CHARLWOOD 175 



A repetition of this state of things occurred in 

 February, 1897. when the dedication of the new organ 

 in the church of Lowfield Heath could not be performed, 

 the roads being four feet under water. 



XXI 



The traveller does not see the true inwardness of the 

 Weald from the hard high road. Turn we, then at 

 Povey Cross for a rustic interlude into the byways, 

 making for Charlwood and Ifield. 



Few are those who find themselves in these lonelv 

 spots. Hundreds, nay, thousands are continually 

 passing almost within hail of their slumberous sites, 

 and have been passing for hundreds of years, yet they 

 and their inhabitants doze on, and ever and again 

 some cyclist or pedestrian blunders upon them by a 

 fortunate accident, as, one may say, some unconscious 

 Livingstone or Speke, discovering an unknown Happy 

 Valley, and disturbs with a little ripple of modernity 

 their uneventful calm. 



The emptiness of the three miles or so of main road 

 between Povey Cross and Crawley is well exchanged 

 for these devious ways leading- along the vallev of the 

 Mole. A prettier picture than that of Charlwood 

 Church, seen from the village street through a framing 

 of two severely-cropped elms forming an archway 

 across the road, can rarely be seen in these home 

 counties, and the church itself is an ancient building 

 of the eleventh century, with later windows, inserted 

 when the Norman gloom of its interior assorted less 

 admirably with a more enlightened time. In plan 

 cruciform, with central tower and double nave, it is 

 of an unusual type of village church, and presents 

 many features of interest to the archaeologist, whose 

 attention will immediately, be arrested by the frag- 

 ments of an immense and hideous fresco seen on the 

 south wall. A late brass, now mural, in the chancel, 



