A HISTORY OF SUSSEX 



He further mentions that a turnpike road had 

 been made from Horsham to London in 1756. 



Before that time it was so execrably bad, that whoever 

 went on wheels were forced to go round by Canter- 

 bury, which is one of the most extraordinary circum- 

 stances that the history of non-communication in this 

 kingdom can furnish. 188 



Marshall also, writing at the same time, in 1798, 

 bears similar witness regarding the Sussex roads : 



Excepting the more public ones, as between Godalmin 

 and Petworth ; Petworth and Horsham (by Pul- 

 borough) ; and Horsham and Dorking ; and except a 

 less public one from the Godalmin road towards the 

 center of the Weald ; this extensive district may be 

 said to be at present without roads .... The lanes 

 through the enclosed lands as well as the glades across 

 the commons lie in their natural state ; worn into 

 gullies and trodden into sloughs. Even in the spring 

 and early summer months they appear intolerable to a 

 stranger ; and in winter are barely passable to a native 

 of the country. 183 



For many centuries, the upkeep of communi- 

 cations was enforced upon the owners of the 

 adjacent lands, and the manorial court rolls con- 

 tain innumerable presentments for allowing por- 

 tions of the roads to become impassable or bridges 

 to fall into disrepair. Bequests were also fre- 

 quently made of money to be expended on mend- 

 ing the foul ways in the neighbourhood, from 

 which no doubt the testators had suffered during 

 their lives. In 1534 an Act was passed extend- 

 ing to Sussex certain provisions already allowed 

 in Kent, for substituting new roads for less con- 

 venient old ones. 184 More important than this 

 was the Act of 1585, 'for the Amendment of 

 High Waies decaied by carriage to and fro Yron 

 Mylles,' in Sussex, Surrey, and Kent, by which 

 any person carrying charcoal, ore or iron, between 

 12 October and I May, should carry for every 

 six loads of ' coales or mine,' and for every ton of 

 iron, 'one usuale carte loade of sinder, gravell, 

 stone, sande or chalke, meate for the repairing 

 and amendinge of the said Highways.' The 

 effect of this, however, was lost, as apparently 

 owing to an error in the drafting of the Act, it 

 was made to apply only to Surrey and Kent. 185 

 This Act having proved a failure, another was 

 passed in 1597 which included Sussex, and enacted 

 that every one so carrying charcoal, ore or iron, 

 should pay for every three loads or for every ton 

 of iron, 3*. to a justice of the peace as a highway 

 rate ; while further, anyone carrying thirty loads, 

 or ten tons of iron between i May and 12 Octo- 

 ber, should carry and lay one load of cinder, 

 gravel, stone or chalk. 186 A notice of the methods 

 used for improving the roads occurs in May, 1632, 

 when the justices of the rape of Bramber reported: 



151 Agric. of Suss. 418. 



18S Rural Economy of the Southern Counties, 98. 



' we have caused the Dikes in the Highways of 

 the wildishe parte of the rape to be made or 

 scowered, and have ordered the surveyors to mend 

 the worst places with sinder (i.e. iron slag) and 

 rubbishe stone.' 187 In 1663 the legislature in- 

 troduced the turnpike system, by which the burden 

 on the parishes was lessened by the taking of tolls 

 from persons using the roads. Apparently, how- 

 ever, it was not until 1696 that Sussex availed 

 itself of the Turnpike Acts, the roads between 

 Crawley and Reigate being made subject to tolls 

 in that year. 188 



Attempts to improve the roads were not appre- 

 ciated by the populace, and when an Act for 

 amending the way from London to East Grin- 

 stead was introduced, the gentry, farmers, and 

 other persons using the roads, petitioned against 

 the charging of tolls, partly on the ground that 

 the worst part of it lay in Surrey. 189 Nor was 

 it only an objection to paying tolls that animated 

 the conservative men of Sussex, for when there 

 was a proposal to make a road from London to 

 Brighton, by way of Cuckfield, the inhabitants of 

 Hurstpierpoint petitioned that it might not pass 

 through their parish for fear of its bringing pick- 

 pockets and other bad characters down from 

 London, to contaminate their village, so long pre- 

 served from evil influences by its protecting sea 

 of mud. 190 At Mayfield, also, the proposal for a 

 turnpike road was opposed as extravagant and 

 absurd, ' because, how can a broad-wheeled wag- 

 gon stand upright if it has no ruts to go in ? ' 191 

 In spite of opposition, however, new roads were 

 made and old ones improved, until now it is only 

 in the country lanes that it is possible to realize 

 what the roads were like that gained Sussex so bad 

 a name in times past. 



The London and Brighton Railway was in- 

 corporated by Act in 1837, the line to Brighton 

 being opened 21 September, 1841, and branches 

 east to Hailsham, Eastbourne, and Hastings, and 

 west to Chichester, during the next five or six 

 years. This railway amalgamated with the 

 London and Croydon Railway in 1846, under 

 the title of the London, Brighton, and South 

 Coast Railway, and has now a network of lines 

 covering the greater part of the county, except 

 the extreme east, where the South Eastern and 

 Chatham Railway have a line, built under an 

 Act of 1846, from Hastings to Tunbridge Wells, 

 with branches from Robertsbridge down the 

 Rother valley to Tenterden, and from Crowhurst 

 to Bexhill. The South Western have also a 

 short branch from Petersfield to Midhurst. One 

 of the earliest light railways, or steam tramways, 

 built in England was that opened between Chi- 

 chester and Selsey in 1897, while the most recent 

 development of communications has been the 

 running of small motor trains between Hastings 



1M Suss. Arch. Coll. xv, 139. 



185 Ibid. 140-2. "Mbid. 142. 



187 Ibid, xvi, 42. 



189 Ibid. 147. 



191 Ibid. Xxi, 21. 



88 Ibid, xv, 143. 

 190 Ibid, xix, 1 68. 



240 



