I reached Fredville Park from Brighton by train (4 trains: Brighton to Hamden Park, Hamden Park to Ashford International; Ashford International to Dover Priory, Dover Priory to Snowdown); three and half hours journey time. But it was well worth it; this is an outstanding medival deer park now ornamental parkland.
Originally given to Odo, Bishop of Bayeau and warrior knight, by William of Normandy (King William I, The Conqueror); it has been passed from aristocratic family to aristocratic family. It is still in private ownership. The fact that huge parts of England are still owned by the landed gentry, who inhereited or bought it from Norman Barons who were given land that wasn’t theirs, and they still prohibit the public from much of this land, is a national disgrace.
On the Woodland Trust Ancient Tree Inventory map all but the trees next to the footpaths are marked as “no public access” but except for the woodland around Fredville House, which is fenced, I roamed freely off the the paths and got close to many of the trees that the Woodland Trust says has no public access. Toward the end of the afternoon a stream of 4x4s drove up the road into Fredville House. They were a hunting party, of shootists and game keepers (as I had heard shotguns being used all afternoon, close by, but not in Fredville Park); none of them challenged me and I was clearly off the public footpaths.
It is not possible to see the three large ancient oak trees, “Majesty”, “Stately”, and ”Beauty”probably 500 years old, including “Majesty” or “The Fredville Oak”, believed to have the largest girth in England, because they are in the fenced of grounds of the former mansion. This is another example of precious natural assets that should be viewable by the public, being shut off to the public.
Fredville Park has many parkland trees. ,,, Not far from the former mansion are the remains of a Spanish chestnut avenue, planted at least 250 years ago. Many of these trees are still in very good condition (2017).
The boundary of the C18 pleasure ground enclosure is intact and encompasses the remaining historic structures including the walled kitchen garden, stables and ice house as well as potential archaeological remains of the mansion.Of particular note, within the immediate grounds of the former mansion, are three large ancient oak trees, probably 500 years old, and a mid-late C19 Wellingtonia. One of these oaks, named “Majesty” or “The Fredville Oak”, is believed to have the largest girth in England.
The origin of the name “Fredville” is not known for certain. Traditionally it is believed to be derived from the Old French: freide ville, meaning a cold place, vecause of its cold, wet, low position. It could, however, be derived from the OldEnglish: frith, meaning the outskirts of a wooded area, plus vill, meaning a manor or settlement, giving “a manor next to the wooded area”.
Fredville House and park was originally part of Essewelle Manor. It is recordedin Domesday that in the time of Edward the Confessor it was held by a woman,Molleve, but in 1086 it was held by Ralph de Courbepine from Bishop Odo. DeCourbepine’s holdings passed to the Maminot family and in the late 1100’s to the Barony de Saye. By 1250 Essewelle had been divided into Esol and Freydevill.The spelling varied over the centuries: Frydewill (1338), Fredeule (1396), Fredevyle (1407), Froydevyle (1430), ffredvile (1738).
Hasted lists the families who held Fredville from the Colkins, in the reign of Edward I, to the Boys, in the reign of Richard III. William Boys’ descendant, Major Boys, had many of his estates confiscated for being a Royalist, but Fredville remained in the Boys family until two of his sons sold it to Denzill, Lord Holles in 1673 in order to pay debts. In 1745, Thomas Holles sold it to Margaret, sister of Sir Brook Bridges, baronet of Goodnestone, which is nearby. Margaret Bridges married John Plumptre, a wool merchant of Nottinghamshire, in 1750, but they had no children. The estate passed to John Plumptre through the marriage. Margaret died in 1756 and her husband remarried in 1758 and had a son. John Plumptre rebuilt the manor as a Georgian house. Sir Brook Bridges’ daughter, Elizabeth, married the author Jane Austen’s brother, Edward.
Jane Austen’s letters (1796-1814) show that she was a regular visitor to the Bridges’ estate at Goodnestone and later to Edward’s new home at Godmersham. She was well acquainted with the Plumptres of nearby Fredville (Jane Austen letters to her sister Cassandra, September – October 1813 and March 1814). John Pemberton Plumptre was for a time a suitor of Jane’s niece Fanny. Jane Austen wrote “Anything is to be preferred or endured rather than marrying without Affection; and if his deficiencies of Manner &c &c strike you more than all his good qualities, if you continue to think strongly of them, give him up at once.” (Jane Austen letter to Fanny November 1814).
Fanny rejected John Pemberton. In the late 19th century the house was greatly enlarged, its 50 bedrooms accommodating the family of 11 children and the necessary staff. In 1921 Henry Western Plumptre built the much smaller “Little Fredville” nearby in the park as the family home and Fredville mansion was abandoned. It was requisitioned during WWII and occupied by a Canadian tank regiment. A fire destroyed most of the house in 1942 and after the war J H Plumptre, son of Henry Western, decided to demolish the building. Only the clock tower and some converted outbuildings now stand. The site remains in private ownership.
The visible trees of Fredville Park in the order that I saw them:
The parkland west of the wood surrounding Fredville House from outside the park
Roots and lower trunk of a felled Pedunculate Oak
Rotting felled Pedunculate Oak
Texture of its bark
Fallen chestnut
With deliquesced Chicken of the Woods, Laetiporous sulphureus
An ancient Beech
Notable Oriental Plane
Fallen Pedunculate Oak
The fungus Hypholoma fasciculare and the mosses Ptychostomum capillare and Grimmia pulvinata, and unidentified lichens, on this tree’s decorticated trunk
Yew, London Plane and Pedunculate Oak
Oriental Plane
Fruit and leaf of Oriental Plane
Hawthorn
Pedunculate Oak in front of two Sweet Chestnuts
Ancient Sweet Chestnuts
A Mycena sp. mushroom on the bark of one og these chestnuts
Ancient Sweet Chestnut
Ancient Yew
Hard to identify this as an ancient Yew, Taxus baccata, at first. It’s shape is nothing like the Yews of its native strongholds: chalk scarp-face woodland. It’s a pasture woodland Yew, sculpted by nibbling deer. Deer can tolerate Yew.
Pedunculate Oak
Lodge to Fredville Park
Historic England listing: Lodge to Fredville Park 11.10.63 II Gate lodge. Early C19. Painted brick with thatched roof. One storey and garret on plinth with dogtooth cornice to half-hipped roof with pierced bargeboards. Central stack with double polygonal flues. Single storey gabled porch with elliptical openings on all 3 sides, that to front with label hood. Arched 2 light wooden casements with label hoods either side of porch, with central four centred arched door with Gothick tracery. Canted bay with Gothick windows on left return front
A postscript
Right next to Fredville Park is the remains of the closed Snowdown Colliery.
The miners were on strike in 1984-85 and I remember well Brighton Trades unions collected food outside supermarkets to send to them. The strikers knew, as did we, that they were fighting the ruling class under Thatcher who wanted to close the pit. Forty years later, in 2025, a merchant banker has persuaded many working people in Kent that their enemy is migrants; but its the Tory ruling class that has impoverished them. The decline in class awareness and the ability of the ruling class to spin false narratives that are believed I find very sassy. Wake up people.
Weather: 10 degrees; overcast; southerly wind of 35mph.
8.28 km; 3:24 hours; elevation gain: 186m
‘Puck’ or ‘Pook’ is a Sussex dialect word, derived from the Saxon word ‘Puca’, meaning a Goblin or Fairy.
East Lavant, or Loventone in the Domesday Book (1086), which along with Mid Lavant and West Lavant, make up the village of Lavant.
The River Lavant is a chalk stream winterbourne (a river that is dry during the summer months). It rises from a spring at East Dean and flows to Chichester. From east of Chichester its natural course was south to the sea at Pagham, but the Romans diverted it to flow around the southern walls of Chichester. Currently there is no water in it, there should be, as the draught from February to October of this year has lowered the water level in the chalk aquifer,
The Trundle is an Iron Age hillfort on St Roche’s Hill. It was built on the site of a causewayed enclosure. There was a chapel dedicated St Roche within the hillfort. It was demolished some time in the C16. A windmill, which burned down in 1773, is known to have existed on the hill. There was an open-air masonic lodge that included the Duke of Richmond, the Duke of Montagu, and Lord Baltimore which met at the top of the hill between 1717 and 1757. There was at one time a gibbet on the Trundle.
East Dean is in a valley in the South Down. In AD 689, Nunna, King of the South Saxons, gave 20 hides of land at “Hugabeorgum and Dene” to Eadberht, Bishop of Selsey. “Dene” has been identified as East Dean. In his will of AD 899 King Alfred the Great left East Dean to his youngest son Æthelweard (AD c. 880 – 920 or 922). The remains of a small deserted Medieval settlement have been found in East Dean Park. The buildings were 14th- and 16th-century.
On a recent trip to the parish of Boxgrove, I walked up the footpath to the west of Halnaker Park, an ancient deer park. Most deer parks have mostly pollarded Oaks, but this one has mostly Sweet Chestnuts. Some other deer parks have Sweet Chestnuts too; such as Bushy, Richmond and Petworth; but in these Oaks domiate; at Halnaker Sweet Chestnut dominates. The Sweet Chestnuts in the park are magnificent; but close-up examination of those by the path revealed them to be in a parlous state.
The Park of Halnaker possibly originated in a grant of free warren made in 1253 to Robert de St. John for his demesnes at Halnaker, Goodwood, and elsewhere, outside the limits of the forest. An inquiry as to the recent enlargement of the park by 60 acres was ordered in 1283, and it was said to contain 150 acres in 1329, and to be 2 leagues round in 1337. Hugh, elder son of Lord St. John, had licence in 1404 to inclose 300 acres of land and wood within the lordship of Halnaker and make a park, according to the metes begun by his father, but possibly did not avail himself of it, as the licence was renewed to Thomas and Elizabeth West in 1517. This may be the origin of Goodwood Park, which first appears in 1540, when it was part of the Halnaker estate, as it was also in 1561. In 1570 Halnaker Park was estimated to be 4 miles in compass and supported 800 deer. It continued to descend with the manor, but Goodwood Park was sold in 1584 by Lord Lumley to Henry and Elizabeth Walrond, who transferred it in 1597 to Thomas Cesar; he conveyed it in 1599 to Thomas Bennett, who in 1609 sold it to Sir Edward Fraunceis. The Earl of Northumberland in 1657 sold it, with ‘the house lately erected therein’, to John Caryll, who conveyed the park and mansion house to Anthony Kempe in 1675, and it subsequently came to the Comptons of East Lavant, from whom it was bought, about 1720, by the Duke of Richmond. from: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/ Quoted on https://boxgroveparishcouncil.gov.uk/about-boxgrove/halnaker/#:~:text=The%20PARK%20of%20Halnaker%20possibly,fn.
