Category Archives: Local History

The Shepherd and Dog

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The Shepherd and Dog in the 1780s

The building in the 1780s: a lithograph by W. Scott after a painting attributed to William Henry Pyne (aka Peter Pasquin)

The main building originated as two, or possibly three, cottages. Its use as a public house probably dates from the early 1800s and it is listed as ‘Shepherd & Dog’ in the 1841 census. It seems safe to assume that it derived its name from the annual sheep washing that took place in the stream immediately outside as described by Nathaniel Paine Blaker in his memoir of a childhood in Fulking in the middle of the nineteenth century. As he records, the pub played a key role in this event since it was the place the shepherds went to recover after spending hours in the bitterly cold water.

Sussex was renowned for smuggling in the early nineteenth century (Blaker has a brief chapter on the topic) and the pub was used to store contraband. It seems that the goods were first taken up the outside steps and then lowered through a concealed opening into a large cavity below. The location of this hiding place is not currently known, although there is anecdotal evidence that it may have been incorporated in structural changes made to the pub over the course of time. A reporter from a local newspaper is thought to have been shown it in 1927, so there may still be a large chamber waiting to be found — complete with a keg of brandy.

The Shepherd and Dog in the 1900s

The Shepherd and Dog in the 1900s

In 1841, William and Frances Welling were living at the Shepherd and Dog with their two children and a twelve year old female servant. The census lists William as a bricklayer so it is possible that Frances ran the pub. By 1851, the pub had passed into the hands of James and Susannah Strivens (aka Strevens) who were living there with their four children and a fourteen year old female servant. Members of the Strivens family had been living in the parish since the eighteenth century, and possibly earlier. James was born in Fulking and is listed as ‘victualler’ (i.e., the publican). By 1861, their family has doubled in size. In 1871, there are four sons still living at home and working as agricultural labourers. James died at the end of that year, aged 49, and Susannah took over as publican. In 1881, one of her daughters is working there as a barmaid and there are also two sons still living at home Frank, a butcher, and Arthur, a market gardener. It may well be that the relevant market garden was part of the property of the pub. By 1891, Frank has taken over the pub and is living there with his wife Louisa and two infant children. Also resident is a niece from Portsmouth working as a barmaid and a fourteen year old female domestic servant.

The Shepherd and Dog in the 1920s

The Shepherd and Dog in the 1920s

The records show that, in 1925, the Shepherd and Dog was a quiet place, used mainly by the villagers, with a very large and productive vegetable garden at the back that stretched up to the foot of the Downs. Beer was delivered in a horse and cart by Nobby Richards, who later lived at 23 Clappers Lane. It was not unusual for some of the local lads to ‘borrow’ the odd bottle of beer whilst Nobby was busy unloading. At that time, the beer itself came from the brewery at Poynings which had been opened in 1851 by Samuel Gumbrell, run by members of the Cuttress family, many of whom lived in Fulking or Edburton, for seventy years from 1855, and then, for the period 1925-1940, became Molesworth’s Poynings Brewery Ltd (Holtham 2004, page 8).

Cuttress and Son Poynings Brewery 1900s
During the 1930s, the landlord was Eugene Baldey, whose father was known for running a rather dubious shoot and who was often seen selling game or rabbits at the back of the pub. The pub in those days consisted of two bars: the public and the saloon. The public bar had sawdust on the floor as the farm workers and locals usually came in wearing muddy shoes or boots. The saloon bar was carpeted and used by visitors and the local gentry. It was separated from the public bar by a wall with a serving hatch in it. All drinks were dispensed from the public bar and when someone in the saloon wanted a drink they knocked on the hatch, placed their order and it would then be passed through to them. It was often the case that the same drink in the saloon bar cost a penny more than in the public bar. Lemonade was made on the premises up to 1939, a practice that was resumed for a while after the end of WWII, and the pub’s own cider was legendary. Along with this, children could go to a small window beside the front door, known as the Bottle and Jug and buy a biscuit for a halfpenny. In the 1930s, the young Geoffrey Harris used to buy ten Gold Flake cigarettes for his father, Henry Harris, from the window. These cost sixpence and the kindly landlord would always give him a chocolate biscuit.

The Shepherd and Dog in the 1940s

The Shepherd and Dog in the 1940s

The landlord throughout World War II was Jack Wiseman. During the war, the pub’s trade was reduced to a handful of local people, along with a few Land Army girls and Canadian soldiers billeted in Fulking and Poynings and some British soldiers stationed at Devil’s Dyke and Edburton. For the entire war, Jack was stationed at the King Alfred in Hove, then a training station for naval officers, in charge of naval transport, a position that entitled him to a special petrol allowance and enabled him to return to the pub every evening, often in the company of naval officers who would return with him the following morning. This was a time when bartering and shady black market deals were carried out in many pubs and there were tales of young ladies prepared to grant certain favours to Canadian and American troops in exchange for a pair of nylon stockings, the latter being almost impossible to obtain during the austere wartime conditions.

After the war Captain Cyril Watts, a Canadian Officer who had been previously billeted in the village for the D Day Invasion, returned to the village and took over as landlord, assisted by his wife Kay and sister-in-law Joyce. Cyril was a colourful character. There are stories of him leaning out of one of the upper windows on occasions clad only in pyjamas, shouting at the full moon. Another time, having discovered his wife was having an affair, he hung from an upstairs window until he fell although, as it turns out, he did not injure himself. This was considered to be sufficiently noteworthy to be reported in the News of the World. Later, he was accused of bigamy.

Morris dancers outside the Shepherd and Dog in 1945

The BBC filmed Morris dancers at the Shepherd and Dog in 1945. A photograph taken at the same event was published in
The Times and featured in the newspaper’s calendar the following year.

In the 1940s and 1950s, like many country pubs, the Shepherd and Dog was the focal point for local social activities including a darts and a very successful clay pigeon shooting club. Film shows were featured, children’s Christmas parties were held there and Morris dancing, a regular attraction from 1945, continued up until 2001.

The Hunt Meet in 1946

The Hunt Meet outside the Shepherd and Dog in 1946. They used to meet there every year but an anti-hunting landlord later discouraged it and the hunt moved to the Royal Oak in Poynings where the meet has become a well established tradition.

Before and after the war, up to the 1950s, cream teas were served in the pub gardens when the weather was fine and if it rained, they were served in a green tin shed where the modern brick kitchen now stands. After the floor of the shed collapsed, teas were served in the pub where the dining area is now. With the war now in the past, trade started to improve and the Shepherd and Dog began to grow in popularity. Bob Champion became the next landlord and was known to the locals as ‘Captain Bird’s Eye’ because of his very large, bushy beard.

During the 1950s and into the 1960s, Bill Hollingdale, the village poet and a well known local character, would often recite poetry in the pub for entertainment. The cue for his party-piece was when a young man came into the pub with his girlfriend. Bill would lose no time in making himself known to the couple and on finding out the young lady’s name, he would then quickly adapt a suitable piece of poetry to include it and then recite it to her in a very loud voice to a now silent pub. Being flattered by this attention the girl would insist that her boyfriend should at least buy Bill a pint. He earned quite a few pints this way.

The Shepherd and Dog in the 1960s

The Shepherd and Dog in the 1960s

In 1964 Bob Cruickshank–Smith and his wife Ruby took over as landlords and, in 1965, invited Geoffrey Harris’s firm Springs Smoked Salmon to start serving cold lunches with salad, offering a choice of smoked salmon, trout, pheasant, partridge, and chicken. This was highly successful but had to be discontinued the following year as the main smoked salmon business was expanding so fast they were unable to maintain a regular supply to the pub. By now the structure of the brewery industry was starting to change. Small, privately owned pubs were gradually being bought up and combined into small groups, usually by a brewery, which meant that landlords were now tenants rather than freeholders. The Shepherd and Dog became part of these changes and when Tamplins brewery bought it, Bob and Ruby moved on. Stan Liquorish took over until the mid 1970s with his wife Joan. He was a popular and successful landlord whose deputy, Stan Taylor, later became the landlord of The Plough at Henfield.

