lief on its facade, is known as the Hog House, and is said to
have been the residence of Ralph Hogge. Who was Ralph Hogge? Who is
Hiram Maxim? Who was Krupp? Who was Nordenfelt? It was Ralph Hogge,
iron-master, who in the year 1543 made the first English metal cannon.
So at any rate say tradition and Holinshed. Buxted is otherwise most
pacific of villages, sleepy and undiscovered. In the early years of the
last century it boasted the possession of a labourer with a memory of
amazing tenacity, one George Watson, who, otherwise almost imbecile, was
unable to forget anything he had once seen, or any figure repeated to
him.

On the road between Maresfield and Crowborough is Heron's Ghyll, the
residence of Mr. Fitzalan Hope. It stands to the east of the road, in
one of those hollow sites that alone won the word "eligible" from a
Tudor builder. Hard by the road is the perfect little Early English
Roman Catholic church which Mr. Hope built in 1897, a miracle, in these
hurried florid days, of honest work and simple modest beauty. The church
being Roman Catholic one may with confidence turn aside to rest a little
in its cool seclusion, relieved of the irritating search for the sexton
of the national establishment, and freed from his haunting presence and
suggestion that the labourer is worthy of more than his hire.

[Sidenote: CLOSED CHURCHES]

While on this subject I might remark that a county vicar describing the
antiquities of his neighbourhood in one of the Sussex Archaeological
Society's volumes, writes magnanimously: "A debt of gratitude is
certainly due to our Roman Catholic predecessors (whatever error might
mix itself with their piety and charity) for erecting such noble
edifices, in a style of strength to endure for a late posterity." It
seems to me that a very simple way of discharging a portion of this debt
would be to imitate the excellent habit of leaving the church doors wide
open, as practised by those Roman Catholic predecessors. My own impulse
to enter many of the Sussex churches has been principally antiquarian or
aesthetic, but to rest amid their gray coolnesses is a legitimate desire
which should be fostered rather than discouraged, particularly as it is
under such conditions that the soul even of the stranger whose motive is
curiosity is often comforted. The arguments in favour of keeping
churches closed are unknown to me. Doubtless they are numerous and
ingenious, but, doubtless equally, a locked church