Following Betty Ellis' 1920s Stroll

The Arun drifts soothingly by, carrying chaotic thoughts to the sea, massaging a tired mind. It's one of those curious days where winter winds rub shoulders with summer sun; now the air feels chill, now it feels warm.

Ripening rapeseed rustles in yellow bands scored through green fields of barley shoots. Above High Barn Buzzards ride the thermals, casting menacing shadows far below, twisting and fading and mixing with the clouds.

A derelict cottage and ancient dew-pond clogged with farm debris cut a sorry sight. Who would want to live in such a remote place today, cut off in the heart of Downland, like the old time shepherds? Over these ruins, known as Canada, a mist drifts, the ghosts of another time.

An isolated coombe, nestling in Downland's bosom, hidden, almost secret lifts any mood. Chalky paths, precipitous and deep-cut, worn with age land the other side of the escarpment in Amberley. Unspoilt, desirable, a place to slow the pace, tarry a while. Cottages bear testimony to old trades of bakers and nailmakers, long gone to retail parks and superstore counters, replaced by a new community.

Now fortified by Mr Knight's hoppy liquid a traffic clogged road, once crossed leads to a peaceful lane. In a deep coombe a hidden riverbed rustles with brimstone, peacock and orange-tip butterflies. Moorhen busy with feeding young, partridges patrol the field edges, set to flight by jumpy woodpigeon. Soon Peppering Farm is found again, hedgerows running with dunnock and house sparrows. Nearby summer's first swallow darts across the barley.

Burpham is reached, like Amberley changed little since medieval times outwardly, but the streets are silent, the pub is closed. The dormitory sleeps it's daytime slumber.

A drizzly end, past Splash Farm and into the Woodleighs, where bluebells are starting to peak through the dry soil,  takes a path once used by a king to flee protestant pursuers, but now leads to a dice with death to reach Arundel station.

The detailed route for this walk can be found by clicking here.

The Burphams and Tansy

Downland is littered with evidence of prior habitation, from great Iron Age forts like that at Cissbury to smaller communities deserted in more modern history. There are a number of deserted medieval villages (DMVs as us historians call them), scattered across the landscape from the Manhood peninsula right across to the Kent border.

Burpham is one such site, but is unusual in that the community was apparently abandoned and moved lock stock and barrel a short distance north. In medieval times trade and profitability governed the success of a community and if a village was not profitable it was simply abandoned. This process may have been accelerated by famine, plague or in the case of a number of coastal communities they were simply washed away, or became victims of longshore drift. Sometimes the landscape was changed when landowners converted to sheep farming and simply razed the dwellings to the ground. It is erroneous to assume that all abandoned communities are as a result of the Black Death, as is often said, the circumstance is often far more complex.

Burpham's name tells us that it was one of King Alfred's Saxon burghs, and therefore must have been considered important at the time, and was fortified, probably to protect a notable crossing of the Arun, in whose crook it nestles.

The subsequent construction of a castle at Arundel, strongly fortified the area and it is generally understood that this checked further development at Burpham, which became a farming community and moved away from the fortified site at around this time. The mound and associated lumps and bumps of this former community remain to be seen just south of the current village, which is a real gem in the Downland landscape.

One of Burpham's most famous residents was the Victorian apiarist and local vicar Tickner Edwardes. who wrote several volumes on his subject, many of which fetch high prices even today. He also wrote 'Tansy', a story of a Downland romance, which was very popular in it's day and was subsequently made into a silent  film by Cecil Hepworth one of the British film industry's earliest directors. Hepworth eventually went bankrupt, and most of his film was melted down for the valuable silver nitrate to pay off his debts. A copy of 'Tansy' fortunately survived this disaster and is at the British Film Institute.

'Tansy' was filmed around Burpham, and used several local people as incidental characters. Because of the aforementioned lack of development of the area about Burpham many of the locations used are extant, and can be seen today.

In the book 'Sussex Pilgrimages', written by the great travel writer RP Hopkins, at about the same time as the film was released, a whole chapter is dedicated to a walk written by local resident Betty Ellis. Designed to take in the locations of the film and the book, it seems the walk, which is of around 12 miles is still possible today. In my next piece I intend to attempt to follow Betty's instructions, and recreate the walk.