From the mid 1970s until the 1990s, Tony Bradley-Hole took over the Shepherd and Dog. In 1978, at the time of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, a fancy dress parade for children took place along The Street in Fulking, finishing with a tea party for the entire village in the pub car park, hosted by the Bradley-Holes. Later that year the pub also organised a torchlight procession through the village which culminated in a bonfire and firework display, on what is today, the front lawn of Cannonberries on the Poynings Road. Similarly, for the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer, the pub offered breakfast to start the day. Villagers then went home to watch the ceremony on television and returned to the pub afterwards for food, drink and a celebration that lasted until midnight. Tony Bradley-Hole was followed by a succession of landlords and during this time it seemed that as soon as a new landlord had built up a good reputation for food, service and a warm welcome at the Shepherd and Dog, the lease would be sold on. There would then follow a slight fall in the pub’s popularity while the next landlord, possibly with a different approach to the business, built up trade again. In January 2006, Geoff Moseley and Jenny Tooley purchased the lease of the pub from Badger, an independent family brewery operated by Hall and Woodhouse, and initiated a major refurbishment.

The Shepherd and Dog in 2007

The Shepherd and Dog in 2007

Architectural notes:

The Shepherd and Dog comprises two Grade II listed buildings. The main building is timber framed, has two storeys wholly faced with stucco, sits on a chalk terrace above the road, and dates from the seventeenth century or earlier. It has a hipped tile roof and casement windows, a bay window on the ground floor, and four hipped dormers on the first floor. The dormers are twentieth century and date from the interwar years. The adjacent stables also has two storeys and casement windows but dates from the eighteenth century. The first floor is slate hung and the ground floor stucco.

Tony Brooks

References

  • Nathaniel Paine Blaker (1919) Sussex in Bygone Days. Hove: Combridges.
  • Peter Holtham (2004) “The brewers of West Sussex”. Sussex Industrial History 34, 2-11, PDF.

[Copyright © 2013, Anthony R. Brooks. Adapted and condensed from Anthony R. Brooks (2008) The Changing Times of Fulking & Edburton. Chichester: RPM Print & Design, pages 9-18.]

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The Aerial Cableway 1894-1909

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The aerial cableway across Devil's Dyke
As the illustrations on this page attest, there was once an aerial cableway across the chasm that has become known as the Devil’s Dyke. An early representation of it is a rather primitive sketch that appears in a book by William Axon that was published in 1897, some three years after the cableway opened.

William Axon 1897 Bygone Sussex. London: William Andrews & Co., facing page 142
The caption to Axon’s drawing refers to an ‘aerial railway’ rather than an ‘aerial cableway’ which is the term that Clark (1976) uses. Many other terms are used in the literature on such systems: ‘aerial ropeway’, ‘cable car system’, ‘overhead tramway’, ‘passenger ropeway’, ‘suspension railway’, ‘wire rope tramway’, and so on. However, since Clark’s booklet is the best available published source on the Dyke installation, his terminology is adopted here.

The aerial cableway circa 1902
The Dyke Railway had begun services in 1887 and James Henry Hubbard, the most energetic Dyke entrepreneur, had bought the hotel and the estate in 1892 and immediately set about exploiting the increase in visitors that the opening of the railway permitted. Thus, on a single public holiday in 1893, he was able to boast of 30,000. The aerial cableway was but one of Hubbard’s ambitious portfolio of attractions designed to boost the visitor numbers yet further. It was first mooted in 1893 and constructed in 1894. It was designed by William Brewer, a civil engineer and inventor.

The installation consisted of 12,000ft of cableway stretched across the ravine. The track cables were suspended from a catenary cable by a series of cast metal supports, having two arms extended outwards and joined to the catenary cable by a vertical rod. The track wheels supporting the cars passed over these anchors, and they were adjusted to preclude all possibility of their running off the tracks. One set of wheels controlled the opposite set. The cars were moved by an endless cable worked by a Crossley’s patent oil engine adjacent to the north station and not by electricity as envisaged in the original proposals. [Clark 1976, page 47]

A 9HP Crossley Brothers Oil Engine from 1892

A 9HP Crossley Brothers oil engine from 1892

One particularly novel feature was the continuity of the line which passed through supports at stated intervals. In other contemporary systems the line would be confined to two given points, necessitating the unslinging and restarting of the cars. There were two cagework cars in use, each seating four passengers and the time taken to cross from one side to the other was about 2 minutes 15 seconds. There were small stations either side of the ravine approximately 1,100ft apart. The height of the cableway from the base of the chasm was 230ft and the clear span between the two huge iron columns supporting the catenary, and embedded in solid masonry, was 650ft. .. The cable rails were less thick than the catenary cable and even if one of the cables parted the stability of the cars would not have been affected, the support provided by the duplication of cables ensuring the cars being maintained in an upright position. [Clark 1976, pages 47-48]

Looking across the Dyke from north to south

Looking across the Dyke from north to south: note the station to the left and the rectangular gap in the pylons through which the cars and the endless cable passed — a key feature of Brewer’s design.

There are three useful ways to evaluate the cableway: (i) as a magnet for day-trippers to the Dyke; (ii) as a public transport link between Poynings and Brighton; and (iii) as an engineering demonstration. These will be considered in turn.

  1. Attracting day-trippers to the Dyke?
    We can safely assume that this is what mattered most to James Henry Hubbard. But, with the passage of time and the absence of any statistics concerning the popularity of the individual attractions that Hubbard had assembled in his nineteenth century theme park, it is impossible to tell what difference the erection of the cableway made or whether the same investment deployed on other attractions would have done better. Paul Clark is sceptical:

    Although the aerial cableway had a good start there is evidence that traffic steadily declined in the early years of the new century; indeed Mr. Hubbard suffered financial difficulties and he was eventually to emigrate to Toronto in 1907. Without the promotion of Mr. Hubbard the cableway’s future was uncertain and it eventually ceased to operate around 1909 although there is no evidence to suggest the exact date. [Clark 1976, page 51]

  2. An important transport link?
    Several writers have suggested that the cableway performed a significant transport function. A Poynings resident could take the steep grade railway to the top of the iron age fort, walk a short distance to the cableway, cross the Dyke, alight, walk a slightly longer distance to the Dyke Station, and catch a train for Brighton. And vice versa, of course. It sounds rather plausible. It even looks plausible when you inspect a 2D map of the locale: if you draw a straight line between the steep grade station and the Dyke station then that part of the line that crosses the Dyke exactly coincides with the route of the cableway. However if you look at a contour map, or simply walk the site, then the plausibility evaporates. The Dyke is not the Grand Canyon. You can just walk round the western end and bypass it. You will end up walking about an extra 500 yards but you will have avoided queuing to buy a ticket, waiting for a cableway car to depart, and spending over two minutes in the air in an open cage enjoying the wind along with the views. Assuming a normal walking pace, getting from the steep grade station to the Dyke Station would have taken at least 9.5 minutes if you used the cableway and at most 12.5 minutes if you simply skirted the Dyke and walked the entire distance. The cableway could not be justified on public transport grounds.

  3. A significant engineering demonstration project?
    As we have seen, there is no reason to suppose that the aerial cableway proved to be a great success as a theme park ride. Nor did it make any significant contribution to public transport on the Downs. But Brewer was an engineer and his cableway was a highly innovative piece of engineering. To substantiate this, we need to delve into the history of cableways. Aerial ropeways have been in use for industrial and military purposes for hundreds of years and must date back to not long after the invention of rope itself. However, the modern aerial cableway only became possible after the invention of sophisticated steel cables in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Brewer did not invent the modern cableway — such systems were in use for moving ore, coal, and similar materials prior to 1894. One such system, the Telpher Line, came into operation in Glynde in 1885 and was used to move bricks from a clay pit over a marsh to a goods siding at the railway station (Pope 1987). Most industrial cableways of the period used a single cable both to suspend the car and to pull it. Those uses conflict. You want a strong (hence thick and stiff) cable to carry the load but a flexible (hence thin and light) cable to tow the car. A single-cable system normally had to involve a compromise. In the case of the Telpher Line, no compromise was required since it dispensed with the towing cable altogether: cars had their own electric motors for locomotion.

