Upper Beeding

After all that madness of months of dancing we have now got the whole of November off...Aril has been scheming to get us out and about at what can be a challenging time of year. This time I picked one of the local heritage walks which the Horsham Museum put together a few years ago for our district. It took us to yet another little pocket of West Sussex that I've never even driven through.

This time we were in the Adur Valley exploring the village of Upper Beeding. We delayed our arrival until a bit later as it was Remembrance Sunday and we didn't want to disturb any of the services going on. I really personally appreciate the thoughtful touch of showing the different coloured poppies together on the memorial display. It's a sensitive way to represent the differently held views around the whole topic of war and the lives lost.

There has been settlement here since at least the Saxon times and some articles suggest that parts of the parish church of St Peter may originate then. From the time of the Norman Conquest this land was part of the package given by William I to his loyal knight William De Braose. This area fell into the so called Rape of Bramber. By 1075 he had established Sele Priory for the Benedictine Order of Monks and they were sharing the church. It was a so called daughter house of the French Abbey of Saumur. As is oft the way of these religious houses it had been dissolved on the grounds of corruption by 1459. Nothing of it stands today, but you can see bits of it still built into the churchyard wall. 

The main part of the village has built up over time alongside the 11th century causeway. If you're familiar with the vernacular styles round here it will come as no surprise to see attractive flint cottages and many timber framed buildings which often started out as manor or farmhouses and have been converted into smaller houses over time. Stone Cottage is a typical example of just this practice, but sadly is noted more for its former occupant Susan Budd, a 30 year old spinster, who served 6 months in prison in 1872 for concealing and burying her child. I suspect this was a far more common occurrence than the records would suggest. 

Not everything is quite so chocolate boxy. The edifice below is certainly a monument to all things Victorian Gothic. It's based loosely on the style of a French chateau which I can see and from 1903 until its closure in 2020  was an Independent Catholic school called the Towers Convent run by the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament. The nuns still live on site and the local state school has taken on the site for its sixth form.

As we made our way towards the wild brooks beyond the village these pretty pink berries drew me in. They looked like a type of Rowan. The footpath soon had us weaving in and out of the reed beds along side the river and the access point is from a shared piece of public land which is run by the Hogs Wallow Community Group. We all know by now how important it is everyone to be able to get out into nature if they want to and this lot do fantastic work setting up projects to make this happen. 

You'll have to take my word for it that what you're looking at below are actually medieval salt making mounds [salterns]. You're not far from the coast here so the sand in the estuary is salty and so it was scooped up and washed. To extract the salt the briny water was boiled and the sand used to build the mounds for the boiling kilns. Such was the importance of salt for preserving food owners whose lands included salterns often took salt in lieu of rent. Crossing the nearby bridge got us back to our starting point, by which time Aril, in typical fashion, had wheedled a little pitstop in the next village of Bramber [using the carrot of free parking😆. I can usually rely on Bramber to top up my weirdometer and as you can see from the final pictures I wasn't disappointed.

As it stands I have no idea where our next adventure will take us, but never fear there will be one!

Arilx