CUCKFIELD 205 



the " hammer-ponds " of the smelteries and foundries 

 have become the resorts of artists seeking the 

 picturesque, and the descendants of the old iron- 

 masters, the Burrells and the Sergisons, have for 

 generations past been numbered among the county 

 families. 



Cuckfield very narrowly escaped being directly 

 on the route of the Brighton railway, but it pleased 

 the engineers to bring their line no nearer than Hay- 

 ward's Heath, some two miles distant. They built a 

 station there, on the lone heath, " for Cuckfield," 

 with the result, sixty years later, that the sometime 

 solitude is a town and still growing, while Cuckfield 

 declines. Hayward's Heath, curiously enough, is, 

 or was until December, 1894, in the parish of Cuckfield, 

 but the time is at hand when the two will be joined 

 by the spread of that railway upstart ; and then will 

 be the psychological moment for abolishing the name 

 of Hayward's Heath — which is a shocking stumbling- 

 block for the aitchless — and adopting that of the 

 parental " Cookfield." 



Meanwhile, I shall drop no sentimental tears over 

 the chance that Cuckfield lost, sixty years ago, of 

 becoming a railway junction and a modern town. Of 

 junctions and mushroom towns we have a sufficiency, 

 but of surviving sweet old country townlets very few. 



To see Cuckfield thoroughly demands some little 

 leisure, for although it is small one must needs have 

 time to assimilate the atmosphere of the place, if it is 

 to be appreciated at its worth ; from the grey old 

 church with its tall shingled spire and its monuments 

 of Burrells and Sergisons of Cuckfield Place, to the 

 staid old houses in the quiet streets, and those two fine 

 old coaching inns, the " Talbot " and the " King's 

 Head." Rowlandson made a picture of the town in 

 1789, and it is not wholly unlike that, even now, but 

 where is that Fair we see in progress in his spirited 

 rendering ? Gone, together with the smart fellow 

 driving the curricle, and all the other figures of that 

 scene, into the forgotten. There, in one corner, you 



