Chapter 17 of Highways and Biways in Sussex, by E. V. Lucas, Chapter 17, Brighton Brighton is interesting only in its past. Today it is a suburb, a lung of London, the rapid recuperator of Londoners with whom the pace has been too severe. The mecca of day exertionists, the steady friend of invalids and half-pay officers. It is vast, glittering, gay, but it is not interesting. To persons who care little for new towns, the value of Brighton lies in its position as the key to good country. In a few minutes one can travel by train to the dyke, and leaving booths and swings behind, be free of miles of turfed down or cultivated wheeled. In a few minutes one can reach Hassex, the station for Walstonbury and Ditchling Beacon. In a few minutes one can reach Falmer and plunge into Stanmer Park, or travelling to the next station correct the effect of Brighton's hard brilliance amid the soothing sleepiness of Lewis. In a few minutes on the western line one can be at Shoreham amid shipbuilders and sailmakers, or on the ramparts of Brambe Castle, or among the distractions of staining cattle market, with Chanktonbury ring rising solemnly beyond. Brighton, however, knows little of these homes of peace, for she looks only out to sea or towards London. Brighton was, however, interesting a hundred years ago, when the pavilion was the favourite resort of the first gentleman in Europe, whose opulent charms preserved in the permanency of Mosaic may be seen in the museum. When the stain was a centre of fashion and folly, coaches dashed out of Castle Square every morning and into Castle Square every evening. Mundan and Mrs. Siddons were to be seen at one or other of the theatres. Martha Gunn dipped ladies in the sea. Lord Frederick Bo Clarec played long innings on the level, and Mr. Barrymore took a pair of horses up Mrs. Fitzherbert's staircase and could not get them down again without the assistance of a posse of blacksmiths. Brighton was interesting, then, reposey in the smiles of the Prince of Wales and his friends, but it is interesting no more. With the pavilion, a show-place, the dome, a concert hall, the stain and enclosure, Martha Gunn in her grave, the chain, pier, a memory, Mrs. Fitzherbert's house, the headquarters of the Young Men's Christian Association, and the Brighton Road, a racing track for cyclists, motorcars and walking stockbrokers. Brighton is entertaining, salubrious, fashionable. What do you will? Its interest has gone. The town's rise from Bright Helmstone, pronounced Brighton, a fishing village, to Brighton, the marine resort of all that was most dashing in English society, was brought about by a Lewis doctor in the days when Lewis was to Brighton. What Brighton now is to Lewis? This doctor was Richard Russell, born in 1687, who, having published in 1750 a book on the remedial effects of seawater, in 1754 removed to Brighton to be able to attend to the many patients that were flocking with her. That book was the beginning of Brighton's greatness. The seal was set upon it in 1783, when the Prince of Wales, then a young man, just one and twenty, first visited the town. The Prince's second visit to Brighton was in July 1784. He then stayed at the house engaged for him by his cook, Louis Welge, which, when he decided to build, became the nucleus of the pavilion. The Prince, at this time, he was now twenty-two, was full of spirit and enterprise, and in the company of Colonel Hanger, Sir John Laid of Edgingham, and other bloods, was ready for anything, even hard work, for in July 1784 he rode from Brighton to London and back again on horseback in ten hours. One of his diversions in 1785 is thus described in the press. On Monday, June the 27th, his Royal Highness abused himself on the stain for some time in attempting to shoot doves with single balls, but with what result we have not heard, though the Prince is esteemed a most excellent shot, and seldom presents his peace without doing some execution. The Prince, in the course of his diversion, either by design or accident, lowered the tops of several of the chimneys of the honourable Mr. Wyndham's house. The Prince seemed to live for the stain. When the first scheme of the pavilion was completed in 1787, his bedroom in it was so designed that he could recline at his ease, and by means of mirrors, watch everything that was happening on his favourite promenade. The Prince was probably as bad as history states, but he had the quality of his defects, and Brighton was the livelier for the presence of his friends. Lime Regis, Margate, Worthing, Limington, Bogner, these had nothing to offer beyond the sea. Brighton could lay before her guests a thousand odd diversions, in addition to concerts, balls, masquerades, theatres, races. The stain, under the ingenious direction of Colonel Hanger, the Earl of Barrymore and their associates, became an arena for curious contests. Officers and gentlemen, ridden by other officers and gentlemen, competed in races with octogenarians. Strapping young women were induced to run against each other for a new smock or hat. Every kind of race was devised, even to walking backwards, while a tame stag was occasionally liberated and hunted to refuge. To the theatre came, in turn, all the London players, and once the mysterious Chevalier Dion was exhibited on its stage in a fencing bout with a military swordsman. The promenade grove, which covered part of the ground between New Road, the Pavilion, North Street and Church Street, was also an evening resort in fine weather. And, to read about Brighton in its heyday, is to receive an impression of continual fine weather, tempered only by storms of wind, such as never failed to blow when Rowlinson and his pencil were in the town, to supply that robust humorist with the contours on which his reputation was based. The grove was a marine randly. Maskers moved among the trees, orchestras discourse the latest airs, rockets soared into the sky. In the county paper for October 1st, 1798, I find the following florid reference to a coming event in the grove. The glittering azure and the noble oar of the peacock's wings under the meridian sun cannot afford greater exultation to that bird than some of our beautiful bell of fashion promised themselves from a display of their captivating charms at the intended masquerade at Brighton tomorrow serenite. In another issue of the paper for the same year are some extemporary lines on Brighton, dated from East Street, which end thus ecstatically. Nature's ever-bountious hand sure has blessed this happy land. Tis here no brow appears with care, what would we be but what we are? Before leaving this genial county organ, I must quote from a paragraph in 1796 on the prince himself. The following couplet of Pope may be fitly applied to his royal highness. If to his share some manly errors fall, look on his face and you'll forget them all. What could be kinder? A little earlier in a description of these anodyne features, the journalists had said of his royal highnesses, arch eyes, that they seemed to look more ways than one at a time and especially when they are directed towards the fair sex. Quieter and more normal pastimes were gossip at the libraries, riding and driving, and bathing in the sea. Bathing seems to have been taken very seriously, with none of the present matter of course haphazardness. In an old guide to Brighton, dated 1794, I find the following description of the intrepid dippers of that day. It may not be improper here to introduce a short account of the manner of bathing in the sea at Brighton. By means of a hook ladder, the bather ascends the machine, which is formed of wood and raised on high wheels. He is drawn to a proper distance from the shore, and then plunges into the sea, the guides attending on each side, to assist him in recovering the machine, which, being accomplished, he is drawn back to shore. The guides are strong, active and careful, and in every respect adapted to their employments. Chief of the bathing women for many years was Martha Gunn, whose descendants still sell fish in the town. Chief among the men was the famous Smoker, his real name John Miles, the Prince of Wales's swimming tutor. There is a story of his pulling the prince back by the ear, when he had swum out too far against the old man's instructions. While on another occasion, when the sea was too rough for safety, he placed himself in front of his obstinate pupil in a fighting attitude with the words, What do you think your father would say to me if you were drowned? He would say, This is all lying to you, Smoker. If you'd taken proper care of him, Smoker, poor George would still be alive. Another of the pleasant stories of the Prince refers to Smoker's feminine correlative, Martha Gunn, one day being in the act of receiving an illicit gift of butter in the Pavilion kitchen. Just as the Prince entered the room, she slipped the pat into her pocket, but not quite in time. Talking with the utmost affability, the Prince proceeded to edge her closer and closer to the Great Fire, pocket-side nearest, and there he kept her, until her sin had found her out, and dress and butter were both ruined. Doubtless his royal highness made both good, for he had all the minor generosity. An old book quoted in Mr. Bishop's interesting volume, A Peep into the Past, gives the following scrap of typical conversation between Martha and a visitor. What, my old friend, Martha, said I, still queen of the ocean, still industrious and busy as ever, and how do you find yourself? Well and hearty, thank God, sir, replied she, but rather hobbling. I don't bathe, because I ain't so strong as I used to be. So I superintend on the beach, for I'm up before any of them. You may always find me and my picture at one exact spot every morning by six o'clock. You wear vastly well, my old friend, for at what age may you be? Only eighty-eight, sir. In fact, eighty-nine come next Christmas pudding. I, and though I've lost my teeth, I can mumble it with as good relish and hearty appetite as anybody. I'm glad to hear it. Brighton would not look like itself without you, Martha, said I. Oh, I don't know. It's like to do without me some day, answered she, but while I've health and life I must be bustling amongst my old friends and benefactors. I think I ought to be proud, for I have as many boughs from man, woman, and child as the Prince himself. I, I do believe, the very dogs in the town know me.  