Unravelling Sussex E-Book

Tony Ward

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 286

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

If you enjoy puzzle solving you will enjoy the novel approach of Unravelling Sussex. Based on Tony Ward's Poetry+ series in Sussex Life, each famous Sussex person or place is introduced by a 'puzzle-poem'. The challenge is to unravel the embedded clues, solved by the chapter that follows. This innovative little book brings new life to the aims 'to inform, educate and entertain'.

Leseprobe

First published in 2016

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

All rights reserved

© Tony Ward, 2016

Illustrations © Grace Osborne, 2016

The right of Tony Ward to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

EPUB ISBN 978 0 7509 6963 5

Original typesetting by The History Press

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Introduction

East Sussex

1 Bateman’s – Family Home of Rudyard Kipling

2 Beachy Head, Birling Gap & the Seven Sisters

3 Alfriston Clergy House – The First Building Purchased by the National Trust

4 Charleston and Monk’s House – Homes of the Sisters Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf

5 Pevensey Castle – William the Conqueror’s Foothold before the Battle of Hastings

6 The Royal Pavilion, Brighton – The Prince Regent’s Seaside Retreat

7 The Priory of St Pancras & Lewes Castle – Sites that Played a Part in the Battle of Lewes

8 The Liberator Memorial – The Crash Site of a US Air Force Second World War Bomber, near Beachy Head

West Sussex

9 Uppark House and Garden – Restored from the Ashes of a Devastating Fire

10 Weald and Downland Open Air Museum – Rescued Historic Buildings

11 Petworth House and Park – A Historic House with an Outstanding Art Collection

12 Chichester Cathedral – Notable for its Works of Art and its Musical Tradition

13 Arundel Castle – Family Home of the Dukes of Norfolk

14 Nyman’s – One of the Finest National Trust Gardens

15 Fishbourne Roman Palace and Gardens & Bignor Roman Villa

16 Standen House and Garden – An Arts and Crafts Family Home

Sussex People

17 Eric Ravilious – Artist

18 Alan Turing – Code Breaker and Father of Computer Science

19 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – Physician and Writer

20 John Logie Baird – Inventor and Television Pioneer

21 Percy Bysshe Shelley – English Romantic Poet

22 Thomas Paine – Influential Writer and Champion of the Rights of Man

23 Sir Ernest Shackleton – Polar Explorer and Leadership Role Model

24 William Blake – Poet and Artist

25 Isambard Kingdom Brunel – Engineer

26 Sir Patrick Moore – Amateur Astronomer and Musician

Explorer’s Guide

Bibliography

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks firstly to Jenny Mark-Bell, editor of Sussex Life, who made space for my idea for a series with a new twist on local history. Now in its third year, this provided the impetus for Unravelling Sussex. Thanks also to my constant supporter, Vera Morley, and her book group who have fun puzzling out the solutions to my monthly riddles. Without the encouragement of her late husband Mike, an inspirational teacher, there would have been no poetry.

Thank you to my readers – particularly to those with connections to the subjects of my pieces who emailed me with such personal and positive responses. It makes it all worthwhile.

Thanks to Nicola Guy and all at The History Press for the encouragement, guidance and the Christmas card, and thanks to Mike Sims, the Poetry Society publishing manager, for the feature on my ‘innovative project’ in Poetry News. Hopefully other writers may feel inspired to join in with ‘unravelling’ their counties.

Thanks to my old friend, the late Peter Roget, whose Thesaurus still comes to the rescue in those early mornings when I’m searching for just the right word. And finally, thanks to my wife Sheila, both for her tolerance and for our extensive book collection, built up in the course of her lifelong love affair with history and literature, an invaluable resource.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tony Ward was published regularly in various poetry magazines in his youth, and then enjoyed a successful career in computing and education. Now retired, he has returned to writing, combining poetry with his love of local history in a novel way. He lives in Eastbourne and is very much a Sussex person. He is a member of the Eastbourne Old Grammarians Association and a writer member of the Sussex Book Club. An Eastbourne Book Group run ‘puzzle-sessions’ using his Sussex Life series.

Tony will be donating a share of his royalties to St Wilfrid’s Hospice, Eastbourne.

