<h2><SPAN name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></SPAN>CHAPTER XI</h2>
<h3>BIGNOR</h3>
<blockquote><p>Burton and the sparrowhawk—James Broadbridge—The quaintest of
grocer's shops—A transformation scene—The Roman
pavement—Charlotte Smith the sonneteer—Parson Dorset's
advice—Humility at West Burton—Bury's Amazons.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Two miles due south from Petworth is Burton Park, a modest sandy
pleasaunce, with some beautiful deer, an ugly house, and a church for
the waistcoat pocket, which some American relic hunter will assuredly
carry off unless it is properly chained.</p>
<p>Mr. Knox has an interesting anecdote of a sparrowhawk at Burton. "In
May, 1844," he writes, "I received from Burton Park an adult male
sparrowhawk in full breeding plumage, which had killed itself, or rather
met its death, in a singular manner. The gardener was watering plants in
the greenhouse, the door being open, when a blackbird dashed in
suddenly, taking refuge between his legs, and at the same moment the
glass roof above his head was broken with a loud crash, and a hawk fell
dead at his feet. The force of the swoop was so great that for a moment
he imagined a stone hurled from a distance to have been the cause of the
fracture."</p>
<p>At Duncton, the neighbouring village, under the hill, James Broadbridge
was born in 1796—James Broadbridge, who was considered the best
all-round cricketer in England in his day. He had a curious hit to
square-leg between the wicket and himself, and he was the first of whom
it was said that he could<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_108" id="Page_108"></SPAN></span> do anything with the ball except make it
speak. In order to get practice with worthy players he would walk from
Duncton to Brighton, just as Lambert would walk from Reigate to London,
or Noah Mann ride to Hambledon from Petworth. Jim Broadbridge's first
great match was in 1815, for Sussex against the Epsom Club, including
Lambert and Lord Frederick Beauclerk, for a Thousand Guineas.
Broadbridge, after his wont, walked from Duncton to Brighton in the
morning, and he looked so much like a farmer and so little like a
cricketer that there was some opposition to his playing. But he bowled
out three and caught one and Sussex won the money.</p>
<p>Above Duncton rises Duncton Down, which is eight hundred and
thirty-seven feet high, one of our mountains. But we are not to climb it
just now, having business in the weald some four miles away to the east,
past Barlavington and Sutton, at Bignor.</p>
<div class="sidenote">THE OLDEST GROCER'S SHOP</div>
<p>Admirers of yew trees should make a point of visiting Bignor churchyard.
The village has also what is probably the quaintest grocer's shop in
England; certainly the completest contrast that imagination could devise
to the modern grocer's shop of the town, plate-glassed, illumined and
stored to repletion. It is close to the yew-shadowed church, and is
gained by a flight of steps. I should not have noticed it as a shop at
all, but rather as a very curious survival of a kindly and attractive
form of architecture, had not a boy, when asked the way to the Roman
pavement, which is Bignor's glory, mentioned "the grocer's" as one of
the landmarks. One's connotation of "grocer" excluding diamond panes,
oak timbers, difficult steps, and reverend antiquity, I was like to lose
the way in earnest, had not a customer emerged opportunely from the
crazy doorway with a basket of goods. It was natural for the boy, whose
pennies had gone in oranges and sweets, to lay the emphasis on the
grocery; but the house externally is the only one of its kind within
miles.</p>
<div class="sidenote">A ROMAN VILLA</div>
<p>In some respects there is no more interesting spot in Sussex<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_109" id="Page_109"></SPAN></span> than the
mangold field on Mr. Tupper's farm that contains the Roman pavements.
Approaching this scene of alien treasure one observes nothing but the
mangolds; here and there a rough shed as if for cattle; and Mr. Tupper,
the grandson of the discoverer of the mosaics, at work with his hoe.
This he lays on one side on the arrival of a visitor, taking in his hand
instead a large key. So far, we are in Sussex pure and simple; mangolds
all around, cattle sheds in front, a Sussex farmer for a companion, the
sky of Sussex over all, and the twentieth century in her nonage. Mr.
