a long succession of Johns and Erasmuses,
but the line failed at the end. There were never enough boys in the
Gainsford families, and when at last the manor went to a daughter the
spell was broken; the house was sold.

[Illustration: _The Bridge over the Moat, Crowhurst Place._]

Crowhurst Place was originally a timber house built in or near the reign
of Henry VII, and according to tradition Henry VIII used to stay there
on his way to visit Anne Boleyn at Hever Castle over the border. It was,
and still is in some respects, an admirable example of the masonry and
carpentry of the fifteenth century, but the destroying hand of later
builders has removed part of the timber and filled up the gaps with
brick and weather-tiling, so that its full character has been taken
away. The great hall, with its glorious beams, was too much for the
utilitarian. The waste of space distressed him. He therefore cut it in
two by running a floor across the length of it halfway up, and
subdivided his floor into bedrooms to accommodate the resident farmer's
numerous family. It would be difficult to ruin a fine hall more
completely.

But the house still has its own beauty, though it is the wild beauty of
poverty and neglect. It stands half a mile from the road to the
south-west of the church, approached by a rough bridle path. The first
glimpse through the trees is of gables striped white and dark; a moat,
befeathered and noisy with ducks, and a little wooden bridge crossing
the moat to a side-door. Beyond lie great barns, a flagged courtyard and
flagged paths, and round the corner a second bridge over the moat,
brickbuilt and massive; and by the garden gate a mounting-stone, which
it would be pleasant to think gave Anne Boleyn's royal wooer an easy
step into the saddle. But it came later, perhaps.

Is it not possible that Crowhurst Place may be rescued as Tangley Manor
was? It has the hall, and the kitchen and the oak panelling, and the
great fireplaces for which we search all the house-agents' catalogues;
it is moated, it has dined a king; there should be a ghost somewhere.
But it rests apart, a farmhouse only. Brambles grow about it, such as
should fence in a castle of sleep; above them timbered gables and tall
chimneys to fit the cold and spacious hearths within. The fires that lit
those hearths wait their rekindling.

CHAPTER XL

OXTED AND LIMPSFIELD

East of Godstone.--Tandridge.--The _Notebook of a Surrey
Justice_.--