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
I have left until the last the prettiest thing in this city of comely
streets and houses--St. Mary's Hospital, at the end of Lion Street (out
of North Street): the quaintest almshouse in the world. The building
stands back, behind the ordinary houses, and is gained by a passage and
a courtyard. You then enter what seems to be a church, for at the far
end is an altar beneath an unmistakably ecclesiastical window. But when
the first feeling of surprise has passed, you discover that there is
only a small chancel at the east end of the building, on either side of
which are little dwellings. Each of these is occupied by a nice little
old woman, who has two rooms, very minute and cosy, with a little supply
of faggots close at hand, and all the dignity of a householder, although
the occupant only of an infinitesimal toy house within a house. How do
they agree, one wonders, these little old ladies of a touchy age under
their great roof?
Different accounts are given of the origin of St. Mary's Hospital. Mr.
Lower says that it was founded in 1229 for a chaplain and thirteen
bedesmen. In 1562 a warden and five inmates were the prescribed
occupants. Now there are eight sets of rooms, each with its demure
tenant, all of whom troop into the little chapel at fixed hours. Mrs.
Evans, sacristan, who does the honours, would tell me nothing as to the
process of selection by which she and the seven other occupants came to
be living there; all that she could say was that she was very happy to
be a Hospitaller, and that by no possibility could one of the little
domiciles ever fall to me.
[Illustration: _The Ruined Nave of Boxgrove._]
CHAPTER V
CHICHESTER AND THE HILLS.
Goodwood--The art of being a park--The Cenotaph of Lord
Darnley--Boxgrove--Cowper at Eastham--The Charlton Hunt--A famous
run--Huntsman and Saint--Present day hunting in Sussex--Mr. Knox's
delectable day with his gun--Kingly Bottom--The best white
violets--A demon bowler--Two epitaphs.
Chichester may have a cathedral and a history, but nine out of ten
strangers know of it only as a station for Goodwood race-course; towards
which, in that hot week at the end of July, hundreds of carriages toil
by the steep road that skirts the Duke of Richmond and Gordon's park.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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