Of special interest to me, is the fact that as long ago as the early 1920s she was complaining about 'arguments over access and rights of way at Amberley Castle, and although I have walked extensively in the area I am not familiar with the specific right of way she is referring to, but I look forward to seeing what became of it.

The reason I have chosen to wrote about Burpham is to follow from the earlier post this week To Build or Not to Build  which discusses the impact and short-termism of current environmental policies. Burpham is neither accessible, nor on any major road. In fact, it's at the end of the road. There's not a great deal of parking, and bike, boat or foot are the best and easiest ways to get there. This doesn't prevent it from being a popular place to visit, and a real gem of this part of the world. The walk, as most of the places I describe here, with one or two exceptions can be, and should be, reached by public transport.

To Build or Not to Build

A local town needs a bypass, it wants a bypass. The roads are gridlocked, growth is hindered. The issue has periodically raised it's head for a generation. In fact, in a letter to the local paper a resident points out that twenty years ago it got so bad they built a relief road, but it's now gridlocked.

And herein lies the problem. "Build it and they will come" applies to roads as much as circuses, and in twenty years the bypass will probably again be gridlocked. The road passes a station. It's a short walk to the town and there are good links with some, but not all, local towns - Dr Beeching saw to that.

The people who want the bypass say the gridlock puts people off coming to the town and drives away business. Perhaps while the cars are at a standstill the local council might survey the drivers, many of whom are alone in five seater vehicles, and establish how many are heading to the town and how many are just trying to get somewhere else? I wonder how many people are really put off by the traffic? Judging by the queues at local horse racing days traffic and boot fairs is rarely something that puts people off their journeys.

The favoured route for the bypass will punch through an ancient wood. When it was proposed to include this wood in the national park, the local county council referred to it as 'unremarkable.' The mainly Conservative council mentioned further on it's objection that, essentially, it's in the way of the bypass.

We must move faster, get there quicker, not have to wait. Time is money, and money is growth. We need a bypass to drive this growth, in the same way that we need to decimate even more countryside for a high speed rail link from Birmingham to London. We must shave off a few minutes. Time is money. We need the rail link because the motorway they built in recent memory is not enough, it's full. We can't expect people to get up earlier, only make necessary journeys, or travel together. We can't expect business men to use technology to have their meetings, via Skype and Videolink. No, it must be done face to face. The journey has to be made. Flesh has to be pressed.

The HGVs that pass the local town have to cross a rail bridge. Every few years it has to be strengthened. It's not up to the traffic. It crosses near the station, where the old goods yard is laid to waste and development land. We don't use the rail network for freight here. Even if it's use could be resurrected the network that once supported it is buried under such  development or is wasteland. The short-sightedness of our forebears has come to haunt us. Roads are the answer. The only answer. Build them we must. Until every inch of unremarkable landscape is buried under concrete.

A letter in the local paper says wildlife can thrive on verges. So the bypass could become a haven for wildlife. Those that would want to enjoy it, of course, would have to take their lives in their hands foraging on the verge while trucks rumble by at umpteen miles an hour. Of course, the vergeside environment would support a different ecology to that of the ancient woodland, with it's coppiced beeches, medieval ponds, and  historic oaks that would be lost by it's construction. 

The local council will again fight a costly battle to argue for the bypass, already rejected once on environmental grounds, protestors will take to the trees. The new planning laws may even support its approval. Then millions will be spent on its construction. The traffic will come, and it will increase, and in time this road too will fill with cars.

The long term view, to use the money to change habits, support improvements to rural public transport, is not something we are used to taking in this country, especially when it comes to transport policy.  What we need to do, for the greater good, for the benefit of the vocal minority - the business leaders, the corporations who's only link with the area it's to rumble blindly through - is build on anything unremarkable.

Until all that is left is the remarkable. Remarkable because it's still there.

Above Amberley

The sun beats down onto soil baked as hard as a late summer's day, yet it is but March.

The river sparkles and along its muddy banks moorhen prints lead to and fro, markers of the industry of nest building. Of the bird itself there is no sign.



