Part 16

Returning to the exploited main road. Friar's Oak is soon reached. It was selected by Sir Conan Doyle as one of the scenes of his Regency story, "Rodney Stone"; but since the year 1900, when the old inn was rebuilt, the spot has become an eyesore to those who knew it of old.

No one knows why Friar's Oak is so called, and "Nothing is ever known about anything on the roads," is the intemperate exclamation that rises to the lips of the disappointed explorer. But wild legends, as usual, supply the place of facts, and the old oak that stands opposite the inn is said to have been the spot where a friar, or friars, distributed alms. To any one who knows even the least about friars, this story would at once carry its own condemnation; but a friar, or a hermit, may have solicited alms here. At any rate, the old inn used to exhibit a very forbidding "friar of orders grey" as its sign, dancing beneath the oak. Stolen many years ago, it was subsequently discovered in London by the merest accident, was purchased for a trifling sum, and restored to its bereft signpost. The innkeeper, however, thinking that what befell once might happen again, hung the cherished panel within the house, where it remains to this day.

From Friar's Oak it is but a step to that newest creation among Brighton's suburbs, Clayton Park, its clustering red-brick villas, building estates, and half-formed roads adjoining the station of Hassocks Gate, which, by the way, the railway authorities have long since reduced to "Hassocks." The name recalls certain dusty contrivances of straw and carpeting artfully contrived for the devout to stumble over in church. But, not to incur the suspicion of tripping over the name as here applied, it may be mentioned that "hassock" is the Anglo-Saxon name for a coppice or small wood; and there are really many of these at and around Hassocks Gate to this day.

[Sidenote: TURNPIKE GATES]

At Stonepound a road leads on the right to Hurstpierpoint, which is too big a mouthful for general use, and so is locally "Hurst." The Pierpoints, whose name is embedded in that of the place, like an ammonite in a geological stratum, were long since as extinct as those other Normans, the Monceaux of Hurstmonceaux, and are what Americans would term a "back number."

............................ . Stone Pound Gate . . Clears Patcham Gate . .St. John's and Ansty Gates. . Y . ............................

............................ . Patcham Gate . . Clears Stone Pound Gate, . .St. John's and Ansty Gates. . 126 . ............................

Stonepound Gate was one of the nine that at one time barred the Brighton Road, and the last but one on the way. It will be seen, by the specimens of turnpike-tickets reprinted here, that at one time, at least, the burden of the tolls was not quite so heavy as the mere number of the gates would lead a casual observer to suppose, a ticket taken at Ansty "clearing" the remaining distance, through three other gates, to Brighton. But it was necessary for the traveller to know his way about, and, if he were going through, to ask for a ticket to clear to Brighton; else the pikeman would issue a ticket, which cost just as much, to the next gate only, when another payment would be demanded. These were "tricks upon travellers" familiar to every road, and they earned the pikemen, as a class, a very unenviable reputation.

It was here, in the great Christmas Eve snowstorm of 1836, that the London mail was snowed up. Its adventures illustrate the uncertainty of travelling the roads.

In those days you took your seat on your particular fancy in coaches, and paid your sixteen-shilling fare from London to Brighton, or _vice versa_, trusting (yet with heaviness of heart) in Providence to bring you to a happy issue from all the many dangers and discomforts of travelling. Occasionally it was brought home, by storm and flood, to those learned enough to know it, that "travelling" derived originally from "travail," and the discomforts of leaving one's own fireside in the winter are emphasized and underscored in the particulars of what befell at Stonepound in the great snowstorm of December 24th, 1836--a storm that paralysed communications throughout the kingdom.

"The Brighton up-mail of Sunday had travelled about eight miles from that town, when it fell into a drift of snow, from which it was impossible to extricate it without assistance. The guard immediately set off to obtain all necessary aid, but when he returned no trace whatever could be found, either of the coach, coachman or passengers, three in number. After much difficulty the coach was found, but could not be extricated from the hollow into which it had got. The guard did not reach London until seven o'clock on Tuesday night, having been obliged to travel with the bags on horseback, and in many instances to leave the main road and proceed across fields in order to avoid the deep drifts of snow.

