STORIES From SUSSEX
The Home of Richard Cobden
Richard Cobden
Heyshott is down a lane off the lovely road that leads from Chichester
Cathedral in all its glory to Cowdray
Castle, the best-kept ruin in Sussex. The lane winds round, past the
little 13th-century church, through the village, until it brings us to a
long drive in a piece of woodland. In the stillness of a valley at the end
of it was the old farmhouse of Durnford, where there was born in the year
before Trafalgar a boy who was to be immortal for all time, Richard Cobden.
The farmhouse has gone but in place of it stands the house that Cobden
built, amid the scenes of his childhood, out of the fund the nation raised
for him in gratitude to the man who won Free Trade for England and laid
the foundations of our national prosperity. He lies at West Lavington with
his only son, but this is Cobden's home and Cobden's village. All may see
his home, which has become a centre for economic students and a comfortable
rest-house or guest-house for all who will.
It was his thinking place. Here he thought out Free Trade; here he energised
that wonderful movement which saved our poor from hunger and gave our rich
their opportunity. In a cabinet are his schoolbooks, and on the walls is
a lovely portrait of his wife and one of his little son. There is a fine
marble of Demosthenes by William Theed, and a great Sèvres vase given to Cobden by Napoleon the Third.
He is remembered with great honour in the church, where an inscription
on his pew says: Here Richard Cobden, who loved his fellow men, was accustomed
to worship God and on the wall above is a tribute, cut in fossil marble
from Derbyshire, which says :
His private virtues were equal to his public spirit. He was beloved by
his neighbours. In his lifetime his fame spread over all the world, and
his name shall live for evermore.
In the churchyard at Heyshott is the grave by which Richard Cobden stood
and buried the brother who grew up with him as a boy, and there is a stone
to William Quinnell, Cobden's faithful servant. The bowl of the font is
almost on the floor; it is made of flint and Cobden was baptised in it,
for it has been here 700 years.
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