Edburton

From Scarp-Foot Hamlet to Shepherds' Pub

St Andrew's church stands on a low knoll beneath the escarpment, built of flint despite sitting on greensand, with only a handful of houses for company. This is the whole of Edburton: a scarp-foot hamlet where the steep wall of the Downs settles the character of the place. Christopher Shoebridge of Love the South Downs calls it "one of our favourite locations that no one knows about," and the arithmetic supports him. There is no general store or pub in the hamlet itself, and the bus routes stop short of it too.

What there is sits a short way along Edburton Road, which runs between Fulking and Small Dole. In Fulking, the Shepherd & Dog is a low-ceilinged country pub with bar tables, a restaurant and an annexed barn warmed by a log burner, with a terrace out the front. Its meat comes from Knepp Castle, its fruit and vegetables from Chefs Farm, and its ales rotate through independent Sussex breweries. Dogs are welcome throughout.

The building began as two or three cottages and appears as the Shepherd & Dog in the 1841 census. The name comes from the sheep-washing that once happened in the stream outside; shepherds who had spent hours standing in cold water recovered inside. Contraband was said to be lowered into a hidden cavity, and a newspaper reporter was shown it in 1927, but nobody now knows where it was. In 1945 the BBC filmed Morris dancers here. Its former landlords included Eugene Baldey in the 1930s, the wartime Jack Wiseman, the Canadian officer Captain Cyril Watts, and Bob Champion, known as "Captain Bird's Eye" for the size of his beard.

Poynings for Pints and Provisions

Over at Poynings, the Royal Oak sits at the foot of the Downs and Devil's Dyke, with fires going in winter. Its garden has a barbecue area, a heated drinks terrace, a welly-wash and a large pirate-ship play structure, a useful nearby option if you are travelling with children. Dogs are welcome here too.

Also at Poynings, on Henfield Road, Rushfields is a farm shop, cafe and plant centre in one. The shop carries local fruit and vegetables, meat, eggs, cheese, handmade pies, ready meals, local wine and beer, and artisan bread. The cafe does a full English, yoghurt and granola, sandwiches, jacket potatoes and homemade soup, with coffee from Trading Post and tea from Hoogly.

Walking to Castle Ring

The walking is the main reason to be here. A five-mile circuit from Fulking climbs the bostal onto the ridge, follows the South Downs Way west, tops Edburton Hill and Castle Ring, then drops back into the hamlet across the fields behind Perching Hovel Wood. Shorter National Trust loops of two and four miles start from the Shepherd & Dog and run along the contours, with views towards both the Weald and the sea.

Edburton Hill carries a scheduled motte-and-bailey, thought to have been thrown up immediately after the Conquest. The motte is about thirty metres across and two metres high, ringed by a ditch some six metres wide. It sat on the boundary between the rapes of Bramber and Lewes and was probably meant to display Norman authority; from the top the view runs north over the Weald and south across the Downs.

Church Stone and Eadburh's Name

The church rewards a slower look. St Andrew's is largely 13th century and aisleless, with an early-14th-century north chapel and a tower whose west window points to about 1375; R. N. Shaw restored it between 1877 and 1880 and added a reredos with painted saints. The lead font, of the early 13th century, is closely related to the one at Pyecombe and is probably the oldest datable object in the building. There are four mass dials scratched into the stone, three piscinae, 17th-century communion rails and pulpit, and the reassembled monument to William Hippisley, who died in 1657.

The hamlet's name is older than any of its stone. Tradition holds that Princess Eadburh, granddaughter of Alfred the Great, founded a church here in the early 10th century and left the settlement her name. Edburton does not appear under its own name in the Domesday survey; its land was folded into the manor of Pythorne in Fulking, held by a man called Levenot both before and after the Conquest.

Arrival and a Parting Joke

Getting here is a matter of the car. The nearest station is Hassocks, about four miles off, step-free and run by Southern; buses reach Poynings and Devil's Dyke from Brighton but leave you a walk short of Edburton itself.

For a village with almost nothing in it, the old schoolhouse keeps one last detail: a gargoyle known as the Parson's Nose, said to be the Page family's parting word in a dispute with the notably large-nosed Reverend Tuffnell.