At the bottom of Fulking's one steep street, water runs out of the chalk into a tiled fountain and ram house that stand much as they were built. In 1886 John Ruskin and the Brighton brewer Henry Willett backed a hydraulic-ram system to pump the spring water uphill to the houses; it worked until mains water arrived in 1951, and the pumps, reservoirs and fountain remain largely intact. Esther Meynell, writing in 1947, called it "one of the most glorious springs in Sussex, leaping out of the chalk with a shout."
The village sits tight under the curving chalk scarp, built of flint, cobbles, timber framing and thatch. The Street has been a conservation area since 1984. The Shepherd & Dog is the natural stop for anyone passing through.
The pub is at the foot of the Downs, low-ceilinged, with bar tables, an annexed barn and a terrace at the front. It began as two or three cottages and had become a pub by the early 1800s, appearing under its present name in the 1841 census. Sheep were once washed in the stream outside, the likeliest source of the name, and at some point the building was used to hide smuggled goods in a cavity whose location is now lost. Dogs are welcome throughout. Recent diners report fish and chips, calamari, roast pork and roast beef on the menu, with a Sunday roast they rate highly; the beer comes from independent Sussex breweries and changes with the season.
For what you can't get in the village, Rushfields at Poynings is a farm shop, plant centre and café together: local fruit and vegetables, meat, eggs, cheese, handmade pies, ready meals and artisan bread, with a café doing full English breakfasts, jacket potatoes, sandwiches and homemade soup.
Walking is the main reason to be here. A two-mile circular from the pub climbs a bostal, the local word for a steep chalk track, onto the South Downs Way, passing a Victorian lime kiln, summer orchids and butterflies, and the remains of the old Fulking Isolation Hospital; allow an hour and a half to two hours. A longer four-mile route follows the contours with the Weald on one side and the sea on the other. About a mile off is Devil's Dyke, the longest, deepest and widest dry valley in Britain, its rim marked by Iron Age ramparts and the remains of a Victorian funfair. Two miles south of Henfield, Woods Mill is a Sussex Wildlife Trust reserve of wetland and woodland with a boardwalk and an all-weather path, open to assistance dogs only.
The parish church stands not in Fulking but along the scarp at Edburton: St Andrew's, thirteenth-century and aisleless, with a fourteenth-century tower and an early lead font worked with scrolling and trefoiled arcading. It has long served as the ancient parish church for both villages; the Domesday surveyors set down Fulking, then Fochinges, as six households, two plough teams and a yearly value of two pounds ten shillings.
A car is easiest, but bus-and-walk routes exist. The nearest stations, Portslade and Hassocks, are close as the crow flies but leave a long cross-country walk, and no bus reaches the village; the 77 from Brighton stops at Devil's Dyke, a mile of the South Downs Way and a descent away. Above the houses, North Town Field has a children's playground.