242 THE BRIGHTON ROAD 



it must have been in the past the breeding-ground of 

 agues and ehills innumerable. 



A true exemplar this of that Sussex of which in 

 1690 a barrister on circuit, whose profession led him 

 by evil chance into this county, writes to his wife : 

 " The Sussex ways are bad and ruinous beyond 

 imagination. I vow 'tis melancholy consideration 

 that mankind will inhabit such a heap of dirt for a 

 poor livelihood. The county is in a sink of about 

 fourteen miles broad, which receives all the water that 

 falls from the long ranges of hills on both sides of it, 

 and not being furnished with convenient draining, is 

 kept moist and soft by the water till the middle of a 

 dry summer, which is only able to make it tolerable to 

 ride for a short time." 



Such soft and shaky earth as this could not bear 

 the weight of so ponderous a structure as was Slaugham 

 Place : the swamps pulled its masonry apart and 

 rotted its fittings. Despairing of victory over the 

 reeking moisture, its owners left it for healthier sites. 

 Then the rapacity of all those neighbouring folk who 

 had need of building material completed the havoc 

 wrought by natural forces, and finally Slaugham 

 Place became what it is to-day. Its clock-tower was 

 pulled down and removed to Cuckfield Park, where it 

 now spans the entrance drive of that romantic spot, 

 and its handsomely carved Jacobean stairway is to-day 

 the pride and glory of the " Star ' Hotel at 

 Lewes. 



The Coverts are gone ; their heraldic shields, in 

 company of an architectural frieze of greyhounds' and 

 leopards' heads and skulls of oxen wreathed in drapery, 

 still decorate what remains of the north front of their 

 mansion, and their achievements are repeated upon 

 their tombs within the little church of Slaugham on 

 the hillside. You may, if heraldically versed, learn 

 from their quarterings into what families they married ; 

 but the deeds they wrought, and their virtues and 

 their vices, are, for the most part, clean forgotten, 

 even as their name is gone out of the land, who once, 