"The passengers, coachman, and guard slept at Clayton, seven miles from Brighton. The road from Hand Cross was quite impassable. The non-arrival of the mail at Crawley induced the postmaster there to send a man in a gig to ascertain the cause on Monday afternoon, and no tidings being heard of man, gig, or horse for several hours, another man was despatched on horseback. After a long search he found horse and gig completely built up in the snow. The man was in an exhausted state. After considerable difficulty the horse and gig were extricated, and the party returned to Crawley. The man had learned no tidings of the mail, and refused to go out again on any such exploring mission."

The Brighton mail from London, too, reached Crawley, but was compelled to return.

[Sidenote: CLAYTON TUNNEL ACCIDENT]

Such were the incidents upon which the Christmas stories, of the type brought into favour by Dickens, were built, but the stories are better to read than the incidents to experience. I am retrospectively sorry for those passengers who thus lost their Christmas dinners; but after all, it was better to miss the turkey and the Christmas pudding than to be "mashed into a pummy" in railway accidents, such as the awful heart-shaking series of collisions which took place on Sunday, August 25th, 1861, in the railway tunnel through Clayton Hill. On that day, in that gloomy place, twenty-four persons lost their lives, and one hundred and seventy-five were injured.

Three trains were timed to leave Brighton station on that fatal morning, two of them filled to crowding with excursionists; the other, an ordinary train, well filled and bound for London. Their times for starting were 8, 8.5, and 8.30 respectively, but owing to delays occasioned by press of traffic, they did not set out until considerably later, at 8.28, 8.31, and 8.35. At such terribly short intervals were they started, in times when no block system existed to render such close following comparatively safe.

Clayton Tunnel was already considered a dangerous place, and there was situated at either end (north and south entrances) a signal-cabin furnished with telegraphic instruments and signal apparatus, by which the signalman at one end of the tunnel could communicate with his fellow at the other, and could notify "train in" or "train out" as might happen. This practically formed a primitive sort of "block system," especially devised for use in this mile and a quarter's dark burrow.

A "self-acting" signal placed in the cutting some distance from the southern entrance was supposed, upon the passage of every train, to set itself at "danger" for any following, until placed at "line clear" from the nearest cabin, but on this occasion the first train passed in, and the self-acting signal failed to act.

The second train, following upon the heels of the first, passed all unsuspecting, and dashed from daylight into the tunnel's mouth, the signalman, who had not received a message from the other end of the tunnel being clear, frantically waving his red flag to stop it. This signal apparently unnoticed by the driver, the train passed in.

At this moment the third train came into view, and at the same time the signalman was advised of the tunnel being clear of the first. Meanwhile, the driver of the second train, who _had_ noticed the red flag, was, unknown to the signalman, backing his train out again. A message was sent to the north cabin for it, "train in"; but the man there, thinking this to be a mere repetition of the first, replied, "train out," referring, of course, to the first train.

The tunnel being to the southern signalman apparently clear, the third train was allowed to proceed, and met, midway, away from daylight, the retreating second train. The collision was terrible; the two rearward carriages of the second train were smashed to pieces, and the engine of the third, reared upon their wreck, poured fire and steam and scalding water upon the poor wretches who, wounded but not killed by the impact, were struggling to free themselves from the splintered and twisted remains of the two carriages.

The heap of wreckage was piled up to the roof of the tunnel, whose interior presented a dreadful scene, the engine fire throwing a wild glare around, but partly obscured by the blinding, scalding clouds of steam; while this suddenly created Inferno resounded with the prayers, shrieks, shouts, and curses of injured and scatheless alike, all fearful of the coming of another train to add to the already sufficiently hideous ruin.

