XXXIII
Weird oast-houses of a gigantic size raise their lofty cowls against the sky-line outside Lamberhurst, and, with their vanes decorated with images of the Kentish Horse, look like the architecture of Nightmare.
Half a mile onwards, an old toll-house, added to in later years, has the appearance of a lodge. Beyond it, the road has at some distant period been raised from a very deep dingle, as may be judged from the farm in the neighbouring hollow, and from the Bewl Bridge, under whose arch the little Bewl stream rushes, with a hoarse voice, far below.
WEIRD OAST-HOUSES, LAMBERHURST.
In another mile is Stone Crouch, whose name of “crouch,” meaning merely a cross—probably a cross-road—prepares one for that most solitary and most rustic hamlet, with a farmhouse and its dependent cottages and barns, all in the old Kentish style. The farmhouse was once a coaching inn, and appears to have borne the sign of the “Postboy,” now taken by a house on the way from Lamberhurst, half a mile before the hamlet is reached.
On the left is the great park of Bedgebury, the seat until 1887, when he died, of A. J. B. Beresford-Hope, once prominent in the House of Commons. He was the descendant of one John Hope, a Hollander, of Amsterdam, whose son settled in England about 1800. That origin was the subject of a curious allusion in Parliament, during the debate of April 12th, 1867, on the Representation of the People Bill: a measure vehemently opposed by Beresford-Hope, whose clumsy, burly form and grotesque mannerisms in speaking were often commented upon. He spoke with emphasis of voice and gesture against that proposal of Disraeli’s, and declared, rather offensively, that he “would vote with whole heart and conscience against the Asian mystery.”
To this the “Asian mystery” himself rejoined that “all the honourable member’s exhibitions in the House are distinguished by a prudery which charms me, and when he talks of Asian mysteries, I may, perhaps, by way of reply, remark that there is a Batavian grace about his exhibition which takes the sting out of what he has said.”
He might even have said batrachian grace, for Beresford-Hope on his legs in the House was something froglike.
The house at Bedgebury, originally built in 1688 by Sir James Hayes, from sources romantically drawn out of treasure recovered from a sunken Spanish galleon, has been twice remodelled, lastly in the ’60’s, and is typical of the taste then prevailing for French architecture of what we may term the Alexandra Palace, Grosvenor Place, and Buckingham Palace Hotel type: which is to a Londoner an easier method of comparison than by naming it the “Louis the Fourteenth style.” It is a type distinguished by scaly Mansard roofs and spiky crestings, and has long been outmoded.
Beresford-Hope was a connoisseur of sorts, with a ready purse for church-restoration, conducted sometimes with that “zeal not according to knowledge” St. Paul laments, and exemplified in the little church of Kilndown, outside Bedgebury Park.
At Flimwell, which is merely a hamlet at the cross-roads, formed into a parish in 1839 by annexing portions of the neighbouring parishes of Etchingham, Ticehurst, and Hawkhurst, the road finally enters Sussex. “Flimwell Vent” is the style by which the place is known to old Turnpike Acts. The name sounds mysterious, but is only a strangely perverted version of “went,” the old rustic word for a cross-road. This, where roads go in four different directions, would be a “four-went way.” The draughtsmen who drew up those acts simply did not understand the term, and spelled it, as Mr. Tony Weller did his name, with a “we.”
The place is not unknown to history. In 1265, Henry the Third having, after a short siege, seized Tonbridge Castle, marched south, and, passing Combwell, a nunnery in the parish of Goudhurst, found the dead body of his cook, Master Thomas, who had incautiously strayed from the main body. According to contemporary records, the enraged King ordered three hundred and fifteen archers to be beheaded “at the place which is called Flimerwelle,” and here accordingly “they were surrounded like so many innocent lambs in a field, and butchered.”
The Angevin kings had no sense of proportion, and a perverted one of justice.
The left-hand road at Flimwell is the way to Rye, leading over what was once the wild and lonely region of Seacox Heath, haunt of the desperate smugglers then infesting this part of the country. The heath is now a thing of the past. Enclosure and farming have abolished it, and perhaps the only fragment of it left is a delightful little patch of brilliant heather preserved in the gardens of Lord Goschen’s mansion of “Seacox Heath.” Portions remain of old buildings once belonging to a house traditionally said to have been used as a warehouse by the half-mythical smuggler, Arthur Grey, but the present house was built in 1871 by Mr. (afterwards Lord) Goschen. It is a rather severe and formal Renaissance building, in a pale yellow sandstone quarried on the estate, and defies the canons of proportion suited to a country house, running to height rather than ground-space—a fashion imposed in streets where houses are built shoulder to shoulder, but unnecessary and undesirable on sites such as this.
It is a beautiful site; a lofty ridge facing south and overlooking many miles of lovely country. Ornate gardens, in which the most brilliant flowers predominate, surround the house, and beyond them are dense plantations of the choicest conifers, collected from all parts of the world.
Between Flimwell and Hastings, a distance of 18¾ miles, there were no fewer than six turnpike-gates levying tribute upon road-users, but in spite of these heavy exactions—perhaps even because of them—the expenditure of the Flimwell and Hastings Turnpike Trust largely exceeded its income, and in 1835 it was £11,000 in debt. In the end Parliament abolished turnpikes, and the bondholders who had lent money on the security of the tolls and the good faith of the Government lost their capital, not only here but all over the country.
A farmhouse one mile on the road beyond Flimwell, with brick-and-tile front and weather-boarded back, and with oast-houses and hop-gardens attached to it, is known, for some inscrutable reason, as “Mountpumps.” In another two miles the road comes to Hurst (i.e. Wood) Green.