Publications
Reflections on Winchelsea Windows, by Esther Meynell, published 1934 in Sussex County Magazine (vol. VIII no. 2, article, pp.130-132) accessible at: W.S.R.O. [Lib 9329] & The Keep [LIB/500177]
Sussex Cottage, by Esther Meynell, published 1936 (xii + 246 pp., London: Chapman & Hall) accessible at: W.S.R.O. [Lib 54] & The Keep [LIB/502128] & West Sussex Libraries & East Sussex Libraries
Sussex (The County Book Series), by Esther Meynell, published 1947 (London: Robert Hale) accessible at: W.S.R.O. [Lib 12494][Lib 10659] & The Keep [LIB/504641]
Review by A. E. [Arundell Esdaile] in Sussex Notes and Queries, February 1947:Between the upper and the nether millstone of the London and Channel suburbs, Sussex is so well-known that many "picturesque" books have been devoted to it. Yet, owing to its former seclusion in its woods, clay and waterless chalk, there is always more to find and enjoy. Nor can it be intelligently enjoyed without a knowledge of its history and also of its pre-history. Mrs. Meynell has grasped this fact, and the result is a book which is not only picturesque but intelligent. Dedicated to our Society by the author, a keen member, it draws largely on the Society's contributions made over the past century to the knowledge of the county's history.
Mrs. Meynell, like her present reviewer, can say with the Apostle "Others with a great price have purchased this freedom, but I was born free," and her love for her petite patrie disarms criticism in one who shares it. But, with all her hard work on the sources, there is here too much picturesque writing, and also some innocence. Let me make a few points. Sussex flint-knapping is not "dead thousands of years "; the latest example I know (at Lancing College) dates from 1930 and there was much in the nineteenth century. The round flint church towers of the Lewes Valley, Norfolk and the French coastal chalk were so built to avoid quoins, stone being scarce. (By a slip, Southover is given as one of them). On pp. 22-3 the Adur should have been added to the rivers which have lost their old names; it is in fact the most modern and least genuine name of all. Reference to The Place Names of Sussex would have saved the wild guess that Adversane (in Billingshurst) is a name of Roman origin. Paradise (at Winchelsea) is merely the old word for park; Parkinson gave his book the rebus title Paradisi in sole Paradisus terrestris. The Tudor dislike of south aspects, here referred to but not explained, was an unintelligent Renaissance importation from Italy, where the hot African wind brings "the plagues of the South." Court Farm, at Ditchling, probably has no royal origin, but, as elsewhere, merely refers to the Courthouse of the Manor. "A gentleman calling himself Horace Smith, Esq." was and is too well known as part author of Rejected Addresses to be so described. Surely the Roman Catholic tradition at Arundel was not unbroken, as here stated. Finally (a misprint?) the Roman weapon was the pilum, not the pillum :
Thine, Roman, is the pilum,
Roman, the sword is thine.
But the book is so sensitive and (in the best sense of the word) amiable, that these faults are only mentioned from a stern sense of duty and in the hope of a revised edition. The illustrations are lovely, but one misses specimens of Georgian Sussex, and in the bad modern fashion they are given no margin; binding cannot fail to crop them.
Mrs. Meynell, like her present reviewer, can say with the Apostle "Others with a great price have purchased this freedom, but I was born free," and her love for her petite patrie disarms criticism in one who shares it. But, with all her hard work on the sources, there is here too much picturesque writing, and also some innocence. Let me make a few points. Sussex flint-knapping is not "dead thousands of years "; the latest example I know (at Lancing College) dates from 1930 and there was much in the nineteenth century. The round flint church towers of the Lewes Valley, Norfolk and the French coastal chalk were so built to avoid quoins, stone being scarce. (By a slip, Southover is given as one of them). On pp. 22-3 the Adur should have been added to the rivers which have lost their old names; it is in fact the most modern and least genuine name of all. Reference to The Place Names of Sussex would have saved the wild guess that Adversane (in Billingshurst) is a name of Roman origin. Paradise (at Winchelsea) is merely the old word for park; Parkinson gave his book the rebus title Paradisi in sole Paradisus terrestris. The Tudor dislike of south aspects, here referred to but not explained, was an unintelligent Renaissance importation from Italy, where the hot African wind brings "the plagues of the South." Court Farm, at Ditchling, probably has no royal origin, but, as elsewhere, merely refers to the Courthouse of the Manor. "A gentleman calling himself Horace Smith, Esq." was and is too well known as part author of Rejected Addresses to be so described. Surely the Roman Catholic tradition at Arundel was not unbroken, as here stated. Finally (a misprint?) the Roman weapon was the pilum, not the pillum :
Thine, Roman, is the pilum,
Roman, the sword is thine.
But the book is so sensitive and (in the best sense of the word) amiable, that these faults are only mentioned from a stern sense of duty and in the hope of a revised edition. The illustrations are lovely, but one misses specimens of Georgian Sussex, and in the bad modern fashion they are given no margin; binding cannot fail to crop them.
Small Talk in Sussex, by Esther Meynell, published 1954 (173 pp., London: Robert Hale) accessible at: W.S.R.O. [Lib 15307][Lib 12870] & West Sussex Libraries