Walks

The Butcher, The Baker and The Clothing Maker

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In 1260, the Diocese of Chichester made a survey of its huge estates across Sussex. By good fortune, this dating (and the document’s survival) are perfect material to illustrate the evolution of the woodland pasture of Heathfield through a series of individual clearings in a forest into a small settlement in its own right around a new church. We can meet individual villagers and follow in their footsteps around their expanding settlement.

Hogges, Pig Iron and Pygmies

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This walk passes as close as the footpath network allows to the site of the iron foundry where this momentous event occurred.

The Moving Village

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Starting this walk today at Buxted Church, it is immediately apparent that the building stands in isolation in Buxted Park. However, such isolation is far from glorious but represents the final phase of one man’s successful efforts to intimidate and remove a whole village.

Art for Art’s Sake

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The visit to Chiddingly by the famous artist Pablo Picasso in 1950 is the inspiration for this short walk around the Chiddingly area, including some classical church sculpture, a famous artist’s house and the pub where Picasso may have failed to get served to the landlord’s eventual loss.

A Grave State of Affairs

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Memorial inscriptions forged by illiterate craftsmen on iron graveslabs line the floor of Wadhurst Church. The network of footpaths linking the many hamlets of the parish provides a further memorial to the former inhabitants, who trod them out through the centuries.

Canute and a Certain Little Woodland Pasture

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The popular history of the High Weald has often included references to the supposedly sparsely populated, impenetrable woodland known as the Andredsweald which remained unsettled for centuries. However, this walk explores an area which was the subject of a land grant by the famous King Canute in 1018 in which the places now to be found in the landscape were already well established and thriving.

A Walk of Mysteries

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Tiny flint tools, thousand of years old, a 150 year old railway which has never carried a train, a skeleton of our very earliest ancestor – the “missing link” between man and ape – dated to the twentieth century. This walk around Uckfield and Fletching takes in many mysteries.

Non Transports of Delight

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A short, very rural walk passing a surprisingly large variety of transport routes, some predictable such as rivers and roads and others less so such as Navigations and a ghost railway which never managed to carry a train.

The Flooded Valley

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A walk to Brambletye, the forerunner of Forest Row with a churchless priest, several manor houses and an impressive ruin by the River Medway. However, the river itself is almost a stream today, due to the huge upstream dam across the valley forming Weirwood Reservoir alongside which the walk briefly passes.

The Ruin by the Medway

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A walk to Brambletye, the forerunner of Forest Row, with a churchless priest, several manor houses and an impressive ruin by the River Medway. A walk worthy of investigation by the great Sherlock Holmes himself.