Amberley is at any rate one of the very, very old sites of human habitation in Sussex. It is the fashion to decry monastic charters, and it would be difficult to prove, though it was for centuries constantly asserted, that Amberley was part of the original foundation of the Church of Selsea. We have regarded it as sufficiently historical to be included in former pages of this book, but whether the monastic traditional charter be true or false, its very existence proves that the popular legend attributed to the place the highest antiquity.
Houghton, which lies in the neck of the gap, is certainly equally old. That British trackway which was mentioned when the topography of Sussex was being described, and which runs all along the rich loam belt immediately to the north of the Downs, had to cross the river at some point. Now it is the universal rule of the old British trackways that they spy out the narrowest part of the wet lands when they attempt to cross a river. They descend by the nearest spur upon the one side, and make for the nearest firm land upon the other. At this spot the river Arun curves strongly eastward and runs right under the Downs. The marshes to the westward of it are still often flooded and were once wide and impassable, but at Houghton there is a spur coming down across them which, while it does not actually bridge the gap, comes near to doing so. That hollow sunken lane, which is the modern descendant of the old British road, runs from Bury just above the flood line on dry soil; it climbs up on to the spur close to an old and reverend inn called “The St. George and Dragon,” and then turns sharp to the left down along the crest of the spur, making for the shortest possible crossing which the marshes afford. It is not too much to say that we are certain the Arun has been crossed at this point since prehistoric men first attempted to pass the river as they journeyed north of the Downs.
The connection of the place with modern history is also not without interest. It was here that Charles II., escaping in disguise after the battle of Worcester, took what was perhaps his last glass of ale, or at least his last glass of ale in the saddle, on his way to Shoreham, from which happy port he got away to his long exile. The house is still licensed, and cursed be the man who takes that license away.
The historical importance of Houghton is further evidenced by the name of the wood which lies up beyond Whiteways on the slope of the
THE RAPE OF CHICHESTER
Downs, which still retains the name of Houghton Forest, indicating that the Crown hunting lands, or, if the modern phrase be preferred, the national preserves, of the neighbourhood depended upon this valley village two miles off. There is little more to say with regard to the historical development of the Rape of Arundel. The villages and towns of the Weald are here, as elsewhere, of a late development. Slinfold, for example, is not mentioned in Doomsday, nor is Billingshurst, though the latter is probably Celtic in origin. Pulborough, which like Billingshurst lies on the Roman road, is the last of the outposts of the Weald to be spoken of in that document, while the excellent village of North Chapel was actually not detached from the parish of Petworth until as late a date as 1693.
The Rape of Chichester has this character to differentiate it from the other rapes of the county, that it is not military. Two explanations of this fact concur and supplement each other. The Rape of Chichester led nowhere, and had no gap in its hills, and the Rape of Chichester was dominated by the Church.
We have seen that all the Rapes of Sussex, leading as they did from north to south, tended to group themselves round highways from the Channel to the Thames valley, and Chichester, with its large though shallow harbour, certainly did afford an admirable entry into England for early navigation; but, once one had made the town, one’s way to London and the North lay up the Stane Street, and this Roman road went through no populous districts nor through any of those gaps which men (after Roman times) would naturally seek for their advance, but went straight over the bleak and desolate Downs, and by the time it got to the crest of these it was within half an hour’s smart riding of the garrison of Arundel. Westward no man would go. The marshes prevented him. Neither would he advance northward; he would have found in that direction, after crossing the pass at Singleton, a fertile valley indeed to raid, but no good opportunity for further progress. Before him would have lain the large sandy wastes which began at what is now the Sussex border by Fernhurst, and continued right on to the neighbourhood of the Thames. They are to-day filling up with villas, but they were, throughout the centuries in which our history was made, empty deserts yielding no corn and affording no shelter of towns or villages to an army. Supposing that an enemy, as for instance a pirate raid of the Danes, were
MERMAID STREET, RYE