Sussex, Painted by Wilfrid Ball

by Hilaire Belloc

WAY ALONG THE DOWNS

it is a connected road again as it was up to Pulborough. You go eastward through Cuckfield, through Hayward’s Heath, past the railway which you cross close to Newick Station, straight on to Maresfield, down south to Uckfield, then on by the main road to Heathfield. A mile eastward of the railway there the road branches; but your better plan is to follow the old line up which came the army of Jack Cade—that is, to skirt Heathfield Park, to pass through Chapel Cross, go over Brightling Hill which has wonderful command of the whole district, and so come down upon the Rother at Robertsbridge. There you will find an inn called the George, of considerable moment. East of this you are no longer in the spirit of Sussex, but in that of Kent, and a very few minutes farther on you are over the legal boundary between the two counties.

The second line is, of course, that of the Downs. It has the disadvantage of ending abruptly at the sea, and does not show you the whole length of the county as does the line through the Weald. But it has the advantage that no other walk or ride anywhere is of the same kind: fifty miles of turf, broken only by four short gaps in the river valleys, lie before you between Harting Hill and Beachy Head. The itinerary of such a ride is as follows:—

You will leave Petersfield by the eastern road, and turn by that lane on the right which makes for the Downs, reaching their summit upon Harting Hill. There is no proper track, but it is open going round the northern edge of Beacon Hill and so onwards, always keeping to the escarpment, and passing to the southern side of the summit of Linch Down. This latter course has the advantage that it avoids going round deep combe or crypt, and, moreover, on the southern side of the summit you strike that ridgeway which will accompany you for many miles, and which here leads you between the two woods in the open. About a mile to the east of the summit of Linch Down you have to cross the somewhat low and steep pass where the Midhurst and Chichester road crosses the hills. Your ridgeway takes you straight across it over the top of Cocking Tunnel, and on up again to the Down on the eastern side of the gap. There it is a clear ride right away until you come above Lavington. At this point it is well to strike to the right or south-west, making for a little chapel which you will see below you in a sort of interior valley of the Downs. Here you will find a highroad

WAY ALONG THE DOWNS

which is the highroad to Petworth; and if you continue it to a group of cottages known as The Kennels, you may leave it again due eastward over some ploughed land until you find in less than half a mile the escarpment of the hills again.

The object of this somewhat complicated direction is to avoid the sharp angle of the Downs at Duncton Hill, but if any one thinks the short cut too difficult, he has but to follow round the escarpment, and he will come by a rather longer route to the same point, which is that steep combe above Sutton and Cold Harbour which those who live to the south of it call, from the nearest farm, “Gumber Corner,” but which is also known as Cold Harbour Hill. It is well to pause here and make it, as it were, a centre of observation, for it is a spot from which the general character of the county, the divisions into which it naturally falls, and the special features which make up its landscape, may all be seized in one view.

There is, perhaps, no other place in England where the landscape is so full of history, and at the same time so diverse and so characteristic of its own country-side.

To the south of you, some 600 feet below, is the whole stretch of the sea-plain, and beyond it, up to the horizon, which is lifted right into the sky, is the belt of the sea. On this, if it be near evening, you see the regular flashing of the Owers Light, which marks that group of rocks where once was a Roman town, and you note how the sea is eating up all that shore. Stretching out towards the light in a sharp point is the promontory of Selsea Bill—all that is left of the submerged land. Here was founded the first bishopric of Sussex. And as your mind dwells upon that foundation you catch, a little to the west and to the right, the great spire of Chichester Cathedral standing up eight miles away under the sunset—Chichester, to which was removed, and which is now the successor of, St. Wilfrid’s original See.