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It is Ditchling Beacon; and, yes, another still farther west; Chanctonbury Ring, with the rounded cone. And on this fair clear morning we can indistinctly discern a thin line of smoke curling up from Butzer, on the very limits of Sussex, and in view of the Isle of Wight and Carisbrooke Castle. Turn eastward.
Now this road I followed passes westward out of Lewes and then turns swiftly north, climbing as it goes, under the Downs beyond Offham, turning west again under Mount Harry and so on past Courthouse Farm and Plumpton church, which stands lonely in a field to the north of the road, till suddenly by Westmaston church under Ditchling Beacon it turns north again towards the Weald and enters the very notable village of Ditchling.
"It seemed to me I'd known twenty Clytemnestras. Old Lady Ditchling for one. I don't know a word of Greek, but I could listen to it for ever " Here Mr. Mrs. Dalloway looked at him with compressed lips. "I'd give ten years of my life to know Greek," she said, when he had done. "I could teach you the alphabet in half an hour," said Ridley, "and you'd read Homer in a month.
Before the autumn is too far advanced and the skies are uncertain, a few hours should be given to that massive Down which fronts the traveller from London, Ditchling Beacon, the highest above the sea-level. It is easy of access, the train carries you to Hassock's Gate the station is almost in a copse and an omnibus runs from it to a comfortable inn in the centre of Ditchling village.
In Burlough Castle and Mount Caburn we have fortresses so old that it is impossible to name the age in which they were contrived and built, nor can we assert with any confidence who they were that first occupied the camp upon Ditchling Beacon, the highest point of the South Downs, or who first defended Wolstanbury. And it is the same with those most famous places Cissbury Ring and Chanctonbury.
There can be no one who has stood upon one of the great heights of the Downs north and south, upon Ditchling Beacon, Chanctonbury or Leith Hill, who, looking across the Weald, has not wondered what this country, lying between the two great chalk ranges, might be, what is its nature and its history and what part it has played in the great story of England.
One mile east of the station is Keymer, a pleasant little place with an uninteresting church which has been practically rebuilt. Ditchling, a mile further, has a very fine Transitional and Early English church which will repay a visit. The nave is severely plain in the older style; the chancel shows some untouched and very beautiful workmanship.
But I had no pride of that sort. I was quite of the same way of thinking as the others, and would as soon have thought of passing my night at Jacob's gibbet on Ditchling Common as in the haunted house of Cliffe Royal.
Back of Brighton are the famous South Downs, the chalk-hills of Sussex, which stretch over fifty miles parallel to the coast, and have a breadth of four or five miles, while they rise to an average height of five hundred feet, their highest point being Ditchling Beacon, north of Brighton, rising eight hundred and fifty-eight feet.
The earthworks here are irregular and not very well defined, but there is a fine dewpound to the east of the camp though perhaps this has not much antiquity, a seemingly older depression now dry in the north-west corner is rather an old rainwater ditch than a dewpound. Altogether it might seem that Ditchling Camp was rather a refuge for cattle than a military fortress.
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