ANNALS OF EASTBOURNE.1

M

EDIEVAL records, written in abbreviated dog-Latin, are

trying alike to the eyesight and temper, and make but dull reading after all, and so I will content myself with quoting one or two extracts from those records translated into the vulgar tongue. My object in so doing is to convince the reader that Eastbourne is not such a brand-new place as some people would have us believe, but that it does indeed possess some history of its own, obscure though its annals may be. In the reign of King John the manor of Eastbourne belonged to Roger de Coningsby, and was granted by Henry III., in the forty-sixth year of his reign, to Peter de Savoy. (Burrell MSS.) This Peter de Savoy was uncle of the Queen, and from him the Savoy Palace in London received its name. for some years previously been Lord of Pevensey.

He had

The "Testa de Nevill," or book of fees in the Court of Exchequer during the reigns of Henry III. and Edward I., contains the following entries which appear to relate to Eastbourne :

The heirs of Gilbert Frank hold a third part of a knight's fee in Burne, of the honour of Mortain, as tenants in chief of our lord the king in the county of Sussex (p. 224).

Fulk de Cantelupe holds the manor of Burne of our lord the king, as did the ancestors of Alard the Fleming, by the service of one knight's fee (p. 226).

Roger de Wolpting, who is dead, held a serjeantry in the hundred of Estburne, which is worth ten marks per annum, by the service of carrying the standard of the foot in the army of our lord the king (p. 229).

A "knight's fee" was the normal "tenement" or holding of a knight during the Middle Ages, and consisted of land sufficient in quantity to equip him for service in the field, whenever his feudal lord required it. But we often meet with fractions of a knight's fee, and the tenants of these small properties probably contributed to the maintenance of a knight. The estates of the greater "tenants-inchief," that is to say, vassals who held their land by direct grant from the king, and not from any intermediate lord, were called "honours."

See also "Old Eastbourne" in Gentleman's Magasine, September 1897.

The "honour of Mortain" was that which had originally belonged to the Earl of Mortain, a half-brother of the Conqueror.

Grand serjeantry was a mode of holding land, by which the tenant-in-chief was bound to perform some special honorary service to the sovereign instead of serving him generally in time of war.

It must be borne in mind that the name 68 Burne" may apply to the manor of Westbourne, and "Estburne" to the hundred of Easebourne in the west of the county; but concerning the next extract there can be no such doubt :

In the fourth year of Edward II., Philip Brode held lands and tenements in the vills of Suthre (South) and Bourne from the king, as of the honour of Aquila, by serjeantry, and by the service of guarding the outer gate of the castle of Pevensey. (Harleian MSS. 708.)

The "honour of Aquila" was the great estate once held by the family of de Aquila, lords of Pevensey, and sometimes known as the "honour of the eagle," because aquila is the Latin name for that bird. The family of Brode gave their name to the estate called "the Broad" at Hellingly, which belonged in more recent times to the Calverleys.

Bartholomew de Baddlesmere obtained the manor of Eastbourne in the seventh year of Edward II. in exchange for that of Thundersleigh in Essex, and held it by the service of rendering annually "unum par clavium caryophili." Two years later he received a charter empowering him to hold a market at Eastbourne on Monday and Thursday of every week, and a fair on the feast of St. Matthew the Apostle, and also a grant of free warren in the same lordship. He was hanged for rebellion in the fifteenth year of the same reign, and the manor of Eastbourne passed to his son, Giles de Baddlesmere. (Burrell MSS.) In recent times there were two fairs held annually at Eastbourne, one at the Old Town on October 11, the other at Stocks Bank on March 1I.

Those who care to pursue the subsequent history of the town in detail may glean many interesting particulars from the valuable collection of manuscripts relating to the history of Sussex which were bequeathed by Sir William Burrell to the British Museum. A great deal of information about persons and places may also be gathered from the contents of the old title deeds of the district. But there are two obstacles in the way of obtaining it from the last-named sourceone is the jealous care with which owners of land guard even obsolete muniments of title relating to their property, the other is the difficulty which anyone but a trained lawyer experiences in reading an ordinary indenture of conveyance.

The Commissioners, appointed in 1728 to survey the coasts of Great Britain, make the following mention of Eastbourne in their report to the Admiralty, contained in a massive folio entitled "Atlas Maritimus":

From Hastings the shore lies east and west, with a long ridge of beach, and a hard sand which we travel on for near twenty miles to Bourn, a small village near the shore. The high ridge of beach runs on, to a point of land a few miles beyond Bourn, West, and there ends; which point, for that very reason, is called Beach Head or Beachy Head.

It was hardly necessary to appoint commissioners in order to obtain such information as the above. I have purposely omitted their reference to the landing of William the Conqueror at Pevensey, for the whole report is written in the style of a schoolboy's essay. They were mistaken, moreover, in their derivation of the name of the great southern promontory. There is comparatively little beach around the base of Beachy Head, and its name is much more likely to be a corruption of a Norman epithet, Beau-chef, "the fine Head," and especially so, because the adjoining cliff, upon which the lighthouse stands, is called by the obviously Norman name of Bel-tout. The English pronunciation of the analogous name Beauchamp as "Beacham," explains how Beau-chef may have been corrupted into Beachy. The above theory is confirmed by the fact that in the third year of Henry IV. the Commissioners of Sewers were directed to view the banks of Pevensey Marsh lying between Bixle and Bechief, or, as we should say, between Bexhill and Beachy Head. ("Dugdale on Fens," p. 94.) In Norden's old map of Sussex the headland is called Beai-Cliffe. The lighthouse, which was first lighted on the night of October 1, 1828, is built upon a comparatively low part of the cliff at Bel-tout, where it is less likely to be obscured by fog than it would be at Beachy Head summit. The rapid falling away of the chalk cliffs will very soon necessitate the removal of the

structure.