The importance of ancient deer parks is outlined in the University of Oxford’s Ancient Oaks of England Project Deer Parks: After the Norman conquest of England in 1066 deer parks became a ‘craze’ among the new nobility, who had taken over almost all the land held before by the Anglo-Saxons. While the Domesday Book in 1086 only recorded 37 deer parks, by around 1300 there may have been as many as 3,000. Every nobleman wanted a park and many had one, while great magnates and some bishops owned 10 or more and the king could boast as many as 80 to 100. It was all about hunting deer and having venison available for feasts. To be able to present guests with this ‘noble’ meat instead of the plain beef and pork that common people (sometimes) had was a serious matter of status.
A deer park was usually created in an area of the manor that was not under cultivation or occupied by hayfields or woods managed as coppice. It was called ‘waste’ (we would now say nature reserve) and often consisted of some open rough grassland or heath and pasture woodland. There were wild growing native trees, mainly oaks. These and some underwood or shrubs were necessary to provide for winter food and shelter. This became especially important with the introduction by the Normans of fallow deer from southern Europe to stock the parks. These animals would not survive the English winter otherwise.
The park was surrounded by a park pale, a ditch on the inside and an earth wall on the outside on top of which was a pale fence of cleft oak. The deer could not scale such a barrier from inside the park, but ‘deer leaps’ could lure them in from outside, a clever construction. … Also inside was usually a park or hunting lodge and if this building was moated we can often still recognize this moat as well as lines of the park pale in the form of lanes, field boundaries or even the earth wall of the park pale. We now know where most of these parks were even if few of these traces remain. By analyzing the position of ancient oaks in the landscape we can find out if they stood in a medieval deer park.
My research has established that medieval deer parks were by far the most important form of land use associated with ancient and veteran oaks in England. Some 35% of all oaks in England with a girth >5.99 m are associated with medieval deer parks and of 115 oaks with >9.00 m girth 60 once stood in those ancient deer parks. Of 23 ‘most important sites’ for ancient oaks I have so far identified, 20 were deer parks and 16 of these were medieval. There are many other landscape associations with ancient oaks and for a significant number of these trees the historical context remains unknown, lost in the mists of time. But the medieval deer parks are the main reason why England has so many of these venerable oaks.https://herbaria.plants.ox.ac.uk/bol/ancientoaksofengland/Deerparks
Typical location [of Sweet Chestnut]: Parkland, designed landscapes, fields, woodland (often found as coppice) and wood pasture. Occasionally avenues, street trees and gardens. Age: Sweet chestnut may be able to live for 1,000 years, although 600 may be more typical on many sites. All sweet chestnut will be ancient from 400 years onwards, although many will have ancient characteristics from around 300 years.Woodland Trust Sweet Chestnut
Jarman identifies seven types of British ‘sweet chestnut landscape’: ancient inclosures; ancient coppice woods; historic boundaries; historic gardens; historic deer parks and designed parklands; historic formal avenues; and more recent high forest and production coppice. R.A Jarman (2019) Sweet chestnut (Castanea sativa Mill.) in Britain: a multi-proxy approach to determine its origins and cultural significance; unpublished PhD Theses. University of Gloucester. https://eprints.glos.ac.uk/7484/1/Robin%20Jarman%20PhD%20Thesis%20Sweet%20chestnut%20in%20Britain.pdf retrieved 01/12/25 p. 2
Sweet Chestnuts Outside of woodland habitats, sweet chestnut performs a different ecological role, as in wood pastures and historic parklands, where stands of single or groups of ancient trees, stubs and stools support many veteran tree features (Lonsdale, 2013). Such trees sustain a wide diversity of scarce and sometimes endangered invertebrate and other animal species; and host a specialised flora, notably lichens, bryophytes and fungi. These trees and their associated communities are typically many centuries old and provide sites of high ‘ecological continuity’ (Rose, 1974 and 1976) in landscapes where these are rare. Johnson op. cit. p. 45
In that context of ecological continuity and antiquity, cultural significance is not a separate concept – humans can be considered as part of nature, and the ‘sweet chestnut scapes’ that were discovered and surveyed during this research reflect that: ancient inclosures, ancient coppice woods, historic boundaries, historic gardens, historic deer parks and designed parklands, historic formal avenues, and high forest and production coppice are all artefacts of management. Johnson op. cit. p.47
The Sweet Chestnuts in Halnaker Park are ca. 400 years old; they look very unlikely to make it to 600 years, let alone 1000 year.
The Sweet Chestnuts are listed by the Woodland Trust Ancient Tree Inventory as all ancient.
They are pollarded, as was typical for trees in deer parks. These ancient Sweet Chestnuts are one of the most important natural assets of the parish of Boxgrove, West Sussex. These Sweet Chestnuts are biologically important and a benefit to the landscape.
(The 18th, 19th and 29th century practice of replanting semi natural ancient woodland with Sweet Chestnut, which was then coppiced for timber, was not a benefit to landscape of Sussex; but it was profitable.)
(Parks & Gardens UK is the leading online resource for historic parks and gardens. It is an essential resource across multiple fields, from heritage preservation and academic research to personal enrichment and professional garden design).
The most impressive feature of the landscape [of Halnaker] is the mature Sweet Chestnut Trees. In essence, the landscape of Halnaker Park has changed little in 370 years, with the exception of changes in land use. More of the park is now under arable cultivation rather than grassland and pasture (as indicated by the field names in 1629). …
The most impressive feature of the landscape is the mature Sweet Chestnut Trees. There are 74 in total distributed along the lower southern boundary, in a block to the south-west of the ruins, in a long row to the south-east of the gate house entrance, and as isolated trees in the lower park. The trees are all in a poor state, with die back and bark loss. They are clearly very old. One has a girth of more than eight meters.….
… [T]he names and location of woodland blocks in 1629 are similar to the current situation, that is: Haflewoode coppice (1629) = Hazel Wood Winkinge Woode = Ladys Winkins; Hoke Woode = Rook Wood; Harthill Wood = Hathill Copse West; Saley Coppice = Seely Copse
The gap or ride through the woodland to the northern boundary, apparent on maps of 1778, 1813, 1880 is still evident as Halnaker Gallop. The shape of the woodland blocks are almost identical to the 1880 map and very similar to the 1778 map. Many of the parkland trees and clumps on the 1880 map are still present today.
In essence, the landscape of Halnaker Park has changed little in 370 years, with the exception of changes in land use. More of the park is now under arable cultivation rather than grassland and pasture (as indicated by the field names in 1629).
The greatest threat to the historic landscape in the short term is the loss of the Sweet Chestnuts in the lower park. All the trees are showing signs of severe stress mainly due to agricultural activities, for example spray drift, ploughing too close to the tree base, or ring barking due to mechanical damage from equipment.
This has not be done. The Lower Park is owned by the Goodwood Estate. All of the chestnuts are on their private land and there is no permissive access.
It is possible that the Goodwood Estate has not taken seriously the preservation of the precious natural assets of the Chestnut-planted deer park because of a prejudice against non-native trees, but as Jarman, et al., point out in (2019) Landscapes of sweet chestnut (Castanea sativa) in Britain – their ancient origins. Landscape History, 40(2), pp.5-40, there is a general consensus on the ecological importance of sweet chestnut in Britain. It can be concluded that, irrespective of whether it is ‘native’ or ‘alien’, the species performs an important ecological function in specific types of ancient semi-natural woodlands, notably in southern Britain where it does behave like the ‘honorary native’ that Rackham (in Rackham, O. (1980). Ancient Woodland) observed it to be. Johnson op. cit. p.47
What the Goodwood Estate says about stewardship: Nestled in the heart of rural West Sussex, the Goodwood Estate spans 11,000 acres, and has a great responsibility to protect, maintain and enhance its distinctive character and landscape. Ensuring that future generations can cherish Goodwood as we all do today..Goodwood Sustainability
To the north are the remain of Halnaker House, again private with no permissive access. From Elizabeth Williamson, Tim Hudson, Jeremy Musson, Ian Nairn, Nikolaus Pevsner (2019) Sussex: West (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England) pp. 409-401:HALNAKER HOUSE (ruins). Halnaker and Cowdray (q.v.) have remarkably similar history. Both were medieval houses given a wholesale remodelling in the C16 by owners who used up-to-date Renaissance ornament. Both became ruined about 1800. But where Cowdrav still impresses as architecture, too much has gone at Halnaker to make it more than a pretty, picturesque group of walls. This is not only the fault of the weather. Details were transplanted wholesale to Chichester, … It is a pity, for the complete Halnaker would have been very impressive.
It was begun by the de Haye family, the founders of Boxgrove Priory and came by descent into the hands of the St John and Poynings families and eventually to Lord de la Warr. The site faces south at the exact point where the Downs begin to rise out of the coastal plain, and consists of an irreg-lar retaining wall enclosing separate hall and chapel ranges. Closed at the south end by a nearly symmetrical C14 gatehouse and wings, achieving a semi-fortified, semi-regular effect which suited both the political climate and the visual inclinations of the C14. Halnaker was the type of Stokesay, not Bodiam. In the C16 the hall range was extended by a solar range that linked it to a chapel: work mainly done for Thomas West, Lord de la Warr (of the Renaissance chantry at Boxgrove and the Renaissance tombs at Broadwater …). The house became redundant when Goodwood was built but was not fully abandoned until the C19.
When you walk around the parish of Boxgrove, West Sussex, history collides in the landscape and the built environment; with extraordinarily diverse and interesting physical evidence of building and other human activity from the Neolithic, Iron Age, Roman Occupation, Norman, Plantagenet and Tudor periods.
The landscape of the Downs, itself formed by human activity – human introduced sheep grazing – is stunning beautiful; as are the ancient chestnuts of the Halnaker medieval Deer Park (which gets its own post). The importance of sheep to the creation of the South Downs, and the medieval economy of Sussex, is referenced in the name of the Boxgrove Priory Church: St Blaise is the patron saint of wool carders.
Sheep were vital to the medieval economy of Sussex, providing the primary raw material for the region’s thriving wool and cloth industry, which was the backbone of the national economy. Beyond wool, sheep provided other valuable resources like meat, milk, and manure, and their management was integral to the agricultural practices that made the area one of the wealthiest in England. P.F. Brandon (1971) Demesne Arable Farming in Coastal Sussex during the Later Middle Ages Agricultural History Review
The pinnacle of its built environment is the Plantagenet and Tudor Boxgrove Priory Church with the De la Warr Chantry being of international art historical importance.
