The Sussex Coast - online book

A Literary & Historical travel guide to the Sussex Coast

	HERSTMONCEUX AND BEXHILL 327 Thou much more fit (were leisure to the same) Thy gracious soveraignes praises to compile, And her Imperial Majestie to frame In loftie numbers and heroic style." Dying suddenly at the Council Table in 1608, he was laid to rest in the Sackville Chapel of Withy-ham church, in Sussex. Bexhill belongs to the present representative of the family, Earl de la Warr, who has done much to develop the rising watering place. The old manor-house is largely
	OLD COFFIN SLAB AT BEXHILL.
	modernised, the walnut-tree in the middle of the village is reduced to an ivy-grown stump, the church has an overgrown appearance from succes­sive enlargements. It contains the oldest Christian monument in Sussex, a child's coffin slab of strangely irregular form, raised in the centre, with Celtic interlacing patterns, two serpents, and two battle-axe crosses. P. M. Johnston, than whom we could not wish for a better authority, says it is as early as the eighth century, and of a northern stone that came very likely from Whitby. The