    The Telpher Line at Glynde

    The Telpher Line crossing the marsh at Glynde (Pope 1987)

    Given the proximity of Glynde, it is perhaps unsurprising that it was the Telpher Cable and Cliff Railway Syndicate Ltd. that acted as the promoter of Brewer’s cableway in 1893. Unlike the Telpher Line, the latter was a two cable system: a relatively thick one was hung like a suspension bridge to act as a rail and a thin one was used to tow the cars*. Another novel feature of the Brewer design was the centrally located rail cable enabled by the holes in the pylons through which the cars passed. Aerial cableways, even to this day, much more commonly have the rail cable to one side or on both sides of the pylons (as at Glynde). And that means that the centre of gravity of the cars is not aligned with that of the pylons. The off-centre load entails using stronger pylons. Side-hung rail cables also make it harder to employ guy ropes on the pylons lest the cars foul them.

    Clark says that Brewer’s aerial cableway was “the first of its type ever built” (page 47) but it is not really clear what this claim amounts to. Clark may be referring to the characteristics just noted. Or he may be referring to the fact that Brewer’s cableway was designed to carry passengers not freight. One of Hubbard’s promotional posters claimed that his ‘Great Cable Railway’ was the only one in Britain. If true, that would suggest that it was also the first passenger cableway in Britain. Talbot claims that the first passenger cableway in the world was built in Hong Kong by a British firm but fails to provide a date (1914, page 35). Passenger transport imposes different design constraints than freight, most obviously in respect of safety. If a car full of coal becomes detached and drops into a chasm, few beyond the mining site will take any interest in the matter and the economic consequences are slight. A less obvious set of constraints concerns ingress and egress: coal can be dropped into a car from a chute and can leave it through a trap in the bottom. Humans prefer something a little more dignified. Further, cars full of coal or bricks do not get seasick or complain about vibration and noise. Cars full of humans do. From what we know, Brewer’s cableway provided solutions to these various constraints.

    The most obvious problem with Brewer’s creation was that it was in the wrong place. It had no real transport function crossing the Dyke. If it had been thrown across the Avon Gorge or the River Severn, say, then it might still be in use today. And William Brewer might have joined at least the second tier in the pantheon of Victorian era engineers.

Today, all that is left of William Brewer’s magnificent piece of engineering are two ugly chunks of concrete positioned either side of the Dyke. No visitor unfamiliar with the history would guess that they once supported a graceful iron and steel suspension bridge.

Victorian concrete

The remains of the foundations of the northern pylon: a relic that only an industrial historian with a speciality in Victorian concrete could love.


A bovine archaeologist at work.

A bovine archaeologist pursuing field work in the area around what is left of the foundations of the southern pylon.

*In reality there were more than two cables involved: the catenary at the top, two for the rails (one in each direction) the cable loop used for towing the cars, and additional cables to brace the pylons.

References and further reading:

GJMG

Some other material relevant to the C19 and C20 history of the Dyke:

Farmers in Fulking: A History of the Harris Family

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Perching Manor Farm in 2013

My grandfather, Henry Harris, came from a farming family that had farmed in Dorset for about two hundred years. In 1891 he moved to Silton Manor, a farm of about 400 acres near Gillingham in Dorset. His son, my father, was also called Henry. Dad was one of a family of seven boys and six girls. The boys all became farmers and the girls, with one exception, married farmers. Five of Henry’s brothers fought in the 1914-18 war. They were all in the Dorset Yeomanry, as most farmers’ sons were and all returned without serious injury. My father was in Egypt and Palestine fighting the Turks and apart from being stung by a scorpion and a few bouts of dysentery was unscathed. In 1991 a centenary gathering was held at Silton Manor and about sixty relatives and other folk connected with the Harris family attended. Some came from as far afield as New Zealand and one from Zimbabwe. Two coaches were hired to take the guests on a tour of the Dorset farms where members of the family had once been tenants.

Over time the family had been able to purchase the farm and the size of the holding had been greatly increased. Six of the seven sons gradually left Silton once they had saved enough money to branch out on their own, leaving the youngest brother as tenant at Silton, until, at a later date, he was able to buy out his brothers. My father (Henry) married my mother Amy in 1920 and left the family farm in Dorset in the same year. At first Amy stayed behind while Henry moved to Sussex and rented a large farm of about 800 acres in Fulking called Perching Manor. This was in Crown ownership and later more land, adjoining the farm, belonging to Brighton Corporation, was rented. The land associated with these farms had become very run down and it took several years to return the land to good health. Amy came out to join her husband in 1922.

Perching Manor

Perching Manor as it was between the wars

At that time there were no tractors and all the cultivation was done using heavy horses of which there were about ten at Perching. The carters started start work at five o’clock in the morning and stopped at half past three in the afternoon. It took two horses and one carter with a single furrow plough, to plough one acre a day. At the end of the day they then brought the horses back to the stables, fed them and bedded them down for the night.

Harvesting with horses

Harvesting on the Downs above Fulking

It was not long before Henry and Amy’s family had grown considerably. Their eldest child Henry, was born in 1926, Brian came along in 1927 and Geoffrey in 1929. They were followed by Susan in 1932, Edwin in 1936 and Alban in 1940. All the boys except Henry worked at Perching Manor Farm and Susan married a farmer.

The Harris household in 1943

The Harris household in 1943. Front: Amy, Alban, Edwin, Susan, Henry. Behind: Brian, Adolfo Marine [POW], Henry, Carlo Mazon [POW], Geoffrey.

Henry won various scholarships first to Oxford and then to American Institutions. He later became a professor aged 23. He took out American citizenship and spent the rest of his working life teaching classics in the USA and Canada. He retired to Vancouver Island in British Columbia and died in March 2007.

A large part of the farm was on top of the Downs where there were cottages for the farm labourers and stabling for the horses. A large flock of sheep was maintained and the land was kept fertile by folding them over land that was used for growing turnips, swedes and various brassica crops.

Kenneth Rowntree's "Tractor", 1946

A Fordson tractor pulling a two-furrow plough
Kenneth Rowntree, 1946

Henry Harris was a good farmer and soon gained respect among the farming fraternity. In the early years, it was a mixed farm with a large dairy herd, a flock of sheep and a large arable acreage. In 1937/8 Henry bought their first tractor: a Fordson. From then on cultivation became easier. The tractor could pull a two-furrow plough and this meant that three acres a day could be ploughed.

When war was declared in 1939, farmers were pressed into increasing productivity. Perching became much more mechanised and the acreage put to the plough was increased. A greater variety of crops was grown, including flax, potatoes and other vegetables. Any land worked by hobby farmers that was considered unproductive was confiscated and handed to more efficient farmers for the duration of war. My father’s acreage was considerably increased by the scheme.

Bren Gun Carrier

Bren Gun Carrier

In 1941 all of our land on top of the South Downs was requisitioned by the War Department for training the army in the use of live ammunition. This left us with only the north escarpment of the Downs for grazing and a fence was erected along the top of the Downs to keep our cattle off the artillery ranges. However, there was plenty of grazing on the ranges and the temptation was to leave the gate open and let the cattle get to the better pasture. It was during this time, whilst out on my horse looking for our quite large herd of cattle, that I came across a Bren Gun Carrier with some men from the electricity board mending wires that had been brought down by artillery fire. I enquired if they had seen our cattle and they directed me to an area where eight steers and heifers lay dead. Apparently a mortar bomb had landed right in the middle of them and this was the result. It was debatable who had left the gate open, but we claimed the Army was at fault and we were compensated £18 a head for each animal.

In 1942 three Italian POWs came and worked on the farm. They were billeted in the cellar at Perching Manor, which was a great help, as most of our young labourers had been called up. The Italians weren’t repatriated until 1947 and in the meantime we also acquired two German POWs who returned home in 1948. Before the Germans left we were allocated two Latvian displaced persons. One left for Canada after about 3 years, the other, Rudolf, remained at Perching for his entire working life.

Towing combine harvester

“Looking back, it was a rather a ‘Heath Robinson’ affair.”

In 1947 we purchased our first combine harvester. A Minneapolis Moline, which made an 8ft (2.4m) cut and was not selfpropelled. Looking back, it was a rather a ‘Heath Robinson’ affair. But at that time it transformed harvesting. The farm had by now become highly mechanised with several caterpillar tractors and other modern equipment and in 1948 two more combine harvesters were purchased.

