Pdf Chapter 1 Horsham to Cuckfield
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Symbols Key Parking Picnic Site Fishing Bus stop Information Centre Walks/Trails Theme/ Pleasure Park Train station Visitor Centre Cycle Trail Cathedral/ Abbey Stile PC Public Convenience Horse Riding Museum Viewpoint Forestry Commission Public House Castle/ Fort Gate Public Telephone Viewpoint Building of Historic Interest Hazards/ Take care Camp Site Country Park English Heritage © Crown Copyright and database right 2011. Ordnance Survey 100019238 Caravan Site Garden National Trust Camp/Caravan Site Nature Reserve Other Tourist Feature Leisure Centre Water Activities HighHigh Weald Weald Landscape Trail Trail Golf Course Slipway 4 Interesting feature Order maps over the telephone (by cheque, credit or debit card) by calling Kent County Council on: 08458 247 600 (Mon - Fri: 8am - 8pm) Chapter 1: Horsham to Cuckfield, 1.1 A Forest Landscape 2. The Victorian Town Hall gentler, more obviously reminiscent Look for the tails of the St Leonard of today’s High Weald countryside. The western-most section of the Trail dragon and the horses of the town’s But the power and force of the water underwrites Sussex’s claim to be name. in the Cycle echoes its use in the iron the most wooded county in Eng- industry and its shaping of the land. land. In St Leonard’s Forest you pass 3. Water features from cool valley woodlands with There are two contrasting man- small streams and hammer ponds made water features in the to exhilarating ridge-top views. The Bishopric. Give Angela Conner’s gentler slopes of the Ouse Valley are Cosmic Cycle, her tribute to locally- more open farmland. The path goes born poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, through several small villages but time to demonstrate its dramatic for the most part you are unaware of quality. The watercourse beyond is the considerable population hidden away in this stretch of countryside so close to major transport routes. Horsham Town Central Horsham is a comfortable mix of old and new. 1. The central Carfax Originally The Skarfolkes, the open common land where the “poor folk’” set up their squats. Today’s green 3 and gold street furniture and out- 1 door cafes make it a pleasant place 3 to begin or end your exploration. Both the Carfax and the adjacent Causeway display a variety of dif- 2 ferent building styles and materials, including Horsham stone slab roofs. Section 1, Map 1, Horsham to Cuckfield 1.2 4. Storm damage wide to support their tiny weight. 9. Lily Beds Pond. The use of water-power in the The woods fringing St Leonard’s Frogs, common and palmate newts The Lily of the Valley that legend iron industry was introduced from Forest present a view common live here too. says sprang up where drops of France in the 16th century. Perhaps in the South-East since the great St Leonard’s blood fell during his this name commemorates a skilled storm of 1987. Individual trees 7. What’s the countryside for? dragon-slaying still perfumes the immigrant worker. tower above scrub rapidly growing Just above the Site of Special air in May and June but at some where large trees fell. Oaks, beech Scientific Interest (SSSI) at distance from the path. 13. Ridge-top views or pine, they tend to be lop-sided Sheepwash Gill, there is a strange From the open land east of Grouse and scraggy where they lost huge barren landscape. On a busy Sunday 10. Greenbroom Hill Road you can see the shape of the branches or were once dominated this resounds to the roar of 100 or The name suggests that this was countryside. The afforested ridges by equal or larger neighbours. The more trail bikes at £4-5,000 a piece; once heath. The stems and spines stretch into the distance; the houses oaks have often adapted best, earnest riders walk the course laid of both broom and gorse are green are dotted along the roads that sprouting anew even from their out behind the chestnut fencing as because they, as well as the leaves, follow the better-drained ridgetops. trunks. carefully as any Badmington Trials contain photosynthetic cells. The horse rider. The site is masked by heather that would have been so 5. Sheepwash Gill trees and the adjoining field is full of common then is growing strongly The steeper section of the stream, fieldfares on a quiet winter’s day. near the path and around conifer near Roosthole Pond car park, stumps. But what happens to it as harbours rare mosses, ferns and 8. Antics! the bracken, birch and pine grow liverworts. Up here you can find The sun catches on a bare patch of more strongly? It certainly won’t