THE Castle of Amberley, an appendage to the See of Chichester, is situated in a parish and manor of the same name. The latter (having privileges of Courts Baron and Leet, with view of Frankpledge), comprises the Tithings of Amberley, Cold-Waltham, and Ashfold, and runs into the parishes of Houghton, Cold-Waltham, Fittleworth, Wisborough Green, and Rudgwick. The population of Amberley, including the Hamlet of Rackham, Recham, or Racomb, was according to the census of 1861, 650. Its estimated acreage is 2,900. The Benefice is ecclesiastically designated the Vicarage of Amberley, with Houghton Chapel; Houghton, however, being a parish per se, with a population put at 165. XVII. 2 A Castle Hou to Chichester Arundel 55 to Chichester Petworth 53 Bury ghton Arun Fluvius Houghton Bridge X Amberley S Amberley, otherwise Amberlegh, Aumberle, Ambrolega, lies about 5 miles N. of Arundel, its post town, and about 12 N.E. of Chichester. We read of it as a town; as a pleasant country village, but lying very low; as a long scattered street of mean buildings; as a thoroughly secluded village, but one that should be visited by all who are in its neighbourhood; as a great thoroughfare from London to Arundel; as distant from the Standard in Cornhill, 43 computed and 51 measured miles, at a time when Tooting was Touting, and Dorking was Darking; and in 1861, as one of those picturesque old-world villages, which may still be found, beyond the influence of the railway navvy. In August, 1863, it was brought more into communication with the outer world, by means of the railway, which runs through it, connecting the Mid-Sussex and the South-Coast lines of the Wickford Bridge Brighton Company. Amberley Station is about 55 m. from London, and about 1 m. from the Castle. 51 to y Marsh Parham Place Wickenholt 46 Pulborow S S to Pulborow To the south of the parish lie the South Downs, of which the escarpments of white and grey chalk, (in lime from which a brisk trade for agricultural and building purposes is carried on,) with Amberley Mount, form noticeable features. It must have been along or 1 The derivation does not appear clear. Amber, says Mr. M. A. Lower, is a very ancient Celtic word, and means a Druidical stone.-Ambe, amphora, a tub.Could Amberley have acquired the name in anticipation of smuggling days, when illicit spirits were stowed away there! The names of Ambersham, Ambergate, Amberstone, Ombersley, Amesbury, may afford some clue to the unde derivatur. 2 Vide Mag. Brit.; Gent. Mag., 1793; Pen. Mag., 1844; Road from Lond. to Arund., by J. Ogilby, Esq., His M. Cosmographer, 1675; Warburton Collus, Brit. M. 836; Black's Suss. in proximity to the Mount, that Arthur Young's course lay, when, on his way from Findon to Arundel, he very fortunately, as he narrates, lost his road on the Downs, and went round by Houghton Bridge-fortunately, from its leading him along the Down edge, with noble views over the wild. "The whole scene glorious!" 66 3 On the west of the parish, reminding us of Isaac Walton's Amerly Trout, runs the river Arun, or, as it has been designated, the High Stream in Arundel Rape, to difference it from all rills, currents, and streams therein, and in the other Rapes;" otherwise, "the Alta Ripa," and the "Hault Rey, half Norman and half Saxon." The Castle ("the crumbling towers of Episcopal Amberley," to borrow Mr. Lower's words) and the nestling village stand upon a bed of sandstone, above the valley of the Arun, which disperses its tidal and upland waters on circumjacent meadows and pastures. In this district, provincialized as the Brooks or Wild Brook, were the Weald Brooks of The Farmer's Tour through E. of Eng., Vol. 3., Lond., 1771. A few entrées from the Fish Tattle of the Water Bailiff, may add variety to the Trout served up above, and be of interest, with reference to the plan for salmonizing the Arun. The record tells of the Functionary himself, charged with the care of the lymitts of the stream and with the oversight of the Fishermen, in their several Bayliwicks; of the Stelliones or Troute, the red spotted, bred in the North water-fall, the black spotted, in the gravel of the W. water; of the Mullet, reputed as not coming up above Arundel, counted the best and fattest in England; of the Carp from the Pitts and Ponds, issuing from the river, where he had birth and breeding; of the Pyke, a ruffling, snarling Fish; of the sided Breame, the healing Tench, the narrow Dace, the Gudgeon, the scaleless Minnow; of Fowls; of swans, their eggs, marks and cignettes; of meshes of netts, to be sized according to the antient brass pin, sometime kept in Arundel Castle; of process from the Sheriff, Justices of Peace, and the High Court of Admiralty, to be made by the bailiff and his deputies; of Pallingham, the Parson of Stopham's, Greasy, Washingham, Ham, West. Burry, and Canterbury Weares, of Steeple Rye in Amberley; of draw-nett, seyne, and tremel, not to be used in the Fence month, either by the Earl of Arundel, (who may fish with a fore nett to it, in respect of the Castle and Honor of Arundel,) or the Bishop, in right of his Castle of Amberley, or the Prior of Hardham, whose interest Sir Wm. Goring hath.