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148 KIPLING'S SUSSEX
The Market Cross House, an ancient hotel standing opposite the cross, should be visited. It boasts twenty bedrooms and the stranger is puzzled among the maze of passages and tangle of communicating doors. It is said that it was once a rendezvous of smugglers. The old house contains secret hiding-places, recesses in walls, abandoned fireplaces, a few stray ghosts, and behaves itself just as any house that can be traced back for nine hundred years should.
Those who desire to dwell at greater length on the history and romance of the little town should obtain Miss Florence A. Pagden's " History of Alfriston."
The name " Alfriston " has been thought to be Alfred's Tun, although some etymologists regard it as a compound of " old " and " Friston," to distinguish it from the other Friston, a few miles to the south. But in the " Domesday Book " the name is spelt " Alvricestone."
Berwick is a retired village a little over a mile north of Alfriston. The church contains a font built into the wall, an old chancel screen, and in the south-west corner of the churchyard is a curious mound, which is rather a puzzle to the student of antiquities.
Berwick Court, a farmhouse near this place, |
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