The Harris family in the 1950s

The Harris family in the late 1950s. Seated at front: Amy, Henry, Susan. Seated behind: Alban, Brian. Standing at rear: Edwin, Henry, Geoffrey.

In 1950 my father formed a partnership between himself and four of his sons (Brian, Geoffrey, Edwin and Alban). The farm was considerably enlarged in the 1950s with the largest addition being a 250 acre farm purchased at Findon, along with another of 160 acres at Small Dole. By 1960 the Harris holding was in excess of 2000 acres, about half of which was owned by the family and the other half rented.

By this time our milking herd was long gone. It had to be disposed of because it had become too difficult to get staff willing to start very early in the morning and work a seven day week. Perching became an arable, sheep and beef farm, growing about 1000 acres of grain, mainly barley, and maintaining a flock of 1000 breeding sheep and a herd of 250 beef suckler cows. Most of the animals were fattened and then sold on.


Henry Harris died in 1961 aged 72 and his wife Amy in 1990 aged 96. Amy had lived at Perching Manor for sixty years.

Springs Smoked Salmon

Springs Smoked Salmon in Edburton

Geoffrey left the partnership in 1964 and bought the Findon Farm from the business. He and his wife Josephine started Springs Smoked Salmon in the same year and in 1972 they sold the farm and concentrated on the salmon smoking business, which is still carried on by their two youngest sons.

Brian took over running Perching Manor Farm, as his brothers gradually branched out to run their own farms. Edwin went into sheep farming and is now retired. Alban (Shiner) has land at Pyecombe and Fulking and rears beef cattle.

Geoffrey Harris, 2007

[Copyright © 2013, Geoffrey Harris. This memoir first appeared in Anthony R. Brooks (2008) The Changing Times of Fulking & Edburton. Chichester: RPM Print & Design, pages 350-354.]

Editorial postscript: ill health forced Brian Harris to retire from farming in 2006. He died in July the following year and is buried in the churchyard at St. Andrew’s. His daughters took over running Perching Manor Farm.

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Perching Manor

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Apart from St. Andrew’s Church, Perching Manor [Farmhouse] is the only Grade II* listed building in Fulking and Edburton. It is the eighteenth century farmhouse for Perching [Manor] Farm, and it retained its traditional role of providing a home for the farmer until 1984. Modern official records typically refer to the house as ‘Perching Manor Farmhouse’, presumably to distinguish it from the original medieval manor house whose remains lie beneath a nearby field, but the house has been known to locals as ‘Perching Manor’ for well over a hundred years (the 1861 census lists it as ‘Perching House’ whilst the subsequent nineteenth century censuses have it as ‘Manor House Perching’).

Perching Manor in the 1900s

Perching Manor in the 1900s

In a draft of the listing details written in 1947, or shortly thereafter, Anthony Dale FSA described the architecture as follows:

An L-shaped eighteenth century farmhouse, with Gothicized windows; two storeys and attic; five rooms wide; three dormers. Faced with square knapped flints with red brick window dressings, quoins, stringcourses, modillion eaves course and panels between the ground and first floor windows. Tiled roof. Windows with segmental heads and pointed Gothic glazing. The dormers contain casement windows and have artificial depressed heads which have Gothic panes in the sash windows below. Doorway with pilasters, projecting cornice, fanlight glazed with same pattern as the windows and door of six moulded panels.
[Howe 1958, pages 32-33]

The front (east) elevation is of a different design to the back (west), which suggests that the front of the house was extended in the late eighteenth century. A beam, believed to be a chimney beam salvaged from the medieval manor house, is now located over the fireplace in the kitchen. The interior of the house has been modernised but, as can be seen from the illustrations above and below, the exterior has barely changed over the years for which we have a photographic record. In the 1990s, a separate building, which houses a swimming pool, was built in the north east corner of the property where once a rhubarb bed flourished.

In 1835, Nathaniel Blaker took over the tenancy of the farm from Richard Marchant, whose family had lived in the parish for more than a century, and moved from Selmeston to Perching Manor with his wife Elizabeth and their infant son. The son, Nathaniel Paine Blaker [NPB] was to become a distinguished surgeon and, late in life, the author of a memoir that has much to say about life in Fulking in the middle of the nineteenth century. The 1841 census reveals that the Blakers had five servants at that time, more than any other family in the parish. Among them was Charlotte Paine, aged 13, who was NPB’s nanny. The household is much the same ten years later although Elizabeth’s widowed mother has joined them. The five servants then include a cook and a groom but the nanny is gone — NPB is sixteen. He tells the following anecdote about his father:

Among other things, my father had learned to “hold plough”, a not very easy accomplishment, as anyone not accustomed to it is likely to find by receiving a blow in the face from the plough handles. One day he had occasion to find fault with the carter for not ploughing the ground properly. The man replied: “Then you’d better do it yourself”. My father answered: “Stand aside and I will”. He ploughed one or two furrows, and handed back the plough to the man, who remained with him, an excellent servant, for fourteen years, and died in the Sussex County Hospital, when I was House Surgeon. [Blaker 1919, pages 1-2]

Perching Farm 1842

A map of the Perching Farm buildings in 1842, during Nathaniel Blaker’s tenancy. Perching Manor is marked in red. The physical layout is much the same today except that the farm buildings have been converted for residential use. The current farm and farmhouse is slightly further north.

One of the jobs that came with being lord of the manor was that of ‘way warden’ — responsibility for the maintenance of the local roads. And with this job came controversy. In 1843, Nathaniel Blaker was summoned to court following a complaint from a Woodmancote resident that he was failing to maintain Holmbush Lane (now known as Bramlands Lane). He immediately called a ratepayer’s meeting at the Shepherd & Dog. The meeting decided that “the attempt to make the Hamlet of Fulking repair any part of the Holmbush Lane should be resisted”. It was resisted and, in due course, the matter was resolved in Fulking’s favour [Howe 1958, page 29].

The grave of Selina and Eli Page

The grave of Selina and Eli Page in the churchyard of St. Andrew’s, Edburton.

The Blakers left Perching Manor in 1856 or 1857 and Eli and Selina Page became the tenants of house and the farm. Eli Page is recorded as way warden in 1857. The Pages were in their late 30s at that time. The 1861 census records the family as consisting of four daughters, a son Richard, and Selina’s 80 year old widowed mother. No servants are listed. By 1871, Selina is listed as ‘farmer’ and head of family. The household then consists of three daughters, the youngest son Naphtali (Nap), who had been born at the farm in 1862, a granddaughter, a governess, a male domestic servant, and a visiting drapers assistant. Richard has married and is farming elsewhere in the parish. By 1881, the draper’s assistant, now listed as ‘draper’, has married Mary, one of the Page daughters, and is living at the manor with his wife and child. Selina is still the head of the household which comprises Nap (then 18), two other adult daughters, two other granddaughters, and a further child. There are no servants. Selina died in 1886, and by 1891, her family has left and Perching Manor is in the hands of Jemima Page, 62, living with a single female servant. Nap has married and is farming elsewhere in the parish. Jemima was not one of Selina’s daughters — she derived her surname through marriage to a Page. She does not appear in any of the earlier Edburton census records. She was, perhaps, a sister-in-law to Eli. Eli himself died in 1896. As pastor of the Mayfield Baptist chapel, he may have been living near there.

In 1901, Nap Page took over running the estate.
Nap Page

Nap was named after one of the twelve tribes of Israel [Naphtali], his father being a baptist minister. As a young man he was inclined to wildness, and was said to have ridden on horseback down Devil’s Dyke for a wager. He also rode regularly to his cousin John Page at Lodge Farm, Ringmer, for all-night card sessions. Rather than stick to the roads, he would go across the fields, jumping the hedges. Several photos survive of Nap. One shows him with a hen on his knee — this was Chuckles who was supposed to have laid an egg for Nap in his bedroom each morning. Another photo shows him in a long coat and bowler hat supervising the annual sheep shearing, sometime before 1912. A further photo shows Nap’s funeral procession leaving for Edburton church, with his favourite horse following behind the bier.
[Wales 1999, page 109]

William Beard, who had known Nap when he was a young man, recollected that:

It was sometimes said by older men that Nap Page was not as good a farmer as his father, Eli, but all who knew him agreed that there was no more jovial or generous host than the Squire of Perching Manor. His rather early death was greatly deplored! His passing marked the end of a period — the Horse Age. [Beard 1954]

As this quotation suggests, Nap adopted the role of country squire, becoming a keen huntsman and entertaining in a lavish style. Unfortunately, his interest in farming was minimal and by the time he died in 1920, the farm had become badly neglected.