It is a magical church full of echoes of French influence along the Sussex coast. Its crossing is a mystery of light and dark and the great chancel is alive with Tudor roses and heraldry. The De La Warr chantry contains beautiful early French motifs from a Book of Hours. These must be some of the best renaissance carvings in any English church. They make Boxgrove very special. Sir Simon Jenkins
There are later building of historical importance too, specifically the 18th century tower Wind Mill on Halnaker Hill (1740) and Sir Edwin Lutyens’s Halnaker Park, built in 1938.
On Halnaker Hill is a neolithic (10000 BC – 2200 BC) causeway enclosure. Below Halnaker Hill. is the late Iron Age Devil’s Ditch; it dates probably from the late Iron Age (ca. 100 BC – AD 43). The Ditch terminates where it meets Stane Street. The Roman Stane Street may have been built shortly after the Devil’s Ditch in the first decade of the Roman occupation of Britain (as early as 43–53 AD). There was an Anglo-Saxon church at Boxgrove (recorded in the Doomsday Book) but there are no physical remains of it. Over it was built an early Norman Benedictine Priory, completed ca. 1170.; its nave is now ruined but the Priory Church of St Mary and St Blaise remains, with the addition of a C14 porch and a C15 vestry, and the addition of outstandingly beautiful C16 C De la Warr chantry (ca 1530).
One of the ancient Sweet Chestnuts; now is very poor condition.
Halnaker Hill’s Windmill from the Deer Park – in this perspective its looks dwarfed by the ancient Sweet Chestnuts!
A fascinating man-made feature of the parish is the octagonal reservoir in the Halnaker House. This is not accessible publicly. The OS map calls it a cockpit; but it may not have been.
A later and important part of the landscape is house of Sir Edwin Lutyens, built in 1938, see Historic England Halnaker Park but this listed building is invisible from roads and public footpaths and is hidden from view by the trees of the medieval deer park in which it is located; and it is private.
The occasion of the Second World War added to the historic melange of Boxgrove Parish’s Halnaker Hill concrete and octagonal brick structures which formed the base of searchlight emplacements. All that remains of these structures is parts of the bases; this are particularly ugly but are of historical importance and are listed by Historic England However, the brick and concrete does provide a substrate for some beautiful lichens e..g the very common Lecanora campestris which I photographed there on 07/12/2024
There are some interesting sixteenth to nineteenth century vernacular houses in the parish; these are excellently described, with photographs, by John Bennett and Beryl Bakewell, available at January 2021 – Boxgrove and Halnaker Listed properties
Halnaker Hill Causeway Enclosure
The oldest feature of the landscape is the neolithic Causeway Enclosure on the top of Halnaker Hill, close to the Halnaker Mill. Between 50 and 70 causewayed enclosures are recorded nationally, mainly in southern and eastern England. They were constructed over a period of some 500 years during the middle part of the Neolithic period (c.3000-2400 BC) but also continued in use into later periods. They vary considerably in size (from 0.8ha to 28ha) and were apparently used for a variety of functions, including settlement, defence, and ceremonial and funerary purposes. However, all comprise a roughly circular to ovoid area bounded by one or more concentric rings of banks and ditches. The ditches, from which the monument class derives its name, were formed of a series of elongated pits punctuated by unexcavated causeways. Causewayed enclosures are amongst the earliest field monuments to survive as recognisable features in the modern landscape and are one of the few known Neolithic monument types. Due to their rarity, their wide diversity of plan, and their considerable age, all causewayed enclosures are considered to be nationally important.Historic England Causeway Enclosure, World War II searchlight emplacements and associated remains on Halnaker Hill
The Devil’s Ditch consist of a banked ditch, the bank being wooded mostly with Pedunculate Oak and Field Maple
The Devil Ditch forming the south boundary of the Halnaker Deer Park:
Butchers Broom in the ditch.
The bank and ditch of the Devil’s Ditch is continuously wooded mostly with Pedunculate Oak and Field Maple. Butcher’s Broom is an ancient woodland indicator species ; so the Devil’s Ditch has biological importance as well as historic importance,
The earthwork is denoted by a bank and a ditch, which grows fainter as it heads east. It runs west to east, forming a boundary at the northern edge of Redvins Copse, passes north of Oak Cottage and Stanefield house before it ends at Stane Street Roman Road. At the eastern end it forms the southern boundary to Halnaker Park. Towards the western end, the bank is about 2.5m above the bottom of the ditch, which is about 6m wide. At the eastern end, near Stane Street, the ditch is wide and shallow indicating that it may have been recut at a later date and possibly used as an early trackway.
The Devil’s Ditch in Sussex has been documented by antiquarians since at least the 18th century. It is part of a group of linear earthworks on the gravel plain between the foot of the South Downs and Chichester Harbour. The entrenchments run from Lavant to Boxgrove and appear to enclose the area of the coastal plain to the south. It has been suggested that these marked out a high status, proto-urban tribal settlement (or ‘oppidum’) preceding the Roman invasion. The Devil’s Ditch is thought to date to the Late Iron Age (about 100 BC – AD 43) but was recut and extended in places during the medieval period. The name of the entrenchment is derived from a local tradition, which holds that the ditch was the work of the devil in an attempt to channel the sea and flood the churches of Sussex. Historic England Devil’s Ditch, section extending 1730yds (1580m) from Stane Street to NW end of Redvin’s Copse
Stane Street and the Halnaker “Tree Tunnel”
Stane Street linked London (Londinium) to Chichester (Noviomagus Reginorum); and runs through the South Downs. Stane is an old spelling of “stone” (Old Norse: steinn) which was used to differentiate paved Roman roads from muddy native trackways. At Halnaker Hill, Stane Street becomes a “tree tunnel”; which is famed on social media, with may photographs like mine below. There are far better photos of the tree tunnel than mine; just Google Halnaker Tree Tunnel and you will see them. Whilst the Halnaker Tree Tunnel is beautiful, from my experience of walking in Sussex there are far more beautiful and historically significant sunken trackways (hollow-ways) in Sussex than this tree tunnel; but for some reason Halnaker Tree Tunnel has “gone viral”; which shows how social media can distort public attention to what is important in the country side.
Remains of the Priory
The small Benedictine priory of Boxgrove in West Sussex was founded in about 1107, originally for just three monks. In a beautiful setting at the foot of the South Downs, the principal remains include a fine two-storey guest house, roofless but standing to its full height at the gable ends. The eastern parts of the priory church became Boxgrove’s parish church after the Suppression of the Monasteries.English Heritage Boxgrove Priory
The importance of the ruins as a picturesque spectacle drew tourists, artist and antiquarians throughout the 18th and 19th century; perhaps enhanced by William Gilpin, who in the eighteenth century wrote essays that explored the picturesque as a new aesthetic concept
Starting in the 18th century, the history of the priory and its ruins attracted the attention of antiquarians and artists. The latter included Samuel and Nathaniel Buck, who in 1737 published an engraving of the church and surviving portions of the roofless monastic buildings. English Heritage Boxgrove Priory
Below, a watercolour view of the ruins of the nave of Boxgrove Priory, seen from the churchyard, by Samuel Hieronymous Grimm, 1781
Samuel Hieronymus Grimm (18 January 1733 – 14 April 1794) was an 18th-century Swiss landscape artist who worked in oils (until 1764), watercolours, and pen and ink media. Grimm specialised in documenting historical scenes and events; he also illustrated books such as Gilbert White’s The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne. Tate Samuel Hieronymus Grimm
The decorations by Lambert Barnard of the choir vault and the sculpture of De La Warr Chantry are of international art-historical importance.
On the choir vault there are decorations by Lambert Barnard for Lord de la Warr (Croft-Murray p112), probably linked with his chantry. Naturalistic foliage, interspersed with the arms of de la Warr and relatives.Sussex Parish Churches Boxgrove Priory Church. Lambert Barnard (d1567/68) did much work for Bishop Sherburn (1508-38), notably in Chichester cathedral. Little is known of his life, but stylistically, if not by birth, he had Netherlandish links. E Croft-Murray: Lambert Barnard: an English Early Renaissance Painter, AJ 113 (1957) pp 108-25Sussex Parish Churches Architects and Artists B
It is hard to know what particular species the flowers depicted on the C16 ceiling painting, commissioned by Thomas West, the 9th Lord de la Warr, are intended to be. They are described as a “delightful mix” of various local plants; but I think it more likely that they are a symbolic representation of the importance of flora to Thomas Wests beliefs; with their decorative pattern being more important than close observation of actual flowers. Botanical accuracy in botanical art was a feature of 17th and 18th century still lives and botanical illustration for florae. The flowers on this 16th century ceiling were probably not meant to be accurate representations of local plants, even if they were inspired by them; they are more symbolic than representational. The symbolic religious use of flowers as symbols of God’s creation was common in medieval churches, as I reminder that all of creation praises God, and perhaps representing the Garden of God, Eden, or the beauty of heaven. Considering that 9th Baron De La Warr was expecting to be buried in this church, it is likely they he wanted them to represent his ascent into heaven.
The chantry in the choir was built by Thomas, Lord de la Warr for himself and his wife between 1530 and 1535 and led to a major internal alteration. … [A chantry is a chapel or area within a church where a priest who would say daily masses for the donor’s soul] The chantry is more a piece of architecture than a monument in any conventional sense. Ironically, … de la Warr was buried at Broadwater in 1554. This was probably because he fell out of favour and was compelled by the King [Henry VIII] to exchange the manor of Halnaker in Boxgrove for Wherwell in Hampshire in 1540 and thus had no further link with Boxgrove, …. Added to this was the abolition of chantries in 1547, which meant that by the time of de la Warr’s death this could only have functioned as a tomb.
