[PDF]A Saunterer In Sussex

A SAUNTERER IN SUSSEX



By the same Author
ON FOOT IN SUSSEX





THE ESTUARY OF THE CUCKMERE


A SAUNTERER
IN SUSSEX


by


A, A. EVANS


Vicar of East Dean and Fiislon^ 1908-1929


WITH 23 ILLUSTRATIONS



METHUEN & GO. LTD., LONDON

26 Essex Street^ W.C.2



Frrst I^zthlished in ^^33


IN ORJEWT DBR-ITTAIN



PREFACE


Two years ago I put out a book, On Foot in Sussex,
which had a generous reception. I find there is
a large public who like to read about wooded
lanes and the creatures which belong to them,
about old churches and the secret things they
will tell to those who linger over them and study
the touches of time. Not only Sussex but every
county in our land is full of good things for those
who are not in a hurry and go about with humble
minds. But the family of Shut-eyes is a large one.

There are some whose good opinion I value
who may upbraid me for writing about places
much of whose charm is that they are hidden
from common gaze. They think of the traffic
of the Brighton road on Sunday and fear that
this wiU spill over to byways as yet quiet and
remote. I do not share these fears. The vast
majority of motorists are not of leisurely mind
and do not care for roads which go nowhere in
particular. It is only a few who will sit for an
hour on a stile and find great happiness in learn-
ing the notes of an unusual warbler, or remain
very still in the sandy hollow of a lane to watch
the jerky movements of a lizard on the opposite
side, or talk with a rural worker on the high
subject of the wool-clip and the price it may
fetch' at the next Lewes sale. Yet I know in the



A SAUNTERER IN SUSSEX

heart of every healthy man and woman is a love
of the open air and the country-side. At the
beginnings of time all were country dwellers, and
a longing for it is latent in human nattzre.

So I am sending out another book about a de-
lectable county of which I dare to say that though
much written about and much talked about is
yet, off the main tracks and away from certain
show-places, but little known.

I wish to thank an old firiend, Arthur Beckett,
editor of the Sussex County Magazine and the Sussex
County Herald, for permission to use material which
has already appeared in those periodicals ; also the
Lord Bishop of Chichester for permission to reprint
two articles from the Chichester Diocesan Gazette, of
which he is editor. Not least I express my in-
debtedness to John E. Ray, of Hastings, the com-
paruon of many a long, happy tramp, whose wide
knowledge of the past history of the county is known
to all its students; nor should I miss out L. F.
S^man, whose books on medieval England are a
mine of valuable information.


Chichester


A. A. EVANS



CONTENTS


CHAPTER PAGE

1 . Flowers of an Old Wall . i
IL Pagham Episcopi . . .10

III. A Fair River of Sussex . . 21

IV. Songs and Sub-songs of Birds . 45

V. Glynde and the Cabourn . 50

VI. The Mystery Stones of Sussex 59

VII. Alciston, Chiddingly, Waldron 64
VIII. A Sunday off .... 76

IX. A Wayside Bethel . . .81

X. Where is Didling? . . *91

XL Philomela .... 98

XII. Homes of Ancient Art . . loi

XIII. Pevensey High Street . . in

XIV. The Country of Richard Cobden i 20

XV. Penhurst and Elsewhere . 129

XVI. Children of Ishmael . -139

XVII. Pynham Priory to Barpham . 145

XVIII. At Egdean .... 164

vii



A SAUNTERER IN SUSSEX

CHAPTER PAGC

XIX. Travellers of the Night . 169

XX. On a Sussex Island . -179

XXI. Some Scratch or Mass Dials . 189

XXII. By the Adur River . . 200

XXIII. Mascots and Luck-bringers . 219

XXIV. A Shrine of English Sculpture 224
XXV. A Sussex Mystery Play . .231


viii



ILLUSTRATIONS


The Estuary of the Cuckmere Frontispiece

{Photo: W. J. Roberts)


A Desolate Chapel, Barton’s Manor,


Nyetimber ....

{Photo: W, J, Roberts)

Facing page i o

Tortington Church

{Photo: W. J. Roberts)

>>

14

Under the Cabourn
{Photo Will F. Taylor)


56

The Abbey Barn, Algiston .

{Photo: T. E, Varley Kirilan)

>>

66

Didling Church ....

>)

94

The Tub Font, Didling

{Photo: H. G. Bnggs)


94

A Male Nightingale sitting on Eggs

{Photo: Mrs. Crawford)

n

98

The Court House, Pevensey .

{Photo: J. Weston & Son)


112

Richard Cobden ....

{From the Portrait by Lowes Dickinson by
courte^ of Mrs. Cobden Unwin)


126

Penhurst Church ....

