CIVIL AND DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE 



yeoman and merchant class, as well as in those belonging to the squire and 

 parson. Many of these have come to light in recent years, of which the 

 following may be instanced : i. The remarkable painting in the house 

 known as the Old Flushing Inn, Rye, date c. 1547, size about 17 ft. by 8ft. 

 This has the royal arms, and badges, and the Magnificat in English black- 

 letter type on scrolls upheld by cherubs, as a frieze ; the ' filling ' being a 

 sage-green ground, covered with foliage, birds and beasts in various colours, and 

 intersected by three diagonal bands, bearing the motto SOLI DEO HONOR 

 ET [GLORIA] the last word, running along the plinth, being destroyed. 

 A painting almost precisely similar exists in a house at Halifax, and both 

 are evident imitations of the tapestries in use at the period. 2. In the 

 ' Mint ' House, Pevensey, is a running pattern of Tudor roses, with a motto 

 or text in black letter. 3. A section of the wall of a half-timber house at 

 South Harting, now in the museum at Lewes Castle, shows arabesque patterns 

 in red, blue-grey, black, and white, dating from the early part of the sixteenth 

 century. 4. In a house in the same village is a curious landscape, with a 

 man in late seventeenth-century costume, rabbits, a stag and other animals, 

 and chestnut-trees in blossom. 5. In what was the old rectory house at 

 Cocking, texts in black letter were found painted upon the walls, taken from 

 the Bishops' Bible. In this connexion may be instanced Standard Hill, a 

 fine old farmhouse, at Ninfield, which has scriptural mottoes carved upon 

 the front, such as ' God's providence is mine inheritance,' and ' Except the 

 Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it. Here we have 

 (1659) no abidence ' ; also Hangleton House, which has, in what is now 

 the kitchen, an arched screen, over which are three oak panels having the 

 Ten Commandments carved thereon, and beneath them the distich a play 

 upon the letter E 



Persevere ye perfect Men, 

 Ever keep these Precepts ten. 



The dog-gates of the staircase at Ford House have been mentioned 

 above : many other curious features remain in a group of farmhouses round 

 Warnham, such as an elaborate door-bolt of wood at Westons, and nicely 

 moulded spit-racks over the great chimney at Stone Farm, and at Mockfords, 

 near Henfield. The key-plates, latches, and other door furniture are worthy 

 of close study. There is a fine chiselled iron lock-plate in a house at 

 Portslade. Throughout the eastern part of the county cast-iron fire-backs 

 and andirons are commonly met with. 8 



A word is due to the picturesque farm-buildings of West Sussex 

 especially. With thatched or tiled roofs, weather-boarded barns, and cobble-flint 

 yard-walls coped with the picturesque Pulborough sandstone, they are well 

 worth study. The barns are often excellently built, as at Ford Place, where they 

 are constructed of narrow red bricks and squared black flints. At Eastergate 

 is a very pretty granary of half-timber construction. The numerous wind- 

 mills form quite a study by themselves. Many of them occupy very ancient 

 sites ; as do also the water-mills, most of which are mentioned in Domesday. 



8 These and many other details of finishings and old domestic implements in use in Sussex farm- 

 houses are described and illustrated in papers by the late J. Lewis Andre, F.S.A., in vols. xxxiv and xlii of 

 the Suss. Arch. Coll. and in vol. xxxiv of The Antiquary ; also in Mr. Charles Dawson's paper in Suss. Arch. Coll. 

 vol. xlvi. 



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