Highways and Byways in Sussex - online book

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

	XXXVIII	CHURCHWARDENS' ACCOUNTS	37i
	distant in the east. The church is a very fine one, with a most interesting Norman tower in its midst. The churchwardens accounts contain some quaint entries : Drumossie moor—Drumossie day— A waefu' day it was to me ! For there I lost my father dear, My father dear, and brethren three.) One of the Icklesham gravestones, standing over the grave of James King, who died aged seventeen, has this complacent couplet: God takes the good—too good on earth to stay, And leaves the bad—too bad to take away. Two miles to the west of Icklesham, at Snaylham, close to the present railway, once stood the home of the Cheyneys, a family that maintained for many years a fierce feud with the Oxenbridges of Brede, whither we soon shall come. A party of Cheyneys once succeeded in catching an Oxenbridge asleep in his bed, and killed him. Old Place farm, a little north of Icklesham, between the village and the line, marks the site of Old Place, the mansion of the Fynches, earls of Winchelsea. The mainland proper begins hard by Rye; on the other side of the railway, where Rye Hill carries the London road out of sight. This way lie Playden, Iden, and Peasmarsh : Play-den, with a slender spire, of a grace not excelled in a county notable, as we have seen, for graceful spires, but a little over- B B 2