Brave and charming. He lives in East Street. If you're on a once any prime pickled salmon or oysters, there you have him. On the Prince's birthday, and on the birthday of his royal brothers, Brighton went mad with excitement. Oxen were roasted whole, strong beer ran like water, and among the amusements single wicket matches were played. One of the good deeds of the Prince was the making of a cricket ground. Before 1791, when the Prince's ground was laid out, matches had been played on the neighbouring hills, or on the level. The Prince's ground stood partly on the level, as it now is, and partly on Park Crescent. In 1823 it became Ireland's gardens, upon whose turf the most famous cricketers of England played until 1847. In 1848 the Brunswick Ground at Hove was opened, close to the sea, into which the ball was occasionally hit by Mr. C. I. Thornton. The present Hove Ground dates from 1871. I like to think that George IV, though no great cricketer himself, he played now and then when young, with great condescension and affability, is the true father of Sussex Cricket. He may deserve all that Lamb, Leigh Hunt and Thackeray said of him, but without his influence and patronage the history of cricket would be the poorer by many bright pages. Where Montpellier Crescent now stands was, eighty years ago, the ground on which Frederick William Lilliewight, the non-paré, used to bowl to gentlemen, young or old, who were prepared to put down five shillings for the privilege. Little Wisden acted as a longstop. Lilliewight was the real creator of round-arm bowling, although Tom Walker of the Hamilton Club was the pioneer, and James Broadbridge, an earlier exponent. It was not until 1828 that round-arm was legalized. Me bowling, Pilch batting, and box keeping wicket, that's cricket, was the old man's dictum, or when I bowls and fuller bats, a variant has it, bowl being pronounced to rhyme with owl, then you'll see cricket. He was thirty-five before he began his first-class career. He bowled fewer than a dozen wides in twenty-seven years, and his myriad wickets cost only seven runs apiece. Brighton, in its palmiest days, was practically contained within the streets that bear boundary names, North Street, East Street, West Street, and the sea, with the parish church high on the hill. On the other side of the stain were the naked downs, while the Lewis Road and the London Road were mere thoroughfares between equally bare hills, with a few houses here and there. During the town's most fashionable period, which continued for nearly fifty years, say from 1785 to 1835, everyone journeyed thither, and indeed everyone goes to Brighton today, although its visitors are now anonymous. Where, of old, they were notorious. I believe that Robert Browning is the only eminent Englishman that never visited the town. Perhaps it does little for poets. Yet Byron was there as a young man, much in the company of a charming youth with which he often sailed in the channel, and who afterwards was discovered to be a girl. A minor poet, Horace Smith, gives us in Horace in London, a sprightly picture of the town in 1813, from which we see that the changes between now and then are only in externals. Brighton Now fruitful autumn lifts his sunburned head, the slighted park few cambrick muslins whiten, the dry machines revisit oceans bed, and Horace quits a while the town for Brighton. The sit forgoes his box at Turnham Green to pick up health and shells with amphitrite. Pleasures frail daughters trip along the stain, led by the dame the Greeks call Aphrodite. Phoebus the tanner, plies his fiery trade. The graceful nymphs ascend Judea's ponies, scale the west cliff, or visit the parade, while poor papa in town a patient drone is. Loose trousers snatch the wreath from pantaloons, nankine of late were worn the sultry weather in. But now, so will the prince's light dragoons, white gene have triumphed over their Indian brethren. Here with choice food earth smiles and ocean yawns, intent alike to please the London glutton. This, for our breakfast, proffers shrimps and prawns, that, for our dinner, south-down lamb and mutton. Yet here, as elsewhere, death impartial reigns, visits alike the cot and the pavilion, and for a bribe with equal scorn disdains my half a crown and bearings half a million. Alas, how short the span of human pride, time flies and hopes romantic schemes are undone, Coswell as coach that carries four inside waits to take back the unwilling bard to London. Ye circulating novelists, adieu, long envious cords my black portmanteau tighten, billiards begone, avante, illegal loo, farewell old oceans bauble, glittering brightened.  I believe that the phrase, queen of watering-places, was first used in this poem. An odd glimpse of a kind of manners, now extinct, in Brighton visitors in its palmy days, is given in Haslitz, notes of a journey through France and Italy. Haslitz, like his friends the lambs, when they visited Versailles in 1822, embarked at Brighton. That was in 1824. He reached the town by coach in the evening, in the height of the season, and it was then that the incident occurred to which I have referred. In Haslitz words, a lad offered to conduct us to an inn. Did he think there was room? He was sure of it. Did he belong to the inn? No, he was from London. In fact he was a young gentleman from town, who had been stopping some time at the White Horse Hotel, and who wished to employ his spare time when he was not riding out on a blood horse, in serving the house, and relieving the perplexities of his fellow travellers. No one but a Londoner would volunteer his assistance in this way. Amiable land of cocaine, happy in itself, and in making others happy, blessed exuberance of self-satisfaction that overflows upon others, delightful impertinence that is ford to oblige them. Brighton's decline as a fashionable resort came with the railway. Coaches were expensive and few, and the number of visitors which they brought to the town was negotiable. But when the trains began to pour crowds upon the platforms, the distinction of Brighton was lost. Society retreated, and the last master of ceremonies, Lieutenant Colonel Eld, died. It was of this admirable aristocrat that Sidney Smith wrote so happily in one of his letters from Brighton. A gentleman attired, point de vis, walking down the parade like a gag delicately.  As he passed the stands of flies, he nodded approval, as if he owned them all. As he approached the little goat carriages, he looked as scants over the edge of his starched neck cloth and blandly smiled encouragement. Sure that in following him I was treading in the steps of greatness, I went on to the pier, and there I was confirmed in my conviction of his eminence, for I observed him look first over the right side, and then over the left, with an expression of serene satisfaction spreading over his countenance, which said as plainly as if he had spoken to the sea aloud, that is right. You are low tide at present, but never mind, in a couple of hours I shall make you high tide again. Beyond its connection with George IV, Brighton has played but a small part in history, her only other monarch being Charles II, who merely tarried in the town for a while on his way to France in 1651 as we have seen. The king's head in West Street claims to be the scene of the merry monarch's bargain with Captain Nicholas Tattersall, who conveyed him across the channel, but there is good reason to believe that the inn was the George in Middle Street, now demolished, but situated on the site of No. 44, the epitaph on Tattersall in Brighton Old Parish Church contains the following lines, when Charles the Great was nothing but a breath, this valiant soul stepped between him and death, which glorious act of his for church and state, eight princes in one day, did gratulate. The episode of the captain's cautious bargaining with the king, of which Colonel Gunter tells in the narrative from which I have quoted in an earlier chapter, is carefully suppressed in the memorial tablet. Another famous Brighton character and friend of George IV was Phoebe Hessel, who died at the age of 106 and whose tombstone may be seen in the old churchyard. Phoebe had a varied career, for having fallen in love when only 15, with Samuel Golding, a private in Kirk's lambs, she dressed herself as a man enlisted in the fifth regiment of foot and followed him to the West Indies. She served there for five years and afterwards at Gibraltar, never disclosing her sex until her lover was wounded and sent to Plymouth when she told the general's wife and was allowed to follow and nurse him, on leaving hospital, Golding married her and they lived, I hope, happily, together for twenty years. When Golding died, Phoebe married Hessel. In her old age she became an important Brighton character and attracting the notice of the prince was provided by him with a pension of 18 pounds a year and the epithet, a jolly good fellow. It was also the prince's money which paid the stone-cutter. When visited by a curious student of human nature, as she lay on her deathbed, Phoebe talked much of the past he records and seemed proud of having kept her secret when in the army but I told it to the ground, she added. I dug a hole that would hold a gallon and whispered it there. Phoebe kept her faculties to the last and to the last sold her apples to the quality by the sea, returned repartee with extraordinary vervent contempt for false delicacy and knew as much of the quality of Brighton liquor as if she were a soldier in earnest. One ought to mention Pitt's visit to Brighton in 1785 as an historical event and certainly for the proof which it offers that Sussex folk have an effective, if not nimble, wit. I use Mr Bishop's words. Pitt, during his journey to Brighton in the previous week, had some experience of popular feeling in respect to the obnoxious window tax. Whilst horses were being changed at Horsham he ordered lights for his carriage and the persons assembled learning who was within indulged pretty freely in ironical remarks on light and darkness. The only effect upon the minister was that he often laughed heartily. Whilst in Brighton a country glovemaker hung about the door of his house on the stain and when the minister came out showed him a hedger's cuff which he held in one hand and a bush in the other to explain the use of it and asked him if the former, being an article he made and sold, was subject to a stamp duty. Mr Pitt appeared rather struck with the oddity and bluntness of the man's question and, mounting his horse, waved a satisfactory answer by referring him to the stamp office for information. Brighton's place in literature makes up for her historical poverty. Dr Johnson was the first great man of letters to visit the town. He stayed in West Street with the thrales, rode on the downs and, after his won't, abused their bareness making a joke about our dearth of trees, similar to one on the same topic in Scotland. The doctor also bathed. Mrs Piozzi relates that one of the bathing men seeing him swim remarked Why sir, you must have been a stout hearted gentleman forty years ago, much to the doctor's satisfaction. It was, I always think, in Hampton Place that Mrs Pipchin, whose husband broke his heart in the Peruvian mines kept her establishment for children and did her best to discourage Paul Dombey. How does the description run? This celebrated Mrs Pipchin was a marvellous ill-favoured, ill-conditioned old lady of a stooping figure with a mottled face like bad marble, a hook-nose and a hard grey eye that looked as if it might have been hammered at on an anvil without sustaining any injury. Forty years at least had elapsed, since the Peruvian mines had been the death of Mr Pipchin but his relict still wore black bombazine of such a lusterless, deep, dead somber shade that gas itself couldn't light her up after dark and her presence was a quencher to any number of candles. She was generally spoken of as a great manager of children and the secret of her management was to give them everything that they didn't like and nothing that they did which was found to sweeten their disposition very much. She was such a bitter old lady that one was tempted to believe that there had been some mistake in the application of the Peruvian machinery and that all her waters of gladness and milk of human kindness had been pumped out dry instead of the mines. The castle of this ogreous and child queller was in a steep by-street at Brighton where the soil was more than unusually chalky, flinty and sterile and the houses were more than usually brittle and thin where the small front gardens had the unaccountable property of producing nothing but marigolds whatever was sown in them and where snails were constantly discovered holding on to the street doors and other public places they were not expected to ornament with the tenacity of cupping-glasses. In the wintertime the air couldn't be got out of the castle and in the summertime it couldn't be got in. There was such a continual reverberation of wind in it that it sounded like a great shell which the inhabitants were obliged to hold to their ears night and day whether they liked it or not. It was not, naturally, a fresh smelling house and in the window of the front parlour which was never opened Mrs. Pipchin kept a collection of plants in pots which imparted an earthy flavour of their own to the