Rye, East Sussex

“ Medieval Sussex—The suddenness of Rye—The approach by night—Cities of the plain—Old Winchelsea—The freakish sea—New Winchelsea—The eternal French problem—Modern Winchelsea—The Alard tombs—Denis Duval and the Westons—John Wesley—Old Rye—John Fletcher—The Jeakes'—An unknown poet—Rye church—The eight bells—Rye's streets—Rye ancient and modern—A Rye ceramist—Pett—Icklesham's accounts—A complacent epitaph—Iden and Playden—Udimore's church—Brede Place—The Oxenbridges—Dean Swift as a baby. ”

“ A damp blind beggar on a stone, who was never dry in his life, and was, of course, a mere mass of rheumatic aches and pains, is a feature common to so many perspectives in England that he need not be dwelt upon. What is precious about Rye is that with its great charm it does not insist upon being dramatically different from those hundreds or thousands of other lovely old towns. ”

“ The church, the largest in Sussex, dominates Rye from every point, and so tightly are the houses compressed that from the plain the spire seems to be the completion not only of the church but of the town too. ”

“ In the opinion of many good judges Sussex has nothing to offer so fascinating as Winchelsea and Rye; and in certain reposeful moods, when the past seems to be more than the present or future, I can agree with them. We have seen many ancient towns in our progress through the county—Chichester around her cathedral spire, Arundel beneath her grey castle, Lewes among her hills—but all have modern blood in their veins. Winchelsea and Rye seem wholly of the past. Nothing can modernise them. ”

“ RYDE, a municipal borough and watering-place in the Isle of Wight, England, 5 m. S.S.W. of Portsmouth. Pop. (1901) 11,043. It is beautifully situated on rising ground on the N.E. coast, overlooking Spithead. It occupies the site of a village called La Rye or La Riche, which was destroyed by the French in the reign of Edward II. About the close of the 18th century it was a small fishing hamlet, but it rapidly grew into favour as a watering-place. ”

“ He took a small house for the summer on the hill of Playden, in Sussex, where for the first time in his life, and after twenty years of England, he enjoyed a solitude of his own among trees and fields. From his terrace, where he sat under an ash-tree working at his novel, he looked across a wide valley to the beautiful old red-roofed town of Rye, climbing the opposite hill and crowned with its church-tower. The charm and tranquillity of the place were perfect, and when he had to give up the house at Playden he moved for the autumn into the old Rye vicarage. ”

“ So also has the early clearing of the forest, and therefore the early establishment of free communication with the Thames valley. This feature we have already touched on in the development of Pevensey and Hastings Rapes. But whatever be the cause, the effect is apparent to those who know the county. One very curious result of it to-day is the difference in the modern settlement of East Sussex and of West. The new-comers with their villas and their great search for something old, that they may{146} destroy it by their admiration, have different chances in the two parts of the county. ”

“ I have been unfair, for example, to Burpham, which lies between Arundel and Amberley and of which nothing is said; and more than one reader has discovered unfairness to East Sussex. For this the personal equation is perhaps responsible: a West Sussex man, try as he will, cannot have the same enthusiasm for the other side of his county as for his own. For me the sun has always seemed to rise over Beachy Head, the most easterly of our Downs. ”

“ In the north transept is a spiral staircase leading to the tower, and elsewhere are memorials of the Fords and Featherstonhaughs of Up-Park, a superb domain over the brow of Harting's Down, and of the Carylls of Lady Holt, of whom we shall see more directly. The east window is a peculiarly cheerful one, and the door of South Harting church is kept open, as every church door should be, but as too many in Sussex are not. ”

“ As a centre for the exploration of East Sussex Lewes has no equal; days may be spent before the interest of the immediate neighbourhood is exhausted; for those who are vigorous enough for hill rambling the paths over the Downs are dry and passable in all weathers, and the Downs themselves, even apart from the added interest of ancient church or picturesque farm and manor, are ample recompense for the small toil involved in their exploration. ”