The plan is rectangular with two bays on the long sides, each with pairs of cusped arches separated by pendants, which are also present on the vault inside – the short ends have none. The base is essentially gothic, decorated with shields within lozenges. The upper part, especially the corner-shafts and those between the bays, is covered in Renaissance ornament of shallow incised figures and foliage, some based on Paris woodcuts of c1500 The canopy also combines such decoration with gothic elements – pairs of angels and putti hold shields with straight heraldic decoration. Tiered niches for statues, if ever filled, are now empty. Inside, the reredos has more empty niches, either side of a blank space intended for a carving. Each side of the reredos is an opening, of which that to the main nave of the church served as a squint. The purpose of the recess to the south was probably to provide symmetry. A small opening on the south side but lower down is too small for a piscina and its purpose is uncertain. The painted interior is mostly restored and the iron gates survive. Sussex Parish Churches Boxgrove St Mary and Saint Blaise
Foliage is a key aspect of the iconography of the chantry It is believed that the animals (real and fictious) come from a French Book of Hours (which one not known); but there are other sixteenth century resources that could be a source for the sculptured imagery e.g. Master of Claude de France’s Book of Flower Studies (ca. 1510–1515); some of the studies can be viewed on-line from the Metropolitan Museum of Art collection in New York see Book of Flower StudiesMaster of Claude de France ca. 1510–1515
The flowers above these imaginary beasts look very similar to the marigolds
but that does not mean that the anonymous sculpture of the De La Warr used this study as a pattern, as images of all flowers in the 16th century are very stylised; the idea could have come from many manuscripts depicting flowers
The marigold was nicknamed “Mary’s Gold” due to several legends linking it to her. One story claims that when Mary’s purse was stolen on the flight to Egypt, all the thieves found were petals, so early Christians left marigold petals around her statues as a substitute for coins.Jonathan Hoyle, Society of Arts, Medieval Natural Symbols
Heaven is often depicted as a return to the garden of Eden in Medieval and Early Modern manuscripts. So the intent of the artist in including much foliage in the chantry may have been to suggest that heaven was where Thomas, Lord de la Warr would go after death. The Tudor roses on the Chantry show Thomas’s allegiance to Henry VIII; opponents of Henry often had their earthly lives shortened by judicial or extrajudicial execution
The flowers on to the left of this beast may be chicory
they are similar to Master of Claude’s chicory. Pre-reformation church sculpture was typically polychrome, often painted painted in gaudy colours but the colour wears away over the years; the colour of sculptured plants would make it easier to assign to possible specific botanical species
The plant’s ability to thrive along roadsides in difficult, disturbed soil, coupled with its strong, deep taproot, made it a symbol of Christian perseverance and resilience in the Middle Ages. The plant’s steadfast nature, even through cold winters, linked it to the endurance of faith. Riklef Kandeler, Wolfram R. Ullrich, Symbolism of plants: examples from European-Mediterranean culture presented with biology and history of art: NOVEMBER: Chicory, Journal of Experimental Botany, Volume 60, Issue 14, October 2009, Pages 3973–3974, https://doi.org/10.1093/jxb/erp248
Here is some Chicory I photographed at Singleton; close by Boxgrove, in 2024. Chickweed was grown for its seed; and it is common in Sussex as a arable weed.
Though C. intybus was formerly regarded as a native, at least in England and Wales, doubt is now cast on that status in most counties, and it is almost always treated as a relic of cultivation. Historically, it was cultivated for its seed (subsp. intybus) British and Irish Botanical Society Plant Atlas 2000 It would have been common in the arable fields around Boxgrove in the C16
There are foliate heads. often called Green Men;, carved in the chantry, although the second of these images looks more like a foliate head of an animal or mythical beast. Lady Raglan only coined the name Green Men in 1939; it has no historical heritage
There is voluminous writing on the Green Man motif representing a pagan mythological figure, as proposed by Lady Raglan in 1939 Raglan, Lady. “The Green Man in Church Architecture.” Folklore, vol. 50, no. 1, 1939, pp. 45–57. doi:10.1080/0015587x.1939.9718148 but her view is not supported be the evidence. Many folklorists believe that foliate heads indicate a perseverance of pagan beliefs after the Christianisation of England. However, as De La Warr had gone to great expense to have the chantry built and have priests pray for his soul (although did not happen because of Henry VIII’s reformation) he would hardly have risked his salvation with what might have been be perceived as pagan imagery. It is far more likely that foliate heads in churches were Christianised symbols of resurrection, as I J B S Corrigan (2019) points out in The Function And Development Of The Foliate Head In English Medieval Churches. Unpublished theses, University of Birmingham accessed 30.11.25 https://files.core.ac.uk/download/pdf/323305511.pdf, which includes consideration of the Boxgrove foliate heads.
This appears to be a thistle
Master of Claud’s thistle
Thistles are associated with the Virgin Mary, It is impossible to say which form of thistle is sculpted on the Chantry but Milk Thistle, Silybum marianum, Also known as the Marian or Mary Thistle, the species name Marianum comes from the Latin and refers to a legend that the milky white streaks on the spiny leaves of this species of thistle came from the milk of the Virgin Mary nursing her child whilst fleeing to Egypt.Bolton Castle Plants
Whether the foliage painting and carvings are attempts at botanical verisimilitude or are entirely symbolic – or something in between – does not bother me – as all you need to do to enjoy the art of Boxgrove Priory Church is visit and look at its art yourself.
A Footnote
Boxgrove Priory Church not only has outstanding Renaissance ceiling painting and Chantry carving, it has some cracking lichens on its external walls, including Ingaderia vandenboomii, which is deemed a “Nationally Scarce” by the British Lichen Society. But it is not that scarce on the north walls of old (mostly Saxo-Norman) coastal churches in Sussex.
Ingaderia vandenboomii has a pink thallus i.e body (the red is a reaction to a chemical reagent spot test used to confirm its identity.
Today I decided to walk though Longfield Wood, Laughton Common, Brickhust Wood, Laughton Common Wood and Bowen Wood in the Broyle; but I didn’t have time in the end to visit Bowen Wood; as I spent a long-time in the unnamed trackway (probably for transporting cattle and pigs to grazing and mast (beech nuts and acorns) through which I passed. I initially thought it was just as access path to Longfield Wood. When you find something beautiful and fascinating, that you hadn’t planned and weren’t expected to see, it a real joy. I got to the Broyle of the half-hourly bus 28 from Brighton
The Boyle was both a deer park and common land, given over by the landowner to local commoner’s use (grazing, pannage, taking timber for building, firewood, and clay for making bricks)
By the second half of the 13th century further assarting [convert woodland to arable use] in the southern part of the manor was restricted, and the remaining forest there was emparked. Three deer-parks (Plashett, Ringmer and Moor Parks) were reserved to the demesne [a piece of land attached to a manor and retained by the owner for their own use] but the Broyle, although also impaled and used as a deer park, served in addition as the common for the tenants in the southern part of the manor. Its functions at this time, described in custumals [medieval documents that stipulates the economic, political, and social customs of a manor] of 1285 and 1331, included the provision of grazing for the tenants’ cattle, beech mast and acorns for their pigs, timber and daub for their houses, firewood for their hearths and clay for their pottery. The Broyle Enclosure, 1767–71 in SUSSEX ARCHAEOLOGICAL COLLECTIONS 138 (2000), 165–89. The full article can be read at: https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archiveDS/archiveDownload?t=arch-285-1/dissemination/pdf/vol_138/11_Kay.pdf
Coppiced Pedunculate Oaks, Field Maple and Midland Thorn along the Trackway
I stumbled across the trackway accidentally. I thought initially that there was a boundary bank on the east of the public footpath; then I noted that there was a trackway between that bank and another bank, further to the east, that I couldn’t seen until I walked over the bank to the right of me into the trackway.
Coppiced Pedunculate Oak is not common in Sussex; but where you see it is coppiced because it is part of a boundary.
Midland Thorn, an ancient woodland indicator species
with two pips (seeds)
Field Maples
I imagined cows and pigs going up the trackway to Longford Wood
Longford Wood
and the pasture woodland of Laughton Common
Laughton Common
There were many pools like this; probably a relict of clay removal by commoners to make bricks
The enclosure of the Broyle, a large deer-park that also served as the main area of common land for the parishes of Ringmer, Glynde and South Malling, was brought about by a private Act of Parliament of 1767. This was the first Parliamentary Enclosure Act in the county of Sussex and one of the largest. The enclosure was hotly contested and an unusual amount of background information has survived, allowing insight into the exercise of power and influence in this 18th-century rural community and identification of the interest-groups promoting and opposing enclosure. John E. Kay The Broyle Enclosure, 1767–71 in SUSSEX ARCHAEOLOGICAL COLLECTIONS 138 (2000), 165–89.
Brickhurst Wood
Probable named after the clay that was taken as a common right to make bricks. Track with boundary bank with Pedunculate Oak going into wood;
the boundary bank persist with Hornbeam all along the edge of the wood in the wood
Wild Cherry; ancient woodland indicator species
The impact of the enclosure.
The impact of the enclosure on the local economy must have been considerable. …old John Dicker the park-keeper found himself out of a place. John and Jane Dicker and five of their children are found in the parish workhouse in April 1771, and continued to receive parish relief through the early 1770s.62 The long established local brickmaking industry based on clay dug from the Broyle seems to have ceased forthwith and not resumed for another half-century. The brickmaker Thomas Crowhurst moved from the Broyleside Howells Bank Farmhouse to Swingate Cottage by the Plashett Park, but soon afterwards left the parish. William Wisdom tells us that his father, a Glynde carpenter, used to have his timber from the Broyle prior to 1766,64 and he and the other local carpenters and woodmen will presumably also have had to seek wood and work elsewhere after the bonanza [for the Lord of the Manner, the Duke of Dorest] of that year. John E. Kay The Broyle Enclosure, 1767–71 in SUSSEX ARCHAEOLOGICAL COLLECTIONS 138 (2000), 165–89.
E.P. Thompson called it [enclosure] a plain enough case of class robbery. Peter Linebaugh (2014) Stop, Thief! : The Commons, Enclosures, And Resistance . pp144-145
Before walking down the path to the Anchor Inn I walk past Skimcorner Wood (as named by Natural England on their ancient woodland database; but called Clay Hill Wood on the OS map)
It is a private woodland, and I could only see a little through a gate; but us clearly seminatural ancient woodland with Sessile Oak and Hornbeam; an unusual combination in Sussex.
The hedgerows from Isfield to the Anchor Inn on the River Ouse
There are many large Quercus robur in hedgerows and shaws along the path to the Anchor Inn
This hedgerow at right angles to the path to the Anchor Inn has superb Oaks.
Oaks in the hedgerow of the field just before the Anchor Inn
This one had much light and many lichens.
On this tree is the rarer lichen Pleurosticta acetabulum
The Ouse and the sluice gates (flood protection) between Barcombe Mills and the Anchor Inn
West of the Ouse
Bushy Wood
Bushy Wood is very disappointing. There are some quite nice maiden Quercus robur on the South Side if the wood.
But most of it has replanted Oaks for commercial purposes. It’s designated by Natural England as Replanted Ancient Woodland
Sadly the Sutton and Newick Estates have pheasant shoots. This is a pheasant feeder. The deliterious effect of pheasant release to nature is well evidenced
In a tiny corner of this wood these beautiful hornbeams have been left.
Agmonds Wood
Here are a few maiden Pedunculate Oaks left in a sea of recently felled planted Sweet Chestnut.