establishment. However choice examples of their kind too these plants were of a kind peculiarly adapted to the embellishment of Mrs. Pipchin. There were half a dozen specimens of the cactus writhing round bits of alath like hairy serpents another specimen shooting out broad claws like a green lobster several creeping vegetables possessed of sticky and adhesive leaves and one uncomfortable flower pot hanging to the ceiling which appeared to have boiled over and tickling people underneath with its long green ends reminded them of spiders in which Mrs. Pipchin's dwelling was uncommonly prolific though perhaps it challenged competition still more proudly in the season in point of earwigs. From Mrs. Pipchin's pooled umby passed to the forcing house Dr. Blimber, Mrs. Blimber, Miss Blimber and Mr. Feder B.A. also at Brighton where he met Mr. Toots. The doctors, says Dickens, was a mighty fine house fronting the sea, not a joyful style of house within but quite the contrary, sad coloured curtains whose proportions were spare and lean hid themselves despondently behind the windows the tables and chairs were put away in rows like figures in a sum fires were so rarely lighted in the rooms of ceremony that they felt like wells and a visitor represented the bucket the dining room seems the last place in the world where any eating or drinking was likely to occur there was no sound through all the house but the ticking of a great clock in the hall which made itself audible in the very garrets and sometimes a dull queuing of young gentlemen at their lessons like the murmurings of an assemblage of melancholy pigeons Dr. Blimber's must have been, I think, somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Bedford Hotel Among other writers who have found Brighton good to work in I might name the authors of The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton and A System of Synthetic Philosophy Mr. William Black was, for many years, a familiar figure on the Kemp Town Parade and Brighton plays a part in at least two of his charming tales The Beautiful Wretch and an early and very sprightly novel called Kill Many Brighton should be proud to think that Mr. Herbert Spencer chose her as a retreat in which to come to his conclusions, but I doubt if she is Thackeray's affection is, however, cherished by the town his historic praise of merry, cheerful Dr. Brighton having a commercial value hardly to be overestimated Brighton, in return, gave Thackeray Lord Stain's immortal name and served as a background for many of his scenes Although Brighton has still a fishing industry the spectacle of its fisherman refraining from work is not an uncommon one It was once the custom I read, and perhaps still is for these men, when casting their nets for mackerel or herring to stand with bare heads, repeating in unison these words There they go then, God Almighty send us a blessing it is to be hoped As each barrel, which is attached to every two nets out of the fleet or a hundred and twenty nets, was cast overboard they would cry, Watch, barrel, watch, mackerel's for to catch White may they be like a blossom on a tree God send thousands, one, two, and three some by their heads, some by their tails God sends thousands and never fails When the last net was overboard the master said Seize all and then lowered the foremaster and laid to the wind If he were to say, last net, he would expect never to see his nets again There are more handsome women in Brighton than anywhere else in the world wrote Richard Jeffery's some twenty years ago They are so common that gradually the standard of taste in the mind rises and good-looking women who would be admired in other places passed by without notice where all the flowers are roses you do not see a rose Shirley Brooks must have visited Brighton on a curiously bad day for seeing no pretty face he wrote of it as the city of the plain Richard Jeffery's, who lived for a while at Hove, blessed also the treelessness of Brighton Therein he saw much of its healing virtue Let nothing, he wrote, cloud the descent of those glorious beams of sunlight which fall at Brighton Watch the pebbles on the beach The foam runs up and wets them Almost before it can slip back the sunshine has dried them again So they are alternately wetted and dried Bitter sea and glowing light Bright clear air dry as dry That describes the place Spain is the country of sunlight, burning sunlight Brighton is a Spanish town in England a Seville The principal inland attraction of Brighton is still the pavilion which is indeed the town's symbol On passing through its many numerous and fantastic rooms one is struck by their incredible smallness Sidney Smith's jest, if it were his I find Wilberforce the abolitionist says something similar is still unimproved One would think that St Paul's Cathedral had come to Brighton and papped Cobbett, in his rough and homely way also said something to the point about the Prince's pleasure house Take a square box the sides of which are three feet and a half and the height a foot and a half Take a large Norfolk turnip cut off the green of the leaves leave the stalks nine inches long tie these round with a string three inches from the top and put the turnip on the middle of the top of the box then take four turnips of half the size treat them in the same way and put them on the corners of the box then take a considerable number of bulbs of the Crown Imperial the Narcissus, the Hyacinth, the Tulip, the Crocus and others let the leaves of each have sprouted to about an inch more or less according to the size of the bulb put all these pretty promiscuously but pretty thickly on the top of the box then stand off and look at your architecture to its ordinary museum in the town Ryton has added the collection of stuffed birds made by the late Mr. E. T. Booth which he housed in a long gallery in the road that leads to the dyke Mr. Booth, when he shot a bird in its native haunts carried away some of its surroundings in order that the taxidermist might reproduce as far as possible its natural environment hence every case has a value that is missing when one sees merely the isolated stuffed bird in one instance realism has dictated the addition of a clutch of pipette's eggs found on the bass rock in a nest invisible to the spectator the collection in the natural history museum at South Kensington is of course more considerable and finer but some of Mr. Booth's cases are certainly superior and his collection has the special interest of having been made by one man Bryton has another very interesting possession in the collection of old domestic pottery in the museum an assemblage the most entertaining and varied that I know of jugs and mugs plates and ornaments all English all quaint and characteristic too and mostly inscribed with motos or decorated with designs in celebration of such events as the Battle of Waterloo or the discomforture of Mr. Pitt or a victory of Tom Cribb others are ceramic satires on the drunkard's folly or the inconstancy of women why are the potters of our own day so dull? history is still being made human nature is not less frail but I see no genial commentary on jug or dish is it the March of Taste? End of Chapter 17 Chapter 18 of Highways and Byways in Sussex this LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Peter Yersley Highways and Byways in Sussex by E. V. Lucas Chapter 18 Rotting Dean and Wheat Ears Beyond Kemp Town's serene and silent line of massive houses is the new road that leads to Rotting Dean the old road fell into the sea some few years ago the fourth or fifth to share that fate but the pleasantest way there is on foot over the turf that tops the white cliffs by diverging inland between Brighton and Rotting Dean just beyond the most imposing girl's school in the kingdom Oving Dean is reached one of the nestling homesteads of the Downs it is chiefly known as providing Harrison Ainsworth with the very pretty title of one of his stories Oving Dean Grange the gallant novelist however was a poor historian in this book for Charles II as we have seen never set foot east of Brighton on the occasion of his journey of escape over the Sussex Downs the legend that lodges him at Oving Dean although one can understand how Oving Dean must cherish it, cannot stand Mock Beggar's Hall in the same romance is South Overgrange at Lewis Peace hath her victory is no less renowned than war Oving Dean is famous not only for its false association with Charles II but as the burial place of Thomas Pelling an old time vicar the first person who introduced Mangle Wurzel into England Rotting Dean today must be very much of the size of Brighton two centuries ago before fashion came upon it but the little village is hardly likely ever to creep over its surrounding hills in the same way the past few years however have seen its growth from an obscure and inaccessible settlement to a shrine it is only of quite recent date that a glimpse of Rotting Dean has become almost as necessary to the Brighton visitor as the journey to the Dyke had the legend of the Briar Rose never been painted had Mulvaney, Ortheris and Leroyd remained uncronicaled and the British soldier escaped the label Absent-Minded Beggar Rotting Dean might still be invaded only occasionally for it was when, following Sir Edward Byrne Jones Mr Rajard Kipling found the little white village good to make a home in that its public life began although Mr Kipling has now gone farther into the depths of the county and the great draftsman some of whose stained glass designs are in the church is no more the habit of riding to Rotting Dean is likely however to persist in Brighton the village is quaint and simple particularly so after the last bus is stabled but it is valuable rather as the key to some of the finest solitudes of the Downs in the great uninhabited hill district between the race course at Brighton and Newhaven between Lewis and the sea then for any merits of its own one other claim has it however on the notice of the pilgrim William Black lies in the churchyard Mr Kipling, as I have said has now removed his household gods Father in land, de Berwos but his heart and mind must be still among the Downs the Berwos country good as it is can I think never inspire him to such verse as he wrote in The Five Nations on the turf hills about his old home no tender hearted garden crowns no bosomed woods adorn our blunt bow-headed whale-backed Downs but gnarled and rhythm thorn bare slopes were chasing shadows skim and through the gaps revealed belt upon belt the wooded, dim blue goodness of the wheel clean of a vicious fence or hedge half-wild and holy tame the wise turf cloaks the white cliff-edge as when the Romans came what sign of those that fought and died at shift of sword and sword the barrow and the camp abide the sunlight and the sword here leaps ashore the full south-west all heavy-winged with brine here lies above the folded crest the channel's leaden line and here the sea-fogs lap and cling and here each, warning each the sheep-bells and the ship-bells ring along the hidden beach we have no waters to delight our broad and brookless veils only the dupond on the height unfed that never fails whereby no tattered herbage tells which way the season flies only our close-bit time that smells like dawn in paradise here through the strong and salty days the unshaded silence thrills or little lost down churches praise the Lord who made the hills but here the old gods scarred their round and in her secret heart the heathen kingdom Wilfred found dreams as she dwells apart of old the best wheat-ear country was above Rottingden but the south-down shepherds no longer have the wheat-ear money that used to add so appreciably to their wages in the summer months a combination of circumstances has brought about this loss one is the decrease in wheat-ears another the protection of the bird by law and a third the refusal of