)»

132


{Photo: Mm Beatson)


IX



A SAUNTERER IN SUSSEX


Pynham Priory, Arundel — ^all that


IS LEFT OF IT . . . . Facing page 146

{Photo; IV. J. Roberts)

West Thorney Church, North Side,

SHOWING Norman Arcading . ,, 186

The Narthex Screen . . . ,, 186

{Photo; W.J. Roberts)

Scratch Dials .... ,, 192

[Photos: E. J. Bedfordy Lewes)

More Scratch Dials . . . „ 196

[Photos: E. J Bedfordy Lewes)

Seeding, a Bit of the Lost Priory

OF Sele „ 212

Old Erringham Chapel, a Norman

Window „ 212

[Photo: J. E, Ray)

The Dorset Chapel, Withyham . „ 228

[Photo: Harold H. Cambum)


X



CHAPTER I


FLOWERS OF AN OLD WALL

An old wall, whether it be of weathered stone or
mellowed brick, is a thing of interest to those who
have eyes to see. It nearly always has a story to
tell, and, moreover, age bestows a beauty wlxich
is wanting in buildings new and raw. Near my
home are row on row of new houses, each like
the other in dreary uniformity; but intervening,
and giving refreshment to the eye, is a delightful
stretch of old wall. It is of centuries ago, buUt of
Pulborough stone, of which a peculiarity is the
horizontal lines in its texture of brown, orange,
yeUow and grey. Rooted in the interstices are
litde frail beauties which love mortar — ^ivy-
leaved toadflax, pearlwort, bits of wartcress, and,
flaunting itself at the top, golden ragwort.

I have a friend who is wise in plant lore and
knows of the partiality of certain flow'ers for cer-
tain places. Some time ago he took over a new
house, which has on the garden side an old wall.
To me the loveliest part of a lovely garden is
this wall, which now beloi^s to him. It is at its
full glory at springtime and early summer.
March and April show bunches of white arabis,
purple aubretia and a drooping linaria; later
comes an unfolding of cerastium, in shining



A SAUNTERER IN SUSSEX

masses of white; there are single wallflowers
and snapdragon, and at the foot are flowers
which love stone and moisture, saxifrages and
myosotis.

I wonder how many of my readers know
Tortington Church? It is, let me say, among the
minor architectural jewels of Sussex. The church-
yard is just one acre, and that has sufficed during
a thousand years for the needs of out-spent
humanity, those of the parish; though, now that
Arundel is spilling over in that direction, it is
doubtful if the acre will serve much longer. On
one side of the churchyard is an old wall, which
separates it from the manor farm, and made up, if
my memory serves me right, of flint brick and
rubble stone. This, when I first saw it, more than
thirty years ago, was the home of a multitude of
wall-loving flowers. I will give a list of some of
these, but the enumeration is in the past tense.
I believe ivy has been allowed to grow freely on
my old wall, and most of these fair things are now
no more. The plants, however, were not rare;
they were only such as you might find here and
there in any part of the land, so there is no need
to go to Tortington and bewail the ravages of
unchecked ivy.

There were three plants, very small and incon-
spicuous, and some people there are who would
call them imattractive. Vernal whitlow grass,
Draba verm, is one. It grew in abimdance. Its full
stature when flowering is from two to three inches,
so it has to be looked for. The leaves are in a

a



FLOWERS OF AN OLD WALL

circlet; a half-crown piece would cover them; a
single leafless stalk rises from its centre and you
will see that each petal of the tiny crown of flowers
is deeply cleft. That is a feature which distin-
guishes it from some relations and gives it
individuality.

Of the same family, and much of the same
appearance, though a trifle bigger, was the rock
cress, Arabis thaliana. Its claim to name and place
as a species is the stem leaves, petals uncloven and
long seed pods. The third of the miniature group
was the pearlwort, Sagim procumbens. This is not
a gardener’s delight; it is an insistent weed, invad-
ing paths, wedging itself between stones, and
refusing, like cheeky street urchins, to be easily
moved off. Each part of the pearlwort, tiny leaf
and tiny flower, is of grace and beauty. If only,
instead of being microscopical in its fashioning,
the inches were feet, it might take proud place
among the fair things of the garden. Each of
these three flowers belongs, as also do shepherd’s
purse, groundsell and the chickweeds, to what
botanists term self-fertilizers; that is to say, the
flowers are too small, the nectar too spare, to
receive visits from insects. For continuance they
fight for themselves, and are, if I may put it so, at
the bottom of the social ladder in the flower
world.

Very different in the estimation of the common
gazer are some other denizens of my wall. There
is the yellow corydalis, Lutea, a gay thing of golden
blossoms among leaves of a delicate pale green.