Perching Manor 1911

The South Down Foxhounds assembled outside Perching Manor in 1911 during the Nap Page tenancy.

In 1920, Henry Harris, an experienced and well-respected farmer, took over the tenancy of Perching Manor and the farm and gradually returned the land to good heart. Thus, for example, his sons recalled having to remove couch grass from the upper parts of the Downs for many years. Henry became Chairman of the Parish Council, was instrumental in having the telephone service extended from Poynings to Fulking, and arranged for the Southdown bus service to be routed through the village. During the war he was the Home Guard sergeant for Fulking and later became officer in charge. In the early years, his 800 acre farm employed a workforce of 16 men and a dozen horses to tend 1000 Border Leicester sheep, 60 milking cows, a small herd of pigs and some 30 acres of arable land growing a mixed crop of wheat, flax, oats (for the horses) and barley (for the pigs). The remaining acreage was grazing pasture for cows and sheep, along with a market garden growing potatoes and onions.

Perching Manor in the 1950s

Perching Manor in the 1950s. Note the TV aerial.

During the war, a team of land girls came in for the harvests and the male workforce included two German and three Italian PoWs, the latter being billeted in the cellar at Perching Manor. The PoWs were repatriated in 1947 and 1948 and replaced by two displaced persons from Latvia. From around 1938 on, the farm acquired tractors and these rapidly displaced the horses and halved the workforce. After the war, three combine harvesters were purchased. During the 1950s, the farm holdings expanded to more than 2000 acres including 1000 acres for grain, 1000 sheep, and 250 cows bred for beef. When Henry Harris died in 1961, aged 72, his sons initially continued to run the farm as tenants of the Crown before Brian Harris took sole charge. In 1984, the Crown broke up the estate. The farm was sold to the National Freight Corporation and Perching Manor itself, which had always been the main farmhouse and the home of the farmer, was sold as a separate lot to the Dubrey family. The house remains in private ownership.

Perching Manor in 2007

Perching Manor in 2007

Tony Brooks

References

  • William Beard (1954) Glimpses of past personalities. St. Andrews Quarterly 24.
  • Nathaniel Paine Blaker (1919) Sussex in Bygone Days. Hove: Combridges.
  • F.A. Howe (1958) A Chronicle of Edburton and Fulking in the County of Sussex. Crawley: Hubners Ltd.
  • Tony Wales (1999) The West Sussex Village Book. Newbury: Countryside Books.

[Copyright © 2013, Anthony R. Brooks. Adapted from Anthony R. Brooks (2008) The Changing Times of Fulking & Edburton. Chichester: RPM Print & Design, pages 191-193.]

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The manor of Perching

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Gules fleur de lis argent

Gules fleur de lis argent: the arms of the wealthy and influential Aguillon family who held the manor of Perching for much of the 13th century.

Nowadays, we think of ‘a manor’ as being a house, probably a modestly grand one (but immodestly grand if built and named recently), or as police slang from the days of The Sweeney. However, for a significant part of England’s history, a manor was primarily a feudal estate and a local administrative and judicial unit. If the lord of the manor lived in a house on the estate then that house would have been known as the manor house. The estate typically contained farms and these were operated either by the lord of the manor himself or by tenants. Manors could be quite large: they might subsume an entire parish or even spread over more than one. In the case of Edburton, the historic parish contains four small manors: Aburton, Paythorne, Perching and Truleigh. Of these, Perching was by far the most important, especially during the Aguillon incumbency.

The four manors of Edburton, in common with others found along the South Downs, are oddly arranged to the modern eye. Together with Fulking*, they partition the parish into long thin irregularly shaped strips running from south to north. The explanation for this topography lies in the fact that the manors owed their existence to farming. Each manor was a self-contained mixed farming zone:

Each had its chunk of Down pasture, its rich malm and greensand arable under the Downs, its sticky wooded patch of gault clay beyond, and fertile lower greensand at the northern end. .. Each of the farmsteads had a daughter farm to the north on the lower greensand — Truleigh Sands, Edburton Sands, Nettledown, and Perching Sands. The woods of Tottington Longlands and Perching Hovel mark the poorly drained gault clay.
[Bangs 2008, page 216]

Sheep were grazed on the Downs, the northern escarpment provided chalk for lime and springs for a water supply, and the weald provided suitable land for crops, cattle, and rabbit warrens as well as woods providing timber and charcoal and a home for swine. In addition to the northern daughter farms listed by Bangs, at least some of the manors once had southern daughter farms located on the top of the Downs. Thus Paythorne had Summersdeane which had survived as a farm from Saxon times until Canadian tanks used it for target practice during WWII. In the case of Perching, the southern farm was probably located at the deserted medieval settlement to the east of the modern, but now dilapidated, Perching Hill Barn buildings.

Site of the medieval_village of Perching

The site of the medieval settlement on Perching Hill. Note the strip lynchets — ploughed cultivation terraces. There was an underground water supply available, currently attested by the well adjacent to Perching Hill Barn.

Perching had a watermill in 1086 when the Domesday Book was compiled. This was used to grind the grain grown by the lord of the manor and his tenants. The latter had no choice — they had to use their lord’s mill and pay for the privilege. The mill was located at the north end of the estate and had fallen out of use by the end of the eighteenth century. Howe [1958, page 22] notes the remains of a mill hatch which may mark the location.
Diagram of a Domesday-era water mill

Diagram of a Domesday-era water mill

After detailing the somewhat complex genealogy that explains how Perching came to the Aguillons, Howe goes on to tell us that:

Perching was now in the hands of a powerful family of considerable note. They were important in the county, for thirteen legal decisions are extant on their tenure of properties in Sussex other than Edburton between 1190 and 1298. They also held estates elsewhere, from one of the chief of which, Addington in Surrey, much can be learned which is of interest for Edburton. They were important to the crown as holding Addington by a service of cookery at coronations. The obligation was no doubt a proud privilege, just as to this day are the duties of bearing certain of the insignia at coronations. The duty is defined as “a sergeantry of making a hotch-potch in a yellow dish in the king’s kitchen on the day of his coronation or by deputy”. Perching was not held by this service, but the succession at Addington and Perching had been the same. The first Norman tenant of both had been Tezelin, the Conqueror’s cook. It is not only that the two manors were so closely connected, nor even the flavour of the kitchen, that is the most significant, but that the family was so closely tied to the crown at a time when so many of the feudal lords were in revolt. Robert, the son of William, and his heir and successor at Perching, was a devoted royalist, in whom the king had such confidence as to allow him to fortify his manor-house. In 1264 a licence [to crenellate] was granted. Meanwhile, Robert had died, in 1261, and in 1268 the licence was renewed to his son, also named Robert. [Howe 1958, pages 8-9]

In contrast to Victorian times, the desire to crenellate a manor was not an aesthetic matter, nor an academic one. The king would have wished to ensure that his supporters were in a position to defend themselves. This was a period when the king and the barons were in dispute. Robert Aguillon was loyal to the king but his overlord, the Earl of Warenne was a militant baron. Relations between them were not good as this document of a prosecution for trespass from 1274 demonstrates:

To the sheriff of Sussex. Whereas the king, at the prosecution of Robert Aguillon, lately ordered him to move the men of John de Warenne, earl of Surrey, archers and other armed men, who wander about Robert’s manor of Percynges and about his other lands, and lie in wait by day and night for his men, and aggrieve and disquiet them, from the said manor and lands, and the archers and other armed men, although warned by the sheriff on the king’s behalf to depart quietly from the manor and lands, still remain there doing worse damage to Robert and his men, whereat the king is moved: the king therefore orders the sheriff, if the archers and men still remain there and refuse to depart, to take them and keep them in prison until otherwise ordered. [Calendar of the Close Rolls, Henry III, 27th March 1274, quoted by Howe 1958, page 9]

When the younger Robert died, in 1286, Perching manor alone had been providing him with an income of around £100,000 per annum in today’s money (calculated on the basis of the relative price of eggs). And he was the lord of many manors.

