I will show you what the site of these uninviting modern places was like, a hundred years ago. It is not far, geographically, from the sorry streets of Burgess Hill to the wild, wide commons of Wivelsfield and Ditchling; but such a change is wrought in two miles and a half as would be considered impossible by any who have not made the excursion into those beautiful regions. They show us, in survival, what the now hackneyed main roads were like three generations ago.
In every circumstance Ditchling Common recalls the "Crackskull Commons" of the eighteenth-century comedies, for it has a little horror of its own in the shape of an authentic fragment of a gibbet. This is the silent reminder of a crime committed near at hand, at the "Royal Oak" inn, Wivelsfield, in 1734. In that year Jacob Harris, a Jew pedlar, came to the inn and, stabling his horse, attacked Miles, the landlord, while he was grooming the animal down, and cut his throat. The servant-maid, hearing a disturbance in the stable, and coming downstairs to see the cause of it, was murdered in the same way, and then the Jew calmly walked upstairs and slaughtered the landlord's wife, who was lying ill in bed. None of these unfortunate people died at once. The two women expired the same night, but Miles lived long enough to identify the assassin, who was hanged at Horsham, his body being hung in chains from this gibbet, ever since known as Jacob's Post.
Pieces of wood from this gallows-tree were long and highly esteemed by country-folk as charms, and were often carried about with them as preventatives of all manner of accidents and diseases; indeed, its present meagre proportions are due to this practice and belief.
The post is fenced with a wooden rail, and is surmounted by the quaint iron effigy of a rooster, pierced with the date, 1734, in old-fashioned figures.
It is a lonely spot, with but one cottage near at hand: the common undulating away for miles until it reaches close to the grey barrier of the noble South Downs, rising magnificently in the distance.
Returning to the exploited main road. Friar's Oak is soon reached. It was selected by Sir Conan Doyle as one of the scenes of his Regency story, "Rodney Stone"; but since the year 1900, when the old inn was rebuilt, the spot has become an eyesore to those who knew it of old.