Darkness overtakes us as we sweep along the hills toward Worthing, where we arrive by lamplight. Morning reveals a quiet and somewhat secluded watering-town, patronized by people who seek to get away from the ceremony and expense of such places as Brighton and Bournemouth. Its hotels are unpretentious, comfortable and accommodating—qualities not so common to resort inns as to go without notice. But Worthing is modern; there is little to detain one on such a pilgrimage as our own. We follow the broad white road which climbs steadily northward from the sea to the distant hills and winds among them to the dreary hamlet of Washington. The name, so familiar to us, bears no reference to the distinguished family. It is of old Saxon derivation—Wasa-inga-tun (town of the sons of Wasa).
A SUSSEX HARVEST FIELD.
From the Original Painting by Daniel Sherrin.
Near at hand is Warminghurst, once the Sussex home of William Penn, who bought the great house in 1676. One of his children died here and is buried in Coolham churchyard close by. Penn was wont to attend services at the meeting house not far away, which was built of timbers taken from one of his ships. It goes locally by the strange designation of “The Blue Idol”—just why, no one seemed to know—and we wandered long in unmarked byroads ere we found it. It is a mile and a half from Coolham, and one follows for a mile a narrow lane branching from the Billingshurst road.
The simple old caretaker lives in a modern addition to the chapel and tills the plot of ground in connection with it. The chapel is a low brick-and-timber building whose interior is the plainest imaginable; a half dozen high-backed benches, a platform pulpit without a stand, and a few books made up its furnishings. As at Jordans, the women sat during worship in a gallery which could be cut off by a sliding partition in case of interruption by persecutors. The old law forbade the assembling of women in the Quaker meetings, but from the gallery they could participate in the services, yet could instantly be shut out of the room if the king’s officers should arrive. Outside, the chapel is surrounded by greensward and tall trees, and the old man was mowing the grass in the tiny burying-ground. Services are still held at intervals, as they have been for the past two centuries or more. Probably the spot was chosen on account of its very retirement, since when the chapel was built it was a criminal offense for the Quakers to assemble in any place of worship. The chapel is unaltered and seems quite as remote and lonely as it must have been in Penn’s time; and the spirit of that old day comes very near as one stands in the tiny room where the founder of the great American Commonwealth was wont to worship according to his conscience, coming hither from Warminghurst in his heavy ox-wagon.
THE “BLUE IDOL,” PENN’S MEETING HOUSE, SUSSEX.
We now begin an uninterrupted run to the east through Mid-Sussex over an unsurpassed road to Cuckfield, Hayward’s Heath, and Uckfield. We continue on the London and Eastbourne road to Hailsham, from whence a digression of three or four miles brings us to the ruins of Herstmonceux Castle. Though styled a castle, it was really a great castellated country mansion, never intended as a defensive fortress. It reminds one in a certain way of Cowdray, though it lacks much of the beauty and grace of the Midhurst palace, and its conversion by its owner into a picnic ground also does much to detract.