Transcriber's Note:
To improve accessibility, certain letters in the 'Dialect' Chapter have been replaced with letters whichshould appear in most browsers.
'e with dot above' is rendered as ê
'a with dot above' is rendered as â
'o with dot above' is rendered as ô
Some punctuation has been added or corrected, and spelling ofnames has been standardized except in quoted material.
Readers who are acquainted with the earlier volumes of this series willnot need to be told that they are less guide-books than appreciations ofthe districts with which they are concerned. In the pages that follow myaim has been to gather a Sussex bouquet rather than to present the factswhich the more practical traveller requires.
The order of progress through the country has been determined largely bythe lines of railway. I have thought it best to enter Sussex in the westat Midhurst, making that the first centre, and to zig-zag thence acrossto the east by way of Chichester, Arundel, Petworth, Horsham, Brighton(I name only the chief centres), Cuckfield, East Grinstead, Lewes,Eastbourne, Hailsham, Hastings, Rye, and Tunbridge Wells; leaving thecounty finally at Withyham, on the borders of Ashdown Forest. For thetraveller in a carriage or on a bicycle this route is not the best; butfor those who would explore it slowly on foot (and much of the morecharacteristic scenery of Sussex can be studied only in this way), withoccasional assistance from the train, it is, I think, as good a schemeas any.
I do not suggest that it is necessary for the reader who travels throughSussex to take the same route: he would probably prefer to cover thecounty literally strip by strip—the[Pg viii] Forest strip from Tunbridge Wellsto Horsham, the Weald strip from Billingshurst to Burwash, the Downsstrip from Racton to Beachy Head—rather than follow my course, north tosouth, and south to north, across the land. But the book is, I think,the gainer by these tangents, and certainly its author is happier, forthey bring him again and again back to the Downs.
It is impossible at this date to write about Sussex, in accordance withthe plan of the present series, without saying a great many things thatothers have said before, and without making use of the historians of thecounty. To the collections of the Sussex Archæological Society I amgreatly indebted; also to Mr. J. G. Bishop's Peep into the Past, andto Mr. W. D. Parish's Dictionary of the Sussex Dialect. Many otherworks are mentioned in the text.
The history, archæology, and natural history of the county have beenthoroughly treated by various writers; but there are, I have noticed,fewer books than there should be upon Sussex men and women. Carlyle'ssaying that every clergyman should write the history of his parish(which one might amend to the history of his parishioners) has borne toolittle fruit in our district; nor have lay observers arisen in anynumber to atone for the shortcoming. And yet Sussex must be as rich ingood character, pure, quaint, shrewd, humorous or noble, as any otherdivision of England. In the matter of honouring illustrious Sussex menand women, the late Mark Antony Lower played his part with The Worthiesof S BU KİTABI OKUMAK İÇİN ÜYE OLUN VEYA GİRİŞ YAPIN!
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