Hard by is the old manor-house. The church, whose great size has already been remarked, has the tombs of Norths and Bunburys, who have lived and died there, with that of a fifteenth-century Lord Mayor of London, a native of Barton Mills, and named from his birthplace, Henry de Barton, who was the first to see that London was lighted by night.
Mildenhall church is kindred in spirit with the town. One of the finest Perpendicular buildings in the county, it has a metropolitan aspect, an air of over-lordship above the villages far and near that is not a little striking.
MILDENHALL.
Even here, at Mildenhall, the shadow of the second Boer War has rested, for a brass tablet on a wall in the church records simply how natives of the town laid down their lives for England on that alien soil. Thus on the bones of the English is the Empire reared, and there be few among the rural churches of this mother-land of ours that do not record some such sacrifice, for the army of 250,000 men came from the highways and byways, and few were the families, rich or poor, that had not the keenest personal interest in the struggle which newspaper lies and contradictions, and the grossest political jealousies conspired to render inglorious in report and speech. Those soldiers were, perhaps, commonplace enough in their everyday lives, but these simple records, and the many other such throughout the country, elevate them to the status of martyrs in a cause, beside whom the little peddlers in votes seem mean and sordid indeed. But we must return to Barton and make for Thetford, and since we cannot reform the politicians, may e’en leave them alone
XXXII
The sinuous road out of Barton Mills is one of the chief beauty-spots of all these one hundred and thirty miles to Cromer. Nowhere is a more curving and undecided main road than this, at the crossing of the little river Lark, and few have so great a charm. Here, close by that old roadside inn, the “Bull,” stand the flour-mills that continue to give a meaning to the old place-name, and past them flows that fishful river, along a reach densely shaded by poplars and willows. Graceful plantations line the road and stud the marshy ground that presently gives place again to mile upon mile of heath.
Over seven miles of heather and bracken lead to Elveden, said by Fox, more than a century ago, to have been the best-stocked sporting estate, for its size, in the kingdom. The wayfarer of the present day can honestly re-echo the opinion of that statesman, for the pheasants swarm. Even upon the highway, as the cyclist passes, instead of scurrying away, they come out of the hedges and stare after him, impudently, as though they alone have a right here. To the pedestrian they are rather embarrassing, following to heel like dogs. They are so used to being handled that they take every man-person for a keeper or food-distributer, and with the inducement of a pocketful of maize, judiciously distributed, they could no doubt be induced to follow one into Thetford.
Those whose business it is to look after the game at Elveden—or “Elden,” as the country people call it—are legion. Elveden is, in fact, maintained by Lord Iveagh, just as it has always been, but now still more strictly, for sport, and here along the white ribbon of the road, or across the purple heaths, you may, in due season, see the “sportsmen” and the beaters setting forth in the morning to slay by wholesale, or in the evening returning, their lust for death and destruction sated for the day. It is undoubtedly a large question, but to the present writer it seems that the real sporting era was when the gunner spent a long day tramping the coverts, the turnip-fields, or the stubble, and sought his quarry with the hunter’s skill, rather than waiting for it to be driven to him.
