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32 KIPLING'S SUSSEX
at Burwash Church would occasionally end in a little beefsteak and kidney pudding dinner at * The Bell."
It is interesting to note, too, that many people in Burwash still remember the Rev. J. Cocker Egerton, author of " Sussex Folk and Sussex Ways," and rector for many years. At the Bell Inn I met the sexton of the village church, who had called in for his ale after Sunday morning service. He was very communicative and recollected the days when the Rev. Egerton played the fiddle at the choir practice way back in 1870. " He had a hem o' trouble with the boys," the old man drawled, " and the only way he could make 'em behave reasonable like was to crack 'em on the head with his fiddle stick. He was odd-fashioned, no bounds, was the old rector."
My old friend the sexton showed me the church, with its quaint porch paved with curiously carven gravestones, and one actually steps over a sixteenth century brass before passing up the aisle. There are one or two rough stone blocks in the churchyard which tradition says were planted over the graves of those smitten down with plague in 1666. " I never lay any spade to turf near them," the old sexton rumbled, " best to let them pesky old bones alone." |
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