the farmers to allow their men any longer to neglect the flocks by setting and tending snares but in the seventeenth, eighteenth and early part of the nineteenth centuries wheat-ears were taken on the downs in enormous quantities and formed a part of every south county banquet in their season people visited Brighton solely to eat them as they now go to Greenwich to cultivate and to culturester for oysters this is how Fuller describes the little creature in the Worthies Wheat-ears is a bird peculiar to this county hardly found out of it it is so called because fat is when wheat is ripe where on it feeds being no bigger than a lark which it equilith in fineness of the flesh far exceedeth in the fatness thereof the worst is that being only seasonable in the heat of summer and naturally larded with lumps of fat it is soon subject to corrupt so that though abounding within 40 miles London polterers have no mind to meddle with them which no caring carriage can keep from putrefaction that pallet man shall pass in silence who being seriously demanded his judgment concerning the abilities of a great lord concluded him a man of very weak parts because once he saw him at a great feast feed on chickens when there were wheat-ears on the table I will add no more in praise of this bird for fear some female reader may fall in longing for it and unhappily be disappointed of her desire a contemporary of Fuller John Taylor from whom I have already quoted and shall quote again thus unscientifically dismisses the wheat-ears in one of his doggerel narratives six weeks or thereabouts they are catched there and are well nigh 11 months God knows where as a matter of fact the winter home of the wheat-ears is Africa the capture of wheat-ears mostly illegally by nets still continues in a very small way to meet a languid demand but the Sussex Autolan as the little bird was sometimes called has passed from the Bill of Fair wheat-ears which despite Fuller have no connection with the ears of wheat the word signifying white tail still abound skimming over the turf in little groups but they no longer fly towards the dinner table the best and most interesting description that I know of the old manner of taking them is to be found in Mr. W. H. Hudson's Nature in Downland the season began in July when the little fat birds rest on the downs on their way from Scotland and Northern England to their winter home and lasted through September in July says Mr. Hudson the shepherds made their coops as their traps were called a T-shaped trench about 14 inches long over which the two long narrow sods cut neatly out of the turf were adjusted, grasped downwards a small opening was left at the end for ingress and there was room in the passage for the bird to pass through towards the chinks of light coming from the two ends of the cross-passage at the inner end of the passage a string was set by which the bird was caught by the neck as it passed in but the noose did not as a rule strangle the bird on some of the high downs near the coast notably at Beechey Head, at Burling Gap at Seafood and in the neighbourhood of Rottingdeen the shepherds made so many coops placed at small distances apart that the downs in some places looked as if they had been plowed in September when the season was over the sods were carefully put back roots down in the places and the smooth green surface was restored to the hills on bright clear days few birds would be caught but in showery weather the traps would all be full this is because when the sun is obscured wheat ears are afraid and take refuge under stones or in whatever hole may offer the price of each wheat ear was a penny and it was the custom of the persons in the neighbourhood who wanted them for dinner to visit the traps take out the birds and leave the money and place the shepherd on returning would collect his gains and reset the traps near Brighton however most of the shepherds caught only for dealers and one firm until some twenty years ago maintained the practice of giving an annual supper at the end of the season at which the shepherds would be paid in the mass for their spoil an old shepherd who had been for years on west side farm near Brighton spoke thus in 1882 as Mr Borough relates in his Birds of Sussex the most I ever caught in one day was thirteen dozen but we thought it a good day if we caught three or four dozen we sold them to a polterer at Brighton who took all we could catch in a season at eighteen pence a dozen from what I've heard from old shepherds it cannot be doubted that they were caught in much greater numbers a century ago than of late I have heard them speak of an immense number being taken in one day by a shepherd who was fifteen near Beachy Head I think they said he took nearly a hundred dozen so many that they could not thread them on crow quills in the usual manner but he took off his round frock and made a sack of it to put them into and his wife did the same with her petticoat this must have happened when there was a great flight their numbers are now so decreased that some shepherds do not set up any coupes as it does not pay for the trouble although we tiers are no longer caught nice and birdcatcher is a very busy man gold finches fall in extraordinary plenty to his nets a birdcatcher told Mr. Borough that he once caught eleven dozen of them at one haul and in eighteen sixty the annual take at wording was one thousand one hundred and fifty four dozen larks are also caught in great numbers also with nets the old system still practiced in France of luring them with glasses having become obsolete nox has an interesting description of the lark glass and its uses a piece of wood about a foot and a half long four inches deep and three inches wide is planed off at two sides so as to resemble the roof of a well-known toy he clipped a Noah's Ark but more than twice as long in the sloping sides are set several bits of looking glass a long iron spindle the lower end of which is sharp and fixed in the ground passes freely through the centre on this the instrument turns and even spins rapidly when a string has been attached and is pulled by the performer who generally stands at a distance of fifteen or twenty yards from the decoy the reflection of the sun's rays from these little revolving mirrors seems to possess a mysterious attraction for the larks for they descend in great numbers from a considerable height in the air hover over the spot and suffer themselves to be shot at repeatedly without attempting to leave the field and knew their course to return to Rottingdeen it was above the village seven hundred years ago that a sore scrimmage occurred between the French and the Cluniac prior of Lewis the prior was defeated and captured but the nature of his resistance decided the enemy that it was better perhaps to retreat to their boats the holy man although worsted thus had the satisfaction of having proved to the king Monck in this country was not as was supposed at court necessarily on the side of England's foes even though they were of his own race according to the scheme of this book we should now return to Brighton but as I have said the right use to which to put Rottingdeen is as the starting point for a day among the hills once out and above the village the world is your own a conspiracy to populate a part of the downs near the sea a mile or so to the east of Rottingdeen seems gloriously to have failed but what was intended may be learned from the skeleton roads that duly fenced in disfigure the turf they even have names these unlovely parallelograms one is Chatsworth Avenue and Ambleside Avenue another End of Chapter 18 Chapter 19 of Highways and Biways in Sussex this LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Peter Yersley Highways and Biways in Sussex by E.V. Lucas Chapter 19 Shoram the cliffs that make the coast between Newhaven and Brighton so attractive slope gradually to level ground at the aquarium and never reappear in Sussex on the channel's edge again although in the east they rise wider and higher with a few long gaps all the way to Dover it is partly for this reason that the walk from Brighton to Shoram has no beauty save of the sea Hove which used to be a disreputable little smuggling village sufficiently far from Brighton for risks to be run with safety is now the well-ordered home of wealthy rectitude Mrs. Grundy's seaside Hove is perhaps the gentilist town in the world although once only a poor hundred years ago there was no service in the church on a certain Sunday because as the clerk informed the complacent vicar the pews is full of tubs and the pulpit full of tea a pleasant fact to reflect upon during church parade amid the gay yet discreet prosperity of the Brunswick Lawns west of Hove and between that town and ports laid by the sea is Aldrington Aldrington is now new houses and brick fields thirty years ago it was nought but five hundred years ago it was the principal township in these parts and a bright helm stone a mere insignificant cluster of hovels centuries earlier it was more important still for according to some authorities it was the port as Adurnay of the Romans the river Adur which now enters the sea between Shoreham and Southwark once flowed along the line of the present canal and the Wishpond and so out into the sea I have seen it stated that the mouth of the river was even more easterly still somewhere opposite the Norfolk Hotel at Brighton but this may be fanciful and can now hardly be proven the suggestion however adds interest to a walk on the otherwise unromantic Brunswick lawns in those days the Roman ships entering the river here would sail up as far as Bramber between the river and the sea were then some two miles possibly more of flat Meadowland on which Aldrington was largely built over the ruins of that Aldrington the channel now washes beyond Aldrington is Portslade with a pretty inland village on the hill beyond Portslade is Southwick notable for its green and beyond Southwick is Shoreham Southwick and Shoreham both have that interest which can never be wanting to the seaport that has seen better days the life of a harbour whatever its state of decay is eternally absorbing and in Shoreham harbour one gets such life at its laziest the smell of tar the sound of hammers the laughter and whistling of the loafers the continuous changing of the tide the opening of the lock gates the departure of the tug its triumphant return leading in custody a timber-laden bark from the Baltic a little self-conscious and ashamed as if caught red-handed in iniquity by this fussy little officer the independent sailing of a grimy steamer bound for Sunderland and Moor Coal the elaborate warfing of the bark all these things on a hot still day can exercise and hypnotic influence more real and strange than the open sea the romance and mystery of the sea may indeed be more intimately near one on a harbour-warf than on the deck of a liner in mid-ocean Shoreham has its place in history then, as we have seen sailed Charles II in Tattersall's Enterprise 450 years earlier King John landed here with his army when he came to succeed to the English throne in the reign of Edward III Shoreham supplied 26 ships to the navy but in the 15th century the sea began an encroachment on the bar which disclassed the harbour it is now unimportant most of the trade having passed but in its days of prosperity great cargos of corn and wine were landed here from the continent when people now say Shoreham they mean New Shoreham but Old Shoreham is the parent Old Shoreham however declined to village state when the present harbour was made New Shoreham church quite the noblest in the county dates probably from about 1100 it was originally the property of the Abbey of Somor to whom it was presented together with Old Shoreham church by William de Brouze the Lord of Bramble Castle it is New Shoreham church which Mr Swinburne had in mind or so