Tupper turns the key, throws open the creaking door—and nearly two
thousand years roll away. We are no longer in Sussex but in the province
of the Regni; no longer at Bignor but Ad Decimum, or ten miles from
Regnum (or Chichester) on Stane Street, the direct road to Londinum, in
the residence of a Roman Colonial governor of immense wealth, probably
supreme in command of the province.</p>
<p>The fragments of pavement that have been preserved are mere indications
of the splendour and extent of the building, which must have covered
some acres—a welcome and imposing sight as one descended Bignor Hill by
Stane Street, with its white walls and columns rising from the dark
weald. The pavement in the first shed which Mr. Tupper unlocks has the
figure of Ganymede in one of its circular compartments; and here the
hot-air pipes, by which the villa was heated, may be seen where the
floor has given way. A head of Winter in another of the sheds is very
fine; but it is rather for what these relics stand for, than any
intrinsic beauty, that they are interesting. They are perfect symbols of
a power that has passed away. Nothing else so brings back the Roman
occupation of Sussex, when on still nights the clanking of armour in the
camp on the hill-top could be heard by the trembling Briton in the Weald
beneath; or by day the ordered sounds of marching would smite upon his
ears, and, looking fearfully upwards, he would see a steady file of
warriors descending the slope. I<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_110" id="Page_110"></SPAN></span> never see a Sussex hill crowned by a
camp, as at Wolstonbury, without seeing also in imagination a flash of
steel. Perhaps one never realises the new terror which the Romans must
have brought into the life of the Sussex peasant—a terror which utterly
changed the Downs from ramparts of peace into coigns of minatory
advantage, and transformed the gaze of security, with which their grassy
contours had once been contemplated, into anxious glances of dismay and
trepidation—one never so realises this terror as when one descends
Ditchling Beacon by the sunken path which the Romans dug to allow a
string of soldiers to drop unperceived into the Weald below. That
semi-subterranean passage and the Bignor pavements are to me the most
vivid tokens of the Roman rule that England possesses.</p>
<div class="sidenote">PARSON DORSET</div>
<p>Charlotte Smith, the sonneteer and novelist, was the daughter of
Nicholas Turner, of Bignor Park, which contains, I think, the plainest
house I ever saw in the country. Charlotte Smith, who was all her life
very true to Sussex both in her work and in her homes—she was at school
at Chichester, and lived at Woolbeding and Brighton—was born in 1749. A
century ago her name was as well known as that of Mrs. Hemans was later.
To-day it is unknown, and her poems and novels are unread, nor will
they, I fear, be re-discovered. Her sister, Catherine Turner, afterwards
Mrs. Dorset, was the author of <i>The Peacock at Home</i>, a very popular
book for children at the beginning of the last century, suggested by
Roscoe's <i>Butterfly's Ball</i>. Mrs. Dorset, by the way, married a son of
the vicar of Walberton and Burlington, whose curious head-dress gave to
an odd-looking tree on Bury hill the name of Parson Dorset's wig—for
the parson was known by his eccentricities far from home. The old story
of advice to a flock: "Do as I say, not as I do," is told also of him.</p>
<div class="sidenote">VILLAGE HUMILITY</div>
<p>The little village of West Burton, east of Bignor, is associated in my
mind with an expression of the truest humility. A kindly villager had
given me a glass of water, and I unfolded<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_111" id="Page_111"></SPAN></span> my map and spread it on her
garden wall to consult while I drank. "Why," she said, "you don't mean
to say a little place like West Burton is marked on a map." This is the
very antipodes of the ordinary provincial pride, which would have the
world's axis project from the ground hard by the village pump. But pride
of place is not, I think, a Sussex characteristic.</p>
<p>Bury, the next hamlet in the east, under the hills, has curious cricket
traditions. In June, 1796, the married women of Bury beat the single
women by 80 runs, and thereupon, uniting forces, challenged any team of
women in the county. Not only did the women of Bury shine at cricket,
but in a Sussex paper for 1791 I find an account of two of Bury's
daughters assuming the names of Big Ben and Mendoza and engaging in a
hardly contested prize fight before a large gathering. Big Ben won.</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_112" id="Page_112"></SPAN></span></p>
<p class="center"><SPAN name="page112.png" id="page112.png"></SPAN><ANTIMG src="images/page112.png" width-obs='700' height-obs='505' alt="The Causeway, Horsham" /></p>
<h4><i>The Causeway, Horsham.</i></h4>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />