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cxxiv,” which appears to be the highly esoteric way of writing 1624. “Mors vitæ initium” he tells us, and illustrates it with the pleasing fancy of a skull mounted on an hour-glass, with ears of wheat sprouting from the eyeless sockets. Other equally pleasant devices, encircled with fragments of Greek, are plentiful, the whole concluding with the announcement that “The end of all things is at hand.” Holding that opinion, it would seem to have been hardly worth while to erect the monument, but in the result it survives to show what a very gross mistake he made.
Two illustrations of the quiet annals of Cuckfield, widely different in point of time, are the old clock and the wall-plate memorial to one Frank Bleach of the Royal Sussex Volunteer Company, who died at Bloemfontein in 1901. The ancient hand-wrought clock, made in 1667 by Isaac Leney, probably of Cuckfield, finally stopped in 1867, and was taken down in 1873. After lying as lumber in the belfry for many years, it was in 1904 fixed on the interior wall of the tower.
XXVII
“ROOKWOOD”
Cuckfield Place, acknowledged by Harrison Ainsworth to be the original of his “Rookwood,” stands immediately outside the town, and is visible, in midst of the park, from the road. That romantic home of ghostly tradition is fittingly approached by a long and lofty avenue of limes, where stands the clock-tower entrance-gate, removed from Slaugham Place.
Beyond it the picturesquely broken surface of the park stretches, beautifully wooded and populated with herds of deer, the grey, many-gabled mansion looking down upon the whole.
AINSWORTH