INTRODUCTION

Sussex is a county steeped in history. This book is a celebration of its cultural and artistic heritage through its much-loved places and some of the famous people who found inspiration here. You will find half-remembered poems and extracts from the novels, letters and diaries of well-known writers who had connections with Sussex. The county was also home to artists, actors, inventors, engineers, scientists, revolutionaries, explorers, sportsmen, a king and a saint. Surprising, amusing, heart-warming and heart-rending insights and anecdotes add to established fact. Sussex is a county of romance, but also, at times, tragedy.

As hinted at in the title, Unravelling Sussex, there is a new twist in this book’s approach. If you wish, you can try a bit of puzzle solving. Each famous Sussex person or place is introduced by a riddle in the form of a poem. But this is no ordinary poem. The challenge is to unravel the embedded clues, which are then explained in the chapter that follows. It is poetry as University Challenge, pub quiz, or cryptic crossword. This will be familiar to followers of my monthly ‘Poetry+’ series in Sussex Life magazine.

If you are not into puzzles, just relax and enjoy an intriguing journey through Sussex. There is much to explore – historic sites and buildings, inspirational gardens, art collections and of course the natural beauty of the Sussex countryside.

If, upon completing the book, you would like to explore further, this is provided in the final section, the ‘Explorer’s Guide’. In this you will find both general advice and specific sources to follow up for each chapter. These include both print and website references, including audio/video clips. Assuming that you have website access, do call up some of the latter – they add a further enjoyable dimension.

As a taster, just some of the things you will discover by ‘unravelling Sussex’:

1 How a famous author spent his Nobel Prize money.

2 The novel by a Sussex resident upon which Andrew Lloyd-Webber based a musical.

3 The whereabouts of a stage designer’s curtained TV set – a miniature theatre.

4 Who was found hiding in a windmill after losing a historic battle.

5 The person whose contribution was said to have shortened the Second World War by two years.

6 The setting for a late-in-life love match between a friend of the Prince Regent and his own dairy maid.

7 The writer who played ten first-class matches for the MCC (Marylebone Cricket Club), upon one occasion taking the wicket of W.G. Grace.

8 The inventor of a device whose widespread introduction was held up because it was thought it would really corrupt and ruin the nation!

9 The revolutionary whose writings played a major part in Great Britain losing its American colonies.

10 The explorer who ‘never learned much geography at school’.

11 The setting in which you could have listened to the music of Gustav Holst, Leonard Bernstein, Pink Floyd, Bob Geldof and the Hollies.

12 The dutiful wife who held a castle against a siege while her husband was away fighting.

13 The scientist who duetted on piano with Albert Einstein on violin.

14 The event that gave birth to the novel Frankenstein.

15 The location of the Sixpenny Room.

16 The poet and artist who was inspired by Sussex’s ‘green and pleasant land’.

17 The location of no ‘crouching tigers’, but many ‘hidden dragons’.

Please, read on …

EAST SUSSEX

THAT’S SHE!’

Young hands reached out to the donkeys,

much loved, but sadly no longer there.

Old hands get flour from the watermill,

through the almost wild garden.

Not a jungle though, no Mowgli.

Though still not made

‘By singing, “Oh, how beautiful!” and sitting in the shade’.

The citation too, edged with flowers.

The prize money added yews and roses,

bought the children laughter –

a boating pond, a paddle boat.

And the house …

‘That’s She! The Only She! Make an honest woman of her – Quick!’

Perfect – our dream too!

But Carrie got there first.

If.

1

BATEMAN’S

FAMILY HOME OF RUDYARD KIPLING

Bateman’s was Rudyard Kipling’s seventeenth-century Wealden ironmaster’s house, built in 1634 and purchased by him in 1902 as a family home for his wife and children. Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) moved his family from ‘The Elms’, a rented house in Rottingdean, partly to escape the intrusion of sightseers. He lived at Bateman’s until his death in January 1936. The National Trust acquired the house in 1939 after the death of Kipling’s wife, Caroline (Carrie). The trust has left the house as it was in their lifetimes, including Kipling’s book-lined study and writing desk.

A pair of donkeys used to live in the field on the hill alongside Bateman’s. They were very friendly and came to be stroked, a high point for visiting children. In the grounds is a working watermill where stoneground flour can be purchased. It is reached by walking through a partly naturalised garden with wild flowers.

