Highways and Byways in Sussex - online book

An illustrated appreciation, of the most interesting districts in Sussex.

	140	BRAMBER	CHA1\
	upon it from the height (the best way to approach a town); and sitting among the wild thyme on the turf I tried to re­construct in imagination the scene a thousand years ago, with the sea flowing over the meadows of the Adur valley, and the masts of ships clustered beyond Steyning church. Once one had the old prospect well in the mind's eye, the landscape became curiously in need of water. After rain, Bramber is a pleasant village, but when the dust
	flies it is good neither for man nor beast. All that remains of the castle is crumbling battlement and a wall of the keep, survivals of the renovation of the old Saxon stronghold by William de Braose, the friend of the Conqueror and the Sussex founder of the Duke of Norfolk's family. Picnic parties now frolic among the ruins, and enterprising boys explore the rank overgrowth in the moat below. The castle played no part in history, its demolition being due probably to gunpowder pacifically fired with a view to obtaining building materials. But during the Civil War the