PEASE POTTAGE 195 



XXIV 



Modern Crawley is disfigured bv the abomination 

 of a busv railway level-crossing that bars the main 

 road and causes an immeasurable waste of public 

 time and a deplorable flow of bad language. It affords 

 a very good idea of the delays and annoyances at the 

 old turnpike-gates, without their excuse for existence. 

 Beyond it is the Park Lane or Belgrayia of Crawley — - 

 the residential and superior modern district of country 

 houses, each in midst of its own little pleasance. 



The cutting in the rise at Hog's Hill passed, the 

 road goes in a long incline up to Hand Cross, by Pease 

 Pottage, where there is now a post-office which spells 

 the name wrongly, " Peas." No one knows how the 

 place-name originated ; but legends explain where 

 facts are wanting, and tell variously how soldiers in 

 the old days were halted here on their route-marching 

 and fed with " pease-pottage," the old name for 

 pease-pudding ; or describe how prisoners on the 

 cross-roads, on their way to trial at the assizes, once 

 held at Horsham and East Grinstead alternately, were 

 similarly refreshed. Formerly called Pease Pottage 

 Gate, from a turnpike-gate that spanned the Horsham 

 road, the " Gate ' has latterly been dropped. It is 

 a pretty spot, with a triangular green and the old 

 " Black Swan ' inn still standing at the back. The 

 green is not improved by the recent addition of a 

 huge and ugly signboard, advertising the inn as an 

 " hotel." The inquiring mind speculates curiously as 

 to whether the District Council (or whatever the local 

 governing body may be) is doing its duty in allowing 

 such a flagrant vulgarity, apart from any question 

 of legal rights, on common land. Indeed, the larger 

 question arises, in the gross abuse of advertising 

 notice-boards on this road in particular, and along 

 others in lesser degree, as to whether the shameful 

 defacement of natural scenery by such boards erected 

 on land public or private ought not to be suppressed 

 by law. Nearer Brighton, the beautiful distant views 