Toward Coombe Wood a solitary buzzard circles, riding high thermals, before plunging down into the wood itself. The path contours the hill before skirting the wood. Each footstep explodes with small clouds of dust. It has not rained for weeks. In Coombe Wood a woodpecker drums out a rhythm to a chorusline of finches and tits, and to the left a field of larks compete for volume.

As the path drops into farmland the song of the larks rises to a crescendo; occasionally a bird lis flushed from the rape field, rising higher and higher as his soprano song fades into the distance. Heads of ripening rape tremble as bees land.


Above Bignor Hill a second buzzard circles bisecting the towers of Glatting Beacon, before speeding down into the hangers on the quickening air currents, effortless and graceful.

The return path through Houghton Wood is alive with brimstone and peacock butterflies, dancing in the sun among yet to bud stands of beech coppice. The lack of foilage serves to accentuate the bright yellow of the brimstones as they jig through the branches.

A shaded pool, dark and stinking provides a cooling bath for a panting terrier, hotly pursued by a red-faced owner.

Along the way the first bluebells stretch for the spring sunlight.

The path drops into Houghton, occasionally hugging the busy main road, before a way is found to the riverbank again and the ancient towpath, leading back to Amberley.


The route for this walk can be found at - http://www.everytrail.com/view_trip.php?trip_id=1503596

The Burgh

Wisps of cloud like strands of a wise sage's hair hang loosely across a powder blue sky, as the river Arun glitters below like a necklace of silver. The chill of the winter morning has been usurped by an afternoon snatched from spring. 

Peppering Farm stands in splendid isolation above Burpham, secreted in a hollow in centre of the South Downs. Time stands still here where the roads ends, wide field margins and thick hedgerows sing with life, and below Arundel castle is cradled in the nook of the river.

When I first came to the Downs some fifteen years ago an old sign, burnt at one corner by a pyromaniac delinquent boasted that if I was very lucky I might see a buzzard here. These short years later I am surprised if I don't see the eagle-like silhouette riding the thermals across remote fields. Today twitchers gather in a small car park huddle, scopes peering out across the coombe. Somewhere here a rough legged buzzard  is wintering. In most years as few as five of these magnificent raptors visit the United Kingdom, and birders from far and wide have scanned the coombe, trying to pick out which of the four or five buzzards that soar above is the one they need for their tick list.

He appears as I reach the triangle of copse that forms the Burgh proper. A covey of grey partridge are flushed from the hedge row, in turn startling a flock of fieldfares. Dunnock patrol the hedgerows, nervously twitching their wings as they feed. 

Across the coombe all eyes are on the rough legged buzzard, I turn north east towards Rackham Banks, and from the neighbouring field the unmistakable chatter of a sparrowhawk fills the air, and the copse erupts with alarm calls. 

A tractor pulls up and a genial farmer chats about the buzzards, a marked contrast to the iron lady who, not far from here at a local private estate pulled up in her expensive car to chastise me for walking on the wrong side of the footpath not long ago. 


Here on this farmer's land much has been done to improve the lot of the local wildlife, and a sign at the entrance proudly proclaims a list of species to be seen here. 


The ancient flint trackway, polished by thousands of years of hoof and foot, starts to glisten as the sun turns the sky the colour of hot coals. Arundel Castle turns purple and then mauve in the haze and on the horizon the sea burns as the sun slowly sinks below the surface.

The Arun at Greatham

The River Arun

The sky seems huge, an endless sheet of towering grey clouds, their tops cleaved off by the jet stream. Rain falls in sheets, and I stand on a carpet of sodden pendunculate oak leaves under trees that career from side to side like the masts of some storm-bound fleet on the open ocean. Water runs from everywhere, is everywhere, is everything.

I wait for the peregrine, but she doesn't come. Nothing flies in this maelstrom. I imagine her driven mad by hunger, unable to hunt. I scan the banks for kills, but there is nothing. I count the moorhen in the garden of Quell Farm, but there are no more and no less than yesterday. I scan the brooks where pochard, wigeon and a solitary great black-backed gull mix with huge numbers of mallard. Creatures everywhere hunch up against the wind driven rains.

Nothing flies and nothing moves. A sudden urge to leave is over-powering and not even the the brightening of the sky and the promise of watching the short eared owls hunting hungrily across the inundated water meadows can keep me here.

I beat a melancholy retreat.