THUNDERFIELD CASTLE 149 



Two and twopence a day I gets, an' works from seven 

 o'marnings to half-past five in the afternoon for that. 

 You'll be gettin' more than two and twopence a day 

 when you're at work, I reckon." 



To evade that remark by an opinion that a country 

 life was preferable to existence in a town was easy. The 

 old man agreed with the proposition, for he had visited 

 London, and " a dirty place it was, sure-ly." Also he 

 had been atop of the Monument, to the Tower, and to 

 the resort he called " Madame Two Swords " : places 

 that Londoners generally leave to provincials. Thus, 

 the country cousin within our gates is more learned in 

 the stock sights of town than townsfolk themselves. 



From here the road slopes gently to the Weald past 

 Petridge Wood and Salfords, where a tributary of the 

 Mole crosses, and where the last turnpike-gate was 

 abolished, with cheers and a hip-hip-hooray, at the 

 midnight of October 31st, 1881. 



At Horley, the left-hand road, forming an alternative 

 way to Brighton by Worth, Balcombe, and Wivelsfield, 

 touches the outskirts of Thunderfield Castle. 



Thunderfield Castle should — if tremendous names 

 go for aught — be a stupendous keep of the Torquilstone 

 type, but it is, sad to say, nothing of the kind, being 

 merely a flat circular grassy space, approached over 

 the Mole and doubly islanded by two concentric moats. 

 It stands upon the estate of Harrowslea — " Harsley," 

 as the countryfolk call it— supposed to have once 

 belonged to King Harold. 



There seems to be no doubt whatever that the 

 Anglo-Saxons did name the place after the god Thunor. 

 It was known by that name in the time of Alfred the 

 Great, but no one knows what it was like then ; nor, 

 for that matter, what the appearance of it was when 

 the Norman de Clares owned it. It seems never to 

 have been a castle built of stone, but an adaptation of 

 the primitive savage idea of surrounding a position 

 with water and palisading it. Thunderfield was a 

 veritable stronghold of the woods and bogs, and the 

 defenders of it were like Here ward the Wake, who 



