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288 THE SUSSEX COAST
Polegate, a railway-formed settlement not more romantic than its name, but the woods around are famed for their butterflies, the magnificent silver-washed fritillary is common, the beautiful white admiral is not so very rare.
A quiet lane turns toward the hill, and soon leads to the scattered little village of Folkington, a delightful retreat among Wealden woods, but right against the Downs. A little Early English church (about 1250) is almost hidden by the trees, the nave and chancel are unseparated by an arch and lighted by splayed lancets with later insertions, a square wooden bell-cot rests on a beam that is incribed "T. 1673 A." The roof is largely fifteenth century, with the common Sussex arrangement of king-posts, brackets, purlins, and collars. On one of the tie-beams, when Rev. Howard Hopley was reading himself in as rector, sat some half-dozen owls, who had got into the building the night before, and they listened attentively to the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church without making any sign of dissent. Among the memorials is an eighteenth-century tablet, with urn and cherubs and arms, to "Sir Wm. Thomas, bart., a right worthy Gentleman," erected by his nephew and heir.
An ancient track along the side of the Downs, with views across the Weald, leads direct to Wilmington church, whose chancel has a Norman string-course with some windows in the same style, and the rest is chiefly Early English, with a short and narrow south aisle. On the walls are traces of Elizabethan texts, and there is a fine canopied pulpit of Jacobean date. In the churchyard is an ancient hollow yew sustained by chains and six great props, whose sombre |
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