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
Goodwood Park gives me little pleasure. I miss the deer; and when the
first park that one ever knew was Buxted, with its moving antlers above
the brake fern, one almost is compelled to withhold the word park from
any enclosure without them. It is impossible to lose the feeling that
the right place for cattle--even for Alderneys--is the meadow. Cows in a
park are a poor makeshift; parks are for deer. To my eyes Goodwood
House has a chilling exterior; the road to the hill-top is steep and
lengthy; and when one has climbed it and crossed the summit wood, it is
to come upon the last thing that one wishes to find in the heart of the
country, among rolling Downs, sacred to hawks and solitude--a Grand
Stand and the railings of a race-course! Race-courses are for the
outskirts of towns, as at Brighton and Lewes; or for hills that have no
mystery and no magic, like the heights of Epsom; or for such mockeries
of parks as Sandown and Kempton. The good park has many deer and no
race-course.
And yet Goodwood is superb, for it has some of the finest trees in
Sussex within its walls, including the survivors of a thousand cedars of
Lebanon planted a hundred and fifty years ago; and with every step
higher one unfolds a wider view of the Channel and the plain. Best of
these prospects is, perhaps, that gained from Carne's seat, as the
Belvedere to the left of the road to the racecourse is called; its name
deriving from an old servant of the family, whose wooden hut was
situated here when Carne died, and whose name and fame were thus
perpetuated. The stones of the building were in part those of old Hove
church, near Brighton, then lately demolished.
[Sidenote: THE CENOTAPH OF DARNLEY]
In Goodwood House, which is shown on regular days, are fine Vandycks and
Lelys, relics of the two Charles', and above all the fascinatingly
absorbing "Cenotaph of Lord Darnley," a series of scenes in the life of
that ill-fated husband. It may be said that among all the treasures of
Sussex there is nothing quite so interesting as this.
[Illustration: _Boxgrove Priory Church._]
[Sidenote: BOXGROVE]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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