Highways and Byways in Sussex Part 41

Rye's eight bells bear the following inscription:--

To honour both of G.o.d and King Our voices shall in concert ring.

May heaven increase their bounteous store And bless their souls for evermore.

Whilst thus we join in joyful sound May love and loyalty abound.

Ye people all who hear me ring Be faithful to your G.o.d and King.

Such wondrous power to music's given It elevates the soul to heaven.

If you have a judicious ear You'll own my voice is sweet and clear.

Our voices shall with joyful sound Make hills and valleys echo round.

In wedlock bands all ye who join, With hands your hearts unite; So shall our tuneful tongues combine To laud the nuptial rite.

Ye ringers, all who prize Your health and happiness, Be sober, merry, wise, And you'll the same possess.

Hardly less interesting than the church are the by-streets of Rye, so old and simple and quiet and right; particularly perhaps Mermaid Street, with its beautiful hospital. In the High Street, which is busier, is the George Inn, the rare possessor of a large a.s.sembly room with a musicians' gallery. One only of Rye's gates is standing--the Landgate; but on the south rampart of the town is the Ypres Tower (called Wipers by the prosaic inhabitants), a relic of the twelfth century, guarding Rye once from perils by sea and now from perils by land. Standing by the tower one may hear below s.h.i.+pbuilders busy at work and observe all the low-pulsed life of the river. A mile or so away is Rye Harbour, and beyond it the sea; across the intervening s.p.a.ce runs a little train with its freight of golf players. In the east stretches Romney Marsh to the hills of Folkestone.

Extremes meet in Rye. When I was last there the pa.s.sage of the Landgate was made perilous by an approaching Panhard; the monastery of the Augustine friars on Conduit Hill had become a Salvation Army barracks; and in the doorway of the little fourteenth-century chapel of the Carmelites, now a private house, in the church square, a perambulator waited. Moreover, in the stately red house at the head of Mermaid Street the author of _The Awkward Age_ prosecutes his fascinating a.n.a.lyses of twentieth-century temperaments.

[Sidenote: RYE POTTERY]

Among the industries of Rye is the production of an ingenious variety of pottery achieved by affixing to ordinary vessels of earthenware a veneer of broken pieces of china--usually fragments of cups and saucers--in definite patterns that sometimes reach a magnificence almost Persian.

For the most part the result is not perhaps beautiful, but it is always gay, and the Rye potter who practises the art deserves encouragement. I saw last summer a piece of similar ware in a cottage on the banks of the Ettrick, but whether it had travelled thither from Rye, or whether Scotch artists work in the same medium, I do not know. Mr. Ga.s.son, the artificer (the dominating name of Ga.s.son is to Rye what that of Seiler is to Zermatt), charges a penny for the inspection of the four rooms of his house in which his pottery, his stuffed birds and other curiosities are collected. The visit must be epoch-making in any life. Never again will a broken tea-cup be to any of Mr. Ga.s.son's patrons merely a broken tea-cup. Previously it may have been that and nothing more; henceforward it is valuable material which, having completed one stage of existence, is, like the good Buddhist, entering upon another of increased radiance.

More, broken china may even become the symbol of Rye.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Court Lodge, Udimore._]

[Sidenote: PETT AND ICKLESHAM]

Between Hastings and Winchelsea are the villages of Guestling, Pett, and Icklesham, the last two on the edge of the Level. Of these, Icklesham is the most interesting, Guestling having recently lost its church by fire, and Pett church being new. Pett stands in a pleasant position at the end of the high ground, with nothing in the east but Pett Level, and the sea only a mile away. At very low tide the remains of a submerged forest were once discernible, and may still be.

Icklesham also stands on the ridge further north, overlooking the Level and the sea, with Winchelsea not two miles distant in the east. The church is a very fine one, with a most interesting Norman tower in its midst. The churchwardens accounts contain some quaint entries:

[Sidenote: CHURCHWARDENS' ACCOUNTS]

1732. Paid for ye Stokes [stocks] __4 10_s._ 8-3/4_d._

1735. January ye 13 pd for a pint of wine and for eight pound of mutton for Good[man] Row and Good[man] Winch and Goody Sutors for their being with Goody in her fitts 3_s._

1744. Fevery ye 29 paid Gudy Tayler for going to Winshelse for to give her Arthor Davy [affidavit] 1_s._ 6_d._

1746. April 26 gave the Ringers for Rejoycing when ye Rebels was beat 15_s._ (This refers to Culloden. There are two sides in every battle; how do Burns's lines run?--

Drumossie moor--Drumossie day-- A waefu' day it was to me!

For there I lost my father dear, My father dear, and brethren three.)