I imagine in his noble poem On the South Coast strong as time and as faiths sublime clothes round with shadows of hopes and fears and sorrows alive with passion of prayers and tears stands the shrine that has seen decline 800 waxing and waning years tower set square to the storms of air and change of season that glooms and glows wall and roof of it tempest proof and equal ever to suns and snows bright with riches and niches and pillars smooth as a straight stem grows stately stands it the work of hands unknown of stately a far and near rise around it the heights that bound our landward gaze from the seaboard here downs that swerve and aspire in curve and change of heights that the dawn holds dear dawn falls there the grey walls there confronting dawn on the low green lee lone and sweet as for fairies feet held sacred silent and strange and free wild and wet with its rills but yet more fair falls dawn on the fairer sea rose red eve on the seas that heave sinks fair as dawn when the first ray peers winds glancing from sun bright glancing to shawram crowned with the grace of years shawram clad with the sunset glad and grave with glory that death reveres in the churchyard there was once and maybe still but I did not find it an epitaph on a child of eight months in the form of a dialogue between the deceased and its parents it contained these lines I trust in Christ the blessed babe replied then smiled then sighed then closed its eyes and died shawram's notoriety as a pocket borough it returned two members to parliament who were elected in the north transept of the church came to a head in 1701 when the naive means by which kindness were revealed it seemed that Mr. Gould who had never been to shawram before directed the crier to give notice with his bell that every voter who came to the king's arms would receive a guinea in which to drink Mr. Gould's good health this fact being made public by the defeated candidate Mr. Gould was unseated at the following election such was the enduring power of the original guinea after the life of the harbour the chief interest of shawram is its river the adur a yellow sluggish shallow stream of great width near the town which at low tide dwindles into a streamlit trickling through a desert of mud but at the full has the beauty of a lake Mr. Swinburne in the same poem from which I have been quoting thus describes the river at evening skies fulfilled with the sundown stilled and splendid spread as a flower that spreads pave with rarer device and fairer than heavens the luminous oyster beds grass embanked and in square plots ranked inlaid with gems that the sundown sheds to the adur belongs also another lyric it is printed in Hawthorne and Lavender to which I have already referred and is one of Mr. Henley's most characteristic and remarkable poems in shawram river hurrying down to the live sea by working marrying breeding shawram town breaking the sunsets wistful and solemn dream an old black rotter of a boat past serviced as a laboring tumbling float lay stranded in midstream with a horrid list a frightening lapse from the line that made me think of legs and a broken spine soon all too soon ungainly and forlorn to lie full in the eye of the cynical uncomfortable moon that as I looked stared from the fading sky a clown's face flowered for work and by and by the wide-winged sunset wand and waned the lean night wind crept westward chilling and sighing the poor old hulk remained stuck helpless in mid-ebb and I knew why why as I looked my heart felt crying for as I looked the good green earth seemed dying dying or dead and as I looked on the old boat I said dear god it's I the ador is no longer the home of birds that once it was but in the early morning one may still see there many of the less common water fell the road to Portsmouth is carried across the ador by the Norfolk suspension bridge to cross which one must pay a toll not an unpleasant reminder of earlier days Old Shoreham a mile up the river is notable for its wooden bridge across the ador to the old Sussex pad at one time a famous inn for smugglers. Few Royal Academy exhibitions are without a picture of Old Shoreham bridge and the quiet cruciform church at its eastward end. A pleasant story tells how in some Sussex journey William IV and his queen were passing through Shoreham coming from Chichester to Lewis one Sunday morning. The clerk of Old Shoreham Church caught sight through the window of the approaching cavalcade and leaping to his feet stopped the sermon by announcing it is my solemn duty to inform you that their majesties the king and queen are just now crossing the bridge. Thereupon the whole congregation jumped up and ran out to show their loyalty. End of Chapter 19 Chapter 20 of Highways and Biways in Sussex This LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Peter Yersley Highways and Biways in Sussex by E. V. Lucas Chapter 20 The Devil's Dyke and Hearst Peerpoint Add the hill above the Devil's Dyke for the Dyke itself wins only a passing glance been never popularised thousands of Londoners and many of the people of Brighton would probably never have seen the wheeled from any eminence at all the view is bounded north and west only by hills on the north by the north-downs with Leith Hill standing forward as if advancing to meet a southern champion and in the west Blackdown, Hindhead and the Hogsback the patchwork of the wheeled is between. The view from the Dyke Hill looking north is comparable to that from Leith Hill looking south and every day in fine weather there are tourists on both of these altitudes gazing towards each other the worst slight that Sussex ever had to endure so far as my reading goes is in Houston's London and its neighbourhood 1808 where the view from Leith Hill is described after stating that the curious stranger on the summit feels sensations as we may suppose Adam to have felt when he instantaneously burst into existence and the beauties of Eden struck his all-wondering eyes Mr. Houston describes the prospect its commands a view of the county of Surrey part of Hampshire, Berkshire, Nettle-bed in Oxfordshire some parts of Bucks, Hartfordshire, Middlesex, Kent and Essex and by the help of a glass Wiltshire a word of Sussex the wisest course for the non-gregarious traveller is to leave the dyke on the right and crossing the ladies golf-links gain Full King Hill from which the view is equally fine save for lacking a little in the east and where there is peace and isolation I remember sitting one Sunday morning on Full King Hill when a white mist like a sea filled the wheel washing the turf slopes 20 feet or so below me in the depths of this ocean as it were could be heard faintly the noises of the farms and the chime of submerged bells suddenly a hawk shot up and disappeared again like a leaping fish the same spot was on another occasion the scene of a superb effort of courageous tenacity I met a large hare steadily breasting the hill turning neither to the right nor left it was soon out of sight over the crest five or more minutes later there appeared in view on the hare's trail a very tired little fox terrier not much more than half the size of the hare he also turned aside neither to the right nor the left but panted wearily yet bravely past me and so on over the crest after his prey I waited for some time but the terrier never came back such was the purpose depicted on his countenance that I can believe he is following still on these downs near the dyke less than a century ago the great bustard used to be hunted with greyhounds Mr. Bora tells us in the Birds of Sussex that his grandfather who died in 1844 sometimes would take five or six in a morning they fought savagely and more than once injured the hounds Enterprise has of late been at work at the dyke a cable railway crosses the gully at a dizzy height a lift brings travellers from the wheel a wooden cannon of exceptional calibre threatens the landscape and pictorial advertisements of the devil and his domain may be seen at most of the Sussex stations ladies also play golf where when first I knew it one could walk unharmed a change that is to be regretted is the exile to the unromantic neighbourhood of the dyke station of the Queen of the Gypsies a swarthy ring-letted lady of peculiarly comfortable exterior who splendid yet a little sinister in a scarlet shawl and ponderous gold jewels used once to emerge from a tent beside the dyke inn a lot husbands, fair or dark she was an astute reader of her fellows with an eye too searching to be deceived by the removal of tell-tale rings a lucky shot in respect to a future ducal husband of a young lady now a duchess of the accuracy of which she was careful to remind you increased her reputation tenfold in recent years her name is Lee and of her title of Queen of the Gypsies there is, I believe, some justification Sussex abounds in evidences of the devil's whimsical handiwork although in ordinary conversation Sussex rustics are careful not to speak his name they say he Mr. Parrish in his dictionary of the Sussex dialect gives an example of the avoidance of the dread name in the down there's a golden calf buried people know very well where it is I could show you the place any day then why don't they dig it up oh, it's not allowed he wouldn't let them has anyone ever tried? oh yes, but it's never there when you look he moves it away his punch-bowl may be seen here his footprints there but the greatest of his enterprises was certainly the dyke his purpose was to submerge or silence the irritating churches of the wield by digging a ditch that should let in the sea he began one night from the north side at Saddlescombe and was working very well until he caught sight of the beams of a candle which an old woman had placed in her window being a devil of Sussex rather than of Miltonic invention he was not clever and taking the candlelight for the break of dawn he fled and never resumed the labour that is the very infirm legend that is told and sold at the dyke I might just mention that the little church which one sees from the dyke railway, standing alone on the hillside, is Hangelton Dr. Keneely, who defended the claimant, is buried there the hamlet of Hangelton which may be seen in the distance below once possessed a hunting lodge of the covets of Slorm which, after being used as labourers cottages, has now disappeared the fine two-dimension of the Bellingham's, now transformed into a farmhouse, although it has been much altered, still retains many original features in the kitchen, no doubt once the hall, on an oak screen are carved the commandments followed by this ingenious motto an exercise on the letter E persevere, ye perfect men ever keep these precepts ten from the dyke hill this is within easy walking distance of many wheeled and villages immediately at the north end of the dyke itself is Foynings with its fine grey, cruciform church raising an embattled tower among the trees on its mound it has been conjectured from the similarity of this beautiful church to that of Alfreston that they may have had the same architect Foynings, now called punnings, was of importance in Norman times and was the seat of William Fitzrainalt whose descendants afterwards took the name of depoynings and one of whom was ennobled as barren depoynings in the 15th century the direct line was merged into that of Percy the ruins of Poynings Place the baronial mansion are still traceable following the road to the west under the hills we come first to Fulking where one may drink at a fountain disguised by a brewer to the glory of God and in honour of John Ruskin then to Edburton where the Leadon font one of three in Sussex should be noted then to truly all little farming hamlets shadowed by the Downes then so to Beading and Bramber or Striding South to Shoreham if instead of turning into Poynings the stream a climb of some minutes with a natural amphitheater on the