The ‘jungle’ is a reference to The Jungle Book, whose central character was the young boy Mowgli. Some relevant extracts follow. The discovery of Mowgli in the jungle by the Wolf Pack:

‘A man’s cub. Look!’

Directly in front of him, holding on to a low branch, stood a naked brown baby who could just walk – as soft and as dimpled a little thing as ever came to a wolf’s cave at night. He looked up into Father Wolf’s face and laughed.

Skip ten or eleven whole years:

He grew up with the cubs, though they of course were grown wolves almost before he was a child, and Father Wolf taught him his business, and the meaning of things in the jungle, till every rustle in the grass, every breath of the warm night air, every note of the owls above his head, every scratch of a bat’s claws as it roosted for a while in a tree, and every splash of every little fish jumping in a pool, meant just as much to him as the work of his office means to a business man.

The quote ‘Oh, how beautiful!’ is from Kipling’s poem The Glory of the Garden, much reproduced on garden ornaments! Pennard Plants and the horticultural charity Roots and Shoots created an Edwardian themed garden in the Great Pavilion entitled ‘The Glory of the Garden’ for the May 2015 RHS Chelsea Flower Show to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Rudyard Kipling’s birth.

‘The citation’ refers to his 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature Diploma citation, on view in the house. The Nobel Prize was awarded to Rudyard Kipling ‘in consideration of the power of observation, originality of imagination, virility of ideas and remarkable talent for narration which characterise the creations of this world-famous author’. Each Nobel Prize Diploma incorporates a uniquely commissioned illustration – Kipling’s is a particularly beautiful flower picture. As well as the diploma, each winner receives a gold medal and a sum of money. Kipling received £7,700, a significant amount in 1907, but far less in real terms than recent prize-winners. He and his wife decided to spend it on the garden. They planted the yew hedges and rose garden and had a shallow boating pond constructed complete with specially built paddle boat for their children and their friends.

When Kipling and his wife, Carrie, first saw Bateman’s they fell in love with it instantly, hence Carrie’s exclamation, ‘That’s She!’.

The final word, ‘If’, refers not just to most visitors’ dream of themselves living in such a house, but to Kipling’s perhaps most famous poem, If. This was written at Bateman’s in 1910 and published in Rewards and Fairies. It spoke to parents all over the world. Sadly, Kipling’s own son John was killed in the First World War at the Battle of Loos in 1915, five years later. John was 18 years of age.

In his foreword to The Nation’s Favourite Poems, published by the BBC following a 1995 poll, Griff Rhys Jones reports that Kaiser Wilhelm II (Emperor of Germany during the First World War) was said to keep a copy of the poem on his desk. The desk in question was not in Germany, but in Holland after his abdication in 1918. The two men, on opposite sides in the Great War, suffered the same bereavement. The kaiser’s own youngest son had committed suicide in 1920 and two of his grandsons were killed in the Second World War. Kipling’s poem rose above partisan viewpoints to connect powerfully with universal aspirations.

The poem If was the clear winner, by twice as many votes as the runner-up, in the Nation’s Favourite Poems poll. The extracts below quote some oft-remembered lines, including the first and last:

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two imposters just the same;

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

And – which is more –you’ll be a Man, my son!

A HUNDRED MILES TO GO

Stars of stage and screen,

painted, filmed, photographed,

each brother bedazzled.

Their guiding light lost,

but regained,

restored.

Where the chalk wall falls to the foam,

children are rock-pooling through the ages,

countless ages,

encased in stones and bones.

Shrimping nets replace flint tools,

a new tribe

replacing the old.

And memories –

bluebirds over white cliffs,

where wings of war set forth.

Gap years in cottages, lost to time and tide.

Smoke still rising –

but now from happy driftwood fires,

evenings under the stars,

but still, for some, a hundred miles to go.

2

BEACHY HEAD, BIRLING GAP & THE SEVEN SISTERS

The Seven Sisters cliffs have been painted many times by both professional and amateur artists. They are also favourite photographic subjects for magazines, holiday snaps and for film locations, appearing in films as diverse as Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Brighton Rock and even a James Bond film, The Living Daylights.