A Red Kite over these Oaks at dusk
Alder Copse
Again replanted ancient woodland with a few old maidens round the edge
Gridiron planting of Pendunculate Oak. No. Alder! Horrible
Shaw between Agmond’s Wood and Alder Copse
Beautiful ancient Pedunculate Oak in this shaw
Hedgerow Oak on the bridle way back to the Anchor Inn
Roosting Starlings
You are much more likely to see ancient oaks in hedgerows than ancient woodlands as the large private owners of Sussex Estates see ancient woidland as an opportunity for cash cropping. However there are smaller average lanf owners who do try to conserve woodland, like the owner of Plashett Wood; except that is private with no public or permissive paths through it6i
In this post I use one large village in Sussex and it surrounding landscape and manorial estate as an exemplar of what has happened to many places in Sussex. I am calling this town by a fictious name name, Tollingly, and the estate around it, the Totworth Estate. All the data here are correct for the real town and the real estate to the best of my knowledge
House prices in Tollingly are on average £507,085 according to one estate agent. According to another, the majority of properties sold in Tollingly are detached and average price of a detached house is £843,568 based on a set of recent sales.
Assuming the average property value in Tollingly is £675, 326.5o, the average salary of a farm worker is £21,500 and the average salary of an arborist is £30,000, an average house in Tollingly is 31 x the average salary of a farm worker and 22 x the average salary of an arborist. The maximum multiple of salary for a mortgage is typically four to five times your annual income. NatWest Mortgage Availability
According to a housing needs survey of Tollingly, the majority of properties in the parish are semi-detached or terraced (46.77%), with a slightly smaller number of detached properties (37.67%). Flats/maisonettes are fewest in number and constitute only 14.91% of the total housing stock. The 2001 census data revealed there to be 17 second homes within the parish (0.65%). From the 2001 Census data … the predominant tenure in Tollingly is owner occupation, with rates much higher than the rest of the UK: owner occupied 81%, Housing Association/Council rented 10% Privare rented 8.7%. According to the local authority responsible for social housing in Tollingly, social housing availability in Tollingly is very limited due to high demand exceeding supply : applicants face long waiting times.The average monthly rent for a private rented two-bedroom house in Tollingly is around 1£267, while a two-bedroom flat averages about £1217 and for a three-bedroom flat, the average is approximately £1367
So in effect there are hardly any people who live in Tollingly who are poor; making rural poverty elsewhere in Sussex invisible to middle class people living in Tollingly. In my road in Brighton poverty is in your face; I live in a terraced house worth ca. £450,000; 50m from my house is large social housing estate where 43% of children live in poverty.
Rural poverty in Sussex is a significant issue, particularly regarding specific challenges like fuel poverty and housing affordability, rather than being consistently higher in overall income deprivation compared to urban centres like Hastings and Crawley. Tackling Poverty Sussex Community Foundation
TollinglyParish is a desirable, historic market town in … Sussex, characterized by its picturesque location; … and a prosperous community. Its affluence is reflected in the low levels of deprivation and high rates of self-employment and professional occupations. According to a District Council Management Plan
Tollingly used to have a livestock market; I used to go there sometimes with my grandfather (a wholesale butcher who, when his business went bust, was an agricultural worker on a farm with tied accommodation on the farm; when the land owner sold the land of the farm and his tied accommodation to a property developer he was made homeless with no compensation). The livestock market closed in 1974. Tollingly still has a market, a “Farmers Market”. When I attended the livestock market there were farmers and agricultural labourers there. The “Farmers Market” has no farmers or agricultural labourers; ii is a market of small-business food providers selling very expensive specialist food items for middle-class buyers; e.g. a stall (with artisan in the title) selling ars of Ruby Kraut for £10.45. “Farmer” has become a signifier of expensive, as has “artisan”.
When I was in my early in the early 70s I used to help my grandfather deliver meat on a Saturday to Brighton and Hove’s many butchers. The meat was sourced directly from Sussex farmers or from Sussex meat markets. The animals didn’t travel long distances, the farmers got a fair price and the meat from butchers was affordable. Now the few butchers that are left are only affordable to wealthy people. Poorer people buy meat from supermarkets that have sourced their meat from agribusiness, that treats animals appallingly, cause huge carbon consumption, cause loss of many farm workers jobs through mechanisation and rip of local small farmers – if they are used at all. (N. B. my Grandfather did pay me for my labour, including a huge greasy spoon fried breakfast in the Elm Grove transport cafe, Brighton).
The gentrification of country towns and rural areas in England has led to the social and economic displacement of working-class people. This process, often referred to as “rural gentrification” or “middle-class colonisation,” has been ongoing for several decades and has significantly reconfigured the social landscape of many rural communities.In many parts of the UK and in particular England, the dual pressure of restrictive housing supply and the effects of in-migration, have resulted in acute affordability issues for local communities (Best & Shucksmith, C2006). In the UK case, supply has tended to be outstripped by increased demand from commuters, retirees, second home owners, and those buying properties as holiday homes (Gallent & Tewdwr-Jones, 2000; Shucksmith, ). Those purchasing properties for these purposes tend to be in-migrants to the area, with greater buying power, who can out-bid local residents, resulting in rises in house prices beyond the reach of locals. Scott, M., Smith, D. P., Shucksmith, M., Gallent, N., Halfacree, K., Kilpatrick, S., … Cherrett, T. (2011). Interface. Planning Theory & Practice, 12(4), 593–635. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649357.2011.626304
Gentrification of rural land has been happening for ca. 200 years since the coming of the railways. Grand middle class settlements were built on ‘waste’ and farmland nesr rail stations. e.g. Croborough, Groombridge, Tunbridge Wells
“All through that 19th century middle class incomers were settling along the railway lines…such as in the mid-Sussex towns…and along the previously deserted Sussex coast. Every village and market town and the hinterland of every rural railway station had its villas and posh semis. Farmsteads were being taken over by the well-off (such as Cotchford Farm, by the author of Winnie the Pooh), and farmland taken out of food production and replaced by amenity uses.” (D. Bangs, personal communication, November 24, 2025)
According to the latest data on the agricultural workforce in England, there was a 4.6% drop in full-time regular workers to 41,000 in 2023, meaning 1,886 left the sector. This equates to an average of 36 a week.Farmers Weekly Agribusiness – by buying up small farms (with hedgerows) – have turned much land nto monocultural deserts, allowing mechanisation to decrease the need for workers – which is in part responsible for loss of agricultural labourers jobs. See Employment impacts of agrifood system innovations and policies: A review of the evidence Julio A. Berdegué, Carolina Trivelli, Rob Vos, Employment impacts of agrifood system innovations and policies: A review of the evidence, Global Food Security, Volume 44, 2025, 100832, ISSN 2211-9124, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gfs.2025.100832https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211912425000070
Supermarkets control pricing of purchases from small farmers; big business’s control over the food market means small farmers receive less revenue which reduces the number of agricultural workers farms can employ 60% of farmers ‘at financial risk from supermarket buying behaviour’ . Josie Clark November 2025 The South East (including London) region has 35,200 farms of all types in 2023/24.HM Government 50% of all UK holdings are under 50 acres
Just outside Tollingly is a voluntary project: the Tollingly Countryside Project, on the land of the local estate: The Totworth Estate. The Totworth Estate has 16th-century Grade I manor house; a home for the landed gentry. The estate is owned by the same family who acquired it in the 18th century; comprising of over 6,000 acres, some of which is farmed in-hand by the estate, and a significant portion is leased to tenant farmers. The estate must get considerable revenue in rents. On the Totworth Estate website it mentions no in-hand farmers or agricultural workers, just people involved in its wine business, forest workers and workers in their restaurant (£85 for a two course meal). The website implies that the estate is focussed on wine production and wine retail
Vineyards are associated with negative environmental impacts. Traditionally, vineyards are intensively managed, involving a high level of pesticide application and the simplification of landscapes, which reduces the diversity of vegetation and crop types. The production and application of pesticides contributes to greenhouse gas emissions, and pesticides can also pollute waterways and soils. More so, the way the vineyard land is worked, together with the land-use change brought on by vineyard implementation, can cause disturbances to soil health and biodiversity.Ebba Engstrom, 2023, Grantham Institute (Climate and Environment) Imperial College London.
A woodland SSSI is also on land owned by the Totworth Estate; there is very little access for the public. Totworth Estate also has pheasant and partridge shooting on its estate; cost: £2195 per gun for a bag of 250 pheasant. There are four shoots a year (in the hunting season) with eight places on each. That brings in revenue of £70240 pa. The estate self-declares a Christian ethos; God inspires their conservation. There is a sign in one part of their estate that says: “Look at the birds in the sky. They never sow nor reap nor store away in barns, and yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you much more valuable to him than they are?” Jesus of Nazareth. Clearly their god doesn’t like Pheasants or Partridges. But maybe there is a clue in this quote of their underlying values: people are more valuable than birds. The release of pheasants and partridges into the environment causes great ecological harm. Pheasants and Partridge shooting is only available to rich people, causes great environmental damage and denies the general public of all incomes access to the land the shoots take place on
The RSPB has growing concerns about the environmental impact of large numbers of gamebirds being released into the countryside. Our main concern is with large-scale shoots which release high densities of gamebirds which can be damaging to the environment including through:
direct impacts, such as browsing of plants, predation of reptiles and invertebrates, competition for food resources eaten by native wildlife and soil enrichment.
Disease transmission to wildlife, like the Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (bird flu)
Changes to the balance of predators and prey of threatened species (gamebirds can be a supplementary food source for predators, such as foxes)
Shooting practices, including lead shot that pollutes the environment, is ingested by scavengers and can enter the food chain. RSPB
The Tollingly Countryside Project (one employee allocated to manage it on the Totworth estate payroll) offers opportunities for volunteering; conserving and managing the land. The Tollingly Countryside Project has over 100 volunteers. I believe that volunteering is important, as much for volunteer’s wellbeing as for the the good they do for the environment and this attested in research: volunteering improves well-being according to NCVO Time Well Spent: A national survey on the volunteer experience
Nationally, individuals of 65–74, with higher levels of education and income are generally more likely to volunteer. NCVO demographics of volunteering. Statistically people with higher incomes and are retired experience the highest levels of wellbeing. WHO Determinants of Health and poverty negatively impacts wellbeing through increased stress from financial insecurity and poor living conditions, leading to higher rates of poor physical and mental health. BMA: Health at a prive: Reducing the impacts of poverty
It is very likely then that the vast majority of volunteers for the Tollingly Countryside Project are middle class and are already experience higher well-being than people living in poverty. Poverty and wellbeing are strongly linked, with poverty causing poor mental and physical health through factors like financial stress, poor housing, and inadequate nutrition The King’s Fund The Tollingly Countryside Project does little for people on low incomes because there are few people on low incomes in their area. It is a project for middle-class people
But a number of studies have shown that low pay is more prevalent and more persistent in rural areas than urban areas. e.g. Chapman, P. and Phimister, E. and Shucksmith, M. and Upward, R. and Vera-Toscano, E., 19991805622, English, Miscellaneous, UK, 1-899987-67-3, York, Poverty and exclusion in rural Britain: the dynamics of low income and employment.(1998).
