Sussex (England) -- Description and travel; Sussex (England) -- History; Sussex (England) -- Pictorial works
the pasturage of these flooded levels is of great value. The stream
rolls on, more and more turbid with the advent of the tide, spreads out
into the willow thickets of Amberley Wildbrook where there is good
shooting of snipe, runs on right under Bury, leaving Amberley Castle
upon the left, passes beneath the causeway and the bridge at Houghton,
and so enters the Arundel Gap. Here it is completely lonely. There are
not even small footpaths by which the villages of this narrow valley can
be reached from the north, though their names of “Southstoke” and
“Northstoke” indicate an early passage of some sort, for this place-name
throughout South England refers to the “staking” by which the passage of
a river was made firm. Two new dykes, cutting off long corners, have
been dug in the course of this valley, and they take the main stream,
while the old river runs in a narrow and sluggish course by a long
detour towards Burpham. The main channel, as it now exists, continues to
keep to the right hand side of the valley, where it is continually
overhung by the deep woods of Arundel Park; and at last, a little below
the Blackrabbit Inn, one sees, jutting out like a spur from the bulk of
the hills, the great mass of the Castle.
The attitude of Arundel, standing above the river at this point, is
hardly to be matched by any of the river towns of England. It stands up
on its steep bank looking right down upon the tidal stream and towards
the sea. The houses are natural to the place (the hideous new
experiments upon the further bank are hidden from the river), and all
the roofs are either old or at least consonant to the landscape, while
the situation chosen for St. Philip’s Church, and its architecture,
happen by an accident that is almost unknown in modern work, to be
exactly suited to the landscape of which it forms the crown, and to
balance the background of the Castle and the Keep.
Below the bridge at Arundel the Arun becomes a purely maritime river. It
runs in a deep tidal channel with salt meadows upon either side, and
with a very violent tide of great height scouring between its
embankments. There are no buildings directly upon its sides save one
poor lonely inn and church at Ford, and in seven miles it reaches the
sea at Littlehampton, pouring into the Channel over one of the
shallowest and most dangerous bars upon this coast.
The other rivers merit a much briefer attention.
The Adur is but a collection of very small
[Illustration: ARUNDEL CASTLE (EVENING)]
[Sidenote: THE ADUR]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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