The Brighton road : the classic highway to the south . et, of a fewscattered houses. Albourne lies away to the here the Vale of Newtimber opens out and theSouth Downs rise grandly ahead. Noble trees, singlyand in groups, grow plentiful ; and where they are attheir thickest, in the sheltered hollow of the hills,stands Newtimber Place, belonging to Viscount Buxton,a noble mansion with Queen Anne front of red brickand flint, and an Elizabethan back, surrounded by abroad moat of clear water, formed by embanking thebeginnings of a little stream that comes welling out ofthe chalky bosom o


The Brighton road : the classic highway to the south . et, of a fewscattered houses. Albourne lies away to the here the Vale of Newtimber opens out and theSouth Downs rise grandly ahead. Noble trees, singlyand in groups, grow plentiful ; and where they are attheir thickest, in the sheltered hollow of the hills,stands Newtimber Place, belonging to Viscount Buxton,a noble mansion with Queen Anne front of red brickand flint, and an Elizabethan back, surrounded by abroad moat of clear water, formed by embanking thebeginnings of a little stream that comes welling out ofthe chalky bosom of the hills. It is a rarely completeand beautiful scene. Beyond it, above the woods where in spring thefluting blackbird sings of love and the delights of amossy nest in the sheltered vale, rises Dale Hill, withits old toll-house. It was in the neighbouring DaleVale that Tom Sayers, afterwards the unconqueredchampion of England, fought his first fight. He was not, as often stated, an Irishman, but theson of a man descended from a thoroughly Sussexian. CO Q<O rt faW faO o M HQ 1-9 fa « oo fa{*fa 250 THE BRIGHTON ROAD stock. The name of Sayers is well known throughoutSussex, and in particular at Hand Cross, Burgess Hill,and Hurstpierpoint. There is even, as we have alreadyseen, a Sayers Common on the road. Tom Sayers,however, was born at Brighton. He worked as abricklayer at building the Preston Viaduct of theBrighton and Lewes Railway : that great viaductwhich spans the Brighton Road as you enter the retired in 1860, after his fight with Heenan, andwhen he died, in 1865, the reputation of prize-fightingdied with him. At the summit of Dale Hill stands Pyecombe,above the junction of roads, on the rounded shoulderof the downs. The little rubbly and flinty churchesof Pyecombe, Patcham, Preston, and Clayton are verysimilar in appearance exteriorly and all are providedwith identical towers finished off with a shingledspirelet of insignificant proportions. This littleNorman


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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1920, booksubjecthorses, bookyear1922