Fortunately no further catastrophe occurred; but nothing of horror was wanting, neither in the magnitude nor in the circumstances of the disaster, which long remained in the memories of those who read and was impossible ever to be forgotten by those who witnessed it.

XXX

[Sidenote: THE SOUTH DOWNS]

From these levels at Stonepound the South Downs come full upon the view, crowned at Clayton Hill with windmills. Ditchling Beacon to the left, and the more commanding height of Wolstonbury to the extreme right, flank this great wall of earth, chalk, and grass--Wolstonbury semicircular in outline and bare, save only for some few clumps of yellow gorse and other small bushes.

Just where the road bends, and, crossing the railway, begins to climb Clayton Hill, the Gothic, battlemented entrance to Clayton Tunnel looms with a kind of scowling picturesqueness, well suited to its dark history, continually vomiting steam and smoke, like a hell's mouth.

Above it rises the hill, with telegraph-poles and circular brick ventilating-shafts going in a long perspective above the chalky cutting in the road; and on the left hand the little rustic church of Clayton, humbly crouching under the lee of the downs.

"Clayton Hill!" It was a word of dread among cyclists until, say, the year 1900, when rim-and back-pedalling brakes superseded the inefficient spoon-brake, acting on the front tyre. Coming from Brighton, the hill drops steeply into the Weald of Sussex, and not only steeply, but the road takes a sudden and perilous turn over the railway bridge, at the foot of the descent, precisely where descending vehicles not under control attain their greatest speed. Here many a cyclist has been flung against the brick wall of the bridge, and his machine broken and himself injured; and seven have met their death here. Even in these days of good brakes a fatality has occurred, a cyclist being killed in November, 1902, in a collision with a trap.

From the summit of the downs the Weald is seen, spread out like a pictorial map, the little houses, the little trees, the ribbon-like roads looking like dainty models; the tiny trains moving out of Noah's Ark stations and vehicles crawling the highways like objects in a minature land of make-believe. Looking southward, Brighton is seen--a pillar of smoke by day, a glowing, twinkling light at evening: but for all it is so near, it has very little affected the old pastoral country life of the downland villages. The shepherds, carrying as of yore their Pyecombe crooks, still tend huge flocks of sheep, and the dull and hollow music of the sheep-bells remains as ever the characteristic sound of the district. Next year the sheep will be shorn, just as they were when the Saxon churls worked for their Norman masters, and, unless a cataclysm of nature happens, they will continue so to be shorn centuries hence.

But the shepherds have ceased to be vocal with the sheep-shearing songs of yore; it seems that their modern accomplishment of being able to read has stricken them dumb. Neither the words nor the airs of the old shearing-songs will ever again awaken the echoes in the daytime, nor make the roomy interiors of barns ring o' nights, as they were wont to do lang-syne, when the convivial shearing supper was held, and the ale hummed in the cup, and, later in the evening, in the head also.

But the Sussex peasant is by no means altogether bereft of his ancient ways. He is, in the more secluded districts, still a South Saxon; for the county, until comparatively recent times remote and difficult, plunged in its sloughs and isolated by reason of its forests, has no manufactures, and the rural parts do not attract immigrants from the shires, to leaven his peculiarities. The Sussex folk are still rooted firmly in what Drayton calls their "queachy ground." Words of Saxon origin are still the staple of the country talk; folk-tales, told in times when the South Saxon kingdom was yet a power of the Heptarchy, exist in remote corners, currently with the latest ribald song from the London halls; superstitions linger, as may be proved by he who pursues his inquiries judiciously, and thought moves slowly still in the bucolic mind.

The Norman Conquest left few traces upon the population, and the peasant is still the Saxon he ever has been; his occupations, too, tend to slowness of speech and mind. The Sussex man is by the very rarest chance engaged in any manufacturing industries. He is by choice and by force of circumstances ploughman, woodman, shepherd, market-gardener, or carter, and is become heavy as his soil, and curiously old-world in habit. All which traits are delightful to the preternaturally sharp Londoner, whose nerves occupy the most important place in his being. These country folk are new and interesting creatures for study to him who is weary of that acute product of civilisation--the London arab.

