north-east is the well-known seamark tower used by mariners in the navigation of the channels of Chichester Harbour. The church has a monument to an ancestor of that Colonel Gunter who took part in the escape of Charles II. Near by is Lordington House, erected by the father of Cardinal Pole and said to be haunted by the ghost of that Countess of Salisbury who, when an old woman upwards of seventy, was beheaded by the order of Henry VIII, and caused the headman much trouble by refusing to place her head upon the block; an ill.u.s.tration by Cruickshank depicts the executioner chasing the Countess round the platform.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE WESTERN DOWNS.]

Several roads lead north through beautiful country, covered by lonely and unfrequented woodlands, to the Mardens. West Marden is about five miles from Emsworth and close to the Hampshire border; all the four villages which bear this name are among the most primitive in southern England. At North Marden is a plain unrestored Norman church, the only one in the immediate vicinity which is worth a visit for its own sake.

Compton, a mile beyond West Marden, has a Transitional Norman church partly rebuilt; this is close to Lady Holt Park, a favourite retreat of Pope; and Up Park, a fine expanse of woodland, where the Carylls once lived; their estates were forfeited for their championship of the Stuarts. The northern end of the park rises to the edge of the Downs close to Torberry Hill, the last summit in Suss.e.x, though the traveller who is so inclined may, with much advantage to himself, penetrate into the lonely recesses of the Hampshire hills, sacred to the shade of Gilbert White, and, still within the probable limits of the _ancient_ kingdom of Suss.e.x, finish his travels at Butser Hill and Petersfield.

Butser Hill is 889 feet above the sea, and therefore higher than any point of the range within Suss.e.x. This well-known summit is familiar to all travellers on the Portsmouth road, from which it rises with imposing effect on the west of the pa.s.s beyond Petersfield. Here the South Downs, so called, may be said to end. The chalk hills are continued right across Hampshire, slowly diminishing in height until they are lost in the great plateau of Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire.

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

Between a fold of the hills lies picturesque Harting in a most delightful situation; an ideal spot for a restful time away from twentieth-century conditions. The tourist, if amenable to the simple life, might well make a stay of a few days to explore the lovely country of which this village forms the centre. The finely placed Early English cruciform church has several interesting monuments to members of former local families, including sixteenth century memorials of the Cowper-Coles. Here is buried Lord Grey, who was connected with the Rye House Plot. Notice the embroidery in the reredos, an unusual style; also the fine wooden roof and shorn pillars; the latter detract from the general effect of the interior and have been noticed in other Downland churches on our route. Quite close to the church are the old village stocks, undoubtedly placed in this position for the sake of convenience, the "court" in more remote districts having been held, in former times, in the church itself. Harting was for a time the home of Anthony Trollope, and Cardinal Pole was rector here.

There are few districts in England and certainly none south of the Trent where old customs and queer legends persist with so much vitality as in these lonely combes and hollows. The effect of being out of the world is perhaps enhanced in these western Downs by the ring fence of dark woods through which we have to pa.s.s to reach the bare, wind-swept solitudes and lonely hamlets within them. The northern escarpment and southern flanks of the hills are clothed in vast forests of beech which add that grandeur to the great ramparts of chalk which the eastern ranges lack. Seen through the ever-shifting sea mists which creep up from the channel these heights take on an appearance of greater alt.i.tude and an added glamour of mystery.

South-east of Harting is the isolated Beacon Hill, once a semaph.o.r.e station between Portsmouth and London; but instead of taking at once to the heights, the pedestrian should first visit Elsted up on its own little hill, and Treyford a mile farther; both churches are ruined and deserted. A new church with a spire that forms a landmark for many miles, stands midway between the two and serves both. Elsted has an inn from the doorway of which the traveller has a superb view of the Downs.

From Treyford a bridle-path leads directly south to the summit of Treyford Hill, where are five barrows called "The Devil's Jumps." From here the track running along the top of the Down will bring us in two miles to the bold spurs of Linch Down (818 feet), the finest view-point on the western Downs, the views over the Weald being magnificent in all directions. A track will have been noticed on the west side of the summit, and a return should be made to this, and then by striking southwards through the Westdean woods we eventually reach Chilgrove. We might then climb the opposite spur and keep southwards until the ridge rises to the escarpment of Bow Hill, but the finest walk of all and the most fitting termination to our tour will be to keep to the rough road which runs down the valley south-east to Welldown Farm. Here a road turns right and in a little over a mile drops to the romantically beautiful Kingley Vale.