The site of the original Perching Manor House

The site of the original Perching Manor House

The building that the Aguillons sought and gained permission to fortify was not, of course, the house that we know as Perching Manor today. The thirteenth century Aguillon manor house stood midway between Paythorne and Perching farms in what is now a field, Frog Holt, immediately south of Perching Hovel Wood. Howe remarks that “it is not known when [it] ceased to be occupied or when it was demolished” [1958, page 33]. There’s not a lot left to see though a portion of the moat persists.
Crenellation licence issued to Robert Ardern 1329

Fortification of the manor continued in the fourteenth century

In the fourteenth century, Perching passed into the hands of the de Arderns, then Sir Michael de Poynings and thence, by marriage, to the Earls of Northumberland. When the 6th Earl was executed for treason in the sixteenth century, all his property was confiscated by the crown. The king then granted Perching to the father of the first Lord Montague (of Cowdray). When the last Lord Montague died, at the end of the eighteenth century, the estate returned to the crown. Throughout the seventeenth century, Perching was held by the Colstock family as tenants of the Montagues. During the time of the Rump Parliament, Thomas Colstock, a royalist, found himself having to appear before the sinister but delightfully named Committee for Compounding with Delinquents in order to retain control of Perching.

*The manorial status of Fulking is complex. It was once a component of the manor of Shipley, then became detached and was eventually absorbed by Perching [see Howe 1958, page 6 for the details]. The Old Farmhouse may have been the manor house.

References:

  • Dave Bangs (2008) A Freedom to Roam Guide to the Brighton Downs. Portsmouth: Bishop Printers.
  • F.A. Howe (1958) A Chronicle of Edburton and Fulking in the County of Sussex. Crawley: Hubners Ltd. [The definitive source on the early history of Perching. Most of the information presented above comes from Howe’s book.]
  • L.F. Salzman, ed. (1940) A History of the County of Sussex, Volume 7: The rape of Lewes. London: Victoria County History, pages 202-204. [This contains a lot of detail on the early history of Perching, albeit in a much less readable manner than Howe. But, unlike Howe, it is just a click away.]

GJMG

Updated 2nd March, 2013.

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Knole House

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Edburton Tithe Map 1842

Knole House is the red square near the top of this 1842 map excerpt.

Prior to the twentieth century, there was very little housing in Clappers Lane. The present Knole House is built on one of the oldest residential sites. There was a small cottage on the site in 1701 and the cottage was probably built some time before 1650. That cottage seems to have endured for three centuries. On the north side there is an old droveway which originally linked farms in Poynings with Clappers Lane. There was a small orchard in the southern part of the grounds, which is gault clay. There were still about forty fruit trees there in the early 1950s. Immediately due south of the property is a field called The Knoll.

Census records show that the cottage was occupied by the Hurssey family in the mid-nineteenth century. In 1841, Daniel Hurssey, his wife, and two adult sons are listed at Clappers, but this is most probably a reference to the area rather than the to house of that name, which was just across the road from Knole House. By 1851 one of the sons had married and fathered a child. All six were living in Knole House and the occupation of each of the three adult males is listed as market gardener. In 1861, Daniel, now aged 74, has become a widower and is living in Knole House with an adult grandson and a female servant from the Beard family. One of his sons is living elsewhere in the village with wife and child.

By 1871, all the Hursseys have left the parish and Henry Sayers, a widower, has moved into Knole House with three children and a housekeeper. Like Daniel Hurssey, Henry was a market gardener and he had already been living in Fulking for at least twenty years. By 1881 he had remarried and he and his second wife remained at Knole House until at least 1901, when Henry was 79.

Nowadays, Knole House is shielded by trees and cannot be easily seen from the lane. But the location is explicitly marked and named in many old maps. This example from a 1898 guide book to Sussex suggests that it was a landmark at that time. It may be that the adjacent ford provided a watering place for horses.

At some point during the early years of the twentieth century, the cottage passed into the hands of Henry Young, a builder whose firm was called ‘H.Young & Son’. He was contracted to construct Fulking Village Hall in 1925/26. Henry’s son Sid and his wife May subsequently inherited the cottage and lived there. May Young, a pleasant, cheerful lady with a good sense of humour was the district nurse for the local villages, who at first made her calls on a bicycle, but was later provided with a car to make her rounds. In those days there was no local health centre with up to date facilities nearby. A visit to the doctor had to be paid for and admission to hospital cost a great deal of money. Nurse Young was thus the first person to receive a cry for help for any medical emergency. Even today, some of the older village residents recall being told that they were delivered at home with her assistance. The Youngs also sold fruit from the trees in the garden. When Sid Young died, May moved initially to Primrose Cottage, and later to Teapot Row, in The Street, Fulking. She put Knole House on the market, but it remained empty for some time.

The View from Knole House

The view of Wolstonbury Hill from Knole House around 1990, much as it would have been 300 years earlier.

When the Youngs lived in the cottage, they used the adjacent stream as their water supply just as all the previous residents had. There was no electricity (or gas) so lighting required candles or oil lamps. There was no sanitation. Nothing much had changed since the cottage was built — except that the quality of the water available from the stream had deteriorated thanks to chemical run-off from the fields. Furthermore, the foundations of the cottage, which sat on greensand, were unsound and needed serious attention. Despite the idyllic location, it is little wonder that the cottage remained empty — it was not in a condition that would have attracted domestic buyers in the 1950s.

Two mid-C20 snaps of Knole House

Two snaps of Knole House as it was prior to Ray Nobbs’s reconstruction in the mid-1950s. Note the porch, the steeply pitched slate roof, the small-pane windows, and the very distinctive patterned tile hanging. The young man in the picture on the right is Ray’s son Chris.

Knole House was purchased in 1954 by Ray Nobbs. Ray was a builder who had the skills that were needed to rescue the cottage, and the vision to see what it could become. He demolished much of it but then rebuilt it on sound foundations in exactly the same location. Parts that were retained, including at least one of the end walls and the associated fireplace and chimney stack, had to be excavated and then underpinned with concrete. The original cottage had had a roof with a relatively steep pitch with slates at the front and tiles at the back. The rebuild had a roof with a shallower pitch and tiles throughout. Chris Nobbs notes:

During renovations Dad unearthed what we thought was a fourteenth century window, from looking at old churches. This was at the back of the house where the old walls were massive and built of flint cobbles, previous occupants had a kitchen here of sorts, it had a very old sink anyway. Down a few steps from here was a kind of cellar with grills to the outside admitting a little light, there were several rings in the floor and we thought that long ago livestock may have been kept. That is actually below the present kitchen extending to the conservatory. The wall at the front was old tiles and brick but beneath that we discovered the original massive oak beams which formed the superstructure and between were laths plastered with wattle and daub.

An immediate priority was the water supply: Ray enlisted the services of Mr Spronket, water diviner, and then dug a well in the grounds, a well which still functions today. And, in the 1960s, Ray was instrumental in securing a mains water supply for the houses in Clappers Lane. In his reconstruction, Ray used materials salvaged from the original cottage and from various old houses and churches in the Brighton and Hove area that had been demolished. As a consequence the house has many interesting features including an old gallery staircase; large, very heavy, solid wooden doors; and a unique front door, along with beams and attractive arches in the hall. One feature that he restored was the linhay, a lean-to shed attached to the north end of the house. This linhay was to assume an interesting role in the subsequent history of the house.

Knole House as it was in 2007

Knole House as it was in 2007. Note the conical porch, the shallow pitch Keymer-tiled roof, the first floor hanging tiles, the distinctive windows with their gothic sidelights, and the side-wall of the linhay on the right.

In 1987, Ray Nobbs and his wife moved to a bungalow in Hassocks. They sold Knole House to Jill and Nick Bremer. The Bremers made some further architectural changes, most notably restoring Keymer tile-hanging to the front of the house (which had been left rendered by Ray). They retained the unusual conical porch that Ray had installed. They converted the attic over the garage, formerly the shed for a carriage, into a proper room with a view over the fields. The linhay had been in use for storage and as a utility room. The Bremers doubled its size, re-roofed it with glass, and converted it into an artist’s studio. When the Bremers sold the house in 2007 and moved to Devon, the buyer was another professional artist, one who continues to use the linhay as his studio.