[Sidenote: OLD SUSSEX WAYS]

Sussex ways are, many of them, still curiously patriarchal. But a few years ago, and ploughing was commonly performed in these fields by oxen.

Their cottages that, until a few years ago, were the same as ever, have recently been very largely rebuilt, much to the sorrow of those who love the picturesque. They were thatched, for the most part, or tiled, or roofed with stone slabs. A living-room with yawning fireplace and capacious settle was the chief feature of them. The floor was covered with red bricks. When the settle was drawn up to the cheerful blaze the interior was cosy. But many of the most picturesque cottages were damp and insanitary, and although they pleased the artist to look at, it by no means followed that they would have contented him to live in.

Outside, in the garden, grew homely flowers and useful vegetables, and perhaps by the gnarled apple-tree there stood in the sun a row of bee-hives. Sussex superstition declared that they might, indeed, be purchased, but not for silver:

If you wish your bees to thrive, Gold must be paid for ev'ry hive; For when they're bought with other money, There will be neither swarm nor honey.

The year was one long round of superstitious customs and observances, and it is not without them, even now. But superstition is shy and not visible on the surface.

In January began the round, for from Christmas Eve to Twelfth Day was the proper time for "worsling," that is "wassailing" the orchards, but more particularly the apple-trees. The country-folk would gather round the trees and chant in chorus, rapping the trunks the while with sticks:

Stand fast root, bear well top; Pray, good God, send us a howling crop Ev'ry twig, apples big; Ev'ry bough, apples enow'; Hats full, caps full, Full quarters, sacks full.

These wassailing folk were generally known as "howlers"; "doubtless rightly," says a Sussex archæologist, "for real old Sussex music is in a minor key, and can hardly be distinguished from howling." This knowledge enlightens our reading of the pages of the Rev. Giles Moore, of Horsted Keynes, when he records: "1670, 26th Dec., I gave the howling boys 6d.;" a statement which, if not illumined by acquaintance with these old customs, would be altogether incomprehensible.

Then, if mud were brought into the house in the month of January, the cleanly housewife, at other times jealous of her spotless floors, would have nothing of reproof to say, for was this not "January butter." and the harbinger of luck to all beneath the roof-tree?

Saints' days, too, had their observances; the habits of bird and beast were the almanacs and weather warnings of the villagers, all innocent of any other meteorological department, and they have been handed down in doggerel rhyme, like this of the Cuckoo, to the present day:

In April he shows his bill, In May he sings o' night and day, In June he'll change his tune, By July prepare to fly, By August away he must. If he stay till September, 'Tis as much as the oldest man Can ever remember.

If he stayed till September, he might possibly see a sight which no mere human eye ever beheld: he might observe a practice to which old Sussex folk know the Evil One to be addicted. For on Old Michaelmas Day, October 10th, the Devil goes round the country, and--dirty devil--spits on the blackberries. Should any persons eat one on October 11th, they, or some one of their kin, will surely die or fall into great trouble before the close of the year.

Sussex has neither the imaginative Celtic race of Cornwall nor that county's fantastic scenery to inspire legends; but is it at all wonderful that old beliefs die hard in a county so inaccessible as this has hitherto been? We have read travellers' tales of woful happenings on the road; hear now Defoe, who is writing in the year 1724, of another proof of heavy going on the highways: "I saw," says he, "an ancient lady, and a lady of very good quality, I assure you, drawn to church in her coach by six oxen; nor was it done in frolic or humour, but from sheer necessity, the way being so stiff and deep that no horses could go in it." All which says much for the piety of this ancient lady. Only a few years later, in 1729, died Dame Judith, widow of Sir Henry Hatsell, who in her will, dated January 10th, 1728, directed that her body should be buried at Preston, should she happen to die at such a time of year when the roads were passable; otherwise, at any place her executors might think suitable. It so happened that she died in the month of June, so compliance with her wishes was possible.

