PARISHES OF WEALD
farther one got from the village church and the group of houses, the less it mattered under whose jurisdiction one fell, and when, with the growth of civilisation and the necessity for exact boundaries, a line was at last drawn, it was drawn somewhat in favour of the Sussex parishes, whose manorial lords were of greater political importance than those of Surrey: for the reason that they held the great castles which defended the south of England. It was, presumably, in this way that the ribbon of land which lies to the north of the forest ridge came to be included within the political boundaries of the modern county.
Viewed in the light of such a development from the sea, the topography of Sussex falls into a comparatively simple scheme.
The whole county is determined by the great line of chalk hills which stand steep up against the Weald, that is, with their escarpment facing northward, and which slope gradually towards the sea plain upon the south in such a fashion, that a section taken anywhere in that range resembles in form a wave driven forward by the south-west wind and just about to break over the Weald. It is not the least of the unities which render Sussex so harmonious that this main range of the South Downs, which are the strong framework of the whole county, should have all the appearance of being blown forward into its shape by those Atlantic gales which also determine the configuration of the trees in the sea-plain and upon the slopes of the hills.
Were this range of the South Downs to run parallel to the sea throughout the length of the county the topographical scheme of which we are speaking could be set forth in very few words. The whole county would fall at once and without qualification into four long parallel belts: the sea-plain, the Downs next inland to it, the belt of old villages at the foot of the Downs to the north (that is, the southern edge of the Weald), and the forest ridge to the north of the whole. As a fact, however, these lines, though parallel to one another, are not strictly parallel to the sea coast; they tilt somewhat from the north-west to the south-east, so that the plan of the county resembles a piece of stuff woven in four broad bands which have been cut in bias, or, as the phrase goes, “on the cross.” Each belt has, therefore, its termination on the sea. The coastal plain gets narrower and narrower, and comes to an end at Brighton; the Chalk Downs run into the sea just beyond this point, and are cut off, in sharp white cliffs all along Seaford Bay, in a
CHICHESTER CROSS
face of white precipice which culminates at Beachy Head. The southern Weald and the flats, which run all across the county just north of the Downs, come to the sea in that great even stretch between Eastbourne and Hastings for which the general name is Pevensey Level; and, finally, the somewhat complicated and diversified forest ridge, with its mixture of clay and sand, runs into the sea in the neighbourhood of Hastings.