“Hurlstone is a rambling old place and takes a good deal of looking after”
– Reginald Musgrave [MUSG]
Bateman's is a Jacobean house, set in the beautiful landscape of the Sussex Weald. It was built in 1634, of local traditional materials: Ardingley sandstone quarried nearby, bricks and roof tiles fired from local clay, beams made of oak from the nearby woods, and Wealden iron. It was made famous in September 1902 when it became the home of author Rudyard Kipling, already known for ‘The Jungle Books’. However, it is not for Kipling’s involvement in a Homes & Watson sketch that I wrote many years ago, that I was visiting:
HOLMES: Do you like Kipling, Watson ?
WATSON: I don’t know, Holmes, I’ve never kipled !
Instead, it was the inspiration that it provided Kipling’s friend, Watson’s literary agent, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Kipling and Conan Doyle first met in Vermont in November 1894 when the latter and his brother interrupted their American tour to spend two days at the Kiplings’ American home. Between the ages of six and twelve, Kipling was in foster care in Southsea, where Conan Doyle would write ‘A Study in Scarlet’ less than ten years later. Their friendship continued through correspondence, with their both being Freemasons strengthening the bond, and the following year Conan Doyle sent Kipling a pair of Norwegian skis. When Kipling moved back to England, visits were more frequent, and eventually the two men became distant neighbors when Kipling moved into Bateman’s. For the next thirty-five years, they maintained a regular correspondence and read each other’s works as they were published, also visiting each other on occasion.
Bateman’s has been identified as a candidate for ‘Hurlstone’, Reginald Musgrave’s residence in ‘The Musgrave Ritual’. Although formally in East Sussex the house like Hurlstone is L-shaped with a woodland and ponds. It does not however have a more modern wing. It is, however, possible that Conan Doyle drew on a number of houses as his inspiration for Hurlstone, as he did for Baskerville Hall.
I therefore made my way from Waterloo East to Etchingham Station, where I had a twenty minute wait for a bus.
Having finally caught the bus, after around ten minutes, I was alighting at Bateman’s Lane, slowly making my way down the lane to the Bateman’s estate, now managed by the National Trust. Handing over a voucher for free entry, I made my way into the grounds, and to the house itself, which has 1634 rather than 1607 above the door, taking several photos of the building before venturing inside.
“Possibly you have seen pictures and read descriptions of the famous old building, so I will confine my account of it to saying that it is built in the shape of an L, the long arm being the more modern portion, and the shorter the ancient nucleus from which the other has developed. Over the low, heavy-lintelled door, in the centre of this old part, is chiselled the date, 1607, but experts are agreed that the beams and stonework are really much older than this” – Sherlock Holmes [MUSG]
On the other side of the door was the black and white tiled hall, which features in Kipling’s story, ‘They’. A steward gave me a potted history of Kipling’s time at the house, before I moved into the Inner Hall, with its large oak staircase. In front of the staircase was a bronze bust of Kipling sculpted by Patrick Synge-Hutchinson, completed after Kipling’s death.
A door just before the staircase led me into the Parlour, used by Kipling’s guests for reading and writing whilst he was working upstairs. It is likely that Conan Doyle would have spent time in this room writing during the day, chatting with Kipling when he had completed his work and also engaged in uproarious parlour games here in the evenings.
Making my way up the stairs, I reached the heart of the house, Kipling’s study, where he would retreat to write and read. The room, like Holmes’ Baker Street rooms, would have had the pungent aroma of Kipling’s Turkish tobacco, as he smoked a very Sherlockian 40 cigarettes per day. It is not too much of a leap to suggest that this room inspired the Hurlstone library where Reginald Musgrave stumbled upon his butler, Brunton, closely examining Musgrave family papers.
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“You can imagine my surprise when, as I looked down this corridor, I saw a glimmer of light coming from the open door of the library. I had myself extinguished the lamp and closed the door before coming to bed…I crept on tiptoe down the passage and peeped in at the open door. Brunton, the butler, was in the library. He was sitting, fully dressed, in an easy-chair, with a slip of paper which looked like a map upon his knee, and his forehead sunk forward upon his hand in deep thought” – Reginald Musgrave [MUSG]
The document that Brunton was looking at was a slip of paper containing ‘The Ritual’, an old observance peculiar to the Musgrave family, which each male member for centuries past has had to go through on his coming of age:
‘Whose was it?’ `His who is gone.’‘Who shall have it?’ ‘He who will come.’
‘What was the month?’ 'The sixth from the first.’
'Where was the sun?’ ‘Over the oak.’
'Where was the shadow?’ 'Under the elm.’
