WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL (p. [16]).
The railway crosses the Rother by a stone bridge, then comes Rye Harbour, and at a distance of two miles, set upon a hill so that it cannot be hid, is the old-world borough of Winchelsea, which the sea has left high and dry, though it had been the abode of great kings, and the witness of battles by sea and land. At Hastings the Downs supply sufficient rivulet-power to maintain glen, waterfall, and dripping well, for sea-side visitors. Following the coast-line to Seaford, the quiet and unpretending watering place which was once a Cinque Port, and which returned members to Parliament until it was disfranchised by the Reform Act, a short walk over the Downs brings the tourist to the pretty broken country of East and West Dean.
Photo: F. G. O. Stuart, Southampton.
SOUTHAMPTON DOCKS (p. [19]).
The stream crossed by Exceat Bridge is the CUCKMERE, of which it need only be said that it has ceased to be a feature of importance to shipping people. It is worth while, nevertheless, to follow it up from the reaches where barges still find resting-place. At Alfriston British, Roman, and Saxon coins have been found; there is a rare sixteenth-century inn, supposed to have been built as a house of call for Canterbury pilgrims, a market cross, a church on the plan of a Greek cross, sometimes designated “the cathedral of the South Downs,” a parish register dating from 1512—possibly the oldest in England—and a half-timbered rectory of still earlier date. There is some doubt as to which is now the smallest church in Great Britain, but the claim has been made for Lullington, which is on the slope of Cuckmere vale. In rambling by this little river the tourist will make acquaintance with the South Downs free and unadulterated. The Cuckmere flows into the sea about two miles from Seaford, having escaped through the opening which takes the name of Birling Gap.
Within an area of four square miles, and almost in touch with St. Leonard’s Forest, three important Sussex streams take their rise—the Ouse, Adur, and Arun. This was the centre of the ancient iron industry of Sussex, and the position would not have been possible without water supply for the hammer ponds. The OUSE is crossed by the London and Brighton Railway a little north-west of Lindfield. The river afterwards winds round the well-wooded seat of the Earl of Sheffield; and at Fletching Common, hard by, the baronial army spent the night before fighting the battle of Lewes. Gibbon the historian was buried in the church, which is noted also for an ancient rood screen and the mausoleum of the Neville family. Maresfield, where the furnaces and forges of the old Sussex iron-masters clustered thick, retains vast expanses of the cinder and slag they created centuries ago. It is beautified by the trees of Ashdown Forest, and sends a tributary to the Ouse; another tributary presently arrives from Buxted, where the first cast cannon ever seen in Europe was made in 1543.
The Ouse is the river of the pleasant county town of Lewes. This rare old town, on its chalk hill, with downs surrounding it, and with the Ouse, on whose right bank it is spread, adding to its attractions, ranks in interest with Chester and Durham. The great battle which was fought on May 14th, 1264, is the event of which the local historians are most proud. As we have seen, it was at Fletching Common that De Montfort encamped his soldiers, and thence he sent a couple of bishops the day before the battle on a fruitless errand to the king, who was quartered at the priory. The most sanguinary slaughter appears to have taken place south of the town, where the Ouse was crossed by a bridge; and the river with its marshy flats assisted in the destruction, for many knights were discovered after the battle stuck in the swamp, “sitting on their horses, in complete armour, and with drawn swords in their lifeless hands.” The Ouse cannot be said to be picturesque; at Lewes it has long lost the sparkle which characterised it in the forest outskirts; but from any elevated point of Lewes Castle, notably the western keep, the easy stream may be seen as it is about to disappear between the hills. The disestablished locks between Cuckfield and Lewes indicate a brisk bygone barge traffic. Early in the present century the river was navigable for barges of forty tons burden for ten miles without interruption, and thence beyond Lindfield in the Hayward’s Heath country. In early times it was probably a broad estuary extending to Lewes itself, and at some time found an outlet to the sea at Seaford, three miles to the east. This, however, is very ancient history, for the river was brought back to its present channel in the sixteenth century.