antiquities. In two miles this byway reaches Alfriston.
("_All_-friston.") The church has a very common legend associated with
it; the foundations are said to have been again and again removed by
supernatural agency from another site to the spot where the solemn and
stately old building now stands. It is a Perpendicular cruciform church
and has an Easter sepulchre and three sedilia. The register is said to
be the oldest in England, its first entry bearing the date of 1512. "A
few years since as many as seventy 'virgins' garlands' hung in
Alfriston Church at once" (Hare). Close by is a delightful
pre-Reformation clergy house. Antiquaries are perhaps as concerned with
the "Star" Inn, one of the most interesting in the south of England and
dating from about 1490. The front of the house is covered with quaint
carvings including St. George and the Dragon, a bear and ragged staff
and what appears to be a lion. On each side of the doorway arc mitred
saints conjectured to represent St. Julian and St. Giles. The inn is
reputed to have been a place of sanctuary under Battle Abbey; it stands
within the abbot's manor of Alciston and was undoubtedly the recognized
hostel for pilgrims and mendicant friars. Another old inn, once a noted
house of call for smugglers, is Market Cross House, opposite all that
remains of the Cross, a mutilated and battered stump, and the only
example, except that at Chichester, in the county.

[Illustration: ALFRISTON.]

Alfriston once had a race week, the course being on the side of Firle
Beacon; in those days the resident population was probably greater than
it is now. Not only were more souls crowded into the old houses still
standing in the village street but tradition tells that the place was
larger and more suited to its spacious old church which is now barely
half filled on an ordinary Sunday.