robust sphagnum mosses, the earth. It’s moving! Crawling is too survive under the oaks that are ones all too often sacrificed to line slow a word to describe the frantic growing up in their sheltering tubes. hanging baskets, and the perky little activity of thousands of wood ants hard ferns. as they move over the great heap 11. Who was Mick? of dried pine needles and twigs, Legend says Mick Mills was a 6. Pondlife bracken bits and grass stems. At smuggler who raced the Devil for his The pond beside the trail is gradually first the activity looks chaotic but soul. They ran so fast, presumably drying up as the sphagnum, rushes then you see that it centres on the along Race Hill that they set the very and flag iris spread in. Even when entrances at the top of their citadel. trees ablaze and that’s why no trees the water is muddied by rain you Take care not to sit down for your will grow along the way! can see the creatures that live on or picnic near the ants; they don’t bite near the surface - water boatman but they can fire formic acid at you - 12. 16th century EU? rowing up for a bubble of air and and that stings! Frenchbridge Gill is the stream pond skaters spreading their six legs dammed to make Hawkins Hammer 10 5 8 4 7 9 6 11 12 13 Kilometres 0.5 1 High Weald Landscape Trail Also use Ordnance Survey Map: Explorer 134 0 Section 1, Map 2, Horsham to Cuckfield ± 4 Miles 0.25 0.5 Interesting feature www.kent.gov.uk/explorekent 1.3 14. Defence of the realm fashion changes! from the churchyard leads to the There are three sets of “tank traps’” picturesque ruins of one of the along the trail between Tattleton’s Other curiosities stand near The finest of the many 16th century Farm (now demolished) and the Chequers: an unusually coloured mansions built by iron magnates. road to the east. The blocks of traditional phone box, an Edward VII Sir William Covert’s house is said to concrete were supplementary to postbox and the modernised 17th have housed 70 people. It fell into barriers placed across roads and to century village well. disrepair in the 1730s; historians natural obstacles like rivers and gills. suggest it was just too big and costly It can be an interesting exercise to 17. Slaugham Church to run once the iron boom was over. work out just what path the defence The contrast between the precisely planners thought the German tanks cut stones known as “ashlars” and 19. Ancient woodland? might take. the amazingly irregular lumps This small woodland east of Upper of local sandstone in the older Barn is probably a remnant of a The pill box hidden in the woods external walls is a foretaste of the much larger wood. Compare east near the junction of the lane and architectural variety you will see and south boundaries. Gnarled old road has one larger opening, inside. Don’t miss the gaping fish coppice trees mark one edge; on the presumably for an anti-tank gun. on the Sussex marble font, or the other, the trees just stop. bas-relief monument to Richard 15. Industrial relics Covert - the size of the nearby Several large beeches in the wood The dam you walk across at the Covert mansion will then come as must be at least 200 years old. Their more westerly pond is typical of no surprise. close set leaves and wide spreading a hammer pond, stopping up a shallow root systems prevent other narrow gill to get a good fall of The light shining through the 600 plants from growing in their shade. water to power a water wheel below year old yew in the churchyard the embayment. shows it to be partly hollow. The living part of any tree is just under 16. Slaugham village the bark - the heartwood is support There is an interesting diversity only. Churchyard yews, evergreen of building styles and materials, and long-lived, are often seen as including at least four different tile symbols of everlasting life and the shapes on the cottages. The house triumph of good over evil. just south of The Chequers appears to be made of well-dressed stone. 18. Slaugham Place But look carefully at the side - how The path running south-east 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 Kilometres 0.5 1 High Weald Landscape Trail Also use Ordnance Survey Map: Explorer 134 0 Section 1, Map 3, Horsham to Cuckfield ± 4 Miles 0.25 0.5 Interesting feature www.kent.gov.uk/explorekent 1.4 20. Modern utilities 19th century its fortunes have coppice and newly-planted trees of the coaches. No wonder they Tucked away alongside Colwood been allied to the London/South protected from grazing and weather needed to change horses along the Court, one of the many large and Coast road.