w
villas. From Forest Row, Wych Cross and Ashdown Forest are easily
gained; but of this open region of dark heather more in a later chapter.

Between Kingscote and West Hoathly, a short distance to the south-west
of East Grinstead, is another "tye"--Gravetye, a tudor mansion in a deep
hollow, the home of Mr. William Robinson, the author of _The English
Flower Garden_. Last April, the stonework, of which there is much, was a
mass of the most wonderful purple aubretia, and the wild garden between
the house and the water a paradise of daffodils.

The church of West Hoathly (called West Ho-ly), which stands high on the
hill to the south, has a slender shingled spire that may be seen from
long distances. The tower has, however, been injured by the very ugly
new clock that has been lately fixed in a position doubtless the most
convenient but doubtless also the least comely. To nail to such a
delicate structure as West Hoathly church the kind of dial that one
expects to see outside a railway station is a curious lapse of taste.
Hever church, in Kent, has a similar blemish, probably dating from one
of the recent Jubilee celebrations, which left few loyal villages the
richer by a beautiful memorial. Surely it should be possible to obtain
an appropriate clock-face for such churches as these.

West Hoathly has some iron tombstones, such as used to be cast in the
old furnace days, which are not uncommon in these parts. Opposite the
church is a building of great antiquity, which has been allowed to
forget its honourable age.

[Sidenote: "BIG-ON-LITTLE"]

We are now on the fringe of the Sussex rock country, to which we come
again in earnest when we reach Maresfield, and of which Tunbridge Wells
is the capital. But not even Tunbridge Wells with its famous toad has
anything to offer more remarkable than West Hoathly's "Big-on-Little,"
in the Rockhurst estate. I am tempted to quote two descriptions of the
rock, from two very different points of view. An antiquary writing in
the eighteenth century (quoted by Horsfield) thus begins his
account:--"About half a mile west of West Hoadley church there is a high
ridge covered with wood; the edge of this is a craggy cliff, composed of
enormous blocks of sand stone. The soil hath been entirely washed from
off them, and in many places, from the interstices by which they are
divided, one perceives these crags with bare broad white foreheads, and,
as it were, overlooking the wood, which clothe