240 THE BRIGHTON ROAD 



found settled here until towards the close of the 

 fifteenth century, being preceded, as lords of the manor, 

 by the Poynings of Poynings, and by the Berkeleys 

 and Stanleys. Sir Walter Covert, to whose ancestors 

 the manor fell by marriage, was the builder of that 

 Slaugham Place whose ruins yet remain to show his 

 idea of what was due to a landed proprietor of his 

 standing. They cover, within their enclosing walls of 

 red brick, which rise from the yet partly filled moat, 

 over three acres of what is now orchard and meadow- 

 land. In spring the apple trees bloom pink and white 

 amid the grey and lichen-stained ashlar of the ruined 

 walls and arches of Palladian architecture, and the 

 lush grass grows tall around the cold hearths of the 

 roofless rooms. The noble gateway leads now, not 

 from courtyard to hall, but doorless, with its massive 

 stones wrenched apart by clinging ivy, stands merely 

 as some sort of key to the enigma of ground plan 

 presented by walls ruinated in greater part to the 

 level of the watery turf. 



The singular facts of high wall and moat surrounding 

 a mansion of Jacobean build seem to point to an 

 earlier building, contrived with these defences when 

 men thought first of securitv and afterwards of comfort. 

 Some few mullioned windows of much earlier date 

 than the greater part of the mansion remain to confirm 

 the thought. 



That a building of the magnificence attested by 

 these crumbling walls should have been allowed to 

 fall into decay so shortly after its completion is a 

 singular fact. Though the male line of the Coverts 

 failed, and their estates passed, by the marriage of 

 their womankind, into other hands, yet their alienation 

 would not necessarily imply the destruction of their 

 roof-tree. The explanation is to be sought in the 

 situation and defects of the ground upon which 

 Slaugham Place stood : a marshy tract of land, 

 which no builder of to-day would think of selecting 

 as a site for so important a dwelling. Home as it was 

 of swamps and damps, and quashy as it is even now, 