XXXI

And now to trace the Hickstead and Bolney route from Hand Cross, that parting of the ways overlooking the most rural parts of Sussex. Hand Cross, it has already been said, is in the parish of Slaugham, which lies deep down in a very sequestered wood, where the head-springs issuing from the hillsides are never dry and the air is always heavy with moisture. "Slougham-cum-Crolé" is the title of the place in ancient records, "Crolé" being Crawley. It was from its ancient bogs and morasses that it obtained its name, pronounced by the natives "Slaffam," and it was certainly due to them that the magnificent manor-house--almost a palace--of the Coverts, the old lords of the manor--was deserted and began to fall to pieces so soon as built.

The Coverts, now and long since utterly extinct, were once among the most powerful, as they were also among the noblest, in the county. They were of Norman descent, and, to use a well-worn phrase, "came over with the Conqueror"; but they are not found settled here until towards the close of the fifteenth century, being preceded, as lords of the manor, by the Poynings of Poynings, and by the Berkeleys and Stanleys. Sir Walter Covert, to whose ancestors the manor fell by marriage, was the builder of that Slaugham Place whose ruins yet remain to show his idea of what was due to a landed proprietor of his standing. They cover, within their enclosing walls of red brick, which rise from the yet partly filled moat, over three acres of what is now orchard and meadowland. In spring the apple trees bloom pink and white amid the grey and lichen-stained ashlar of the ruined walls and arches of Palladian architecture, and the lush grass grows tall around the cold hearths of the roofless rooms. The noble gateway leads now, not from courtyard to hall, but doorless, with its massive stones wrenched apart by clinging ivy, stands merely as some sort of key to the enigma of ground plan presented by walls ruinated in greater part to the level of the watery turf.

The singular facts of high wall and moat surrounding a mansion of Jacobean build seem to point to an earlier building, contrived with these defences when men thought first of security and afterwards of comfort. Some few mullioned windows of much earlier date than the greater part of the mansion remain to confirm the thought.

That a building of the magnificence attested by these crumbling walls should have been allowed to fall into decay so shortly after its completion is a singular fact. Though the male line of the Coverts failed, and their estates passed, by the marriage of their womankind, into other hands, yet their alienation would not necessarily imply the destruction of their roof-tree. The explanation is to be sought in the situation and defects of the ground upon which Slaugham Place stood: a marshy tract of land, which no builder of to-day would think of selecting as a site for so important a dwelling. Home as it was of swamps and damps, and quashy as it is even now, it must have been in the past the breeding-ground of agues and chills innumerable.

A true exemplar this of that Sussex of which in 1690 a barrister on circuit, whose profession led him by evil chance into this county, writes to his wife: "The Sussex ways are bad and ruinous beyond imagination. I vow 'tis melancholy consideration that mankind will inhabit such a heap of dirt for a poor livelihood. The county is in a sink of about fourteen miles broad, which receives all the water that falls from the long ranges of hills on both sides of it, and not being furnished with convenient draining, is kept moist and soft by the water till the middle of a dry summer, which is only able to make it tolerable to ride for a short time."

Such soft and shaky earth as this could not bear the weight of so ponderous a structure as was Slaugham Place: the swamps pulled its masonry apart and rotted its fittings. Despairing of victory over the reeking moisture, its owners left it for healthier sites. Then the rapacity of all those neighbouring folk who had need of building material completed the havoc wrought by natural forces, and finally Slaugham Place became what it is to-day. Its clock-tower was pulled down and removed to Cuckfield Park, where it now spans the entrance drive of that romantic spot, and its handsomely carved Jacobean stairway is to-day the pride and glory of the "Star" Hotel at Lewes.