Tony Brooks

Maps

  • The Edburton Tithe Map, 1842 [digitised by the West Sussex Record Office, Chichester].
  • Map of the Brighton area by J. Bartholomew and Co., reproduced in A.R. Hope Moncrieff (1898) Black’s Guide to Sussex and its Watering Places. London: Adam and Charles Black, facing page 30.

With thanks to Chris Nobbs for reminiscences of his time at Knole House and to Jill and Nick Bremer and to James Lightfoot for their help with source materials for this post.

[Copyright © 2013, Anthony R. Brooks. Adapted from Anthony R. Brooks (2008) The Changing Times of Fulking & Edburton. Chichester: RPM Print & Design, pages 84-85.]

Updated to include reference to Henry Young, 9th February 2015.

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The Dyke Railway 1887-1938

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Dyke Railway Station around 1905

Dyke Station viewed from the south around 1905. Note the goods wagons to the right of the platform and the fenced lane leading up the hill. The farmhouse at top right was destroyed during WWII.

Plans for a railway to link Brighton to the Dyke were first mooted in the early 1870s but did not receive parliamentary approval until 1877. It took another decade before the railway was finally opened. In addition to the usual legal and property issues that attend the creation of a railway line, the overall gradient of 1 in 40 posed a significant technical challenge as did the hard chalk rock found at the end of the route. Indeed, the terminus of the line fell short of the Dyke by several hundred yards because the gradient at that point made further extension impractical.

Over the first year of operation, some 160,000 passengers were carried. The only intermediate stop at that time was at West Brighton (now Hove) Station. The total distance was 5.5 miles of which 3.5 were on the slope of the Downs. The trip took twenty minutes (just as the 77 bus from Brighton Station does today). The first additional intermediate stop to be added to the line was Golf Club Halt in 1891. This was a private platform built on what was then the property of Brighton & Hove Golf Club and provided for the use of its members. Two further intermediate stops opened in 1905, both on the main Brighton-Portsmouth line: Dyke Junction Halt (later renamed Aldrington Halt) and Holland Road Halt. The fourth, and final, addition was Rowan Halt built in 1933 to serve the new Aldrington Manor Estate that was then being developed to the north of the Old Shoreham Road.

The railway remained in operation for half a century with the exception of a closure of three and a half years at the end of WWI. When the line first opened in September 1887, there were eight trains a day (five on Sundays) between Brighton and the Dyke (and conversely). In June 1912, there were eleven trains a day (one fewer on Sundays). In November 1938, the penultimate month of operation, there were sixteen trains a day (half as many on Sundays). Conventional locomotives were used for most of the line’s life although a prototype steam railbus (essentially a large bus mounted on two bogies) was employed on the line in the mid-1930s and proved to be very popular with customers.

Dyke Railway map from the 1890s.

An 1890s map showing the route of the Dyke Railway

Although useful to members of the various golf clubs situated between Brighton and the Dyke, the primary passenger function of the railway was to take day trippers up to the Dyke in the morning and bring them back in the evening. Demand was thus seasonal and weather-dependent. Many of these visitors would use the Dyke as the basis for a day’s walking. Teashops sprang up in the villages at the foot of the Dyke to cater for their needs. Fulking and Saddlescombe each had one and Poynings had four at one stage. For those unwilling to stray off the Dyke itself, refreshments were also to be had at the Dyke Hotel and at Dennett’s Corner which was only a few yards from the station. A secondary passenger function was to take residents of Edburton, Fulking, Poynings, Saddlescombe and the various local farms into Brighton. The roads were poor and buses did not reach the Dyke until the 1930s. If you were not wealthy enough to have the use of a horse or, later, a car, then access to Brighton was difficult before the railway was built. Locals used the service to shop in Brighton and others commuted to work there.

Passengers were the main focus of the railway. But it also offered a goods service and this was economically important to the local villages. A goods siding was built at the Dyke Station in 1892. Coal, coke, cattle fodder and parcels were transported to the Dyke and collected from the station by horse and cart or by the local coal merchant. The latter then delivered both coal and parcels in the villages (and was paid a penny for each parcel by the railway company). On the return journey, goods wagons would take straw, hay, grain and local produce from the farms and market gardens into Brighton. Goods traffic was discontinued in January 1933.

Dyke Station viewed from the north around 1911

Dyke Station viewed from the north around 1911. Note the signal box, the goods siding to the left of the platform, and the fenced lane, complete with ‘Suttons Seeds’ billboard, leading from the station to the roads to the Dyke Hotel and to Saddlescombe. The old carriage, with attached sheds, in the foreground was used as a refreshment room. In a very similar contemporary photo, a horse and wagon can be seen drawn up besides goods trucks in the siding (Harding 2000, page 10).

Golf Club Halt was a request stop rather than a real station. It never appeared in the rail timetables. However, the wishes of club members were reflected in the details of those timetables. There was a platform but that was all. You couldn’t buy a ticket for it — you had to purchase a ticket for the Dyke Station. If there were golfers on board, then the train would stop there to let them off. On the return journey, the train would stop to pick up golfers if they were visible on the platform (after dark, they struck matches). The platform was (and is) some fifty yards north of the clubhouse, perhaps because the gradient adjacent to the clubhouse made a more convenient location infeasible. However, from 1895 on, when a train was about to leave the Dyke Station, a bell would ring in the clubhouse alerting departing members to the need to make their way to the platform immediately. Although club members had mostly taken to using motor cars in the 1930s, the halt remained in use (especially when the weather was poor) until the railway itself was closed.

Golf Club Halt 2012

Golf Club Halt — the edge of the platform in 2012

What remains of the railway today? South of the bypass, Brighton’s urban sprawl has eradicated almost every trace of it. Aldrington Halt remains in use, albeit unmanned. North of the bypass, the route is still visible either from the sky or on the ground, but you need to know what to look for. The cuttings and embankments that were needed to make the uphill route possible are there and dense scrub marks the location of the track for several long stretches. A public cycleway (the Dyke Railway Trail) running parallel to, or along, the track extends from the bypass to Brighton & Hove Golf Club. From then on, the line of the track runs through private farmland but a strip of scrub reveals its presence. Much of Golf Club Halt, which was never more than a platform, is still there, hidden in the scrub. At the northern terminus, Devil’s Dyke Farm now stands where Dyke Station once was. All that was left of the station a dozen years ago was a small chunk of the platform.

Further reading:

  • Paul Clark (1976) The Railways of Devil’s Dyke, Sheffield: Turntable Publications. [This booklet contains a detailed history of all aspects of the line and includes maps, photos, transcripts of relevant documents, and engineering diagrams.]

  • Peter A. Harding (2000) The Dyke Branch Line, Byfleet: Binfield Print & Design. [Reprinted in 2011, this well illustrated booklet is currently the most readily available work on the history of the railway.]

  • Hove Borough Council (1989) Dyke Railway Trail [PDF], a four page leaflet. [The map contains a number of errors: e.g., both the exact railway route and Golf Club Halt are mislocated. Nevertheless, the leaflet is still useful if you plan a walk in the area.]

  • Barry Hughes (2000) Brighton & Hove Golf Club: A History to the Year 2000. Brighton: B&HGC. [Pages 27, 30, 33, 42, 48, 60-61, and 115 contain material relevant to the railway and Golf Club Halt.]

GJMG

Some other material relevant to the C19 and C20 history of the Dyke:

Castle Ring

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The location of Castle Ring

A nineteenth century Ordnance Survey map showing the location of Castle Ring in relation to Edburton Road which sits some 400 feet below it.

Castle Ring[s], also known as Edburton Castle or Edburton Camp, sits at the peak of Edburton Hill on the Downs halfway between Fulking and Edburton. It cannot be seen from the road. It can just be seen from the South Downs Way as you descend the western slope of Perching Hill, but only if you already know what you are looking for. There is no marked footpath to it. Getting there entails a steep climb across a field. But it is worth the effort. The structure itself, which has ‘scheduled monument’ status, is impressive and the views over the Weald are the equal of those from the Dyke.

