Highways and Byways in SussexLucas, E. V. (Edward Verrall)
History
Highways and Byways in Sussex
Lucas, E. V. (Edward Verrall)
Sussex (England) -- Description and travel
Between Rotherfield and Mayfield is a little hill, trim and conical as
though Miss Greenaway had designed it, and perfect in deportment, for it
has (as all little conical hills should have) a white windmill on its
top. Around the mill is a circular track for carts, which runs nearer
the sails than any track I remember ever to have dared to walk on.
Standing by this mill one opens many miles of Kent and Surrey: due north
the range of chalk Downs on which is the Pilgrim's Way, between Merstham
and Westerham, and in front of that Toy's Hill and Ide Hill and their
sandy companions, on the north edge of the Weald.
Mayfield is a city on a hill on the skirts of the hot hop district of
which Burwash is the Sussex centre. To walk about it even in April is no
exhilaration; but in August one thinks of Sahara. I lived in Mayfield
one August and could barely keep awake; and we used to look across at
the rolling chalk Downs in the south, between Ditchling and Lewes, and
long for their cool, wind-swept heights. They can be hot too, but chalk
is never so hot as sand, and a steady climb to a summit, over turf
odorous of wild thyme, is restful beside the eternal hills and valleys
of the hop district.
[Sidenote: SAINT DUNSTAN]
Mayfield has the best street and the best architecture of any of these
highland villages. Also it has the distinction of having done most for
mankind, since without Mayfield there would have been no water to cure
jaded London ladies and gentlemen at Tunbridge Wells. According to
Eadmer, who wrote one of the lives of Dunstan, that Saint, when
Archbishop of Canterbury, built a wooden church at Mayfield and lived in
a cell hard by. St. Dunstan, who was an expert goldsmith, was one day
making a chalice (or, as another version of the legend says, a
horseshoe) when the Devil appeared before him. Instantly recognising his
enemy, and being aware that with such a foe prompt measures alone are
useful, St. Dunstan at once pulled his nose with the tongs, which
chanced happily to be red hot. Wrenching himself free, the Devil leaped
at one bound from Mayfield to Tunbridge Wells, where, plunging his nose
into the spring at the foot of the Pantiles, he "imparted to the water
its chalybeate qualities," and thus made the fortune of the town as a
health resort. To St. Dunstan therefore, indirectly, are all drinkers of
these wells indebted. For other drinkers he introduced or invented the
practice of fixing pins in the sides of drinking cups, in order that a
thirsty man might see how he was progressing and a bibulous man be
checked.
[Sidenote: MAYFIELD]
When consecrating his little church at Mayfield St. Dunstan discovered
it to be a little out of the true position, east and west. He therefore
applied his shoulder and rectified the error.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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