“ Gilbert White has an often-quoted passage on these hills:—"Though I have now travelled the Sussex downs upwards of thirty years, yet I still investigate that chain of majestic mountains with fresh admiration year by year, and I think I see new beauties every time I traverse it. This range, which runs from Chichester eastward as far as East Bourn, is about sixty miles in length, and is called the South Downs, properly speaking, only round Lewes. As you pass along you command a noble view of the wild, or weald, on one hand, and the broad downs and sea on the other. ”

“ The present church, which stands on the site of St. Cuthman's, is only a reminder of what it must have been in its best days. When one faces the curiously chequered square tower, an impression of quiet dignity is imparted; but a broadside view is disappointing by reason of the high deforming roof, giving an impression as of a hunched back. (One sees the same effect at Udimore, in the east of Sussex.) ”

“ Winchelsea and Rye are remarkable in being not only perched each upon a solitary hillock in a vast level or marsh, but in being hillocks in themselves. In the case of Winchelsea there are trees and green spaces to boot, but Rye and its hillock are one; every inch is given over to red brick and grey stone. They are true cities of the plain. ”

“ In the days of Napoleon, when any moment might reveal the French fleet, the Sussex hill tops must often have smouldered under false alarms. The next hill in the east is Treyford Hill, above Treyford village, whose church tower, standing on a little hill of its own nearly three hundred feet high, might take a lesson in beauty from South Harting's, although its spire has a slenderness not to be improved. ”

“ In the first place, we see that the shaded districts lie in a broad band across England from north-east to south-west, from the East Riding of Yorkshire to Dorset and the east part of Somerset.
Secondly, we see that there is a perfectly sharp line of demarcation between the shaded and the non-shaded area, running through Suffolk, Essex, passing through London, and along the border between Surrey and Kent. This line becomes indefinite as it passes through the Weald of Surrey and Sussex, but its termination can be traced in the part of Sussex which lies on the southern slope of the South Downs. ”

“ In the architecture of Rye, if one has ventured into its harbour, which is nowadays difficult of entrance and exit, one finds some delightful bits of almost medieval date: hoary roofs and towers and moss-grown walls. It is difficult to believe that once the “French walked the streets, slaying all they could meet with, afterwards burning the houses.” Just as they did, we may remark, at Sandwich, Winchelsea, Yarmouth, Dartmouth, and many another town upon our south coast. ”

“ But these encampments are tied close to the railway; they do not seem to spread their influence over the landscape or to change the character of the people in any way.
In East Sussex you get, on the contrary, whole belts of country into which the spirit of the great towns has penetrated, perhaps for ever. Thus there is such a belt in the line of Rotherfield, Mayfield, and Heathfield. ”

“ As for the Rye House; at the beginning of the nineteenth century it had become a work-house, and so continued until 1840, when, under the Poor Law Amendment Act, it became necessary to provide less make-shift accommodation. To-day it is the resort of beanfeasters innumerable, who are set down at the Rye House station, and guzzle and swill at the gimcrack Rye House inn, where the Great Bed of Ware is the staple attraction ”

“ New windows in Norman style were inserted in 1871 to bring the east end into harmony with the nave.
St. Mary's is the first house to be seen on approaching the village from the east. It is a beautiful specimen of a timber-built Sussex house; notice the open iron-work door with its queer old bell-pull.
Every visitor should inspect the quaint museum of taxidermy in the village street; here guinea-pigs may be seen playing cricket, rats playing dominoes and rabbits at school; the lifelike and humorous attitudes of the little animals reflect much credit on the artist. ”

“ Penhurst, by the way, is one of the most curiously remote villages in east Sussex, with the oddest little church.
I walked to Ashburnham from Ninfield, a clean breezy village on the hill overlooking Pevensey Bay, with a locked church, and iron stocks by the side of the road. It is stated somewhere that at "that corner of Crouch Lane that leads to Lunford Cross, and so to Bexhill and Hastings," was buried a suicide in 1675. At how many cross roads in Sussex and elsewhere does one stand over such graves? ”

