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.

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

02.02.12

Amberley Wild Brooks is marked on some maps as Amberley Swamp, and there's a sign warning of 'dangerous marshes'. Whether its brook, swamp or marsh matters not, they're all the same when they are filling your boots with cold, black wintery water. Stonechats converse nosily, with voices that sound like stones being tapped together. They remain a sight unseen, hidden perhaps among clouds of blue tits, great tits and coal tits, as here are there a small flock of long tailed tits flash by. No sign of the Bewick's swans that bought me to this boggy playground, the low marsh and high shrubbery restricting visibility to only short distances.



I follow the route back, and recall a calamitous navigational error that had me jumping ditches, climbing fences and being chased by cattle a summer ago. A new signpost saves others from the relationship ending arguments that such mistakes can lead to. 

Although only January 2nd, daffodils decorate the roadside here.

Heading back through Quell's farm there are some gaps in the treeline that afford a peering view down onto the shining waters of the Arun, now on it's ebb. On the opposite bank a chocolate Labrador barks at nothing in particular, and flushes the falcon peregrine from the reeds just below me; three silent, hefty wing beats and she's away, lost behind the trees. I am right under the perch where I saw her on my last visit, and can see why she chooses this spot, with it's high view out across flooded marsh where a hearty menu of wildfowl await a hungry hawk.

The short eared owl's are big news now and  Waltham Brooks  is busy with heads popping up from behind every bush. Here the Arun starts to run fast as it heads for it's gap in the South Downs just south of Amberley. Suddenly the peregrine flashes past, flying low, and turning hard south after crossing the river, calling in in what seems sheer delight at her flight. She rises up into the sun, like a fighter pilot preparing for ambush. It's like looking into a fire trying to follow her and she's soon lost from view.

No-one in the field reacts, so hard-wired are they into finding their target species they fail to see this perfect hunting machine not twenty feet above their heads. Thirty years ago these creatures were dying out in our country, but now they are recovering. The peregrine has evolved so effectively, so perfectly that her qualities are incorporated in the design of modern fighter jets.This individual is large, her white underside flecked with fine dark spots, and her back is a fitting RAF blue. It's a curse that the sun is the wrong side for anything more than a blurry silhouette of a photograph.

Seeking out a wet and boggy seat to provide cover for photographing owls  a merlin is flushed and he swoops away, sending up great clouds of assorted tits and starlings. Behind me, and across the field the owl-watchers ignore this rare and stunning bird, the smallest of our falcons.

A short eared owl quarters the field right next to me, he hunts me, my size diminishing to that of a vole, his eyes fix mine, I cannot tear my gaze away, he closes, his mottled feathers merge with vegetation, only his eyes have colour, bright amber staring, fixed and then, suddenly, he's away. He veers dramatically west, dropping one wing and away, into the sun. Three feathers rest lightly on the ground hard by the hawthorn.




He calls his shreiking call, and hastens his pace, swinging towards the flood defence bank over the old canal lock.  He drops low, skimming reed mace and rises to confront a nearby male who has strayed onto his territory. They grapple mid-air, shreiking and calling, tussling with talons raised, before my male breaks and with fast beats to propel him away glides into nearby shrubbery to lick his wounds.

There are six owls here today, the most seen since November when they first arrived and they put on a show for the gathered twitchers. One rises right in front of a waiting photgrapher, vole firmly clenched in knife like talons. 

Three Bewick's swans honk as they pass overhead, signalling the coming of sunset, and short splash across fields to a waiting flask.