A Pelican in Sussex

Old place is the epitome of Elizabethan elegance which Charles Eamer Kempe created around himself at Lindfield, near Haywards Heath, in Sussex in the last two decades of the nineteenth century. An extravaganza of the architectural style of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, extensive and grandiose, richly embellished within and without by carving and pargeting, it was bejewelled with copious windows in stained or painted glass, though much of this glass was removed in the nineteen-twenties. Kempe became very wealthy and celebrated in his success as an artist and designer, especially in glasswork. At Old Place his purpose was to create a gentleman's country residence in the late Tudor/Jacobean style, and any visitor there even now, when, since the War, the house has been divided into several residences, cannot but agree that he realised that ideal.