“ Warminghurst in those days of park and deer, lake and timber (it had a chestnut two hundred and seventy years old) , might well be the first spot to which an enfranchised spirit winged its way.
From Warminghurst is a road due south, over high sandy heaths, to Washington, which, unassuming as it is, may be called the capital of a large district of West Sussex that is unprovided with a railway. Steyning, five miles to the east, Amberley, seven miles to the west, and West Worthing, eight miles to the south, on the other side of the Downs, are the nearest stations. ”

“ All the beauty and charm of this lovely district is accentuated in Ryedale, and when we have accomplished the three long uphill miles to Rievaulx, and come out upon the broad grassy terrace above the abbey, we seem to have entered a Land of Beulah. We see a peaceful valley overlooked on all sides by lofty hills, whose steep sides are clothed with luxuriant woods; we see the Rye flowing past broad green meadows; and beneath the tree-covered precipice below our feet appear the solemn, roofless remains of one of the first Cistercian monasteries established in this country. ”

“ The "English Salvator Rosa"—Sops and Ale—Beau Chef—"The Breeze on Beachy Head"—Shakespeare and the Cliff—"To a Seamew"—The new lighthouse—Parson Darby and his cave—East Dean's bells—The Two Sisters—Friston's Selwyn monument—West Dean.
Eastbourne is the most select, or least democratic, of the Sussex watering places. Fashion does not resort thither as to Brighton in the season, but the crowds of excursionists that pour into Brighton and Hastings are comparatively unknown at Eastbourne ”

“ Mr. Hughson describes the prospect. "It [Pg 194] commands a view of the county of Surrey, part of Hampshire, Berkshire, Nettlebed in Oxfordshire, some parts of Bucks, Hertfordshire, Middlesex, Kent and Essex; and, by the help of a glass, Wiltshire." Not a word of Sussex.
A SEA OF MIST
The wisest course for the non-gregarious traveller is to leave the Dyke on the right, and, crossing the Ladies' Golf Links, gain Fulking Hill, from which the view is equally fine (save for lacking a little in the east) and where there is peace and isolation. ”

“ It may be mentioned in connection with this part of the county, that of all maritime districts possessed of remarkable inland scenery Sussex is the least to be remembered by those who have seen it from the sea. The Downs slope up so gradually, the line of the coast is so flat, and the reek of the coastal towns, though slight, so continuous, that the general impression a man has who runs along even upon a clear day from Rye harbour, let us say, to the Looe Stream inside the Owers, thus covering the whole stretch of the county coast, is one of monotony. ”

“ There is a choice of roads between Worthing and Arundel: that which keeps to the low lands has been partly traversed in the journey to West Ferring.
About two miles east of this village, and close to Angmering station, are the twin villages of East and West Preston; the former has a Norman and Transitional church with one of the four stone spires in Sussex. At Rustington, a mile farther, is a more interesting Early English church with a Transitional tower. Note the ancient sculpture in the north transept, also the squint and rood-loft steps. ”

“ Sussex, as we have seen, is rich in Saxon relics, but the county has nothing more interesting than this. The church is cruciform, as all churches should be, and there is a little east window in the north transept through which, it is conjectured, arrows were intended to be shot at marauding Danes; for an Englishman's church was once his castle. Archæologists familiar with Worth church have been known to pass with disdain cathedrals for which the ordinary person cannot find too many fine adjectives. ”

“ East Grinstead, the capital of north-east Sussex, is interesting chiefly for Sackville College, that haunt of ancient peace of which John Mason Neale, poet, enthusiast, divine, historian, and romance-writer for children, was for many years the distinguished Warden. Nothing can exceed the quiet restfulness of the quadrangle. ”

“ Seen from the river or from the east side of the Arun valley, Arundel is the most imposing town in Sussex. Many are larger, many are equally old, or older; but none wears so unusual and interesting an air, not even Lewes among her Downs. ”

“ The track winding up Bignor Hill is still easily recognisable, and from the summit half Sussex is visible: the flat blue weald in the north, Blackdown's dark escarpment in the north-west, Arundel's shaggy wastes in the east, the sea and the plain in the south, and the rolling turf of the downs all around. Henceforward the road is again straight, nine unfaltering miles to Chichester, which we enter by St. ”