The South Country by Hilaire Belloc

The South Country WHEN I am living in the Midlands
That are sodden and unkind,
I light my lamp in the evening:
My work is left behind;
And the great hills of the South Country
Come back into my mind.
The great hills of the South Country
They stand along the sea;
And it's there walking in the high woods
That I could wish to be,
And the men that were boys when I was a boy
Walking along with me.
The men that live in North England
I saw them for a day:
Their hearts are set upon the waste fells,
Their skies are fast and grey;
From their castle-walls a man may see
The mountains far away.
The men that live in West England
They see the Severn strong,
A-rolling on rough water brown
Light aspen leaves along.
They have the secret of the Rocks,
And the oldest kind of song.
But the men that live in the South Country
Are the kindest and most wise,
They get their laughter from the loud surf,
And the faith in their happy eyes
Comes surely from our Sister the Spring
When over the sea she flies;
The violets suddenly bloom at her feet,
She blesses us with surprise.
I never get between the pines
But I smell the Sussex air;
Nor I never come on a belt of sand
But my home is there.
And along the sky the line of the Downs
So noble and so bare.
A lost thing could I never find,
Nor a broken thing mend:
And I fear I shall be all alone
When I get towards the end.
Who will there be to comfort me
Or who will be my friend?
I will gather and carefully make my friends
Of the men of the Sussex Weald;
They watch the stars from silent folds,
They stiffly plough the field.
By them and the God of the South Country
My poor soul shall be healed.
If I ever become a rich man,
Or if ever I grow to be old,
I will build a house with deep thatch
To shelter me from the cold,
And there shall the Sussex songs be sung
And the story of Sussex told.
I will hold my house in the high wood
Within a walk of the sea,
And the men that were boys when I was a boy
Shall sit and drink with me.

Beachy Head—A Spring Evening

 The women decided that we must go,

Packing our evening tea,
To the lawns at the head of the cliffs,
To a view of the lighthouse.

Along the edge of the crumbling chalk,
Lawn thatched walls that barred Caesar,
Pagan hues of spring on football-painted boys,
And with mysteries elevated, the girls met in vesper fresh dresses.
Those with thoughts just for one walked, hands-joined
To the head of the cliffs
“For a view of the lighthouse.”

With sandwiches, biscuits and tea
The young men and women
Sat talking with passionless curiosity
Of the ones who come without tea, without a friend,
Shrouding themselves in mists of grief
To the head of the cliffs, who stepped from the living
Losing a view of the lighthouse.

Evening burned hard the once blue sky,
Embracing light stretched out from the day.
We sat about on the brilliant green,
Lazily bathed by touches of warm sea wind,
On the lawns of the cliffs,
In view of the lighthouse.

Steve Taunton

A Sense of Place.

When I was at school I was hopeless at maths, it made no sense to me, and I never saw myself being part of a world where quadratic equations mattered. The only thing that pricked my attention was when we started playing with protractors and learning what was essentially resection, a navigational technique. As a child I loved maps, I would pour over them in the library, or follow the routes of the great explorers with a nail-bitten finger. I was soon drawing all over them and calculating angles and distances.

I consider myself lucky, I have a fantastic sense of place, a sense of where I am. I feel connected with that ancient ability to move through the landscape with apparently little to guide me. This doesn't mean that I don't know how to use a map and compass, far from it, but they often sit buried in my rucksack while I am walking. Generally, even in the Highlands, I read over the route on the map the day before I leave and tuck the map in a pocket only using it to confirm I am on the right track. I have often taken people on long mountain walks and they comment on how little I use the map.

But not everybody can do this, some people have a mental block, a fear of getting lost, or not understanding what they see on the map. I have been lost, on a couple of occasions wildly so, and I have kicked myself for my stupidity. It's often down to over-confidence, a case of 'oh this looks right', rather than digging out that buried map and making sure I am on the right track. Fortunately no harm has been done.

However, I think getting lost now and again is a good thing, it forces me to reconnect with navigation, and with my understanding of my position in the landscape. I am probably quite annoying to walk with, as once I have walked a route once I tend not to have to do much checking the next time. So getting lost, intentionally even, means that I have the opportunity to revisit those skills and put them into practice. As long as I am suitably equipped and don't walk off a cliff there's not much that can go wrong. So you might miss a train, or a bus, or end up somewhere new. That's all part of the fun.

When I teach people navigation I try to get them over this fear of being lost by explaining that they already navigate, albeit subconsciously. They drive home, or to their parents, they know that they live down the third street after the traffic lights. Navigating away from the built environment is exactly the same - there are just fewer man-made structures to rely on; so we look to natural features such as streams and crags.

Downland can be surprisingly remote, the South Downs are several miles broad, and places like Woolbeding and Ebernoe Commons, although close to habitation are easy to get lost in. It's important to be able to read the map, and retain a feel for where you are. It's also important not to panic. Sit down, have a drink and think things through. A panicked mind doesn't think straight and often offers up the worst case scenario. A rational mind, not hungry or dehydrated, will help you think through the process of how you got to be where you are.

As you walk make a mental note of things you see, this soon becomes second nature, you've crossed a stream, or maybe a minor road, you can hear a trainline, these are all things that may help you put yourself back where you want to be. Follow them on the map with your finger if needs be. Look out for the next symbol - if the map says you should be crossing a lane, or passing a stream and it doesn't happen, check your position again. It's like a little puzzle,  and like all puzzles, with  thought the clues can be put together and a solution reached.