Low pay’s prevalence in rural areas is thought to arise partly due to employment in low-paying sectors such as agriculture. Chapman, P., Phimister, E., Shucksmith, M., Upward, R. and Vera-Toscano, E. (1998) Poverty and exclusion in rural Britain: the dynamics of low income and employment, York: York Publishing. But in Tollingly there are few people employed in agriculture.
So the Tollingly Countryside Project provides opportunities for well-off people, mostly retired, who are already statistically happier than poorer people, to volunteer and increase their well being.
All well and good, and there is value in that, but if the Totworth Estate used the money it donates to the Tollingly Countryside Project and employed agricultural workers to do what the volunteers do they could increase the well-being and income of poorly paid agricultural workers; but I don’t think there are many/any agricultural worked who live in the Tollingly area; as they couldn’t afford to live there. Moreover, the donation that Tollingly Countryside Project receives from the Totworth estate is relatively small; the total donations, from appraising their most recent financial statement, is around £50,000 – there are not many people you can employ with that.
However, the Totworth Estate’s website says it employs 70 people. A third-party business analysis website estimates the winery revenues at £7,000,000. The Totworth estate does not publicly lists its accounts; so it hard to know what profits they make after expenses are taken into account. If those 70 people are on the average rate of pay in the UK (£38,100) so the staffing costs for the estate is approximately £2,667,000. It would appear that most of their employees are engaged in wine making; but they have three employees in the forestry team and one employee who manages the Tollingly Countryside Project. So it would appear that the majority of the effort of the estate is focussed on wine production. A bottle of their best-selling wine costs £36 so that effort is focussed on middle-class consumers.
It would be very hard now to increase the employment of workers on agricultural land. “Farmers remove their workers and replace them with giant and expensive machines in just the same way as every other industry does under capitalism. The ‘law of value’, capitalism’s ‘hidden hand’, dictates that they do so. Each unit of capital has to compete with other units of capital, and profit is to be made on labour, not on the machines themselves. They are therefore driven to increase the rate of exploitation of labour by innovating technically and replacing relatively unproductive-but-widespread manual labour by hugely more productive machine-minding labour; right up the point when site-based labour is replaced entirely by the robot machine (in milking, harvesting, planting, ploughing, sorting, adding value), so that the farmer’s profit comes from just his own family’s labour and the labour of the people who made the machines” D. Bangs, personal communication, November 24, 2025)
The Tollingly Countryside Project is a project mainly funded by the Totworth Estate. The stated aims of the Tollingly Countryside Project is to create inspiring opportunities for anyone to join in, through active volunteering, engaging events and inclusive access. An interpretation of Totworth Estate setting up Tollingly Countryside Project is class washing: a narrative that downplays social class distinctions and inequalities, presenting a false sense of a “level playing field”; the Totworth Estate uses Tollingly Countryside Project to disguise the class privilege of the estate and the people who live in Tollingly.
One of the responsibilities of a landlord is to maintain public rights of way through their land; this is a statutory duty. Walking on a path is something that you can do irrespective of your wealth or income – it is a free pleasure. Recently I was walking through the estate on a public footpath and it was blocked with ca. 15 ash trees that had been felled. The trunks with their branches were laying across the path. It is a criminal offence to block a public right of way. I emailed the forestry team of Totworth Estate and the local authority about the blockage. In the absence of a right to roam public footpaths are often the only access you have to land; so it important that they are usable. Instead of using their foresters to remove the trees.
I soon had a reply from the manager of Tollingly Countryside Project saying that the children from a local school were going to clear the ash; with the comment “it is us getting the manual work done for nothing”. Children can not use a chainsaw (which was obviously used to fell the trees); cutting the trunks and branches with hand saws is heavy manual labour for adults let alone children. I think there is great value in children learning outside, in woodland, in meadows, on farms etc. But is it safe to get children to do heavy manual work Moreover, clearing public rights of way needs to be done quickly and efficiently, to meet a landowners statutory responsibilities; i.e. by paid workers, not children, or volunteers.
The social milieu of Tollingly and its environs is middle class: high cost housing; opportunities for game bird shooting; opportunities to quaff high-price wine or buy high cost food items. It’s not surprising almost no working class people now live in the Tollingly area: there is little work and housing that is only affordable to the wealthy. The Tollingly area seems to have been colonised by middle class people; supported by the landed gentry; erasing the working class people who used to gain a living from the land.
We need a new model of agriculture that is democratic, and in community co-operative ownership; employing local people, growing food for local people; we need to end our reliance on imported cheap food that is carbon polluting and gives great profit to international agri-business and supermarkets. We need food security, and affordable food, that meets the food and employment needs of ordinary people. We don’t need the big-business model that leads to the destruction of nature and the impoverishment of people. Nor do we need the landed gentry (aided by misguided ecologists) taking land out of food production to rewild it as a hobby. Saving nature is about regenerative farming not introducing storks so that middle class people can expensively “glamp ” to see them in a “shepherds” hut at £350 for two nights to see them.
I am not sure how we get there; but Aaron Benanav: ‘Beyond Capitalism -1. Groundwork for a Multi-Criterial Economy’ & ‘Beyond Capitalism – 2. Institutions for a Multi-Criterial Economy’ in the New Left Review offers a nuanced understanding of how we get beyond capitalism . Aaron Benanav explains multi-criterial economy in discussion at https://wissenschaftspodcasts.de/podcasts/future-histories/s03e50-aaron-benanav-beyond-capitalism-i_10021691/
I took the photos in this blog post to bring your attention to some marvellous things in nature, in Sussex, that are hidden from the public. I will not name the Sussex wood I trespassed in to take these photos.
If you go down to the woods today, you’re in for a big surprise: a third of England’s woodlands are owned by just a thousand landowners.
That’s the central finding of my new investigation into who owns England’s woods. The analysis also raises questions how private woods are used – with many of them kept off-limits to the general public in order to maintain them as pheasant shoots, despite receiving public subsidies. https://whoownsengland.org/2020/11/02/who-owns-englands-woods/Guy Shrubsole accessed 16.11.15
The ownership of land in Sussex
Much land in Sussex is in private ownership and walking in significant amounts of that land is currently prohibited by signs denying public access; often this is associated with pheasant shooting. But pheasant shooting also effects land with public access as well as private land where shooting occurs. I recently walked through a public-access SSSI scarp-face ancient wood in West Sussex, adjoining a private wood used for pheasant shooting. I saw and heard many pheasants in this wood I was walking through. I had a lunchtime half pint of cider in the nearest pub to the wood, and in the pub there was a group of pheasant shootists there bragging (loudly) about how many pheasants they had shot. The existence of private woodland for pheasant shooting has a negative impact on much woodland – private and public.
For many years, we have been concerned with the impacts of two of the most intensive forms of shooting: driven grouse, and the high-density release of Pheasants and Red-legged Partridge for shooting. Our studies have identified that various key practices are causing particular ecological harm, with implications for both biodiversity and the climate emergency. The big issues: the illegal killing of birds of prey, the use of lead ammunition, the burning of peatland habitats and the release of millions of non-native Pheasants and Red-legged Partridges into the natural environment. RSPB The Facts about Intensively-Managed Game-Bird Shooting. RSPB The facts about intensively-managed gamebird shooting
Many of the potential impacts of gamebird releasing are poorly studied and understood, and are often under-represented in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. A common theme emerging from these reviews is that the ecological impacts of gamebird releasing appear to be strongly polarised, withpotential negative effects associated with the released birds (e.g. enhanced predator abundance and predation, increased disease transmission, altered habitat structure, reduced invertebrate abundance. Mason, L.R., Bricknell ,J.E., Smart, J. & Peach, W. J. (2020) The impacts of non-native gamebird releasein the UK: an updated evidence review. RSPB Research Report No, 66 RSPB Centre for Conservation Science, Sandy UK. Downloadable from RSBP Game bird shooting – laws and impact
Screenshot from Mason, et. al (2020)
Here is an indication of how much land is in public ownership in the Western (West Sussex) South Downs. Of the top five owners of land in Sussex by acreage owned, only one is a public body. (The wood that these photos were taken in is not in West Sussex). These data are from Guy Shrubsole & Anna Powell-Smith’s excellent Who Owns England: Who Owns the South Downhttps://whoownsengland.org/2018/02/16/who-owns-the-south-downs/ accessed 16.11.25
… the current 4th Viscount Cowdray … has donated £65,000 over the past decade to UKIP, the Conservatives and Vote Leave …
2) Duke of Norfolk – Arundel & Angmering Estates: 16,000 acres
… “Since William rose and Harold fell, / There have been Earls at Arundel.” So reads a plaque in the shadow of the magnificent Arundel Castle, stronghold of the Earls of Arundel, whose proximity to power down the centuries eventually also earned them the Dukedom of Norfolk. ..
“When the 15th Duke stood on the battlements of his newly repaired keep in 1910, he would have had the satisfaction of knowing that almost everything he could see in all directions belonged to him.” Although the Ducal estate is thought to have diminished in size since then, it is still… The Estate’s origins go back to the Norman Conquest.”
3) National Trust properties across the South Downs: 15,151 acres
…his family estate also includes 3,000 acres in Cumbria ….
5) Duke of Richmond – Goodwood Estate: 11,500 acres
As the [Independent, Sean O’Grady Thursday 30 July 2009. Earl of March: A glorious example of the landed classes; says [The Duke of Richmond] has “leverage[d] Goodwood’s formidable competitive advantages – the things that cannot be replicated elsewhere (except by other landed families, presumably): vast (and beautiful) space and a magnificent stately home”. But these modern businesses depend on owning land inherited down the centuries: “Even if they wanted to, it is difficult to imagine any company, oligarch or Middle Eastern princeling acquiring such an enormous chunk of southern England [nowadays].”
I have trespassed in an SSSI wood owned by one of the above, which the public are denied access to. It has outstanding and rare natural heritage, including this Usnea articulata String-of-Sausages Lichen, extremely rare in Sussex. This wood is regularly used for pheasant shooting. As I was walking around it I saw dead pheasants that had been left on the ground from a hunt of a few days before.
