Sussex Downs

“ Fairy knew that this was only one phase of the Sussex downs; another time those hills—by the way, the word “down” is derived from an old Saxon word, meaning “hill”—another time those hills would look soft, and warm, and sweet, and attractive, just as the Sussex peasant, on better acquaintance, proves himself honest and true and kind-hearted, in spite of his uncouth manners. ”

“ The Weald, the oak woods, the wide, sea-tasting skies of Sussex pour through every page; the Downs hold the chapters in their hollows. Wind carries the reader along. The vitality of this rushing, stimulating book is equal to the sincerity that produced it. You feel the author has a passionate sense of the beauty of this old county where he lives himself. His illustrations reveal it too. As you read it you feel you walk the Downs by his side and hear his cantering mind reveal them to you: “There, a day’s march away to the south, stood the rank of the Downs. ”

“ The scenery of the Sussex Downs is like the Sussex people in this respect—it requires to be well known to be thoroughly appreciated; cold and reserved at first, it is only on better acquaintance you learn the sterling worth, the truth, the real kindness of heart, and the hospitality which characterise the Sussex people. ”

“ The somber beauty of the Sussex wood, the lonely Downs and the pounding of the tides, the time of autumn, symbolize the threat to the human person who is just coming into his own. Death is all around him, and Sussex itself is marked with the inexorable mutability attaching to a passing world. ”

“ The roll of the Downs has always stood, like a monstrous green wave, blown forward before the south-west wind. The{152} simple and vivid green of the turf, and the sharp white chalk pits, have always stood making the same contrast with the sky and the large sailing clouds; and they will continue to do so for ever.
A Sussex man recognises his home when he sees it from the height above Eden Bridge, or from Crowborough top as he enters the county from the north or from the Surrey hills; he knows it when, as he gazes southwards, he catches along the horizon the dark wall of the Downs. ”

“ They stand, a silent undiscovered country, between the seething pleasure towns of the seaboard plain and the trim estates of the Weald. Londoners, for whom Sussex has a special attraction by reason of its proximity (Brighton's beach is the nearest to the capital in point of time) , either pause north of the Downs, or rush through them in trains, on bicycles, or in carriages, to the sea. Houses there are among the Downs, it is true, but they are old-established, the homes of families that can remember no other homes. There is as yet no fashion for residences in these altitudes. ”

“ Many of the villages in the northern Weald, beautiful as they are, might equally well be in Kent or Surrey: a visitor suddenly alighting in their midst, say from a balloon, would be puzzled to name the county he was in; but the Downs and their dependencies are essential Sussex. Hence a Sussex man in love with the Downs becomes less happy at every step northward. ”

“ Gilbert White has an often-quoted passage on these hills:—"Though I have now travelled the Sussex downs upwards of thirty years, yet I still investigate that chain of majestic mountains with fresh admiration year by year, and I think I see new beauties every time I traverse it. This range, which runs from Chichester eastward as far as East Bourn, is about sixty miles in length, and is called the South Downs, properly speaking, only round Lewes. As you pass along you command a noble view of the wild, or weald, on one hand, and the broad downs and sea on the other. ”

“ Then the descendants of those who now own Brighton, Worthing, and the rest, the children of the men who build villas on Crowboro’ top, and the heirs of the new-comers who have purchased, one would think, at least a third of the great old houses under the Downs, will be worthy of the soil which their ancestors certainly did not understand, and the historical development of Sussex will continue. ”

“ This, however, is only the impression made by the town when viewed as a whole; its individual houses, its churches and castle, and above all, its encircling hills are England, and England at her best and dearest to those who call Sussex home. The beauty of the surroundings when viewed from almost any of its old world streets and the charm of the streets themselves make the old town an ever fresh and welcome resort for the tired Londoner who appreciates a quiet holiday. ”

“ They are not cut for profit, or at least very rarely, because the ground is too steep for haulage. They live their own life and are secluded.
Indeed, all over the broad back of the Downs, for seventy miles and more, these patches of woods, both in the combes and up on the shoulders of the hills, are a necessary part of Sussex. They exhibit{168} the unconquerable nature of the county, its strongholds of silence and of desertion within an hour or two of London, and within a short walk of those flaring new places which have sprung up upon the sea-shore. ”

“ Until that fashion sets in (and may it be far distant) the Downs will remain essential Sussex, and those that love them will exclaim with Mr. Kipling,
God gave all men all earth to love,
But since man's heart is small,
Ordains for each one spot shall prove
Beloved over all. ”

“ I have been unfair, for example, to Burpham, which lies between Arundel and Amberley and of which nothing is said; and more than one reader has discovered unfairness to East Sussex. For this the personal equation is perhaps responsible: a West Sussex man, try as he will, cannot have the same enthusiasm for the other side of his county as for his own. For me the sun has always seemed to rise over Beachy Head, the most easterly of our Downs. ”

“ But no modern change seems to affect the character of these lonely stretches of grass, and it may be noted with satisfaction that, when those ignorant of the nature of Sussex attempt to violate the security of the Downs, that experiment of theirs is commonly attended with misfortune. ”

“ Well, roast beef and plum pudding, say what you like, is a very complete figuration of the Protestant ideal. Now let us think of Sussex.... The villas with their gables, and railings, and laurels, the snug farm-houses, the market-gardening, but especially the villas, so representative of a sleepy smug materialism.... Oh, it is horrible; I cannot think of Sussex without a revulsion of feeling. Sussex is utterly opposed to the monastic spirit. Why, even the downs are easy, yes, easy as one of the upholsterer's armchairs of the villa residences. ”

