The Brighton road : the classic highway to the south . level of the watery turf. The singular facts of high wall and moat surroundinga mansion of Jacobean build seem to point to anearlier building, contrived with these defences whenmen thought first of securitv and afterwards of few mullioned windows of much earlier datethan the greater part of the mansion remain to confirmthe thought. That a building of the magnificence attested bythese crumbling walls should have been allowed tofall into decay so shortly after its completion is asingular fact. Though the male line of the Coverts
The Brighton road : the classic highway to the south . level of the watery turf. The singular facts of high wall and moat surroundinga mansion of Jacobean build seem to point to anearlier building, contrived with these defences whenmen thought first of securitv and afterwards of few mullioned windows of much earlier datethan the greater part of the mansion remain to confirmthe thought. That a building of the magnificence attested bythese crumbling walls should have been allowed tofall into decay so shortly after its completion is asingular fact. Though the male line of the Covertsfailed, and their estates passed, by the marriage oftheir womankind, into other hands, yet their alienationwould not necessarily imply the destruction of theirroof-tree. The explanation is to be sought in thesituation and defects of the ground upon whichSlaugham Place stood : a marshy tract of land,which no builder of to-day would think of selectingas a site for so important a dwelling. Home as it wasof swamps and damps, and quashy as it is even now,. ao mo 5? O h-l 242 THE BRIGHTON ROAD it must have been in the past the breeding-ground ofagues and ehills innumerable. A true exemplar this of that Sussex of which in1690 a barrister on circuit, whose profession led himby evil chance into this county, writes to his wife : The Sussex ways are bad and ruinous beyondimagination. I vow tis melancholy considerationthat mankind will inhabit such a heap of dirt for apoor livelihood. The county is in a sink of aboutfourteen miles broad, which receives all the water thatfalls from the long ranges of hills on both sides of it,and not being furnished with convenient draining, iskept moist and soft by the water till the middle of adry summer, which is only able to make it tolerable toride for a short time. Such soft and shaky earth as this could not bearthe weight of so ponderous a structure as was SlaughamPlace : the swamps pulled its masonry apart androtted its fittings. Despairing of victo
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1920, booksubjecthorses, bookyear1922