In an ideal world land would not be owned by individuals; but in the absence of a change to the ownership of land, I believe:
(2) the ownership of land should be taxed through a Land Value Tax, see: Labour Land Campaign What is Land Value Tax (accessed 16.11.25)
I am not urging you to trespass. If you choose to trespass, please follow the guidelines from the Right To Roam that are cited at the end of this post
The wood that I trespassed a few days ago and its natural wonders
This woodland is a Site of Special Scientific Interest that is believed to have been continuously wooded since medieval times. The wood’s soil is clay; and the wood is dominated by sessile oak, pedunculate oak, hornbeam and hazel with some ash and alder, with an understory of holly and bramble. The hornbeam and hazel have been previously coppiced. The sign on the gate as well as saying the land is private warns of shooting occurring in the wood.
The rides are lined by goat willow, aspen, blackthorn, hawthorn and silver birch
There is a boundary bank and ditch planted mostly with coppiced hornbeam, that exactly follows the parish boundary shown on the OS map
Honrbeam
Sessile Oak and Hornbeam
Graphidaceae family lichen possibility Graphis scripta on a Hornbeam
Sessile Oak in “tall forest” woodland
Hazel
Holly
Sessile Oak, with a sheet of the lichen Dendrographa decolorans on the dry side of the tree
Sessile Oak leaf on the base of the tree above
The lichens Lecanactis abietina (an old tree lichen) and a Chrysothrix sp. (Gold Dust Lichens) on a Sessile Oak
Coppiced Hornbeam
Clouded Funnel fungi
Sessile Oak
Bark Barnacle Lichen on Sessile Oak
Brnacle lichen is found mainly on the bark of living trees in ancient woods, and it is indicative of longstanding woodland conditions. Woodland Trust Bark Barnacle Lichen
Sessile Oak covered in Usnea cornuta
Parish boundary bank with coppiced Hornbeam
A recently pollarded young Hornbeam – showing continuity of ancient woodland management practices
Coppiced Hornbeam
A Hornbeam with a range of Pertusaria spp. Hornbeams often have many genus Pertusaria and family Graphidaceae
Lepra (formerly Pertusaria) amara, Pertusaria pertusa and Pertusaria leioplaca. Terrestrial molluscs love eating the apothecia of Pertusaria. L. leioplaca seems their favourite; it must be their caviar.
Ball of Common Striated Feathermoss with Candlesnuff fungus,
You’ve all seen signs claiming ‘Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted’. They’re a lie.
In the UK, ‘trespass’ is a civil offence, provided you don’t infringe certain conditions. You cannot face criminal prosecution simply for being on someone else’s land without permission (or away from a designated Right of Way, open access land or land where any bylaws permit public access). The dispute is solely between you and the landowner, and the police cannot get involved.
That landowner could theoretically take you to civil court. But they’d have to know who you are, and it would most likely be a waste of their time.
Likewise, any ‘damages’ would have to be proportionate to the damage you’ve caused, which if you follow our principles of trespass below, should be zero.
However, the legal situation changes if you do any the following when trespassing on land:
Cause damage to property
Disrupt lawful activity
Conduct yourself in a threatening or abusive fashion
Bring a vehicle, intending to reside & cause damage
Enter land with special restrictions* (see below)
That would be classed as ‘criminal trespass’, which is a criminal offence, leaving you potentially subject to police enforcement.
*Important Note: there are certain sites with special trespass designations which do make your mere unauthorised presence a criminal offence. The penalty for violation can be serious. Mostly, these are common sense. Avoid military sites, essential infrastructure (e.g. railways, airports, nuclear facilities) and stay away from the sorts of places the King might be having a cup of tea (or the Prime Minister hosting an illegal party).
Right to Roam follow some key principles when accessing land without permission. We do not condone actions which break these rules, as these will simply undermine our campaign.
Take responsibility for your own actions
Respect people’s privacy, domestic property and gardens
Don’t walk where crops are growing (stick to field margins or use alternative routes)
Avoid places that don’t feel like open countryside (e.g. have buildings or machinery)
Respect livestock and other animals kept on the land such as ponies and horses (i.e. avoid closed paddocks). Remember that cattle – especially bulls or cows with calves – can be dangerous
Care for nature (avoid fires, wildlife disturbance or damage to flora)
Since civil trespass (i.e. simply existing on land) is not a criminal offence it is especially important that it does not become associated with criminal activity. Damage nothing. Disrupt no lawful activity. Peacefully enjoy what you came to experience.
Voices from the seventieth century
The gentrye are all round stand up now, stand up now The gentryeare all round stand up now The gentrye are all round on each side the are found Their wisdom so profound to cheat us of our ground.
The Diggers Song, Gerald Winstanley, 1650 True Levellers (Diggers)
At last the bus 78 to Seatoller was running after the road flooding had subsided! I could visit the woods at the south of the Borrowdale Rainforest NNR that I had intended to visit on 03.10.25
Getting off at Seatoller, I decided to visit some of southernmost woods of the NNR: High Stile and Low Stile Woods; named as “Seatoller Wood” on the Natural England map of ancient woodland, . When I got to these woods they were fenced off with “private” signs, despite them being marked as public access land on the OS map. As I said in my post of 03.11.25, I had had to do lots of research to find where the constituent parts of the NNR are. The National Trust website on the NNR doesn’t have a map of the NNR, and there is no Natural England visitors’ guide, as there is for other NNRs. There is also no information on which parts of the NNR have public access and which don’t. The only way to find out whether or not there is no public access is to visit the woods and find out for yourself, when you have found out where the constituent woods in the Borrowdale Rainforest NNR are.
The only way I found out where the constituent woods of the NNR were, was by looking at the declaration of NNR map on the government’s website. I then had to cross reference this map with the OS map to find the names of the constituent woods of the NNR.
I support the right to roam (visit Right To Roam) but in the absence of a right to roam, the very least public bodies administrating NNRs should do is to tell the public where parts of NNRs are and which can be visited
High and Low Stile Woods from Johnny Wood
Johnny Wood
Lichens on a dry stone wall at the beginning of the wood
Probably Cladonia polydactyla, with bright red apothecia (fruiting bodies) on the edges of its cups; growing with/on moss
Rhizocarpon geographicum (green and black) in a mosaic with Lecidea lithophila (white thallus with red tinge and black apothecia) and an other lichen
Rhizocarpon geographicum and Lecidea lithophila are extremely common in Borrowdale; in Sussex (where I live) Rhizocarpon geographicum is rare, and restricted to church yards, Lecidea lithophila is non-existent in Sussex. North-West lichen enthusiasts are probably not that excited by seeing these lichens but as a Southerner seeing these was very interesting.
Distribution Maps (British Lichen Society) Lecidea lithophila & Rhizocarpon geographicum
Lecidea lithophila
A dead Sessile Oak
which reminded me of the Statue of Liberty
The trunk of this tree is still a viable substrate for epiphytes (because epiphytes take no nutrition from their substrate) including mosses, polypody ferns and lichens
Polypody fern
Physalacriaceae family fugus on tree
Physalacriaceae spp. are saprobic; i.e. they obtain nutrients by breaking down dead and decaying organic matter, serving a useful ecological function
This rocky bank as covered in mosses
A sphagnum moss probably Sphagnum palustre was at the top of this bank.
The demonstrated the difference between habitat in the south (where I live) & the north-west temperate rainforest. Sphagnum palustre in Sussex is found in bogs and wet flushes with a supply of water from springs or streams. In Borrowdale, it is also at the top of this rocky mound because it rains a lot ; in the south, it doesn’t rain enough for that.
Seathwaite, Borrowdale: This village is the wettest inhabited place in England, receiving around 3,500 mm (138 inches) annually.Visit Cumbria Weather in the Lakes
The average annual precipitation in Sussex is around 914mm (36 inches)Climate Data Sussex
Scleroderma citrinum Common Earthball
Mossy boulders
In Johnny Wood, Wilson’s Filmy-fern can be found. I have never seen it. So I explored likely filmy-fern outcrops to try and find it.
Filmy Ferns are characteristic of temperate rain forest
Wilson’s Filmy Fern has a similar distribution to Tunbridge Filmy Fern
Following my success in finding Tunbridge Filmy Fern in the High Weald (an outlier population in the of Sussex where the These unique geological features of the High Weald produce create a localized, hypo-oceanic microclimate that supports plant species typically of western Atlantic woodland), I explored rock outcrops like those ones I have seen Tunbridge Filmy Fern on for Wilson Filmy Fern, like this one:
But when I climbed up to this rocky outcrop below, I “only” found common bryophytes e.g. White Earwort & Tamarisk Moss. But many “common” bryophytes are beautiful. I saw no Wilson’s Filmy Fern in any of the rock outcrops I explored.
White Earwort
Common Tamarisk-Moss
But as I have said before, I am never tire of seeing common beautiful things.
Here is some Tunbridge Filmy Fern I saw in Sussex to give you an idea of what Filmy Ferns look like!
The leaves of Wood-Sorrel, an ancient woodland indicator species, growing though Sphagnum palustre
Concrete water reservoir. Ancient temperate rainforest woods in the UK are not untouched by human intervention. Most have always been part of living, changing landscapes formed by human-nature interaction.
Waling along the River Derwent from Johnny Wood to the Bowder Stone
Walking along the Derwent I saw many birds, including this gorgeous juvenile Chaffinch
I also saw two White-throated Dippers dipping the Derwent for food. Both of them were quicky gone so I was unable to get a photo of them
Here is a Dipper I saw in the River North Esk south of Edinburgh in 2023
It is always a thrill to see Dippers
Witch’s Broom – Taphrina betulina (a fungal gall that effects the tree’s growth)
Herdwicks!
Not all of Borrowdale is Atlantic Oakwood; there is also much secondary woodland. Looking up from the valley, I could see Secondary Beech plantation
and Pine plantations
As Guy Shrubsole says: the Atlantic Oakwoods of Borrowdale remain fragmented and under pressureNational Trust Borrowdale NNR . Which makes it all the more important that the National Trust and Nature England point out to the public which fragments are Atlantic Woodland (Temperate Rain Forest)
Bowder Stone
In the valley of the river Derwent, in Borrowdale, just north of Rosthwaite in a woodland clearing on the opposite side of the road from the river, stands a huge glacial boulder shaped like a human head that is one of several Cumbrian curiosities and, which has locally been called The Bowder Stone or Balder’s Stone, after the son of the Norse god, Odin (Woden). This ice-borne rock was carried down the valley by a glacier many thousands of years ago and deposited, having been trapped and then dislodged between the two side-slopes of the river valley.The Journal Of Antiquities The Bowder Stone, Rosthwaite, Cumbria
The boulder would have nestled deeply in the forests that covered the Lake District after the last ice age – the original ‘wildwood’ that predated human habitation in the Lakes. It stood unmoved through the coming of the people who built the Iron Age hillfort on Castle Crag, the Norse who created the many clearings or ‘thwaites’ along the valley for grazing, and the traditional woodland industries which coppiced and harvested the timber for firewood, building materials and leather tanning.
