Of the hurried notes I managed to make about the priest-house at the time, and those I set down from memory afterwards, I gathered that it was built not later than 1350, possibly earlier. Originally there was a large hall heated by a fire on a raised stone set in the centre, the smoke of which escaped through a hole in the roof, and the old plaster of the roof still shows the blackening caused by the smoke. At either end of the hall were doors leading to offices, the sleeping-rooms being above these. Such was its simple plan. About 1522 the present chimney was built on the site of the ancient open fire, and the hall divided into two compartments "as you now see it." "And how do you know all this?" queried I, when I could get a word in. "Well, you see, sir, at different times members of Archaeological Societies have been over to examine the building, and I always went over with them, and so I learnt a lot about it. The house was originally built by the Prior of Lewes as a hospital for invalid priests, and it also served the purpose of a guest-house for stray travellers; the roads in these parts were then but rough tracks through wild forests, full of wild beasts, they tell me. In the chimney a hiding hole was discovered, but it was only three feet square, and as a man could not get into it, it is supposed it was for hiding treasures, or perhaps books." The old house was full of ancient furniture and of odds and ends of curious things that served our ancestors. I remember there was a steel striker and a flint with a tinder-box; I tried my prentice hand with these, and after several attempts at last obtained a light, but with difficulty; it must have been trying and tedious work using this steel, flint, and tinder-box on a cold winter's morning. Little wonder so many houses in past times had their fires piled up at night so that they might keep in till the morning, when the smouldering ashes readily caused the fresh fuel put on them to become ignited. At one old manor-house I went over some years back, I was informed that the fire in the hall had not been out for two centuries; even in summer it was kept alight, day and night, for the walls of that house were thick, and the hall was only pleasantly warm on the fine August noon when I was there. A friend of mine told me that in 1908 he discovered a cottage at Huckaback, Castleton, Yorkshire, where the turf fire had not been out for sixty-eight years.