SUSSEX ROAD-LORE 103 



Really, for myself and quite a number of friends 

 struck by the charming bells' device, I should be 

 only too pleased to arrive at the true inwardness 

 of the decoration ; also to be told what roads to 

 London, from north, south, east, or west, counted 

 from Bow Church. '' Paterson's Roads " does 

 not appear to afford the required data, and I was 

 almost discouraged from further search because 

 my good friend Henry Hewitt Griffin — most 

 alarmingly patient, persevering prober Into 

 statistics and all sorts of musty records — 

 happened to write about a book he thought of 

 making out of tracking, like Mr Pickwick and 

 the Hampstead Ponds, the London roads to 

 their very source or first recognisable existence. 

 Mr G., in sketching his plan, mentioned the 

 extraordlnray number of different points of 

 departure or termination these highways radiat- 

 ing from the metropolis had, so that when you 

 made any place so far from or to London by the 

 stones, real understanding of the exact distance 

 could be arrived at only if the particular point In 

 London's City — or Southwark's Borough — was 

 understood. If the Brighton via Lewes to 

 London roads were measured to Cheapslde, then 

 possibly my correspondents are correct ; but I 

 cannot help fancying there is more local character 

 in the bells on the Sussex milestones and the 

 Sussex gravestones and finlals of ancient Sussex 

 houses than comes from connection with routes to 

 Bow. I hope that recent correspondents will 

 excuse my challenging their assumption that I 

 did not notice the very evident bow above the 

 bells. That Is just what I did, on the milestones 

 and the tombstones as well, and the coincidence 

 struck me as precluding the explanation now 



