INDUSTRIES 





in 1745, and only coming to an end in 1906 by 

 amalgamation with the Brighton Gazette and 

 certain other papers under ' The Sussex Amalga- 

 mated Newspapers Ltd.' Lewes was probably 

 the first town to set up a press, and the firm of 

 Lee seems to have been the only printers there 

 until about i8i8, 176 when John Baxter settled 

 in Lewes. Baxter was the most notable of the 

 Sussex printers, and was the inventor and first 

 user of the inking-roller ; his quarto Bible, with 

 notes and illustrations, attained a great reputation, 

 and had a wide sale in America as well as in 

 England. 177 His son George Baxter was the 

 inventor of the well-known oil process of printing 

 in colours. J. Seagrave was printing at Chiches- 

 ter during the last decade of the eighteenth 

 century, when he published a Chichester Guide 

 and some of Hayley's poems. Presses were 

 working at Rye in 1773, when The Cabinet, or 

 Christian Miscellany, was printed there, and in 

 1785 at Hailsham ; James Hurdis issued his 

 poem ' The Favourite Village ' and other works 

 from a private press at Bishopstone, between 

 1797 and 1800, and there was a private press 

 at Glynde in I77o. 178 The growth of this 

 industry has been as remarkable in Sussex as 

 elsewhere, but presents no particular features of 

 interest ; at the present time the county has 42 

 local newspapers, and the number of persons 

 engaged in printing, which was 221 in 1851 and 

 553 in 1871, had risen in 1901 to 1,310. 



In the industrial history of any district, factors 

 of great importance are the means of communi- 

 cation and transport. The more completely a 

 district is isolated the more it will be compelled 

 itself to produce the articles it requires, while at 

 the same time the production will be limited by 

 local needs. So that, broadly speaking, where 

 transport and communication are lacking, indus- 

 tries will tend to be numerous but unimportant, 

 but where they are good the industries will be 

 more or less confined to those for which the 

 district is particularly suitable, and will therefore 

 probably be of some importance. In the case of 

 Sussex we have a long seaboard with a chain of 

 harbours which were of importance in mediaeval 

 times, though owing to the change of the coast- 

 line and the increase of size in shipping they are 

 now mostly of small value ; there are also a 

 series of rivers, of no great size, but even now for 

 the most part navigable for barges to a consider- 

 able distance inland. Against this system of 

 water communication must be set the possession 

 of roads which were, at least in the northern 

 portion of the county, notoriously bad. In the 

 south, where the roads could run for the most 

 part over the high ground of the Downs, the 



176 In that year he printed the Levies Poll Book, 

 which from 1768 onwards had been printed by 

 William Lee. 



177 See Diet. Nat. Biog. 



178 Cotton, Typographical Gazetteer (2nd. ser.). 



requirements of traffic were sufficiently well met, 

 but in the Weald, with the exception of the 

 Roman road of the Stane Street from Chichester 

 to London, and possibly one or two other high- 

 ways, communication was only possible by 

 country lanes sheltered from the drying influence 

 of sun and wind by great woods, difficult and 

 unpleasant in any but the driest summer weather, 

 and impossible in winter. ' Souseks full of 

 dyrt and myre ' the county was called in the time 

 of Henry VIII, and for some centuries it con- 

 tinued to deserve the title. When Prince 

 George of Denmark visited Petworth in the 

 winter of 1703 one of his suite wrote to a friend 

 describing the journey 



through the worst ways that I ever saw in my life. 

 We were thrown but once indeed in going, but both 

 our coach, which was the leading one, and his high- 

 ness's body coach, would have suffered very often if 

 the nimble boors of Sussex had not frequently poised 

 it up, or supported it with their shoulders from Godal- 

 ming almost to Petworth ; and the nearer we ap- 

 proached the Duke's house the more unaccessible it 

 seemed to be. The last nine miles of the way cost 

 us six hours time to conquer them ; and indeed we 

 had never done it, if our good master had not several 

 times lent us a pair of horses out of his own coach, 

 whereby we were able to trace out the way for him. 1 ' 11 



Defoe in his Tour of 1724 also alludes to the 

 execrable state of the Sussex roads, mentioning 

 an instance of a lady of quality being drawn to 

 church by a team of oxen as the mud was im- 

 passable for horses. Dr. John Burton, in his 

 account of a journey through the county in 

 1 75 1, 180 speaks enthusiastically of the Romans' 

 work in making the Stane Street, 



for from the moment I left it I fell immediately upon 

 all that was most bad, upon a land desolate and muddy, 

 and upon roads which were, to explain 

 concisely what is most abominable, Sussexian. No one 

 would imagine them to be intended for the people and 

 the public, but rather the byways of individuals, or more 

 truly the tracks of cattle drivers ; for everywhere the 

 usual footmarks of oxen appeared, and we too who 

 were on horseback going on zigzag almost like oxen at 

 plough, advanced as if we were turning back, while we 

 followed out all the twists of the roads. Not even 

 now, though in summer time, is the wintry state of 



the roads got rid of, our horses could 



not keep on their legs on account of these slippery and 

 rough parts of the roads, but sliding and tumbling on 

 their way, and almost on their haunches, with all their 

 haste got on but slowly. 



Writing some fifty years after this the Rev. 

 Arthur Young said : 



The turnpike roads in Sussex are generally well enough 

 executed .... The cross-roads upon the coast are 

 usually kept in good order ; . . . . but in the Weald 

 the cross-roads are in all probability the very worst 

 that are to be met with in any part of the island. 181 



179 Suss. Arch. Coll. xiv, 15. 



180 Ibid, viii, 254. 



151 Agiic, of Suss. 416-17. 



239 