3



A SAUNTERER IN SUSSEX

These leaves are as deeply cut as maidenhair
fern. It is a flower not born to blush unseen, but
beckons to every passer-by. Cottage folk love it,
and in many trim village gardens it has an hon-
oured place. In my parish of East Dean every
morning when going to the village school I was
greeted through half the year with the cheerful
smile of yellow corydalis. It has been there among
stones beneath the window-sill of the teacher’s
house for years beyond reckoning, and it is there
still.

Now, of plants one may say there are those
which love the shade like heartsease, high winds
like dropwort, the hot sun hke cistus, the patter of
much rain like gipsywort, long droughts like the
house-leek, and the kiss of sea spray like thrift.
Plants, too, have social groupings. There are
proud beauties, such as roses and lilies who had
their beginnings in the wild like other plants but
are cosseted and cared for by the gardener; and
there are plants of low degree, like shepherd’s
purse and common dock whose dwelling is waste
comers and abandoned heaps.

On my old wall I have mentioned among
several others the especially gay and attractive
yellow corydalis. It dwells as often in trim gardens
as on neglected walls, and with equal grace.
Another joyous plant of the wall is the ivy-leaved
toadflax. It has the scientific name, a bit of
rhythmic Latin, of Linaria cymbalaria. I am in-
clined to say it has a partiality for the walls of
church and churchyard, I so often find it there.

4



FLOWERS OF AN OLD WALL

Perhaps it is that a church and its accessories has
in its first rearing mortar well limed and strong
and so rarely need the raking and worrying of
the trowel, a thing no stone-loving plant can long
abide. I have heard that the litde trailing toad-
flax was at the first brought to this country by
monks who loved to stock the physick garden, an
adjunct of every such settlement, and obtained
herbs of healing from all parts of Europe and the
East, Like many other of our British flowers it
came here as an immigrant, and we may count it
among the beloved aliens. The juice has a heahng
virtue, it was said, but what that is I do not
know. Also I should add there are dark associa-
tions in the history of this innocent flower. It
yields when distilled an arsenical oxide which was
used by those who followed the refined art of slow
poisoning and secret murder, and may be said to
have a place in the story of the Borgia and Medici
and rascaldom of many ages.

There also grew here the wall rue or maiden-
hair spleenwort. It is said to be the smallest fern
in Britain and may be ‘the hyssop which groweth
out of the wall’ of which Solomon spake. It is
fairly firequent and rarely exceeds four inches.

Pellitory-of-the-wall is ubiquitous — ^it is on my
wall, on your wall, on every wall sufficiently aged
and dilapidated. The plant cannot be called
beautiful. Its leaves are hairy, they collect the
dust, the flowers red, small, dingy, but for all that
pellitory is a plant of renown among those who
use herbs to meet the ills that flesh is heir to. It

5



A SAUNTERER IN SUSSEX

possesses, I am told, ingredients of potency, and as
a simple is soothing and cooling. I have heard of
its virtues; though my information is second-hand.
A friend of mine had gout in a tendon of the heel,
which besides maiming him gave torture as of red-
hot irons. During some months the efforts of his
doctor were vain; he felt inclined to say, in the
words of a Hebrew king, ‘I shall go softly all my
days.’ But healing came. Meeting a country
woman he was told a cure was awaiting him in
the abundant pellitory which bestrewed the
garden walls of his home. He tried it, and though
the story sounds a bit marvellous I was assured
that after months of misery in three days he felt
relieved, and in a fortnight was cured. All hail to
pellitory-of-the-wall ! Dingy, unbeautiful, com-
mon, yet for those in need worth its weight in
gold.

Now I would mention two more plants on this
old wall; small, of humble mien and yet choice.
They are the rue-leaved saxifrage, Saxifraga tri-
dactylites, and thyme-leaved sandwort, Arenaria
serpyllifolia. The first has a minute and snowy-
white flower and leaves of rich green. It is not
common and also not rare. The other, too, is
dainty, loves dry places and the hot sun. Both
of these some years ago grew in abundance
on the west wall of Arundel Church, but
they have been cast out recently by the mason’s
trowel.

There are plants rare and of beauty to be found
on old walls, but these must be sought for, and no



FLOWERS OF AN OLD WALL

botanist who loves to go in quest cares to give
broadcast their names. There is joy in making
discovery not unlike that of the gold-digger, but
the true flower-lover sees, notes and leaves them
to live out their lives. I may allude, however,
without rashness, to a charming ragwort, mis-
named Senecio squalidus, which shows itself on
almost every wall of Cluchester. It is also much
in evidence on the college walls of Oxford. Who-
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