“ Hotels will not be found in the Downs; the tourist who cannot live without them will find his wants supplied within but a few miles at any of the numerous Londons by the Sea; but that will not be Sussex pure and undefiled, and if simplicity and cleanliness, enough to eat and drink, and a genuine welcome are all that is required, he will find these in our Downland inns.
It is in the more remote of these hostelries that the inquisitive stranger will hear the South Saxon dialect in its purity and the slow wit of the Sussex peasant at its best. ”

“ But if one's first impression of new country cannot be too favourable we have done rightly in starting at Midhurst, even at the risk of a loss of enthusiasm in the concluding chapters. For although historically, socially, and architecturally north Sussex is as interesting as south Sussex, the crown of the county's scenery is the Downs, and its most fascinating districts are those which the Downs dominate. The farther we travel from the Downs and the sea the less unique are our surroundings. ”

“ And the old Sussex songs ring through every chapter, given with the music for all to echo who have voices (“I will sing Gol-ier,” that delightful, ancient song of Sussex) , and other songs as well, not so easily classified. Mr. Belloc has put a bit of his heart, certainly of his early love, into this modest two-shilling volume. His love of battle too⁠—and battles. All the Sussex battles live again as you read about them howling and clashing among the undulating wood-lands and over the grand old Downs of Sussex. ”

“ Man's hand has drained the marshes of the Rother, of Pevensey, and of Selsea Bill; and railways have broken down the isolation of Sussex from the remainder of the country. Still, as of old, the natural configuration continues to produce its necessary effects. Even now there are no towns of any size in the Weald: few, save Lewes, Arundel, and Chichester, anywhere but on the coast. The Downs are given up to sheep-farming; the Weald to game and pleasure-grounds; the shore to holiday-making. The proximity to London is now the chief cause of Sussex prosperity. ”

“ The great spaces of landscape which Sussex can afford have never changed and never can. No man will ever build largely upon the Downs. No forest will ever gather on so valuable a soil as that of the coastal plain. No mere extension of buildings or further cultivation will destroy the distant aspect of the Weald.
A man looking down from the crest of the Downs to the south and to the north of him sees much of what his ancestry have seen since men first stood upon those hills. The Weald was once a little denser in wood, the coastal plain a little less thick with villages, but that is all. ”

“ Sussex is, perhaps, of all the English counties that one in which it is most difficult to find good{16} water, as we have already seen in speaking of the Weald, and as we shall see further when we come to talk of the Chalk Downs. But these little villages, standing as they do just upon the crack where the chalk (which is permeable and full of water like a sponge) comes sharp on to the impermeable soil of the Weald, are all fed by a multitude of delicious running streams filtered through hundreds of feet of the pure carbon of the hills and bursting out along the old road. ”

“ A finer site could not have been found. Above Great Common is a superb open space nearly six hundred feet high, with gorse bushes advantageously placed to give shelter while one studies the Fernhurst valley, the Haslemere heights and, blue in the distance, the North Downs. Sussex has nothing wilder or richer than the country we are now in. ”

“ There is hardly one without its stream.
Having reviewed these three belts—the coast-plain, the forest ridge, and the southern belt of the Weald—it remains for us to describe that which is by far the most important, namely, the South Downs. It will be necessary to devote to those hills a closer attention than we have given to the rest of the county, for one may call them, without much exaggeration, the county itself. Sussex is Sussex on account of the South Downs. Their peculiar landscape, their soil, their uniformity, give the county all its meaning. ”

“ Beyond it the downs extend, in almost illimitable ranges ascending to the wild golden gorse, to the purple heather.
We are on the burgh. The hills tumble this way and that; below is the great weald of Sussex, blue with vapour, spotted with gold fields, level as a landscape by Hobbema; Chanctonbury Ring stands up like a gaunt watcher; its crown of trees is pressed upon its brow, a dark and imperial crown.
Overhead the sky is full of dark grey clouds; through them the sun breaks and sheds silver dust over the landscape; in the passing gleams the green of the furze grows vivid. ”

“ Seen from the river or from the east side of the Arun valley, Arundel is the most imposing town in Sussex. Many are larger, many are equally old, or older; but none wears so unusual and interesting an air, not even Lewes among her Downs. ”

“ Their artificiality is most easily seen along the north. The true line of division should run along the ridge of the forests: St Leonards and Ashdown.
As a fact, political and organised Sussex overlaps this ridge and takes in part of what is geographically Surrey upon the north. The reason of this is that during many centuries the Weald was so sparsely inhabited that the Surrey villages under the North Downs, and the Sussex villages under the South Downs, thrust out long extensions into the forest, a custom which gave to those parishes a most peculiar shape. ”

“ As a centre for the exploration of East Sussex Lewes has no equal; days may be spent before the interest of the immediate neighbourhood is exhausted; for those who are vigorous enough for hill rambling the paths over the Downs are dry and passable in all weathers, and the Downs themselves, even apart from the added interest of ancient church or picturesque farm and manor, are ample recompense for the small toil involved in their exploration. ”

“ From Selborne it is but a step across the border into the downs of Sussex—“Green Sussex, fading into blue,” as the poet so aptly puts it. The low sun strikes along the rough hills as we enter Midhurst, nestling in a nook in the downs and reached by rather difficult roads. It is a quiet town with an air of thorough self-contentment; a town of weather-beaten houses with over-hanging timbered [Pg 304] gables, sagging tile roofs and diamond-paned casements ”

“ It may be mentioned in connection with this part of the county, that of all maritime districts possessed of remarkable inland scenery Sussex is the least to be remembered by those who have seen it from the sea. The Downs slope up so gradually, the line of the coast is so flat, and the reek of the coastal towns, though slight, so continuous, that the general impression a man has who runs along even upon a clear day from Rye harbour, let us say, to the Looe Stream inside the Owers, thus covering the whole stretch of the county coast, is one of monotony. ”