Castle Ring has not been excavated and rather little is known about it or what it was for. Even the date of construction is uncertain although most sources point to the end of the 11th century, immediately after the Norman conquest. Volume 1 of the Victoria County History, published in 1905, refers to it as “this curious little work” and remarks that:

There no traces of masonry, and, as far as one can see, there is no supply of water near. Why it should be placed here is a mystery, unless, indeed it was a signalling station visible perhaps from Pulborough and Knepp Castle.
[Page 1905, page 476]

Volume 7, published in 1940, is likewise terse:

It has a very small rectangular bailey [= external wall], and an equally insignificant motte [= mound]. It is probably an outpost castle constructed soon after the landing in 1066. The boundary of the rape [= administrative district], and the division between East and West Sussex, passes immediately to the west of the motte ditch.
[Salzmann 1940, page 202]

Plan of Castle Ring

Plan of Castle Ring taken from Allcroft 1908, page 660

Hadrian Allcroft’s magisterial Earthwork of England, published in 1908, still provides the most comprehensive archaeological description and discussion of the site:

Edburton Camp crowns a prominent hill-bastion of the northern face of the Downs .. In position it resembles Chanctonbury, as also in having one vallum [= earth rampart] and one fosse [= trench or moat], but it is singularly small even for a Sussex fortress, measuring no more than 60 yards across the widest diameter of the diminutive area, and in plan is quite unlike any other hill-top fortress. The line of the defences follows the oval contour of the exiguous hill-top on all except the southern side, where it is interrupted by a depressed mound of 100 feet in diameter, the fosse looping outwards to cover the base of the mound. The whole plan, therefore, is at first sight much that of the simplest form of mount-and-bailey fortress. But on close examination this resemblance will be found to be less real than apparent: the mound is too low to have been a motte, for it does not attain even to the 10 feet or so of vertical height reached by the vallum on either side of it, and it can never have been much higher than it now is, for had it been greatly wasted the fosse along its southern side must have been far less deep than now, and the depression at its centre must have disappeared. More important still, the fosse is not carried round the northern side of the mound, and apparently never was. The vallum to east and west rises to more than average height, but ends abruptly, neither reaching to the mound nor being continued round its base. A shepherd’s path traverses the area, passing the vallum by openings seemingly both original in the eastern and western sides. From the western entrance commences a second vallum, which follows the edge of the fosse right round the southern angle of the camp and then gradually disappears. It is at its highest in the angle where the fosse bends to accommodate the mound, and at this point is a circular depression about 8 feet wide in its broad summit. The great mound is neither flat-topped nor ringed by a vallum, but in its centre has a cup-shaped basin 33 feet in diameter and perhaps 3 feet deep. The ground to the south of the camp is to all intents level, but there are no signs of any outworks, unless a small and low mound 80 yards to the south-west be such. From the eastern entrance, where the slope is steeper, a very slight scarp is traceable for some 40 yards in a direction west of south. It is perhaps an old plough-mark. Fragments of pottery are to be found in the mole-casts along it. Further to the west lie several barrows which have yielded very early remains.

Of all the South Down camps this is the most puzzling: it would indeed be difficult to find another like it anywhere. It has been said of it that it “has nothing in common with the hill-forts (of Sussex).” One would rather say that it has everything in common with them except the mound. The nearest analogy to the mysterious mound with its depression is that within the area of Mt. Caburn, which would seem to have been a reservoir. It is much to be regretted that Pitt-Rivers, who explored the one, did not examine the other also; and small as Edburton Camp is, the task of exploring it completely would be an easy one. Meanwhile there is nothing but conjecture. Some have suggested that the mound was a beacon. If that were so, what was the need of the rest of the earthworks? Yet they are all apparently of one plan with the mound and of one date. Others believe it to be a Norman fortress; but against this is the absence of any encircling fosse about the whole of the mound, quite apart from the exceptional character of the site, at an elevation such that no water can have been found within several hundreds of feet at any time during many centuries past. Edburton must remain a mystery until the spade is brought to unlock its secret.
[Allcroft 1908, pages 659-662, footnotes omitted]

Google Earth image of Castle Ring

Aerial photograph of Castle Ring from Google Earth

Recent reference material (i) lists the structure as “Early Medieval/Dark Age — 410 AD to 1065 AD” but then immediately goes on to say that it is believed to be Norman; (ii) claims that the central depression resulted from “mistaken barrow digging in the 19th century” but offers no evidence for this speculation; and (iii) suggests that the use of Castle Ring was “more likely to have been administrative and residential” than military but fails to address the implications of the apparent absence of any water supply. It seems that Allcroft’s conclusion — “Edburton must remain a mystery until the spade is brought to unlock its secret” — is as true today as it was more than a century ago.

References and further reading:

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Nathaniel Paine Blaker

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Nathaniel Paine Blaker 1835-1920

Portrait of Nathaniel Paine Blaker (1835-1920) by A.H. Fry


The Blakers are a Sussex family with a long pedigree. They have been around since at least the end of the thirteenth century and their Portslade branch dates back to the end of the fifteenth century. Although he was born in Selmeston, Nathaniel Paine Blaker (1835-1920) [NPB, henceforth] descended from the Portslade Blakers. NPB’s great grandfather, Nathaniel Blaker, who died in 1815, was “a very prominent citizen of Portslade in the 18th century” according to The History of Portslade: An Interim Report. One of his seven sons, also called Nathaniel Blaker (1772-1863), moved to Selmeston. And he in turn had a son, also called Nathaniel Blaker (1800-1880), a farmer who moved to Perching Manor in Fulking with his wife and son in 1835, shortly after the birth of NPB, who was to remain an only child. It was clearly a prosperous family — the 1841 census records a total of five household servants, more than any other household in the parish of Edburton at that time.

NPB trained as a surgeon. Although his father was a farmer, and probably his grandfather too, such a choice of career was in no way surprising for a Blaker — two cousins and a great uncle also became surgeons. NPB started at Sussex County in 1852 and then went on to Guy’s in 1855, qualifying in 1858. He practiced at convict hospitals in Lewes and Woking before returning to work in Brighton, initially as House Surgeon at the Brighton & Hove Dispensary in 1860 and then in the same role at Sussex County in 1864 with promotion to Assistant Surgeon in 1869, later becoming a Senior Surgeon and subsequently Consulting Surgeon there.

Sussex County Hospital as it was in the mid nineteenth century

Sussex County Hospital in the mid nineteenth century


At some point when NPB was in his 60s, a medical friend suggested that NPB commit his reminiscences to paper. He was, presumably, expecting a record that would concentrate on NPB’s long medical career. But that is not what he got. In 1906, NPB wrote to his friend as follows:

Though medical matters are, of course, what you are most interested in, I trust you will pardon my endeavour to give a sketch of a Sussex village as in childhood I recollect it, before railways, better roads and easier means of communication had done away with the primitive habits and customs of the rural population as I first knew them.
[Letter to Dr. Arthur Newsholme, 30th July 1906]

Sussex in Bygone Days: title and facing pages

Sussex in Bygone Days: title and facing page

In the event, NPB’s informative and affectionate portrait of rural Sussex as seen through the eyes of a child and teenager occupies the first 138 pages of the book that he wrote. The long medical career gets a mere 60 pages and he tells us virtually nothing of his life from 1870 onwards. But he got the balance right. Miles of shelves in Hay-on-Wye groan and splinter under the weight of dusty Victorian medical reminiscences that few buy and fewer read. By contrast, various editions of Sussex in Bygone Days, including modern paperback copies, are readily available on Amazon and elsewhere. The original version of the book was printed, “for private circulation only”, in 1906. The version that is most readily available today is the “revised, extended and largely rewritten” book that NPB published in December 1919, the year before his death. In addition to A.H. Fry‘s superb photographic portrait of NPB, the 1919 book contains three historically interesting photographs taken by Dr. Habberton Lulham who also wrote the foreword (one of those photos can be seen facing the title page, above). Sussex in Bygone Days fully deserves its status as a classic of Victorian rural history alongside Maude Robinson’s book about Saddlescombe. NPB’s friend and colleague Sir Arthur Newsholme got his prediction exactly right:

I cannot but think that our successors fifty or a hundred years hence will be glad to read such a vivid account of the rural life of a favoured part of our Old England, as it was lived in bygone days. It is a fragment of local history which has permanent value. [Letter to NPB, 21st May 1918]

Further reading:

GJMG

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