This vale is a cup-shaped hollow in the south side of Bow Hill; its steep sides are clothed in a sombre garb of yews and at the farther end of the combe is a solemn grove of these venerable trees amid which broad noon becomes a mystic twilight filled with the spirit of awe; a fitting place for the burial of warrior kings with wild, barbaric rite.

Tradition has it that many Danish chieftains were here defeated and slain and that here beneath the yews they rest. But who shall say what other strange scenes these lonely deeps in the bosom of the hills have witnessed before Saxon or Dane replaced the Celt; who in turn, for all his fierce and arrogant ways, went, by night, in fear and trembling of those spiteful little men he himself displaced, and whose vengeance or pitiful grat.i.tude is perpetuated in the first romances of our childhood. Though their living homes were in the primeval forests of the Britain that was, their last long resting places were under the open skies on the summits of the wind-swept Downs. Many of the smooth green barrows that enclosed their remains have been ruthlessly rifled and desecrated by greed or curiosity. It is to be hoped that the votaries of this form of archaeological research have now discovered all that they desired to know, and that our far-off ancestors will be left to the peace we do not grudge our more immediate forefathers.

Appendix

THE SUSs.e.x DOWNS FROM END TO END

The following summary will suggest to the stranger how his time, if limited, could be so disposed as to take in the whole range with those villages which are essentially Downland settlements and those which lie immediately at the foot of the escarpment. For this purpose the order of the book is reversed and the tourist should start at the western or Hampshire end and finish his walk at Beachy Head. The enjoyment of this tour will of course be greatly enhanced if half the distance is traversed each day, thus doubling the time.

[Ill.u.s.tration: COWDRAY COTTAGE.]

1ST DAY.

Midhurst (Angel Inn) or c.o.c.king Station via Lynch Down, Beacon Hill, to Harting, 9 miles (Ship Inn).

2ND DAY.

Harting to Bow Hill and Kingley Bottom via North and East Marden, 8 miles; on to West Dean, Singleton and c.o.c.king (Inn), 17 miles; or Midhurst, 20 miles.

3RD DAY.

c.o.c.king by Heyshott Down and Duncton Beacon to East Dean, 7 miles (Inn); on by Burton Down and Bignor Hill (Stane Street) to Bignor, 13 miles (Inn); on to Amberley, 19 miles (Inn).

4TH DAY.

Amberley to Rackham and Kithurst Hills; down to Storrington (White Horse Inn), 5 miles. By the main road to Washington (Inn) and Wiston.

Ascend Chanctonbury Ring, 10 miles; on to Cissbury Ring and over Downs at Steyning, 16 miles (White Horse).

5TH DAY.

Steyning via Bramber and Upper Beeding to Trueleigh Hill and Devil's d.y.k.e, 6 miles (Inn); down to Poynings, round Newtimber Hill to Pyecombe and Wols...o...b..ry, thence by hill road to Ditchling Beacon, 12 miles; on by edge of Downs to Mount Harry and down to Lewes, 18 miles (White Hart, Crown, etc.)

6TH DAY.

Lewes over Cliffe Hill and Mount Caburn to Glynde and West Firle, 4 miles (Inn); over Firle Beacon and along edge of Downs to Alfriston, 9 miles (Star Inn); by Lullington to Windover Hill ("Long Man of Wilmington") down to Jevington, 12 miles (Inn); up to Willingdon Hill and thence by eastern edge of Downs all the way to Beachy Head, 17 miles. Eastbourne, 20 miles.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SKETCH MAP OF THE ROADS FROM LONDON TO THE DOWNS.]

Appendix II

LONDON TO THE SOUTH DOWNS--THE WEALD

The writer of the preceding chapters has often been tempted to trespa.s.s outside the limits imposed upon him, and penetrate the woody fastnesses of the Weald. In this separate section a short description will be given of some of the most characteristic scenes and interesting towns and villages between London and the coast.