‘Each brother bedazzled’ refers to the 1954 musical film Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, nominated in that year for Best Picture Oscar and the fifth most popular film at the British box office in 1955. There have been several stage adaptations since.

‘Their guiding light lost’ refers to the Belle Tout Lighthouse, overlooking the Seven Sisters on the clifftop near Beachy Head. However, this was not the first warning light to be set up. The first lights were located in ‘Parson Darby’s Hole’. Between the late 1600s and until his death in 1726, Parson Darby saved many lives. One of Parson Darby’s duties, as parson of Friston and East Dean, was to bury the bodies washed up on the shore. Although some disasters were due to storms, others would have been due to the activities of wreckers luring them onto the rocks with misleading lights. Parson Darby set about establishing a reliable, fixed light. He excavated existing caverns near the base of the cliffs, creating ledges upon which he set lights on stormy nights. He kept watch throughout the night. Even if they should be driven onto the rocks, some sailors were saved by being pulled into ‘Parson Darby’s Hole’. Parson Darby’s grave is in East Dean Churchyard. His epitaph reads, ‘He was the sailors’ friend.’

The Belle Tout Lighthouse, the first permanent ‘guiding light’, was built in 1828. The clifftop, however, was not a good location. Frequently shrouded in mist and constantly threatened with collapse due to recurrent cliff falls, it was decommissioned in 1899. It was not demolished, although in the Second World War it was seriously damaged as a result of being used for artillery target practice. After the war it was rebuilt as a private house. Inexorably though, cliff falls continued. In 1998, a successful major fundraising drive paid for the building to be moved intact, on rails, further back from the cliff edge. By then the 30ft safety margin in front of the house had collapsed into the sea. The cliffs are still eroding at an average of 1m per year.

The Belle Tout was used as the main location for the 1987 BAFTA award-winning drama series, The Lives and Loves of a She Devil, a BBC dramatisation of Fay Weldon’s 1983 novel:

Mary Fisher lives in a High Tower, on the edge of the sea: she writes a great deal about the nature of love. She tells lies.

(The opening paragraph of The Life and Loves of a She Devil, by Fay Weldon.)

It is now a holiday let.

‘But regained …’ refers to the replacement Beachy Head Lighthouse built at the foot of the cliffs which was brought into service in 1902. ‘Restored’ refers to this lighthouse nearly losing its iconic red and white stripes when Trinity House announced in October 2011 that it could no longer afford to repaint them. The lighthouse would have been left to return to its natural granite grey. A widely supported fundraising campaign avoided this fate by reaching the repainting target of £27,000 in July 2013. The repainting by a specialist team, including two abseilers, took just under three weeks, being completed on 9 October 2013. The campaign had attracted worldwide support. Notable supporters and donors included Eddie Izzard, the Duke of Devonshire, Ronda and David Armitage (who respectively wrote and illustrated The Lighthouse Keeper books for children), Bill Bryson, Griff Rhys Jones, John Craven (a BBC Countryfile item) and many local organisations and individuals.

When the Beachy Head Lighthouse was manned, up until 1983, there used to be a cable strung from the clifftop to the platform encircling the top of the lighthouse, just below the light. During construction of the lighthouse (1900–02) twin heavy-duty cables were installed for a temporary cable car to take workers and building materials to an iron platform installed next to the lighthouse site. These were removed, but a connection was retained to carry a telephone cable. This was before the days of mobile phones. The cable is no longer there.

David Armitage, who illustrated his wife’s Lighthouse Keeper books, tells how the presence of the cable provided the idea for the first book. One day, in the late 1970s, when a cable was still in place, David was walking on the clifftop with their children, Joss and Kate. As young children are wont to do, he was asked, ‘Daddy, what is that cable for?’

David had an inspiration, ‘Well, that is to send the lighthouse keeper his lunch.’

The first book was, of course, called The Lighthouse Keeper’s Lunch. First published in 1977 by Andre Deutsch Ltd, it was an immediate prize-winner, being awarded the Esther Glen Award for Best Book of the Year (New Zealand, 1978). It was the first of Ronda’s series of nine bestselling books, now modern classics. It tells of how ‘Mr Grinling gets his lunch in a most peculiar way’.

