East Chiltington

The pub and the parish around it

The Jolly Sportsman stands at the end of a single-track lane at the foot of the South Downs, a country gastropub with four bedrooms above it and an outdoor bar in the garden. Fish comes off the Sussex coast daily, meat from farms and butchers within twenty miles, and the bread and the desserts are made in the kitchen. Much of it is cooked over live fire. On Sundays there are roasts with the full trimmings, a smaller version for children, and fish, vegetarian and vegan plates for anyone who would rather not. Local Sussex bitters come from the cask, though the pub keeps quiet about which ones. In summer you eat in the garden; in winter you eat by the fire. Well-behaved, quiet dogs are welcome on leads, in the pub and outside, provided they stay off the furniture. Tanya Armstrong runs the place and Callum Fenner cooks. Chris Wilkins once described it as "an oasis of civilised gastronomy in the East Sussex wilderness," which tells you both what the food is like and what surrounds it.

What surrounds it is a parish that barely holds together as a place. East Chiltington runs about four miles north from the crest of the Downs towards South Chailey, up to a mile and a half wide, with houses and farms strung along quiet lanes and small clusters at Hollycroft and Pouchlands. There is no shop, no school and no parish hall; nearby Plumpton has a village shop for refreshments and walking supplies. The southern half of all this sits inside the National Park, which is to say the good half for walking.

Church stone and Domesday roots

The church has no shop or hall to compete with, and has served as the village's only indoor gathering place, hosting films, theatre and live music over the years. The building itself is Grade II*, with an early-twelfth-century nave, a small west tower under a pyramidal tiled roof, and an east wall built from a local Sussex marble called Winklestone. An ancient yew stands in the churchyard. It began life as a chapel of ease to Westmeston, and that history survives in the names Chapel Lane and Chapel Farm.

The Domesday surveyors found two holdings here, held under William of Warenne, with twenty households and half a mill worth one shilling and twopence between them. They valued the two holdings at five pounds and one pound.

Four ways into the landscape

The walking is the reason to stay. From the church a three-and-a-half-mile circuit runs through Warningore Wood and past Novington Manor. A flatter four-and-a-half miles loops out from Plumpton station past the pub and the Old Mill House. For the Downs proper, the National Trust circuit at Blackcap covers four miles of chalk paths, open downland, a hidden wood and a sunken bostal, with views north across the Weald; allow two and a half hours and expect mud in winter. Running through the parish is the Greensand Way, identified locally as an old Roman road, following the tree-lined track called the Ferrings west towards Streat.

Stations, lanes and Lewes

Getting here means Plumpton or Cooksbridge station, both with direct trains to London Victoria and on towards Lewes and Eastbourne, or the B2116 and a set of single-track lanes. Lewes, with its castle and priory ruins, is five miles off.

The apple-year rhythm

The village keeps its own rhythms. There is a community orchard, and each year the East Chiltington Trust presses its apples, holds a harvest supper and throws a party on Hollycroft Field. It feels like the kind of place that measures the year by when the apples come in.