[Illustration:  ST. MARY’S, BRAMBER.]

St. Mary’s is the first house to be seen on approaching the village from the east.  It is a beautiful specimen of a timber-built Sussex house; notice the open iron-work door with its queer old bell-pull.

Every visitor should inspect the quaint museum of taxidermy in the village street; here guinea-pigs may be seen playing cricket, rats playing dominoes and rabbits at school; the lifelike and humorous attitudes of the little animals reflect much credit on the artist.

Steyning is a short mile farther on our way (both Bramber and Steyning are stations on the Brighton Railway).  This was another borough until 1832 but, unlike its neighbour, it was of considerable importance in the early middle ages and at the Domesday survey there were two churches here.  The one remaining is of great interest; built by the Abbey of Fecamp to whom Edward the Confessor gave Steyning, it was evidently never completed; preparations were made for a central tower and the nave appears to be unfinished.  The styles range from Early Norman to that of the sixteenth century when the western tower was built.  Particular notice should be taken of the pier-arches which are very beautifully decorated; also the south door.

The original church was founded by St. Cuthman.  Travelling from the west with his crippled mother, whom he conveyed in a wheelbarrow, he was forced to mend the broken cords with elder twigs.  Some haymakers in a field jeered at him, and on that field, now called the Penfold, a shower has always fallen since whenever the hay is drying.  The elder twigs finally gave way where Steyning was one day to be and here Cuthman decided to halt and build a shelter for his mother and himself.  Afterwards he raised a wooden church and in this the saint was buried.  The father of the great Alfred was interred here for a time, his remains being afterwards taken to Winchester when his son made that city the capital of united England, though the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle asserts that the King was buried at Worcester.

[Illustration:  STEYNING.]

Steyning was once known as Portus Cuthmanni and to this point the tidal estuary of the Adur then reached.  There are a number of fine old houses in the little town, some with details which show them to date from the fifteenth century.  The gabled house in Church Street was built by William Holland of Chichester as a Grammar School in 1614; it is known as “Brotherhood Hall.”  The vicarage has many interesting details of the sixteenth century and in the garden are two crosses of very early date, probably Saxon.

[Illustration:  GRAMMAR SCHOOL, STEYNING.]

The bygone days of Steyning seem to have been almost as quiet as its modern history.  A burning of heretics took place here in 1555; and the troops of the Parliament took quiet possession of the town when besieging near-by Bramber, but Steyning had not the doubtful privilege of a castle and so its days were comparatively uneventful.