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.
XXXIV
Hurst Green is a large hamlet, and an offshoot of Etchingham; created by the road travel of the last hundred years. It is in two most distinct parts: one unmistakably Georgian, the other just as distinctly Late Victorian, shading off into Early Edwardian. Although one continuous street, divided only by a cross-road, the two parts of Hurst Green are very different in appearance, and look so antagonistic that it would not be surprising to learn that the inhabitants of either will have no dealings with those of the other.
The traveller comes first to the more recent portion: very red and raw, and there he finds a reason for much of these developments, in a large and highly ornate Police-station, which is not merely that, but a Court-house as well. Hurst Green, it seems, is the headquarters of a Petty Sessional division of the county of Sussex: much to the advantage of the great neighbouring “George” inn and its rival over the way, the “Queen’s Head.” When the railway came, and the custom fell off and the great stables were deserted, the two old inns were in grave danger of extinction. Only the Petty Sessions saved the situation. To-day, when the awful majesty of the Bench has dealt with the crimes and misdemeanours of the district—awarding fine or imprisonment for poaching or the juvenile rifling of orchards—the upholders of law and order and the rights of property in ground-game adjourn for refreshment, and in the “George” drink confusion to the illegal midnight sportsman and the youthful apple-stealers, while the friends and relations of those hardened criminals drown their sorrows at the “Queen’s Head.”
