The Brighton road : the classic highway to the south . t had not rendered duty. At Hand Cross the ways divide, the Bolney andHickstead route, opened in 1813, branching off to theright and not merely providing a better surface, but,with a straighter course, saving from one and a halfto two miles, and avoiding some troublesome rises,becoming in these times the record route forcyclists, pedestrians, and all who seek to speed betweenLondon and Brighton in the quickest possible rejoins the classic route at Pyecombe. For the present we will follow the older way, byCuckfield, down to Staplefi
The Brighton road : the classic highway to the south . t had not rendered duty. At Hand Cross the ways divide, the Bolney andHickstead route, opened in 1813, branching off to theright and not merely providing a better surface, but,with a straighter course, saving from one and a halfto two miles, and avoiding some troublesome rises,becoming in these times the record route forcyclists, pedestrians, and all who seek to speed betweenLondon and Brighton in the quickest possible rejoins the classic route at Pyecombe. For the present we will follow the older way, byCuckfield, down to Staplefield Common. A lovelyvale opens out as one descends the southern face ofthe watershed, with an enchanting middle distanceof copses, cottages, and winding roads, the sun slantingon distant ponds, or transmuting commonplaceglaziers work into sparkling diamonds. At the foot of the hill is Staplefield Common, bisectedby the highway, with recent cottages and modernchurch, and in the foreground the Jolly Farmers inn. Hut where are the famous cherry-trees of. 202 THE BRIGHTON ROAD Staplefield, under whose boughs the coach passengersof a century ago feasted off the black-hearts ;where are the Dun Cow and its equally famousrabbit-puddings and its pretty Miss Finch ? Gone,as utterly as though they had never been. Three miles of oozy hollows and rises covered withtangled undergrowths of hazels lead past SloughGreen and Whitemans Green to Cuckfield. From thehillsides the great Ouse Valley Viaduct of the Brightonline, down towards Balcombe and Ardingly, is seenstalking across the low-lying meadows, mellowed bydistance to the romantic similitude of an aqueduct ofancient Rome. Plentiful traces are yet visible of the rugged oldhollow lane that was the precursor of the present places it is a wayside pool ; in others a hollow,grown thickly with trees, with tree-roots, gnarled andfanglike, clutching in desperate hold its crumblingbanks. The older rustics know it, if the younger andthe pass
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1920, booksubjecthorses, bookyear1922