Bel-tout cliff exhibits a section of what was once upon a time a rounded hill girdled by an ancient entrenchment, one of those eminences to which our forefathers applied the term "tot-hill" or "toot." The compiler of the Promptorium Parvulorum, written in the year 1440, defines "totehylle" as "hey place of lokynge," and evidently connects it with the obsolete English word toot-to spy or peer about, and his opinion is followed by the modern etymologists. But I venture to suggest that its origin is to be found in the Old Norse word tota or tuta, meaning "a gently swelling prominence," which may well have been familiar to Normans and English alike, for

both nations hailed originally from the far north. Bel-tout therefore appears to signify the fair toot or mound.

The author of a description of the Sussex coast, written in 1833,

says :

The keen and ethereal air of this exalted spot would seem almost capable, with the permission of the presiding and conservative spirit, of restoring vigour to the dying.

And then gravely adds :—

Strange as the discrepancy of situation may appear, the nearest approach to the purity and freshness of the atmosphere on Beachy Head, in the southern or midland part of the kingdom, appeared to us to be the summit of the Colosseum in the Regent's Park. (Parry, p. 211.)

What a sudden drop from the sublime to the ridiculous!

The following list of "gaps," or passes from the sea-shore to the top of the cliff, is taken from an old book of sketches made at Eastbourne in 1832-Martin's Pit, the Chains, Holywell Gap, Whitebread Hole (no path), Punchsticks, Cow Gap, Gungarden on Beachy Head, and Birling Gap.

The plough-land lying behind Cow Gap was known as "France," and the name of "France Barn" is still applied to the old farm building which stands there. Meads for an equally inscrutable reason was formerly designated by the natives "Turkey." The nicknames may possibly have some reference to the days when smuggling prevailed here. The valley at the back of Meads was known as "Well Combe," and the field attached to the farmhouse (which now forms part of Mr. Brown's school) was called "The Coltstocks." The hill above Paradise, on which are the ruins of an old windmill, is called "St. Gregory's" in a sketch-book of the year 1813, but whether it is the site of the ancient chapel of the same name I am unable to ascertain.

I should like to say a few words concerning the old houses of Eastbourne. Most of them have already been swept away, and, alas! even as I write these words, several of those remaining are doomed to speedy destruction. "Old Susans," in Seaside Road, which bears the date 1714, is a massively constructed building, some of its internal walls being two feet in thickness.

In the year 1778, Mr. James Royer, of Hanover Square, Middlesex, formerly page to King George II., purchased the site of the adjoining house known as "The Elms," then described as "a piece of land behind the barn and close at Susans in Eastbourn, together with a building called the Hog house, and a little building at the end thereof, which said piece of land was theretofore parcel Q Q

VOL. CCLXXXIV. NO. 2010.

of the estate of Joseph Picknall, deceased, who about the year 1714 erected thereon the said building called the Hog house, &c." On this spot Mr. Royer built a summer residence, and bestowed upon it the name of "New Susans." He was perhaps the first person who attempted to draw public attention to the charms of this seaside. village, and to induce visitors to resort to it for the benefit of their health, for he built several other houses at Eastbourne and published a guide-book to the neighbourhood. In 1823, "New Susans" was purchased by Mr. John Graham, who made large additions to the house and subsequently gave it the name of "The Elms," in allusion to the old trees which shade its grounds. The Prince of Capua stayed at "The Elms" in the summer of 1852.

Mr. Royer also built "The Grove" in Grove Road, and thereby hangs a tale; for the architect whom he employed to erect this building happened to attract the notice of Sir Arthur Pigott, afterwards Attorney-General, who lived close by at Rose Cottage. Sir Arthur advised the architect to throw up his profession and to embrace the law, and the result proved the soundness of the advice, for the quondam architect was admitted a student of the Inner Temple in 1785, and subsequently became known to the world as Sir John Leach, Master of the Rolls. Another legal luminary, Lord Thurlow, lived for a short time at "Thurlow House" in Grove Road (“Eastbourne Recollections," p. 5). A house of a character similar to the Grove, called "Larksfield," was built by Mr. Royer on the "Leet Road," which ran from the Wish to Prentice Street, and it was the occasional residence of Lady Lismore and her daughter, Miss O'Callaghan. Mr. William Cavendish, the eldest son of Lord George Cavendish, married Miss O'Callaghan, and Lord George purchased "Larksfield," and pulled it down, in order to improve the view from his grounds at Compton Place. All that now remains of the Leet Road is the thoroughfare which skirts the southern side of the Eastbourne College cricket ground. The locality known as the Wish is now comprised within Mr. William Wallis's grounds, and the site of Prentice or Prentis Street within those of Sir Alfred Dent.

The "Larksfield" just mentioned must not be confused with another house of the same name which was afterwards built by Mr. Rawdon, and which is now incorporated in the buildings of the Eastbourne College. Mr. Royer's Larksfield stood nearer to Prentice Street than the latter.

From the Wish, the old road led across what is now the Devonshire Park. A grove of trees which still flourishes in that modern paradise