SUSSEX

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 98, 24 February 1947, Page 5

SUSSEX

(By H. Sergeant)

FAMED ENGLISH COUNTRY HOME OF SUNSHINE & PEACE

From Wall to Weald—from the Cheviots to the Channel—was once a far cry. Caesar’s legions, tramping northwards to mann the milecastles against the Piet would spend a footsore month on the road. Today there are aeroplanes which could take you from Brighton to Berwick and back between lunch and tea. So time which through the ages almost inconceivably long is drawing the hill down .to the plain, has drawn the people of England down to unity.

Let Sussex keep its individuality. It is a garden and a ' playground, a Southland of sunshine and peace. When men dig the Cheviots they dig for camps and forts and weapons. When they dig the Downs they dig for villas centrally heated and luxurious with baths and fountains. Roman rule was milder in the South and the South Saxons who followed (Sussex takes its name from them) were mild and cultured men, though St. Augustine had not yet brought them to Christianity. The fiercer Danes harried the coast but made no deep inroads.

The conqueror swept in, but peace came again almost with the piercing of Harold’s eye on Senlac Hill. And thereafter the tale of weald and down is a tale mainly of peace and culture and industry. Let us stand on the edge of the whispering trees on Chanctonbury Ring and hear a little story of famous Sussex. Northwards from this ancient British and Saxon vantage point the weald country stretches to the North Downs above and beyond which can be seen the far haze of London. This weald (weald means open country) tells more to the stu■dent of man’s beginnings than any other area in the country. For here, north of the far eastern edge of the Downs has been found the skull of one of the four oldest men in the world.

A hundred thousand years ago men walked across the plain from from France—there was no channel then—and one of them lay down and died at Piltdown. a few miles north of Lewes. He was not a man as we know men today. His face was apelike; his brow receded, but he was not an ape. He was one of the common ancestors of man as distinct from the ape. The Piltdown man brought fame to Sussex! '

It was a famous hunting country —this weald—from far off days when it rose in great forests from a primaeval lake. Here with the forests of Ashdown or Pevensey, Arundel and St. Leonard—where King John hunted with more than 200 hounds. Most of it has been farmland for centuries.

Arundel now centres on the seat of the premier Earl of the Kingdom—the Duke of Norfolk. But among the trees of Ashdown there still lingers forest lore and forest customs.

King Alfred himself contributes to Sussex fame. Not only did his navy (Britain’s first real navy) crush the Danish marauders but he himself lived in Sussex, and loved it. Many of his horses were stabled at Ditchling. Barnham and Steyning are mentioned in his will. Alfred and his navy bring to mind the Cinque Ports at first, Hastings, Sandwich, Dover, Romney and Hythe. Ships from the Cinque Ports supplied the strength of King Harold’s fleet, when he vainly tried to intercept the conqueror’s landing. Whinelsea an Rye were added soon after the conquest and later the ports numbered 39 of which about one-third were in Sussex. »

These Cinque Ports have had 900 years of honourable history, which is symbolised today in coronation privileges accorded to the ports Barons. When bluff King Hal planned his national navy, the ports influence declined but then were still able to help England to safety when Spain’s armada swept in arrogance up the Channel.

From our eyrie on Chanctonbury Hill we turn and look south to that long and sunny coast line, which is the playground we spoke of. Here are Hastings and St. Leonard’s, Eastbourne, Shoreham, Brighton, Lancing, Worthing, Augmening, Littehampton, Bognor and Selsey where it is said the Saxons first landed 1500 years ago.

Here is the playground that the railway has opened within living memory. Worthing was but a fishing village a hundred years ago and ..in the last 20 years has doubled its

population. Brighton has always been Doctor Brighton since George 4th recommended it by his presence as a health resort, but the by-ways of Rottingdean and Saltdean to the east have only in recent years been open to the London sunshine seeker. Bognor is now Bognor Regis for it was here at Craigwell House near the beach that King George V came to recuperate and to gain some years of useful life. Littlehampton grows bigger and bigger. Sussex-born readers may remember the little green, where Dan Randall sang (Won’t you Come Home Bill Bailey) and other songs of a generation ago. Villas cluster, the green now and for many acres inland. To the west we almost see Chichester, named after Cissa Son of Aella the Saxon who landed at Selsey. It used to be the camp of Cissa. Looking eastward again we see Warminghurst near Steyning, where lived William Penn the founder of Pennsylvania, in the United States. It was at Warminghurst that Penn the Quaker conceived his idea and it was with 100 men of West Sussex that he sailed for America in 1684.

Steyning calls to mind the many famous schools which Sussex has borne. It is a peculiarity of many Sussex schools that they are built on the ruins of far older foundations. Sussex abounds in schools. There are about 450 public elementary schools and more than 2Q public secondary schools, also many preparatory private schools. There are technical and art schools and training colleges for teachers. There is an Agricultural College at Dickfield and 200 Women’s Institutes. Three hundred years old are the Grammar Schools at Rye, Hastings and Midhurst, at Horsham is Richard Collyer’s School founded in 1539 and an even more famous school—Christ Hospital. It was in 1902 that Christ Hospital for just 350 years situated in the Grey Friars district of London moved out to the green fields of Sussex. Few great schools are left in London now. Westminster stays because it must, its traditions are so closely bound with its Abbey.

Sussex’s first industry in days gone by was the forging of iron. Sussex ironfields did a roaring export trade in Tudor times. Cannon took a big share. Times change and Sussex must change with them. From Sompting’s Saxon Towered Church to the children’s playground beach of Lancing ringed with its new bright villas, is but a step for hikers whose laughter and choruses echo to round the old Castle walls of Bodiam, Hurstmonceux, Pevensey, Camber, Hastings and Amberley.

There are filling stations within easy reach of Battle Abbey. Yet the shining land of the South Saxons was ever and ever will be, more gay than serious, more a playground perhaps than any Shire of England.