Two hundred years ago, the Bowder Stone was one of the most prominent landmarks in the valley – a huge boulder that awed visitors with its sheer size and mass that stood out against the sky as the road wound towards it .Balanced improbably on one edge, it was popular with Georgian tourists for the ‘pleasurable terror’; they enjoyed wild, romantic scenery and the frisson of experiencing danger from a safe distance.National Trust History on the Borrowdale Valley
The area around the Bowder Stone is now designated by Nature England and the National Trust ancient (oakwood) rainforest; but the immediate area around the stone has clearly not been continuously wooded
Dunnock on dry stone wall.
A Sessile Oak with “white” bark from a distance
The white bark is probably lichens of the Mesic bark community (the Pertusarietum). I am very used to this community, as it is common in the south, especially in parkland trees and trees at the edge of woods. I thought it unusual to see this in the Lake District but I did some research and found that whist it is largely southern community in the UK, …. [there is] a very important stronghold in the Lake DistrictPlantlife: Lichens and Bryophytes of Atlantic Woodland in the Lake District
More Rhizocarpon geographicum and Lecidea lithophilaon a rock. Whilst I had never come across Lecidea lithophila until Monday, by Thursday I could recognize it at 50m away
Lots of Silver Birch, Beech and Yew above the Bowder Stone
The National Trust says of Borrowdale Rainforest NNR: The Borrowdale Oakwoods are one of England’s largest remaining pieces of temperate rainforest that once spread from the north of Scotland down the west coast of England, Wales and Ireland and are part of a long standing cultural landscape
And these Silver Birch, Yew and Beech woodland are within the NNR that is described as Oakwood. But Oakwood is not all Oak
Upland oakwoods are characterised by a predominance of oak (most commonly sessile, but locally pedunculate) and birch in the canopy, with varying amounts of holly, rowan and hazel as the main understorey species. The range of plants found in the ground layer varies according to the underlying soil type and degree of grazing from bluebell-bramble-fern communities through grass and bracken dominated ones to heathy moss-dominated areas. Many oakwoods also contain areas of more alkaline soils, often along streams or towards the base of slopes where much richer communities occur. Elsewhere small alder stands may occur or peaty hollows covered by bog mosses Sphagnum spp. These elements are an important part of the upland oakwood system. The ferns, mosses and liverworts found in the most oceanic of these woods are particularly rich; many also hold very diverse lichen communities.Buglife Upland Oakwood
Cummacatta Wood
Cummacatta Wood is, to me, of very high biological interest (with sparse ancient trees and bog), is not in the designated NNR area, although it is probably of more biological interest than some of the woodland around the Bowder Sone which is in the Borrowdale Rainforest NNR. The danger of having an NRR that is described as a rainforest NRR is that biologically important areas that are not rainforest are not offered the protection that being part of a National Nature Reserve
Cummacatta Wood has a physical sign saying it is a National Trust property; however there is no information about it online from the National Trust or any other organisation except for one mention of the wood in a hiking apps.
It is not in the Borrowdale Rainforest NNR but it is in the geographical area of the Lodore-Tri0ttdale Woods SSSI. Although it is not mentioned in its SSSI specification by name; the sentence The site includes a number of interesting non-wooded habitats. Species-rich flushes may include Cummcatta Wood; although it is partially wooded!
Despite the deafening silence of the internet on Cummacatta Wood of its biological nature, I found it charmingly beautiful and full of biological interest. I have walked through Johnny Wood, the woods around the Bowder Stone and Cummacatta Wood just once and I wasn’t long in any of these areas; so my views on their interest is very impressionistic. I almost certainly missed many interesting species of lichens, bryophytes and vascular plants!
Cummaccatta is sparsely wooded with Sessile Oak, Silver Birch, Hazel, Yew, Juniper and Ash.
Here the beautiful and common (in North West Atlantic Woodland) liverwort Frullania tamarisci
A twisted Sessile Oak
Yew
Hawthorns; as in Sussex, often have abundant (bit different) lichen. Sussex Hawthorns are dominated by Ranalina spp.lichens with few or no Usnea spp. Upland north-west Hawthorn often have more Usnea. On these hawthorns Usnea floridana is relatively common; it is very rare on South East hawthorns
Lichens on these two hawthorns
Hypogymnia physodes
Cladonia polydactyla
A liverwort not a lichen: Frullania tamarisci
Falvoparmelia caperata
Beard lichen: probably Usnea subfloridana
Usnea subfloridana
Platismatia glauca
Two stunted Yews
Juniper
Bog Pond Weed
Bog Asphodel
Red: Sphagnum capillifolium subsp. rubellum
Common Heather
The way in and out of Cummacatta Wood is on the B2859, the Keswick to Seatoller road, along which the Stagecoach 78 bus runs
To get to the Wildfowl and Wetland Trust Caerlaverock Wetland Centre, I took the bus from Keswick (where I was staying) to Penrith; then a train from Penrith to Carlisle, then a train from Carlisle to Dumfries. Then I took a bus from Dumfries to the junction on the road to Caerlaverock Castle, where there is a turnoff to the Caerlaverock Wetland Centre. It is about a 45 minute walk from the bus stop to the Wetland Centre. The 6A Bus Service (Houston Couches) only runs five times a day so careful planning is required!
The splendid Gothic Revival / Tudor Revival Carlisle Station. 1847, designed by the architect William Tite.
As soon as I got off the bus and started walking down the lane to WWT Caerlaverock, I saw these Pink-footed Geese, Anser brachyrhynchus, in a field next to the lane. They were the only Pink-Footed Geese I saw.
Having spent the brief Arctic summer nesting in central Iceland, pink-footed geese take to open water and spend 25 days afloat, moulting their wing feathers before their flight south. One mid-autumn day, with the wind in the right direction, and temperature and food levels dropping, pink-footed families take off. Into the North Atlantic they fly, making landfall on the Faroe Islands six hours later, resting for a day before taking off again towards British shores. A day later, they land on our coasts. Over 400,000 pink-footed geese spend the winter in the UK [mostly and Scotland and Norfolk] Wildlife Trusts Pink-footed Geese
Then, almost immediately, I saw some Barnacle Geese, Branta leucopsis, in the field next door.
The black-and-white barnacle goose flies here for the ‘warmer’ winter from Greenland and Svalbard. This epic journey was once a mystery to people, who thought it hatched from the goose barnacle at sea!The Wildlife Trusts Barnacle Geese The entire population of Svalbard Barnacle Geese (ca. 20,000) overwinter in the Solway Firth
Zwartbles sheep; a breed of domestic sheep originating in the Friesland region of the north Netherlands which are popular in Scotland on the way along the road to the Wetland Centre
There were about 40 Whooper Swans, Cygnus cygnus, in the Whooper Pool
Sibelius saw Whopper Swans flying over him. This inspired the majestic main theme of the last movement of his 5th Symphony; emulating the majesty of swan flight. Here is a Whooper Swan dabbling with bum in the air. If he had seen a Whooper dabbling, with its bum in the air. h is swan theme may be different. Yoi can listen to the Swan theme here: Sibelius: Symphony No. 5 – III. Allegro molto – London Philharmonic Orchestra The first presentation of the Swan Theme is 1:20 mins in (French Horns)
This parent Whooper Swan and its cygnet, were fascinating to watch. The parent did something (e.g. preen, dabble for food), then cygnet did it; learning through mimicry. This cygnet was probably born in Iceland. First time in Scotland.
The Whooper Swan is a large white swan, bigger than a Bewick’s Swan. It has a long neck, which it usually holds erect, and black legs. Its black bill has a large triangular patch of yellow on it. It is mainly a winter visitor to the UK from Iceland, although a small number of pairs nest in the north. The estuaries and wetland it visits on migration and for winter roosts need protection. Its winter population and small breeding numbers make it an Amber List species. It is also a Schedule 1 listed bird, meaning it is illegal to disturb them.RSPB Whooper Swan
Ducks! Shovelers, Anas clypeata, and Teal, Anas crecca, in the Whooper Pool
As I was walking to a hide I saw a flock of Redwings, Turdus iliacus, and Fieldfare, Turdus pilaris; the UK’s “winter thrushes” that migrate from Scandinavia. They were eating Hawthorn haws.
Fieldfare – along the Avenue
Fieldfares are large, colourful thrushes, much like a Mistle Thrush in size, shape and behaviour. They stand very upright and move forward with purposeful hops. They are very social birds, spending the winter in flocks of anything from ten or twenty to several hundred strong. These straggling, chuckling flocks which roam the UK’s countryside are a delightful and attractive part of the winter scene.RSPB Fieldfare
Tree Sparrows, Passer montanus
This was the first time I have ever seen Tree Sparrows; I have searched for them in their remaining locations in Sussex with no success.
Tree Sparrow Passer montanus
Much declined and now very scarce resident; scarce passage migrant and winter visitor. Red-listed species of high conservation concern. Section 41.
Records were received from only four sites in 2023 as the Tree Sparrow decline continues in Sussex. All the records were from East Sussex. No birds were reported from many former strongholds such as Pevensey Levels, Rye Hbr and Scotney GP.
The first record of the year was from East Guldeford village where a single bird was reported on 22 Jan. The highest count of the year was just four at Camber on 5 Jun. A single bird was photographed in a garden at Northiam on 23 Jul and was seen on three successive days. This sighting was close to an unconfirmed report from the previous month. A Tree Sparrow was seen in the same Northiam garden on 14 Nov. The final sighting of the year mirrored the first, a single bird at East Guldeford village on 28 Dec.
Tree Sparrow continues to slide towards extinction in Sussex. Numbers of this species have fluctuated in the past, which offers some hope, but there is no sign of recovery yet. This is a species of high conservation concern and observers are asked to report all sightings, particularly if breeding evidence is obtained. [RA Black] Sussex Ornithology Society Sussex (2024) Bird Report 2023 p. 176
Green Finch, Chloris chloris
Some of the 1000s of Barnacle Geese by the flood planes of the Solway from the Salcot Merse Hide.
A Hen Harrier attack. A pair of Hen Harriers, Circus cyaneus, were sitting on posts near the Solway. The male flew off – probably to catch a Meadow Pipit or a rodent, and it spooked the Barnacle Geese
Starlings, Sturnus vulgaris, on a power line; walking back towards the bus stop.
Near the bus stop I saw a raptor flying low across a field. It settled in a Hawthorn for a few seconds and flew up. This was the best shot I got; it’s probably a Buzzard, Buteo buteo
Sim's Nature Notes 