First walk of 2022

2022 has called already for me to get out there and explore. With others or on my ownsome with my little camera, locally or further afield, revisiting somewhere to refresh or somewhere new...I really don't mind. This time I chose somewhere close to home, but just over the county border in Surrey. It wasn't a place I'd been before

Ewhurst is a fairly small village which has seen occupation since Roman times, but doesn't seem to have featured heavily in the history books. The parish church of SS Peter and Paul is 12th century, but has undergone at least six different transitions during its existence so it's now a bit of a curate's egg. The font and one of the doors is original, but the rest is a right old mish-mash. The spire collapsed in 1837 and its final restoration was as recently as 1954.

It's really only at the time of Henry VIII's break with Rome and his subsequent casting around for sources of ecclesiastical income that Ewhurst gets a mention. It was a poor area and a church without great wealth. It's recorded as having no silver plate and even today the lack of impressive tombs inside is noticeable. The combined factors of poor weather and crop failure created such dire poverty that they were granted exemption from paying any clerical tax in 1554. Everything goes quiet again until the Civil War when the village came out in support of the Cavaliers. The nearby village of Rudgwick threw their weight behind the Roundheads and fights between them continued for decades before they resolved their differences. Nowadays it's a rich man's playground and celebrities such as Eric Clapton have chosen to settle here. How its fortunes have changed!

With the brief history lesson out of the way a few photos from our amble. There are some lovely details on the stained glass windows within the church which was our starting point. This one with the robin and mistletoe seemed very seasonably appropriate and on the opposite corner the primroses and the promise of things to come [sooner than I could have anticipated at that point]

Now you know by now that I can never resist the temptation to have a little look just incase there's some graffiti somewhere within the fabric of the building. My luck was in with a rather large nosed fellow peering out at me. He's medieval by all accounts.

Leaving the church we crossed various fields and followed the footpaths as they criss-crossed farms and stables before we entered the Sayers Croft nature reserve.

The area we were in was mainly wooded with a few fairy doors sprinkled around for good measure. To either side of us was the private land belonging to Sayers Croft. Nowadays it is a charitable trust that runs activity camps for inner city children out in the countryside. It was set up originally in 1942 as a safe haven for evacuees from Catford Central school. Its ethos is to cultivate positive mental health and relationships for young people and foster a strong sense of responsibility and community spirit. There are up to 12000 attendees every year and they can try their hand at all sorts. The archery looked very tempting!

Now imagine my surprise when I glimpsed this in the far distance. A reproduction roundhouse was something I definitely did not expect to see on my way round. It turns out that it's another of the Trust's projects. The original one was the victim of an arson attack in 2013, but the locals rallied round and built a second one. The decision was taken to leave the remains of the original in place so that the archaeologists could see how they decay over time.

Finally how about this for a lovely little early surprise. After seeing the ones depicted in glass, seeing the real thing tucked away in a sheltered and very warm spot was delightful. 💛

Arilx