On her website Ronda tells ‘all about me’. New Zealand was her birthplace and it was her home until soon after completing her teacher training. At the age of 23 she took ship for England. She met David, a Tasmanian, on the ship. They married in England, travelled for a while and then in 1974 settled permanently in Sussex. The books continue to be bestselling, much-loved favourites of young children and their teachers, widely used in primary schools. A thirtieth anniversary edition was brought out in 2007 by the current publishers, Scholastic Children’s Books.

Turning our attention to the beach, ‘Where the chalk wall falls to the foam’ is a line from the poem Seascape, by W.H. Auden. The complete poem is engraved on a brass plaque on a memorial bench beside a path called the ‘Friston Drencher’ to be found on the OS Explorer Map of Eastbourne and Beachy Head. This path leads from the South Downs Way above Jevington towards the Seven Sisters. The complete poem beautifully encapsulates the essence of the view:

Here at the small field’s ending pause

Where the chalk wall falls to the foam, and its tall ledges

Oppose the pluck

And knock of the tide,

And the shingle scrambles after the suck-

ing surf,

And the gull lodges

A moment on its sheer side.

(Seascape, by W.H. Auden, Verse 2 of 3.)

‘Rock-pooling’ and fossil hunting are two of the activities put on by the National Trust at Birling Gap. Stone-age flint tools, ten thousand years old, have also been discovered at this location, whose name derives from that of the Saxon tribe who settled there – ‘Baerlingas’.

In the Second World War the cliffs and lighthouses were used as a landmark for bombers bound for Germany and for fighters returning to their bases. For many bomber crews, shot down on their missions, Beachy Head was their last sight of England. This sad reflection is now inscribed on a memorial on the clifftop. The inspirational Vera Lynn’s wartime song contains the line ‘There’ll be blue birds over the white cliffs of Dover’. As the real white cliffs of Dover are no longer white, cliff falls there having been halted, the Seven Sisters cliffs often stand in for them in films, TV and even the Dover Town Council publicity website!

‘Gap years in cottages, lost to time and tide’ remembers, for many, holidays spent in the row of holiday cottages at Birling Gap. The cottages are gradually disappearing over the cliff due to erosion. Before the days of portable barbecues, both locals and holidaymakers gathered up driftwood on the beach to make fires for ‘sausage sizzles’, often in the evenings, when the sparks from the fire flew up to the stars. Come morning, South Downs Way walkers still had the best part of 100 miles to go to reach the end of the long-distance footpath near Winchester.

AN OAK LEAF ON THE BEAM

Pride of a survivor,

but a humbler house than the cathedral next door,

property of the priory,

five hundred years,

but fallen from grace.

The pleading voice heard,

guardian angels, patron saints,

reformer, vicar, lawyer.

Ten pounds bought new life

and an oak leaf on a beam.

Restored to grace,

Survivor.

Survivors too in the garden.

Beside the reeded riverbank,

Forbidden fruit, forgotten fruit,

mulberry, medlar, betrayer –

blood on its branches.

One hundred years on,

the ten-pound purchase celebrated –

a sundial, a bridge from the past,

a rose for the founder, a battle now won,

telling their stories to days yet to come.

3

ALFRISTON CLERGY HOUSE

THE FIRST BUILDING PURCHASED BY THE NATIONAL TRUST

Alfriston Clergy House was the first building purchased, in 1896, by the newly formed National Trust (the very first acquisition had been 5 acres of clifftop at Dinas Oleu in Wales). The vendors were the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, the house having been in the ownership of the nearby Michelham Priory for the previous 500 years. The purchase price was £10, a nominal sum even in today’s equivalent, but necessary to satisfy the legal requirements of the sale.

Next door to the ‘humbler house’ stands the Church of St Andrew, known as the ‘Cathedral of the South Downs’. The fourteenth-century church was built around ten years after the Clergy House in the shape of a Greek cross with a central bell tower. The bells are rung from the floor of the chancel crossing, in full view of the congregation.