-A descrip. of the High Stream of Arund., transcribed from a Book commencing with the Bailieship of Lawrence Eliot, Esq., A.D., 1712. The Amberley application of the word Brooks to the superficial area of grass, peat, &c., which is intersected by ditches, has a parallel elsewhere. "The Brooks are often only the marshy meadows themselves, which nourish and are watered by such streams, in which; they answer to the old high German buroch, palus."—(Kemble.) Kemble inclines to some connexion between Brook and brackish, though he cannot trace it. See Mr. Lower's paper, Suss. Arch. Coll., vol. xv., p. 164. An illustration of the term Wild Brook is given in a note to that discursive work, the Polyolbion, which relates, "Thence the light Muse to th' Southward soares, earlier days; the vast bog, north of Amberley Castle; the peat pits; the skirts of the great wood Andredswald. Here, in the memory of the Amberley native, the pig of Amberley had pannage, roamed, and multiplied; here, it is likely, were some of the cherished spots forbidden to the goose; here grew the sedge hassocks (nature's type, it may be, of the primitive Prie-Dieu, the hassock of our churches); here grew the rush, which, peeled, greased, and grasped by the standard or pendent forceps, lighted the gude-woman at her spinning wheel, the farm-house dame and homeling. Here thrived the raspberry and the cranberry, the latter a fruitful source, about 50 years ago, of cottage incomings; as hovering here, the osprey is depicted; here, wind and water rocked the reed-warbler's nest; and here, still linger the snipe and the wild duck. Quaintly-worded, if not archaic, lists of plants tell of the Weald Brooks or their vicinage, (the Amberley district, perhaps, might not appropriate the whole Flora,) as the habitat of Marsh St. Peter's Wort, Bugle with a red flower, Black-berried Heath, Crow, or Crake berries, Flea Grass, Hare's Tail Rush, Sweet Willow, Quicken Tree, Osmunda Regalis, Marsh Violet. Mullen, with a yellow flower, is assigned to the wall of the "To this day, we call those woody lands, by North the Downes, the Weald: and the Channel of the River that coms out of those parts, and discōtinues the Downs about Bramber is yet known in Shorham Ferry, by the name of Wealddick." Amberley Bucolics would not enumerate, among the melodies of morn, "The wild brook babbling down the mountain side." BEATTIE'S SCOTTISH MINSTREL. 6 Manorial articles provide that a custodian of animals and lands was to be chosen on the day of St. Mary Magdalene (July 22nd; Wheatly on the B. of Common Prayer;) at 1 p.m. Among other duties, he was to keep a dog to drive away the geese from the pastures, quarum excrementa et plume intoxi 66 cant animalia ad magnum tenencium incommodum." The morticine animal (carrion) was to be duly reported, under a penalty of four pence.-Chich. Episc. Reg., (P.) 100. Hassock, a reed or rush; a tuft of rushes or coarse grass.-Halliwell's Dict. For the process of medicating the juncus conglomeratus, or common soft rush, see White's Selborne, Letter xxvi. He estimated that 5 hours of comfortable light, for a poor family, might be got for a farthing.-Arch: Journal, Vol. xiii., p. 193. Cranberries sold from a shilling to half-a-crown a quart. 7 Knox's Ornith. Rambles. Vide Rev. J. Coxe's Suss.; Gough's Camden. Churchyard. The Rice plant, so called, we have known searched for in the Brooks. THE CASTLE. Without endorsing the position laid down in "Excursions through Sussex," that the Castle is the only remarkable object in the village, it well deserves attention. Let the reader, however, be prepared for something akin to building castles in the air, inasmuch as a distinguished architectural writer, Mr. Matthew H. Bloxam, has obligingly furnished us with the following remarks upon the ruins called Amberley Castle: "The structure is not a Castle, though called so, in the proper sense of the term. It is one of those defensive mansions, of which we have a list of nearly 400, crenellated, embattled, and, to a certain degree, fortified under the Crown. Most of them are still existing in a habitable state, or in ruins. Many of these embattled mansions were, in after times, popularly denominated Castles, but they want many of the characteristics of the old castles." The principal epochs in the history of the Castle are connected with its Origin, Crenellation, Decoration, and Decadence. The Origin.-The history of Amberley dates from an early period, and is associated with the struggles and the fortunes of Ceadwalla, the son of a sub-king of the West Saxons. Ceadwalla, after the strong and active measure of conquering Æthelwealh or Edelwach, King of Sussex, was seized, to use the mild and passive language of the law, of this manor. He appears to have slain his antagonist, about A.D. 670. A disposition of 8 cassates at [Amberley snd] Houghton was made to Wilfrith, Bishop of Selsey. Whether the king, influenced by the vow of a fourth part of the spoil to God's use, which was attributed to him, after devastating the Isle of Wight, compounded or not, for the retention of more fertile spots, by the surrender of the terra inculta, the Ley of Amberley, the charter does not recite. The panegyric upon Amberley, as the garden of West Sussex, had not then been pronounced by the auctioneer; and probably the hay of the North Mead (a locality which was early an object of manorial solicitude,)10 was not culminating towards £6 a ton. 9 See Lappenberg's Hist. of Eng. under Saxons; Burrell MSS., 5687; Hayley's Ad. MSS., 6343; Kemble's Charters. 10 Reg. Chich., (P.) 100. |