Neighbourhood: A year's life in and about an English village

Neighbourhood: A year's life in and about an English village

If you love the quiet of the countrythe real quiet which is not silence at all, but the blending of a myriad scarce-perceptible soundsyou will get it in Windlecombe, heaped measure, pressed down, and running over, year in and year out. The village lies just where Arun river breaks the green rampart of the Sussex Downs. To the west, the lowest cottages dwindle almost to the waters brink. Northward and eastward, the highest buildings stand afar off, clear cut against the blue wall of the sky; while in between, filling the deep, steep combe, church and inn and every kind of dwelling-house, little or big, huddle together under their thatch and old red tiles, with the village green in their midst, and a thread of white road rippling through them all and up the steep combe-side till it is lost in the sunny waste of the hills. But there is no way through Windlecombe. From the market town four miles off, the road p. xiiis good enough; and good it remains until it reaches the highest human outpost of the village. But there it suddenly changes to a mere cart-track, soon to vanish altogether in the green sward of the Down. And therein lies Windlecombes chiefest blessing. Far away on the great main road, when the wind is southerly, we can hear the motor-bugles calling, and see pale comet-beams careering through the night. But these things come no nearer. At rare intervals, perhaps, a stray juggernaut will descend upon us, and demand of some placid rustic the nearest way to Lands End or Aberdeen, returning disgusted on its tracks when it learns that there is only one road from here to anywhere, and that the road it came. But these ear-splitting, malodorous happenings are few and far between. At all other times, Windlecombe wears the quiet of the hills about it like a garment. The dust of the highway has no soaring ambition to whiten the hedgerows, or fill the cottagers cabbages with grit. It still keeps to its ancient, lowly work of smoothing the path for man and beast; and our children can play in it unterrorised, our old dogs lie in it at their slumberous ease. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 62978
Author: Edwardes, Tickner
Release Date: Aug 19, 2020
Format: eBook
Language: English