right brings one to the wooded northern escarpment of Saddlescombe North Hill or New Timber Hill which offers a view little inferior to that of the dyke at Saddlescombe by the way lives one of the most learned Sussex ornithologists of the day and a writer upon the natural history of the county so who cavalierly treated in this book this quick eye and descriptive hand the readers of Blackwood have reason to be grateful immediately beneath New Timber Hill lies New Timber consisting of a house or two a moted Grange and a little church which though only a few yards from the London road is so hidden that it might be miles from everywhere on the grass bank of the Bostel descending through the hangar to New Timber I counted on one spring afternoon as many as a dozen adders basking in the sun we are still here though so near Brighton in country where the Badger is still found while the New Timber woods are famous among collectors of moths if you are for the wheeled it is by this Bostel that you should descend but if still for the Downs turn to the east along the summit and you will come to Pycombe a straggling village on each side of the London road just at the head of Dale Hill Pycombe has lost its ancient fame as the home of the best shepherd's crooks but the Pycombe crook for many years was unapproached the industry has left Sussex crooks are now made in the north of England and sold over shop counters I say industry wrongly for what was truly an industry for a Pycombe blacksmith in an iron factory since the number of shepherds does not increase and one crook will serve a lifetime and more an old shepherd at Pycombe talking confidentially on the subject of crooks complained that the new weapon as sold at Lewis although nominally on the Pycombe pattern is a numb thing the chief reason which he gave was that the maker was out of touch with the man who was to use it his own crook like that of Richard Geoffrey's shepherd friend had been fashioned from the barrel of an old muzzle-loader the present generation he added is forgetting how to make everything why he had neighbours, smart young fellows too who could not even make their own clothes Pycombe is but a few miles from Brighton which may easily be reached from it a short distance south of the village is the plough inn the point at which the two roads to London that by way of Clayton Hill Fry's Oak Cookfield Balcom and Red Hill and the other on which we are now standing by way of Dale Hill, Bolney Handcross, Crawley and Rygate become one on the way to Brighton from the plough one passes through Patchham a dusty village that for many years has seen too many bicycles and now is in the way of seeing too many motor-cars in the churchyard is or was a tomb bearing the following inscription which may be quoted both as a reminder of the more stirring experiences to which the Patch's people were subject a hundred years ago and also as an example of the truth which is only half a truth sacred to the memory of Daniel Scales who was unfortunately shot on Thursday evening November the 7th 1796 Alas! Swift flew the fatal lead which pierced through the young man's head he instant fell resigned his breath and closed his languid eyes in death all ye who do this stone draw near oh pray let fall the pitying tear from the sad instance may we all prepare to meet Jehovah's call the facts of the case there's some likeness to the death of Mr. Bardell and Sergeant Buzzfuzz's reference to that catastrophe Daniel Scales was a desperate smuggler who when the fatal lead pierced him was heavily laden with booty he was shot through the head only as a means of preventing a similar fate befalling his slayer just beyond Patchum as we approach Brighton is the narrow chalk lane on the left leads to the lady's mile the beginning of a superb stretch of turf around an amphitheater in the hills by which one may gallop all the way to the Clayton Mills the grass-ride extends to Lewis Preston once a village with an independent life is now Brighton but nothing can harm its little English church noticeable for a fresco of the murder of Thomas Becket a representation dating probably from the 1st this however is a digression and we must return to Pikeham in order to climb Walsdenbury the most mountainous of the hills in this part and indeed although far from the highest perhaps the noblest in mean of the whole range by virtue of its isolation and its conical shape the earthworks on Walsdenbury although supposed to be of Celtic origin were probably utilised by the Romans for military purposes more than any of the downs does Walsdenbury bring before one the Roman occupation of our country immediately below Walsdenbury on the edge of the wheel is Danny and Elizabethan House today the seat of the Campions but 200 and more years ago the seat of Peter Courthope to whom John Ray dedicated his collection of English words not generally used and before then the property of Sir Simon de Peerpoint the park is small and without deer but the house has a façade of which one can never tire I once saw a 12th night performed in its gardens and it was difficult to believe that Shakespeare had not the spot in mind when he wrote that play the Danny drive brings us to Hearst Peerpoint or Hearst as it is generally called which is now becoming a suburb of Brighton and thus somewhat losing its character but which the hills will probably long keep sweet James Hannington bishop of Equatorial East Africa who was murdered by natives in 1885 was born here here lived Richard Weeks the antiquary and here today is the home of Mr. Mitten most learned of Sussex botanists to Hearst belongs one of the little Sussex Squires to whose diligence as a diarist we are indebted for much entertaining knowledge of the past little park now the property of the Hannington family where Thomas Marchant the diarist in question lived and kept his journal between 1714 and 1728 is to the north of the main street lying low the original document I have not seen but from passages printed by the Sussex Archaeological Society I borrow a few extracts and social life October the 8th 1714 paid four shillings at Lewis for a quarter pound of tea five pence for a choir of paper and six pence for two mouse traps October the 29th 1714 went to north barns near Homewood gate to see the pond fished I bought all the fish of a foot long and upwards at 50 shillings per hundred I am to give Mrs. Dobson a hundred store fish over and above the aforesaid bargain but she is to send to me for them October the 30th 1714 we fetched 244 carp in three dung carts from a stew of pass and citizen at street being brought thither last night out of the above pond October the 31st 1714 Sunday I could not go to church being forced to stay at home and let down fresh water to the fish they being as I supposed sick because they lay on the surface of the pond and were easily taken out but towards night they sunk the little park ponds still exist but the practice of breeding fish has passed in Arthur Young's general view of the agriculture of the county of Sussex 1808 quoted elsewhere in this book is a chapter on fish wherein he writes a Mr. Fenn of London has long rented and is the sole monopoliser of all the fish that are sold in Sussex carp is the chief stock but tench and perch, eels and pike are raised a stream should always flow through the pond and a marley soil is the best Mr. Millwood has drawn carp from his mal pits 25 pounds a brace and two inches of fat upon them but then he feeds with peas when the waters are drawn off and restocked it is done with stores of a year old which remain four years the carp will then be 12 or 13 inches long and if the water is good 14 or 15 the usual season for drawing the water is either autumn or spring the sail is regulated by measure from the eye to the fork of the tail at 12 inches carp are worth 50 shillings and 3 pounds per 100 at 15 inches 6 pounds at 18 inches 8 pounds and 9 pounds 100 stores will stock an acre or 35 brace 10 or 12 inches long are fully sufficient for a breeding pond the first year they will be 3 inches long second year 7 third year 11 or 12 fourth year 14 or 15 this year they breed although fish breeding is not what it was many of the Sussex ponds are still regularly dragged and the proceeds sold in advance to a London firm sometimes the purchaser wins in the gamble, sometimes the seller the fish are removed alive in large tanks and sold as they are wanted chiefly for Jewish tables but we must return to Thomas Marchant January 16th Sunday 1715 I was not at church having a bad headache January 25th 1715 we had a trout for supper 2 feet 2 inches long from eye to fork and 6 inches broad it weighed 10 and a half pounds it was caught in the Albourne brook near Trussell house we stayed very late and drank enough April 15th 1715 paid my uncle caught nests 15 pence for a small bottle of Daffys elixir July 18th 1715 I went to Bolney and agreed with Edward Jenner to dig sandstone for setting up my father's tombstone at five shillings I gave him six pence to spend in drink that he might be more careful August the 7th Sunday 1715 I was not at church as my head ached very much November the 22nd 1716 fished the great pond and put 220 of the biggest carp into the new pond and 18 of the biggest tench put also 358 store carp into the flat stew and 36 tench and also 550 very small carp into a hole in the low field November the 24th 1716 fished the middle pond put 66 large carp into the new pond and 380 store tench into the flat stew and 12 large carp put in large tench and 57 middle sized tench into the hovel field stew June the 12th 1717 I was at the cricket match at Dungton gate towards night January the 24th 1718 a mountain bank came to our town today he calls himself Dr. Richard Harness Mr. Scut and I drank tea with the tumbler of his tricks I am no judge but he appears to me to play well on the fiddle January the 30th Friday 1719 King Charles martyrdom I was not at church as my head ached very much February the 28th 1719 we had news of the Chevalier de Saint-Georges the pretender being taken and carried into the castle of Milan September the 19th 1719 John Parsons began his year last Tuesday my face twice a week and my head once a fortnight and I am to give him a hundred faggots per annum September the 30th 1719 talked to Mrs. Beard for Alan Savage about her horse that was seized by the officers at Brighton running brandy December the 5th 1719 my Lord Treep put a feral and pick to my stick note my Lord Treep was a tinker named Treep my Lord Burt who is also mentioned in the diary was a farrier end note July 28th 1721 paid Harry Wolvin of Twynum for killing an otter in our parish note an otter of course was a serious enemy to the owner of stews and ponds end note February the 7th 1722 Will and Jack went to Lewis to see a prize fight between Harris and another September the 18th 1727 dined at Mr. Hazelgroves and cheapened a tombstone Thomas Marchant was buried September the 17th 1728 less than two miles west of Hearst Pier Point is Albourne so hidden away that one might know this part of the country well and yet be continually overlooking it the western high road between Brighton and London passes within a stone's throw of Albourne but one never suspects the existence close by of this retired village so compact and virginal and exquisitely old-fashioned it is said that after the execution of Charles I Bishop Jackson lived for a while at Albourne Place during the Civil War and once escaped the parliamentary soldiers by disguising himself as a bricklayer there is a priest's hiding-hole in the house some three miles north of Albourne is Twynum another village which situated only on a by-road midway between two lines of railway has also preserved its bloom here at the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th centuries at Hickstead Place a beautiful Tudor mansion that still stands lived Richard