One of the Icklesham gravestones, standing over the grave of James King, who died aged seventeen, has this complacent couplet:

G.o.d takes the good--too good on earth to stay, And leaves the bad--too bad to take away.

Two miles to the west of Icklesham, at Snaylham, close to the present railway, once stood the home of the Cheyneys, a family that maintained for many years a fierce feud with the Oxenbridges of Brede, whither we soon shall come. A party of Cheyneys once succeeded in catching an Oxenbridge asleep in his bed, and killed him. Old Place farm, a little north of Icklesham, between the village and the line, marks the site of Old Place, the mansion of the Fynches, earls of Winchelsea.

[Sidenote: PLAYDEN AND IDEN]

The mainland proper begins hard by Rye, on the other side of the railway, where Rye Hill carries the London road out of sight. This way lie Playden, Iden, and Peasmarsh: Playden, with a slender spire, of a grace not excelled in a county notable, as we have seen, for graceful spires, but a little overweighted perhaps by its cross, within whose church is the tomb of a Flemish brewer, named Zoctmanns, calling for prayers for his soul; Iden, with a square tower and a stair turret, a village taking its name from that family of which Alexander Iden, slayer of Jack Cade, was a member, its home being at Mote, now non-existent; and Peasmarsh, whose long modest church, crowned by a squat spire, may be again seen, like the swan upon St. Mary's Lake, in the water at the foot of the churchyard. At Peasmarsh was born a poor artificial poet named William Pattison, in whose works I have failed to find anything of interest.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Udimore Church._]

The two most interesting spots in the hilly country immediately north of the Brede valley (north of Winchelsea) are Udimore and Brede. Concerning Udimore church, which externally has a family resemblance to that of Steyning, it is told that it was originally planned to rise on the other side of the little river Ree. The builders began their work, but every night saw the supernatural removal of the stones to the present site, while a mysterious voice uttered the words "O'er the mere! O'er the mere!" Hence, says the legend, the present position of the fane, and the beautiful name Udimore, or "O'er the mere," which, of course, becomes Uddymer among the villagers.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Brede Place._]

[Sidenote: BREDE PLACE]

From Udimore one reaches Brede by turning off the high road about two miles to the east. But it is worth while to keep to the road a little longer, and entering Gilly Wood (on the right) explore as wild and beautiful a ravine as any in the county. And, on the Brede by-road, it is worth while also to turn aside again in order to see Brede Place.

This house, like all the old mansions (it is of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries), is set in a hollow, and is sufficiently gloomy in appearance and surroundings to lend colour to the rumour that would have it haunted--a rumour originally spread by the smugglers who for some years made the house their headquarters. An underground pa.s.sage is said to lead from Brede Place to the church, a good part of a mile distant; but as is usual with underground pa.s.sages, the legend has been held so dear that no one seems to have ventured upon the risk of disproving it.

Amid these medieval surroundings the late Stephen Crane, the American writer, conceived some of his curiously modern stories.

One of the original owners (the Oxenbridges) like Col. Lunsford of East Hoathly was credited by the country people with an appet.i.te for children. Nothing could compa.s.s his death but a wooden saw, with which after a drunken bout the villagers severed him in Stubb's Lane, by Groaning Bridge. Not all the family, however, were bloodthirsty, for at least two John Oxenbridges of the sixteenth century were divines, one a Canon of Windsor, the other a "grave and reverent preacher."

[Sidenote: DEAN SWIFT'S CRADLE]

The present vicar of Brede, the village on the hill above Brede Place, has added to the natural antiquities of his church several alien curiosities, chief among them being the cradle in which Dean Swift was rocked. It is worth a visit to Brede church to be persuaded that that matured Irishman ever was a baby.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Brede Place, from the South._]

CHAPTER x.x.xIX

ROBERTSBRIDGE

Horace Walpole in difficulties--A bibliophile's threat--Salehurst--Bodiam--Northiam--Queen Elizabeth's dinner and shoes--Brightling--Jack Fuller--Turner in East Suss.e.x--The Burwash country--Suss.e.x superst.i.tions--_Suss.e.x Folk and Suss.e.x Ways_--Liberals and Conservatives--The Suss.e.x character--Independent bellringers--"Silly Suss.e.x"--Burwash at Cricket--James Hurdis--A donkey race--"A hint to great and little men"--Henry Burwash--Etchingham--Sir John Lade and the Prince--Ticehurst and Wadhurst.

Robertsbridge is not in itself a particularly attractive place; but it has a good inn, and many interesting villages may be reached from it, the little light railway that runs from the town to Tenterden, along the Rother valley, making the exploration of this part of Suss.e.x very simple.

Horace Walpole came to difficulties hereabout during his Suss.e.x journey.