The Clergy House, a thatched, timber-framed Wealden ‘hall house’, was not originally built by the Church. It was built in 1350, the ‘pride of a survivor’ – a yeoman farmer who prospered after the Black Death. By reducing the working population by up to one third, this had increased the wages and profit margins of the survivors. It wasn’t until 1395 that the priory was able to add the house to its extensive estates. The term ‘clergy house’ refers to its ownership by the Church, not because a priest lived there.

Upon exploring the house – warning, low doorways – and passing through the sixteenth-century parlour into the main two-storey high hall, it is the floor that is worthy of note. It is composed of a pounded down mixture of ground chalk and sour milk, a locally available and eco-friendly alternative to concrete. An information sheet even shows the chemical reaction involved, complete with chemical equations.

Over the next 500 years the house was modified and extended several times. Tenants came and went, but by 1885 the house had become a liability and the Church authorities sought permission to demolish it once the existing elderly occupant, Harriet Coates, had died. This happened three years later.

However, the local vicar, the Reverend F.W. Beynon, campaigned vigorously to save the house. In one initiative, the Reverend Beynon contacted a group of three friends who, first separately and then together, were deeply committed to saving unspoilt countryside and ancient buildings threatened with destruction. The three like-minded campaigners were Octavia Hill, Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley and Sir Robert Hunter.

The ‘reformer’ in the poem is Octavia Hill (1838–1912), the eighth daughter among twelve children who, starting work at the age of 14, had tirelessly devoted herself to social reform. She was shocked by the terrible living conditions of the poor East End children in ‘the raggedy school’ where she helped out. Funded by John Ruskin, who acquired the leases, she set about renovating and letting out previously rundown houses. In a short time she had fifteen housing schemes under her management with around 3,000 tenants.

‘Open space for all’ was another campaign, successfully leading to the acquisition of Parliament Hill Fields and Hampstead Heath through the Commons Preservation Society. As Octavia Hill entreated, ‘We all need space; unless we have it we cannot reach that sense of quiet in which whispers of better things come to us gently …’. Octavia Hill was the first person to use the phrase ‘Green Belt’.

The ‘vicar’ in the poem is Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley (1851–1920). With the support of the others he had successfully campaigned to stop the construction of railways to serve slate quarries in some of the most beautiful parts of the Lake District.

The third member of the group, the ‘lawyer’ in the poem, is Sir Robert Hunter (1844–1913), who was to become the first chairman of the executive committee of what he christened ‘The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty’. Being a bit of a mouthful, this was shortened to the National Trust. As the lawyer in the group, it was Hunter who had first formulated the proposal for a society to protect land (and subsequently properties) and who secured its permanent status by drafting the Bill which became the 1907 National Trust Act:

The central idea is that of a Land Company, formed not for the promotion of thrift or the spread of political principles, and not primarily for profit, but with a view to the protection of the public interest in open spaces in the country … the acquisition and holding of properties … the acquisition of manors … and the maintenance and management of gardens … as places of resort for recreation and instruction. (From a speech given by Sir Robert Hunter at the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science in Birmingham, September 1884.)

One of the first actions of the trust was the launching of the successful appeal by Octavia Hill for funds to restore Alfriston Clergy House, which by then (1895) was in a dreadful state of repair. The phrase ‘the pleading voice’ and the last line of the poem are taken from Octavia’s text, ‘the pleading voice of the old building itself … to be left to tell its story to the days that are to come’. She promoted Alfriston Clergy House as ‘rich in memories of England as our ancestors knew’.

On the corner of a beam in the original hall of the house is a spot-lit carving of an oak leaf. It is thought that this may have been the original inspiration for the National Trust’s emblem.

Outside, the garden, largely laid out by the first National Trust tenant Sir Robert Witt in the 1920s, is bordered by the River Cuckmere. The garden surrounds the house. It is not a large garden in National Trust terms but contains some interesting features and artefacts. There is a medieval-style box garden, roses chosen for their scent, a medieval herb garden, and a productive vegetable garden laid out as a series of eight raised beds retained with railway sleepers.

The orchard contains old ‘forbidden fruit’ apple varieties like Sussex Duck’s Bill, Lady Henniker, Lady Sudeley, Crawley Beauty and the local Alfriston. Also, perhaps ‘forgotten fruit’, are the mulberry and medlar trees. The ‘betrayer – blood on its branches’ refers to the Judas tree (Cercis siliquastrum), so called because it was a tree of this Mediterranean species from which Judas Iscariot is believed to have hung himself. Its clusters of dark pink flowers appearing around Easter time on bare branches are traditionally said to resemble drops of blood.

