It was largely owing to the isolation produced by faulty means of travel that Sussex villages, up to comparatively recent times, retained so much of old-world quaintness and charm. Many of the labourers of a past generation never moved out of their own district during the whole of their lives. A story used to be told of a Heathfield labourer who, after a quarrel with his wife, deserted his home and went to another village a few miles away. Home sickness, however, soon overcame him, and, coming back to his family, he declared that he had had quite enough of “furrin parts”—nothing like Old England after all! An old lady of the village of Ditchling, who was going up to London, being asked what sort of place she thought she was about to see, replied that she expected it would be “about like the bustling part of Ditchling.” The old cottages in the villages were formerly full of Sussex ironwork, and of this I made a collection, which includes some very good specimens—fire-dogs and backs, rush-light holders, tongs, and the like—of this extinct industry. At that time I lived in the very centre of what was formerly a great iron-producing district, for near Heathfield were many furnaces which at one time kept half the population in full employ. Many Sussex families owed their fortunes to the ironworks, amongst them the Fullers, one grateful member of which set up the inscription “Carbone et Forcipibus” on the house. The old hammer ponds still existing are extremely picturesque, in many cases having clear rippling streams, containing brook trout, flowing out of them. The last furnace in Sussex—Ashburnham Furnace—was only finally blown out in 1825, having been worked by Lord Ashburnham up to that time; the iron produced there was at one time said to be the best in the world. As the iron industry decayed hop-growing was introduced, which gave some measure of employment to the population which began to find its old occupation gone.