The Sussex Coast - online book

A Literary & Historical travel guide to the Sussex Coast

	AS many another town is payrid and y-lassid Within these few yeris, as we mow se at eye Lo, Sirs, here fast by Wynchelse and Ry. Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, Merchant's second story.
	Seen from a distance, her great church on the hill-top rising over her red tile roofs, Rye is perhaps the most beautiful of all Sussex towns, and though the picturesqueness of her streets has sometimes been exaggerated, there are few places in England on the whole so redolent of the past. The contrast with Winchelsea is very-great; instead of the place being seated on an ample plateau with cliffs all round, crowded buildings everywhere climb steep hill-sides, and practically no part of the town is level. Instead of wide leafy thoroughfares there are narrow lanes, which usually are not very straight, and the houses are close together, for space on the island was valuable; there are hardly any trees, except in the churchyard on the highest ground. To supplement the institutions that belonged to the Cinque Ports as a whole, each place framed 378