Travelling through this peaceful land, loitering along its lanes that tempted one to loiter because of their pleasantness, we eventually turned up at Ansty Cross, where we were on one of the three familiar Brighton roads, for there is a choice of roads from London to Brighton, all beloved of the speedy motorist who heeds not the scenery he passes; but they are dusty, with much hasting traffic, and not the roads that a quiet-loving pilgrim would choose. For this cause we did not go far on the Brighton road, but left it by the first promising lane, and in time we reached a little green in an out-of-the-way spot. I could not find it named on my map; there was no village there, but a cottage or two faced it, and in the centre of the green was a post with a weathercock on the top, and the weathercock had the date of years past pierced in it, a date I have forgotten. The post was railed round for protection, so I thought there might possibly be some story connected with it, otherwise why so protected? I asked particulars of a cottager, and he, nothing loth to be informing, told me that the post was part of an ancient gibbet—I do not remember having seen such a thing before—whereon a man was hung in chains for robbery and murder. It appears from the tale I was told that a tramp sought food and shelter one night at a cottage close by; the cottager took pity on him and gave him food and a night's lodging, and was in return robbed of the small savings he had by the scoundrel of a tramp, who richly deserved his fate. Such are the tales of the road.
It must have been a gruesome sight in old days, and one not at times to be avoided, for travellers to see a man hung up thus by the wayside, his shrivelled body swinging, or perhaps only his bones rattling, in the wind to the creaking of the chains. I remember a certain church clerk telling me a story of how in past days, at a spot near his church, a poor woman's only son was exposed on a gibbet—I think it was merely for stealing a sheep he suffered death, stolen to provide his widowed mother with food,—and how in after days the poor, bereaved, broken-hearted, solitary widow used to tramp all alone on dark winter nights to the gibbet to pick up any bones of her boy that might have fallen to the ground, and carry them carefully home, so that she might secretly bury them in a quiet corner of the churchyard. I could only hope that the story was not true, but the clerk assured me it was, "every word of it." Sometimes I am thankful I live in these latter days.
Then wandering over more winding lanes we came to the top of Scaynes Hill, where the road dropped down steeply before us, and from where there is a fine view looking over the fair wooded Weald to the bare but not barren downs, and just then over their long, undulating line the sea mists were creeping, and I thought there came wafted inland the rare scent of the sea. The mists kept rolling in great masses down the green sides of the hills, then as if by magic vanished from view. I never saw the South Downs look so glorious or so mountainous as they looked with their crowning of mists and their dark shadowed bases. To realise the full beauty of the downs you must see them in all weathers and not in sunshine alone. Sunshine is cheerful, but sunshine is a tamer; now mists give the downs just a suspicion of grandeur. Even Snowdon looks tame on a clear, cloudless day.
Descending Scaynes Hill we mounted again to a wide open common with a big white windmill topping it and so exposed to all the winds, a mill boldly in evidence that surely would have tempted Don Quixote, had he been of to-day and passed by that way, to try a tilt or two at it. Without the mill the common would have looked bare and have been wholly characterless except for its openness. I think, after an old castle or a ruined abbey, there is more character about a windmill than in any other building; moreover, a windmill is always a telling and a graceful structure, so a pleasing, even a poetic, feature in any landscape. I really think that more than half the charm of Holland lies in its many bickering windmills, and the life their whirling sails give to its flat and dreamy landscapes with their slow canals.
After a time our road led us between great rocks, so quickly in England does the scenery change its character, for the rocks suggested a road in the wild North Country; it was as though we had suddenly been transported there. So we reached steep-streeted Uckfield, and in a few more miles the little railless town of East Hoathly, somewhat beyond which I espied, peeping over distant woods, a tall stone church steeple; it attracted my eye, for it is an unusual sight in Sussex, where the churches have mostly square towers, or steeples roofed with oak shingles. On consulting my map I found the steeple belonged to Chiddingly church, a little remote village off any main road. I had indeed some trouble in finding my way there along the narrow lanes that alone led to it. The church proved interesting. For the village I cannot say much. It consisted of but a few houses, not more than half a dozen, I think, a small shop where they appeared to sell everything from bacon to pins (it was the post office also), and a little inn boasting of the sign of "The Six Bells," a sign that presumably gives one the number of bells in the steeple, for it was an old custom to represent the number of bells in the neighbouring church on an inn sign—one amongst other odd bits of information I picked up on the journey; my journey indeed provided me with quite a storehouse of information about unimportant matters.
Chiddingly church has an ancient and time-worn look. I noticed that the steeple was bound round with iron chains, and I asked a man of the place if he knew why they were there, for they were not ornamental. "They be to keep the old steeple together," said he. Poor old steeple, thought I, to have to depend upon chains to hold it in place. "It was the village blacksmith's idea," explained the man. Now I should have thought it was an architect's job. But iron chains exposed thus to all storms would in no long time rust away, I should imagine, though I dare say they will last for some years; but never before have I seen a building so repaired. It is truly a primitive arrangement without even the advantage of being picturesque.
The west doorway displays at either end of the drip moulding the quaint device of the Pelham buckle. Now this device was the crest or badge of Sir John Pelham, that gallant knight who made prisoner the King of France at the famous fight of Poictiers, after which he assumed as his crest or badge a representation of the sword-belt buckle of the captured king, and on any building he founded, or helped in its construction, he caused a carving of that badge to be placed. This bit of information I also picked up on the way, though on a previous tour. On a good many churches in Sussex you will find the Pelham buckle engraved. Such was the pride of the Pelhams.
The west window of the church is notably out of the centre of the tower, and is but one example of many showing how the old builders considered not strict uniformity, and by so doing, I feel, added a certain charm of irregularity to their structures; they were content with eye measurements; to-day the foot-rule settles everything with a mathematical and eye-provoking accuracy.
Within the church what first caught my eye was the gorgeous monument, in a side building all to itself, of "Sir John Jefferay, Knt., late Lord Chief Baron of the Excheqvr," who "dyed the xxiii of May 1575." This monument is somewhat mutilated, it is said at one time by country folk who mistook it for the tomb of the hated Judge Jeffreys. A little away from the church stands a portion of the wing, with its windows bricked up, of the once stately home of the Jefferays, now converted into the outbuildings of a farmhouse—and that and their tomb marks the end of their glory.
I noticed in the church an old-fashioned two-decker pulpit, with a sounding-board above; you do not see many of these nowadays. This reminds me of a story of old times I heard on the way and that was fresh to me. It appears that in a certain country church a strange parson had taken duty one Sunday. Now it was the custom there not to begin the service before the squire had arrived. But the strange parson knew nothing of this nor of the squire, so he promptly started with "When the wicked man," whereupon the clerk below hurriedly stood up and in a loud whisper exclaimed, "You must not begin yet, sir, he has not come in."