The key is not to the let the fear of getting lost dampen your spirit of adventure. Venture out when you have plenty of time, when you are not pressed to get back by a certain time; relieve yourself of pressures that make becoming lost much worse than it really is. Walk slowly, think about the things you see, and remember to look behind you every so often. Things often look very different from another viewpoint, and if you are planning to return by the same path this will help you recognize the features.

The Sussex Downs have features you can use to navigate, so that, once you have mastered the art, you are not tied to the map. This frees you up to enjoy a more natural, connected walk. Think about these things. In good visibility there are several clues to your location. If you are up high you can probably see the sea, in Sussex the sea is generally to the south. If the sea is north of you, you have a problem that you may need to ring the coastguard to help you with. The Downs themselves run generally east-west. The major transport networks tend to run north-south or east-west with little variation. There are few major roads, if you can see these in the distance and tie them up with other features you can start to get a feel for where you are. There are high masts at Glatting Beacon and Truleigh Hill that can be seen for several miles; on good days the Spinnaker Tower at Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight can be seen, as can Chichester Cathedral spire, the Amex football stadium, the Belle Tout Lighthouse and Sussex Heights in Brighton. There are single masts on Whitehawk Hill and near Castle Hill in Brighton, and again at Findon, on the west side of the valley. At night these are lit. They can be seen from a long way away, as can the lights of major urban centres, so even walking at night shouldn't be too fearful

I don't use GPS devices, I don't know how to, nor do I care to. I have a back up on my phone that can give me a quick grid reference. I've used it once in two years. I'm sure electronic devices have their place and converts love them. But I think a map and compass is perfect. You need to be able to use one in case the GPS goes down for some reason. So why carry the extra weight?

The thing is to overcome that fear, in the South Downs you are never far from habitation, and while the public transport network can be a bit hit and miss there will always be something to fit with your map.

I'm always happy to help people take their first steps with navigating. Feel free to contact me, I come very cheap - my fee is usually hop-based liquid refreshment. I truly believe these skills are latent in every one of us, and just need a little help to surface.

I recommend 'Mountain Navigation' by Peter Cliff, it's the simplest text on the subject, and the fact it's been in print for a generation underlines how good a guide it really is.

All comments, even negative are welcome. 

(c) Justin Norman 2011-12

Real England by Paul Kingsnorth

The Battle Against the Band

Although written a few years ago now, and not strictly about Sussex, this book does follow another theme of mine, which is the preservation of our unique landscape.

The Real England pulls together a series of characters that are kicking out against the move towards a nation of identikit cities, streets and countryside. Contrary to what the media will have you believe they're not all unwashed hordes taking to trees and battling the police, the people we encounter here are striking because of their normality; their everyday-ness. The stand up to corporate giants like Tesco, and the faceless corporations that would have you believe your life is enhanced if you have a Starbucks on every corner, and two branches of Tesco in between.

There is a melancholy feel to the book, for as time as passed since it was written it is evident nothing has changed, other than the government, and that this drive, if anything, may have increased. The only check now is the economic downturn.

As I read the book, I started to wonder if the real battle wasn't against the move towards clone towns, but as much a battle against the blandness of people, who just accept that this is the way and are happy to spend their weekends queuing to park in huge out of town retail parks, or equally monolithic urban shopping centres; where the cost of parking is deliberately prohibitive to stop you straying too far from it's grasp.

The characters we meet  in Kingsnorth's well-researched, and evocatively written book are striving against being eaten up by this sort of development. It's a cry for a Britain we all cherish, but few are prepared to fight to save from this creeping ruin. It puts me in mind of the best of past writings in a similar vein; Akenfield and Ask the Fellows Who Cut the Hay; while Kingsnorth's book is more national, the subject is similarly sad; that we are leaving behind a lot of the character of England in order to line the purses of the corporate fat cats.

As the MP,  Jim Dowd puts it - ask people if they want to keep their local shop and they all agree, ask how many actually use it and the figures plummet. 

As a historian I know that change is to some degree inevitable, and is often for the good; Kingsnorth seemingly agrees with this; it's not the development and the growth that is the issue, it is the manner in which it is done. The way in which progress is sold as a good thing, even when those it affects disagree, but are not given a voice to protest.

The theme here is really that place is an important part of our identity. Without a sense of place those things that hold communities together are broken down. After this book was published there were several days of rioting across the UK, and it is no coincidence that Real England talks about the alienation of people who, if they are not "consumers" have their rights and needs reduced. The drive to sameness destroys that sense of place, whether it's from disinterested staff in coffee shops repeating the 'five steps to customer satisfaction' mantras (I've been in here hundreds of times, you've served me, I know the sugar is behind me...) or the identikit estates that homebuilders want us to come home to and shut the door on the world around us.

The conclusion does offer hope though, I just fear that the people who read these books are already converts, and that we need to change the habits of the bland masses; the sheep that stream into the great concrete cathedrals to consumerism to spend, spend, spend and to hell with the consequences. I wonder if the oil tanker has gone too far and it's too late to turn it round before it hits the wall, however hard we stamp on the brakes. That's my fear, that we've gone too far, ceded too much power, worried so much about 'growth' and profit that all the words in the world probably won't slay the consumerist dragon.

I really urge anyone who has an interest in such matters to buy the book, preferably from an independent bookseller rather than a global corporation with a shady tax-paying record; or maybe see if your library has a copy.
 

The blog of the book can be found here Real England Blog; and more about Paul can be found here and 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.