A walnut tree is a favourite of the squirrels, and the garden is also home to a large variety of birds, whatever the season. These include green and great spotted woodpeckers, kingfishers, tree creepers and a sparrowhawk. The trust also puts on ‘bat evenings’.

In 1995, the centenary of the National Trust was celebrated with the installation of a special sundial, sitting on a balustrade from the old London Waterloo Bridge, ‘a bridge from the past’.

Octavia Hill’s vital role in the founding of the National Trust was also celebrated by the naming of a new rose variety in her honour. Octavia Hill and her two fellow campaigners, through their dedication and tenacity, accomplished the seemingly impossible – ‘a battle now won’. The National Trust continues ‘telling their stories to days yet to come’.

BRIGHT LIGHTS

Bright lights of London forsaking bright lights of London,

a quieter beacon brings together the dancing partners.

Sisters off the beaten track that binds them.

The artist,

paint on the canvas, paint on the walls, the chairs, the tables,

a house of youth, breaking conventions, forging bonds –

new ideas for a new world.

The writer,

blue streams flowing from her pen in a room of her own,

the house a mongrel who stole her heart,

good days,

‘bells ringing for church – daffodils out – apple trees in blossom –

cows mooing – cocks crowing – thrushes chirping …’

But an idyll stolen by the black dog,

the bad days,

the sounds not heard, the sights not seen,

weighed down, carried away

not now by streams of thought,

but by the force of an unyielding tide.

4

CHARLESTON AND MONK’S HOUSE

HOMES OF THE SISTERS VANESSA BELL AND VIRGINIA WOOLF

Charleston Farmhouse, at Firle near Lewes, and the nearby Monk’s House (National Trust), at Rodmell near Lewes, were the East Sussex retreats of the two sisters. They were both members of the Bloomsbury Group, a close-knit group of artists, writers and intellectuals who first came to prominence in the First World War. Originally centred on the Bloomsbury area of London, they used these ‘oases of calm’ to escape from their hectic London lives. The permanent residents of Charleston, at various times from 1916 onwards, were the artists Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, together with Bell’s two children, Julian and Quentin. Also resident during the First World War was the writer David Garnett. Grant and Garnett, both conscientious objectors and lovers, were required to work on the land. Although Vanessa’s husband, Clive, was a regular visitor and indeed moved into a set of rooms in the house just before the Second World War, their marriage had long been one in name only. On Christmas Day 1918, Vanessa and Duncan’s daughter, Angelica, was born at the house, completing a household that broke the conventions of the day.

Visitors included writers and critics – T.S. Eliot, E.M. Forster, Lytton Strachey, David Garnett and Vita Sackville-West (also of Sissinghust garden fame); artists and art critics – Roger Fry and Clive Bell; and the economists Saxon Sidney Turner and Maynard Keynes. ‘The house seems full of young people in very high spirits …’ (Vanessa Bell, 1936).

The group as a whole had a ‘desire to break with the Victorian past’, both in their work and their domestic arrangements. This was even further in evidence when David Garnett, who had been present at the birth of Angelica Bell, wrote to a friend that he thought that he may marry her, ‘when she is 20, I shall be 46 – will it be scandalous’. True to his word, on 8 May 1942 they married – she was 23, he was 49. Garnett’s novel, Aspects of Love (1955), was the basis for the Andrew Lloyd-Webber musical of the same name.

Charleston had been discovered by Virginia Woolf, who had bought a house with her husband Leonard in Lewes. Virginia was keen for her sister to also have a place nearby and wrote to Vanessa, ‘If you lived there you could make it absolutely divine’. Vanessa and Duncan wasted no time and took out a lease on the house – ‘It’s most lovely, very solid and simple …’

There’s a wall of trees – one single line of elms all round two sides … We are just below Firle Beacon … Inside the house the rooms are very large … Ten bedrooms I think some enormous. One I shall make into a studio. The Omega dinner service looks most lovely in the dresser.

(Letter from Vanessa Bell to Roger Fry.)