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Partington who married my father's sister, and lived many years chairman of quarter sessions at Offham, among the South Downs, near Lewes there was a man who understood mutton! A little silver saucepan was placed by his side when the leg of mutton, or sometimes two, about as big as fine fowls, were placed in one dish before him.
A few miles from Tunbridge Wells is Offham, a little, out-of-the-way village which boasts of a queer mediaeval relic, the only one of the kind remaining in the Kingdom. This is called a quintain post and stands in the center of the village green. It consists of a revolving crossbar on the top of a tall, white post.
Queen Elizabeth was very much amused at Kenilworth Castle by the hard knocks which the inexpert riders received from the rotating sand-bag when they charged "a comely quintane" in her royal presence in the year 1575. A handsome quintain still stands on Offham village green, in Kent, although it is no longer used for the skilful practice of former days.
The road to Lewes continues under the shadow of Mount Harry and eventually drops to the Lewes-London highway near Offham, remarkable as being the first place in the south where a line of rails was used for the passage of goods. A turn to the right and we soon reach Lewes near St. Anne's Church.
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.
At first he bore away almost every prize, but breeding too much in and in, and for speed more than for stoutness, the reputation of his kennel considerably declined before his death. In 1797 a brace of greyhounds coursed a hare over the edge of a chalk-pit at Offham, in Sussex. The hare and both the dogs were found dead at the bottom of the pit.
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