Stapley another of the Sussex diarists whose manuscripts have been selected for publication by the Sussex Archaeological Society I quote a few passages in the month of November 1692 there was a trout found in the Poining's Wish in Twynum which was 29 inches long from the top of the nose to the tip of the tail and John Flint had him and eat him he was left in a low slank after a flood and the water fell away from him and he died the fish I saw at John Flint's house the Sunday after they had him and at night they boiled him for supper but could not eat one half of him and there was six of them at supper John Flint and his wife Jane and four of their children and the next day they all fell on him again and compassed him here we have the spectacle of a good man struggling with accuracy August the 19th 1698 paid Mr. Thuard for Dr. Comer's paraphrase on the common prayer twenty shillings and sixpence for carriage I paid it at the end of the kitchen table near the chamber stairs door and nobody in the room but he and I no, it was the end of the table near the parlour April the 26th 1709 I brought a salmon trout of William Lindfield of Grubbs in Bolney which he caught the night before in his net by his old orchard which was wounded by an otter the trout weighed eleven pounds and a half and was three foot three inches long from end to end and but two foot nine inches between the eye and the fork there is also a record of a salmon trout being caught at Bolney early in the last century which weighed twenty two pounds and was sent to King George IV at Brighton I must quote a prescription from the diary to cure the whooping cough get three field mice floor them draw them and roast one of them and let the party afflicted eat it dry the other two in the oven until they crumble to a powder and put a little of this powder in what the patient drinks at night and in the morning mice played and still play in remote districts a large part in the rural Farmer Cabir a Sussex doctor once told me that he had directed the mother of a boy at Portslade to put some ice in a bag and tie it on the boy's forehead when the next day the doctor asked after his patient the mother replied briskly oh Tommy's better but the mice are dead the Stapley family ate an oatmeal pudding made in the following manner of oats decorticated take two pound and of new milk enough the same to drowned of raisins of the sun stoned ounces eight of currants cleanly picked an equal weight of suet finely sliced an ounce at least and six eggs newly taken from the nest season this mixture well with salt and spice to make a pudding far exceeding and you may safely feed on it like farmers for the receipt is learned Dr. Harmer's Richard Stapley's diary was continued by his son Anthony and grandson John the most pleasing among the printed extracts is this 1736 May the 21st the white horse was buried in the saw-pit in the Lane's Wood he was aged about 35 years as far as I could find people that knew him fold he had been in his time as good a horse as ever man was owner of and he was buried in his skin being a good old horse end of chapter 20 Chapter 21 of Highways and Byways in Sussex this LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Peter Yersley Highways and Byways in Sussex by E. V. Lucas Chapter 21 Ditchling another good-walk from Brighton begins with a short railway journey to Falmer on the Lewis Line then strike into Sussex Park the seat of the Earl of Chichester a descendant of the famous Sussex Pelhams with the church and the little village of Stanmore on the far side of it and so up through the hollows and valleys to Ditchling Beacon Dr. Johnson's saying of the downs about Brighton that truly desolate that if one had a mind to hang oneself for desperation at being obliged to live there it would be difficult to find a tree on which to fasten a rope proves beyond question that his horse never took him Stanmore way for the park is richly wooded on Ditchling Beacon one of the noblest of the Sussex Hills and the second if not the first in height of all the range the surveys differ in giving the palm to Duncan the Romans had a camp and the village of Ditchling may still be gained by the half subterranean path that our conquerors dug so devised that a regiment might descend into the wheeled unseen Ditchling is a quiet little village on high ground where Alfred the Great once had a park the church is a very interesting and graceful specimen of early English architecture dating from the 13th century a hundred and more years ago water from a calibiate spring on the common was drunk by Sussex people for rheumatism and other ills but the spring has lost its fame the village could not well be more out of the movement yet an old lady living in the neighbourhood who when about to visit London for the first time was asked what she expected to find replied well I can't exactly tell but I suppose something like the more bustling part of Ditchling a kindred story is told of a Sussex man who finding himself in London for the first time exclaimed with astonishment what a queer large place why it ain't like Newick and it ain't like Chaley on Ditchling Common are the protected remains of a stake known as Jacob's post a stranger requested to supply this piece of wood with the origin of its label would probably adventure long upon the right tack for Jacob whose name has in this familiar connection a popular and almost an endearing sound was Jacob Harris a Jew peddler of astonishing turpitude who after murdering three persons at an inn on Ditchling Common and plundering their house was hanged at Horsham in the year 1734 and afterwards suspended as a lesson to the gibbet of which this post Jacob's post is the surviving relic all gibbets it is said are good for something and a piece of Jacob's post carried on the person is sovereign against toothache a Sussex archaeologist tells of an old lady a resident on Ditchling Common for more than 80 years whose belief in the post was so sound that her pocket contained a splinter of it long after all her teeth had departed from extracts from the diary of Mr. John Burgess Taylor, Sexton and particular Baptist of Ditchling which are given in the Sussex archaeological collections I quote here and there August the first 1785 there was a cricket match at Lingfield Common between Lingfield in Surrey and all the county of Sussex supposed to be upwards of 2,000 people June the 29th 1786 went to Lewis with some wool to Mr. Chatfield fine wool at eight pounds five shillings per pack went to dinner with Mr. Chatfield had boiled beef, leg of lamb and plum pudding stopped there all the afternoon Mr. Pullin was there Mr. Trimby and the Curia etc was there we had a good deal of religious conversation particularly Mr. Trimby June the 11th 1787 spent three or four hours with some friends in conversation and religious subjects the inquiry was the most easy and natural evidences of the existence and attributes of the supreme being in discussing upon the subject we was nearly agreed and proposed meeting again every first Monday after the full moon to meet at four and break up at eight March the 14th 1788 went to Fryer's Oak to a bull bait to sell my dog I sold him for one guinea upon condition he was hurt but as he received no hurt I took him back again at the same price we had a good dinner a round of beef boiled a good piece roasted a leg of mutton and ham of pork and plum pudding plenty of wine and punch at Bright Elmstone washed in the sea End of Chapter 21 Chapter 22 of Highways and Byways in Sussex This LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Peter Yersley Highways and Byways in Sussex by E. V. Lucas Chapter 22 Cuckfield Haywood's Heath on the London Line would be our next centre were it not so new and suburban fortunately Cuckfield which has two coaching-ins and many of the signs of the leisurely past is close by in the midst of very interesting country with a church standing high on the ridge to the south of the town broadside to the wheeled it's spire a landmark for miles Cuckfield Place, a house and park according to Shelley which abounded in bits of Mrs Radcliffe is described in Harrison Ainsworth's Rookwood it was in the avenue leading from the gates to the house that that fatal tree stood a limb of which fell as the presage of the death of a member of the family so runs the legend knowledge of the tree is however disclaimed by the gatekeeper Ockenden House in Cuckfield has been for many years in the possession of the Burrell family one of whom Timothy Burrell an ancestor of the antiquary left some interesting account books which contain in addition to figures many curious and sardonic entries and some ingenious hieroglyphics I quote here and there from the Sussex Archaeological Society's extracts by way of illustrating the life of a Sussex Squire in those days 1683 to 1714 1705 paid gosmark for making cider one day whilst John Coachman was to be drunk with the carrier's money by agreement and I paid tuppence to the Glacier for mending John's casement broken at night by him when he was drunk 1706 25th March paid John Coachman by Ned Virgo that he may be drunk all the east a week in part of his wages due one pound this was the fare provided on January the 1st 1707 for 13 guests plum potage carves head and bacon goose pig roast beef sirloin veal a loin plum potage boiled beef a clod two baked puddings three dishes of minced pies two capons two dishes of tarts two pullets plum porridge it may interest some to know was made thus take of beef soup made of legs of beef twelve quarts if you wish it to be particularly good add a couple of tongues to be boiled therein put fine bread sliced, soaked and crumbled done, currents and pruence two pounds of each lemons, nutmegs, mace and cloves are to be boiled with it in a muslin bag add a quart of red wine and let this be followed after half an hour boiling by a pint of sack put it into a cool place and it will keep through Christmas Mr. Burrell giving a small dinner to four friends offered them peas potage two carps, two tench capon, pullet, fried oysters baked pudding roast leg of mutton apple pudding, goose, tarts, minced pies it is perhaps not surprising that the host had occasionally to take the waters of ditchling which are no longer drunk medicinally or to dose himself with hirre picre one more dinner this time for four guests who presumably were more worthy of attention a soup take off two large carps at the upper end pigeon pie, salad, veal or leves leg of mutton and cutlets at the lower end three roast chickens scotch pancakes, tarts, asparagus three green geese at the lower end in the room of the chickens removed four sourced mackerel raisins in cream at the upper end carves foot jelly, dried sweet meats carves foot jelly flummary, savoury cakes imperial cream at the lower end in October 1709 Mr. Burrell writes in Latin from this time I have resolved as long as the dearth of provisions continues to give to the poor who apply for it at the door on Sundays 12 pounds of beef every week on the 11th of February four pounds more in all 16 pounds and a bushel of wheat and half a bushel of barley in four weeks and a bushel to the northeast of Cuckfield is supposed to have come Andrew Board the original Mary Andrew among the later boards who lived there was George Board in whose copy of Natura Brevium and Tenores Novelli bounced together given him by John Sackville of Chidingley Park is written this board would be a relative of the famous Andrew priest, doctor and satirist 1490 to 1549 who may indeed have been the author of the district above it is certainly in his vein Andrew Board gave up his vows as a Carthusian I'm sure you've heard of him I'm sure you've heard of him I'm sure you've heard of him I'm sure you've heard of him I'm sure you've heard of him I'm sure you've heard of him Andrew up his vows as a Carthusian on account of their rubourostity