high--and it was a simple matter to beach a boat just below. In High Street, almost facing the turning which leads up to the church, is a dark red-brick building of the seventeenth century: this is Pocock's Grammar School, which readers of Thackeray will remember as the place where Denis Duval was sent to be educated. A little farther along we come to Conduit Hill, in which is situate the Ancient Monastery of the Austin Friars--a fair building, possessing that rare thing, flamboyant tracery. If the ghosts of the little brothers of bygone days ever return to their former haunts, they must be deeply grieved or intensely amused, for the building has been everything from a malt-house to a Salvation Army barracks. As we leave the town a flood of questions surges into the brain, perhaps never to be answered. Why is it there is such an attraction about Rye? Why will men and women travel half across the world to see these crooked streets once more? Why should the very mention of the name conjure up such haunting memories of the past? There is very little in the place that is actually old--a gateway, one or two houses, a small tower, a church--yet the impression is one of remotest antiquity. BODIAM When in 1377, following on other successful raids, the French descended on Rye and sacked and fired the town, it became evident that Hastings could no longer afford sufficient protection to that stretch of the coast, or to the important river valley leading thence inwards; and the necessity for another stronghold was immediately realized. Thus did Bodiam come into existence. It so happened that, at the moment when the defenceless condition of the Rother became apparent, there had come into the district a knight well skilled in all the military arts, one Edward Dalyngrigge, a member of an old Sussex family and brother to the sheriff of the county. Dalyngrigge had spent many years in France, and taken part in numerous expeditions, some of them scarcely creditable. Following a fierce but capable warrior, one ready for almost any emergency, he had learned not only the art of the soldier but also the science of the castellan. Now, Sir Edward was married to Elizabeth Wardeux, the heiress of the manor of Bodiam, and therefore possessed of the old moated manor-house some distance from the river. Consequently, in virtue of the necessity of the times, Sir Edward had little difficulty in extracting the licence to build a suitable castle. ====================================================================== [Illustration: BODIAM CASTLE] The castle is a ruin--a mere empty shell--but outwardly its towers and walls rise sheer from the lily-covered waters of the moat in a fine state of preservation. (_See page 59_) ======================================================================