‘How was it stepped?’ ‘North by ten and by ten, east by five and by
five, south by two and by two, west by one and by
one, and so under.’
‘What shall we give for it?’ ‘All that is ours.’
‘Why should we give it?’ ‘For the sake of the trust’
Moving along, I entered the West Bedroom which was a guest bedroom. It was presented as if it was being used by Kipling’s cousin, Stanley Baldwin, who was a frequent visitor to Bateman’s.
Next up was the Exhibition Room, thought to have once been the Kipling’ bedroom. As part of this, the Bateman’s Visitors Book was on display showing 1920-1921. Unfortunately, Conan Doyle was not among the signatories on these pages.
Finally on the upper floor, I reached the bedroom of Kipling’s son, John (known as ‘Jack’). On the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, Jack attempted to enlist immediately, but was rejected due to poor eyesight. He therefore pressured his father to pull strings with his friend, General Lord Roberts, and secured a commission in the 2nd Battalion of the Irish Guards. On 2nd October 1915, the Kiplings received a telegram from the War Office, announcing Jack as missing in action. Despite the optimism of his parents that he may simply have been captured, he was finally counted among the 20,000 British soldiers who had died in this engagement. The Kiplings never recovered from Jack’s death, and in 2016 Kipling wrote a poem ‘My Boy Jack’, which records his loss.
Making my way downstairs, I reached the Dining Room where the Kiplings took lunch at 1pm and dinner at 8pm. He offered guests first-rate wines, but preferred to drink cider himself.
Exiting the house via a small room which was used as schoolroom for their two children, I found myself in the gift shop where I purchased three postcards of different views of the house. Making my way back outside, I walked around the outside of the house, taking photos from the lawns, incuding the door that 'The Ritual' led to.
“From this starting-point I proceeded to step, having first taken the cardinal points by my pocket-compass. Ten steps with each foot took me along parallel with the wall of the house, and again I marked my spot with a peg. Then I carefully paced off five to the east and two to the south. It brought me to the very threshold of the old door" - Sherlock Holmes [MUSG]
I then moved to a small outbuilding which contained Kipling’s 1928 Rolls-Royce Phantom, behind glass. The car cost Kipling £2,833 18s. 6d. Like his friend, Conan Doyle, he was pioneer motorist who enjoyed exploring England by car.
The time was now 1pm, so in line with Kipling’s mealtimes, I retired to the estate’s café, for some lunch.
It was then time to explore the grounds, looking for the oak mentioned in ‘The Ritual’. This eventually brought me to Park Mill, built in 1750 and extended in the 1830’s. Kipling loved the idea of having a watermill in his garden, even if the first thing that he did was to remove the wheel and have a turbine installed to generate electricity.
At the back of the mill was a gate leading to the mill pond, and the area of the estate which inspired many of Kipling’s later works, such as ‘Puck of Pook’s Hill’. However, it was the deep pond itself that interested me as being the lake in ‘The Musgrave Ritual’ which it is believed that the wronged maid, Rachel Howells, has drowned herself, and from which the remains of Charles I’s crown is recovered.
“ A splendid park with fine old timber surrounds the house, and the lake lay close to the avenue, about two hundred yards from the building” – Sherlock Holmes [MUSG]
“We could follow [Rachel Howell]’s footmarks easily across the lawn to the edge of the mere, where they vanished close to the gravel path which leads out of the grounds. The lake there is eight feet deep, and you can imagine our feelings when we saw that the trail of the poor demented girl came to an end at the edge of it. Of course, we had the drags at once, and set to work to recover the remains, but no trace of the body could we find. On the other hand, we brought to the surface an object of a most unexpected kind. It was a linen bag which contained within it a mass of old rusted and discoloured metal and several dull- coloured pieces of pebble or glass” - Reginald Musgrave [MUSG]
Retracing my steps, I undertook a brief second wander round the house, before exiting the estate, making my way over the road where there were several possible trees that could have been used as markers to where the treasure was hidden.
I then made my way back up the lane and along the main road for around fifteen minutes to the village of Burwash. First point of interest was a statue of Kipling sitting on a bench, sculpted by local sculptor Victoria Atkinson, and unveiled in February 2019. Having taken several photos of the statue, I finally managed to get a photo with myself sitting next to ‘Kipling’.
Walking a few minutes further on, I reached the Burwash War Memorial, which features John Kipling’s name.
Retracing my steps for about five minutes, I reached a bus stop, where again I had a twenty minute wait for a bus. I then had a short wait at Etchingham Station before I could catch a train back to Waterloo East, and then home.
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