and he became a doctor travelling much on the continent several books are known to be his chief among them the Diatory and Breviary of Health he wrote also Lower and Horsefield indeed hold that the Gotham intended was not the Nottingham Shire Village but Gotham near Pevensey, where Board had property. That he knew something of Sussex is shown by Board's Book of Knowledge, where he mentions the old story, then a new one, that no nightingale will sing in St Leonard's Forest. It is the Book of Knowledge that has, for frontispiece, the picture of a naked Englishman with a pair of shears in one hand, and a piece of cloth over the other arm, saying, I am an Englishman, and naked I stand here, musing in my mind what raiment I shall wear, for now I will wear this, and now I will wear that, now I will wear I cannot tell what. We shall see, Andrew, again, when we come to Pevensey. A glimpse of the orderly mind of a pre-Reformation cuckfield yeoman is given in a will, quoted recently in the Sussex Daily News, in an interesting series of articles on the county under the title of Old Time Sussex. In the year of our Lord a God, 1545, the 26th day of June, I, Thomas Gaston, of the Pish of Cuckafeld, cycle in body, whole, and of perfect memory, ordain and make this my last will and test, in manner and form following. First I bequeath my soul to Almighty God, or our Lady St Mary, and all the holy company of heaving, my body to be buried in the churchyard of Cuckafeld, item to the mother church of Chichester, four pence, item to the high altar of Cuckafeld, four pence, item I will have at my burial five masses, in likewise at my month's mind, and also at my yearly mind, all the charge of the church set apart, I will have in meat and drink, and to pour people, ten shillings at every time. The high altar was frequently mentioned favourably in these old wills. Another Cuckfield's testator, in 1539, left to the high altar, for tithes and oblastions negligently forgotten six pence. The same student of the calendar of Sussex wills in the district probate registry at Lewis, between 1541 and 1652, which the British Records Society have just published, copies the following passage from the will of Gerard Onstuy in 1568. To marry my daughter, twenty pounds, the feather bed that I lie upon, the bolsters and coverlet of tapestey a work, with a blanket, four pairs of sheet, that is to say four pairs of the best flaxen, and other two pair of the best hempen, the great brass pot that her mother bought, the best boardcloth, tablecloth, a lime and wheeler, i.e. a spinning wheel, that was her mother's, the chafing-dish that hangeth in the parlour. In those simple days everything was prized. In one of these Sussex wills in 1594 Richard Ferndeen, a labourer, left to his brother Stephen, his best doublet, his best jerkin, and his best shoes, and to Bernard Ross, his white doublet, his leaven doublet, and his worst breeches. Three miles west of Cuckfield is Bolney, just off the London Road, a village in the southern boundary of St Leonard's Forest, the key to some very rich country. Before the days of bicycles Bolney was practically unknown, so retired is it. The church, which has a curious, pinnacled tower nearly 300 years old, is famous for its bells, concerning whose melody Horsefield gives the following piece of counsel. Those who are fond of the silvery tones of bells may enjoy them to perfection by placing themselves on the margin of a large pond, the property of Mr. W. Marshall. The reverberation of the sound coming off the water is peculiarly striking. Sixty years ago this sheet of water had an additional attraction, says Mr. Knox. During the months of May and June 1843 an osprey was observed to haunt the large ponds near Bolney. After securing a fish he used to retire to an old tree on the more exposed bank to devour it, and about the close of evening was in the habit of flying off towards the north-west, sometimes carrying away a prize in his talons if his sport had been unusually successful, as if he dreaded being disturbed at his repast during the dangerous hours of twilight. Having been shot at several times without effect, his visits to these ponds became gradually less frequent, but the surrounding covers being unpreserved and the bird itself too wary to suffer a near approach. He escaped the fate of many of his congeners, and even reappeared with a companion early in the following September, to whom he seemed to have imparted his solitary dread of man, his mortal enemy, for during the short time they remained there it was impossible to approach within gunshot of either of them. The indirect road from Bolney to Hand Cross, through Warning Lidder and Slorm, parallel with the Coaching Road, is superb, taking us again into the iron country, and very near to Leonard's Lea, which we have already seen. The glory of Slorm Place is no more, but one visible sign of it is preserved in Lewis in the town hall, in the shape of its old staircase. Slorm Place was the seat of the Covert family, whose estates extended, says tradition, from Southwark to the sea, and, says the more exact horse-field, from Crawley to Hangleton, above Brighton, Slorm Park used to cover one thousand two hundred acres, of the church being within it. Perhaps nowhere in Sussex is the change so complete as here, and within recent times, too, for horse-field quotes in 1835 the testimony of an aged person whom the present rector buried about twenty-five years back, who used to relate that he remembers when the family at Slorm Park, or Place, consisted of seventy persons. This continues in a footnote, the natural receptacle of many of his most interesting statements. The name of the aged person alluded to was Harding, who died at nearly one hundred. According to his statement, the family were so numerous they kept constantly employed mechanics of every description who resided on the premises. A conduit which supplied the mansion with water is now used by the inhabitants of the village. The kitchen fireplace still remains of immense size, with the irons that supported the cooking apparatus. The arms of the covets, with many impalements and quarterings, yet remain on the ruins. The principal entrance was from the east and the grand front to the north. The pillars at the entrance fluted with seats on each side are still there. According to the statement of the above person, there was a chapel attached to the mansion at the west part. The mill-pond flowed over nearly forty acres, according to a person's statement who occupied the mill many years. The ruins, little changed since Horsefield wrote, stand in a beautiful old-world garden, which the traveller must certainly endeavour to enter. A mile north of Slorm is Hand Cross, a Clapham junction of highways, whence Crawley is easily reached. Crawley, however, beyond a noble church, has no interest, its distinction being that it is half way between London and Brighton on the high road, its distinction and its misfortune. One would be hard put to it to think of a less desirable existence than that of dwelling on a dusty road and continually seeing people hurrying either from Brighton to London or from London to Brighton. Travellers, fatens, motorcars, bicycles pass through Crawley so numerously as almost to constitute one elongated vehicle, like the moving platformer to the last Paris exhibition. And not only travellers on wheels, for since the fashion for walking came in, Crawley has had new excitements or monotonies. In the shape of walking stockbrokers, walking butchers, walking auctioneers, clerks, walking Austrians pushing their families in wheelbarrows, walking bricklayers carrying hods of bricks, walking acrobats on stilts, all striving to get to Brighton within a certain time, and all accompanied by judges, referees and friends. At Hand Cross, lower on the road, the numbers diminish, but every competitor seems to be able to reach Crawley, perhaps because the railway station adjoins the high road. It was not, for example, until he reached Crawley, that the Austrian's wheelbarrow broke down. On the other side of the line, two miles northeast of Haywood's Heath, is Lindfield, with its fine common of geese, its generous duck pond, and wide straggling street of old houses and new, too many new, to my mind, rising easily to the graceful early English church with its slender shingled spire. Just beyond the church is one of the most beautiful of timbered houses in Sussex, or indeed in England. When I first knew this house, it was a farm in the hands of a careless farmer. It has been restored by its present owner with the most perfect understanding and taste. For too long, no one attempted to do as much, for east mascalls, a timbered ruin lying low among the fields to the east of the village, but quite recently it has been taken in hand. Great Lindfield Epitaph may be mentioned, that of Richard Turner, who died in 1768, aged 21. Long was my pain, great was my grief, surgeons I'd many, but no relief. I trust through Christ to rise with the just. My leg and thigh was buried first. I must not betray secrets, but it might be remarked that the kindly yet melancholy study of wilden people and wilden scenery called Idlehurst, the best book, I think, that has come out of Sussex in recent years, may be read with some special appropriateness in this neighbourhood. North of Lindfield is Ardingley, now known chiefly in connection with the large school which travelers on the line to Brighton see from the carriage windows as they cross the viaduct over the ooze. The village, a mile north of the college, is famous as the birthplace of Thomas Box, the first of the great wicketkeepers who disdained gloves even to the fastest bowling. The church has some very interesting brasses to members of the Wakehurst and Culpeper families, who long held Wakehurst Place, the Elizabethan mansion to the north of the village. Nicholas Culpeper of the Herbal was of the stock, but he must not be confounded with the Nicholas Culpeper whose brass, together with that of his wife, ten sons and eight daughters, is in the church, possibly the largest family on record depicted in that metal. The church also has a handsome, canopied tomb, the occupant of which is unknown. From Ardingley superb walks in the Sussex Forest Country may be taken. The End of Chapter Twenty-Two


And it comes again to the feet of Pallinio, sorry, Vinicius down the left-hand side, knocking in behind Adam Smith to Solomon, pulled back to the edge of the area. Here's Harrison Reed, tested for Pereira, brilliant full-on goal. No doubt about that, that is an excellent goal from Fullham. A cut form of open there via the left-hand side, pulled back to the edge of the penalty area, and a super finish into the bottom left-hand corner from Pereira. And 16 minutes in, the better side lead, born with nil, full-on one. Quarter from the left here, one nil, Cherries are trailing. This time it's Rothwell, out comes Leno, a swinging haymaker and fisted away, out to Tavernier, right side of the penalty area, cutting on to his left. Goes for goal! A dipping, bending shot beyond Leno, into the top left-hand corner. A goal to light up the vitality stadium. It's Bournemouth one, full-on one. Well, what an absolute corner that is. When he's cut inside, I'm thinking, just take a chance and have a strike, that he did and he's found the top corner with it. Water start to the second half, this has been... Bournemouth on the front foot again with Lerma, tries to thread it through. Ryan Christie, what a brilliant first touch from Christie, who's in on goal, shoots low, Leno with the save, and then it's smuggled in! Dominic Solanke was right in there! Ryan Christie played a huge role as well. Fullham couldn't get it clear, and Solanke pressured the defender, and the ball went over the line. And Bournemouth, with 12 minutes left, have come from behind to lead full and two goals to one.