Offham

It was while he lived at Court House that Powys began working as a lecturer for the University Extension, in addition to his private lectures in schools.

' I used almost always to walk the four miles to Lewes when I made my professional starts in the mornings, and I generally went by the road through Offham rather than over the downs. This I did because I had my gown to carry and my elusive sylphids' essays, as well as the books, sometimes heavy ones that I had to quote from.'

His Extension work involved a heavy schedule of travelling to centres all over the country, but also included lectures in Lewes, the first series of which was entitled 'The Roman Emperors – The Caesars'.

This is the course which got him into trouble with the Oxford authorities, as a result, he says, of his placing too much emphasis on the 'personal equation', in particular, the scandalous Twelve Caesars of Suetonius, though it seems that their main concern was the fact that his knowledge of Roman constitutional history was not up to date.

To read a review of the first lecture in the series, click here.

JCP's avenue can be identified with reasonable certainty, I think, from the map available here (enter the coordinates 539400 and 113000, choose the 1878-1879 map, zoom in on the resulting image and look at the road beneath New Barn). The photograph shows the avenue looking west with Mount Harry behind to the left.

Sadly, of the thirty or so trees shown on the map no more than a dozen remain, and every twenty yards along the road one encounters a forlorn, overgrown old tree-stump. But perhaps Powys would have appreciated the scene today just as much, given the mysterious feelings and essences conjured up for him by '...these roadside tree-stumps, these grey fragments of old walls...' and other unremarkable but atmospheric examples of the inanimate.

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