THE NATIONAL TRUST. 
191 
to undertake the custodianship of a monument to three men of 
national note upon an historic battle-field. 
But occasions arise when it must raise funds suddenly or let 
slip golden opportunities of purchase or preservation, and such 
cases have arisen. In Susse.x, at Alfriston — the town of Alfred 
the King — still stands a unique specimen of a fourteenth century 
clergy house. This has been handed to the Trust for a nominal 
sum, and acting on the advice of Mr. Waterhouse, R.A., and the 
Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, it is endeavour- 
ing to raise such a sum as shall put it into substantial repair — 
£iy> is required. So urgent is it, that, feeling that unless roofed 
in before the winter it may perish, IMiss Octavia Hill has offered 
to guarantee £1^ if the amount can be raised, and Mr. Herbert 
Phillips promises £^o ; other smaller sums have also been given. 
But where the rest is to come from onl}' your readers know; and 
it seems a pity that for want of an appeal to all who, like Sel- 
bornians, care for beautiful England, future generations should 
be unable to realize how the secular clergy lived in pre-reforma- 
tion times. This is a house whose antiquity and associations 
might well appeal to Roman Catholic and Protestant alike. 
The second earnest appeal which was made by the Duke of 
Westminster, Canon Wilberforce, Mr. Herkomer, Mr. Walter 
Crane and others, was for .^290 to complete the purchase for the 
nation of one of the most interesting headlands on the Cornish 
coast, the Barras Point opposite Tintagel Castle. Any lovers 
of Arthurian legend must see the difference in the interest of the 
associations with olden-time romance that will be possible to those 
who stand on Barras Headland and gaze across Arthur’s Cove 
from the Point as it is, and the effect the scene would have 
upon them if the same headland was the adjunct of an hotel, 
or the terrace ground of some sanatorium. Thanks to Lord 
Wharncliffe, the headland last year escaped the possibility of 
this fate. His Lordship is willing to hand it to our Trust on the 
terms of the purchase price he paid for it, and thus to enable it 
by charter to be always in statu qtco for lovers of our Cornish 
coast, for botanists, for students of bird-life, for painters and 
poets and holiday-makers who love 
“ The sea-girt walls as nature bade them be, 
Where dark Dundagel frowns above the sea.” 
If any of your readers will help by sending, no matter how 
small, a subscription to the purchase price of that wild fourteen 
acres and a half of faerie and romance and glorious Cornish 
scene, the National Trust will be grateful. Any further in- 
formation would be most gladly given by the Secretary, Mr. 
Laurence Chubb, i. Great College Street, Westminster, at whose 
office the articles of association of the Trust can be seen, and 
from whom the annual report, presented at the last meeting, 
can be obtained. 
H. D. Rawnsley. 
