The weathervane on the church is a golden fish. Rudyard Kipling took it for a dolphin — "Where windy Piddinghoe's begilded dolphin veers" — though local tradition calls it a salmon trout. It turns above one of only three round church towers in East Sussex, on the west bank of the River Ouse between Lewes and Newhaven.
St John the Evangelist is the first thing you see and the thing worth climbing up from the water to look at. The circular west tower and the north nave arcade are twelfth-century; the chancel, north aisle and south arcade are early thirteenth-century, and Philip Currey rebuilt the south aisle and chapels in the 1880s. The spire is octagonal and shingled. A recent project costing £83,500 repaired three surviving bells and hung three more. It is Grade I listed and stands quietly above the river bend that the whole village clusters around.
Below the church lies the pond, which was not always here. Until 1913 Piddinghoe made whiting and bricks, and from 1903 a clay pit fed material shipped upriver to Lewes for cement. When the digging stopped, the excavation filled with water. Newhaven & Seaford Sailing Club sails on it now and runs a cadet programme for ages eight to sixteen, with coaching, organised races and a path toward RYA certificates.
The river itself is tidal and fast. The Egrets Way, a walking and cycling route covering the seven miles between Newhaven and Lewes, passes close by and is blunt about the water: people without local knowledge can be swept toward the sea or toward Lewes, or left stranded in the mud. The riverside stretch between Newhaven and Piddinghoe has been paused over a possible structural problem, so check which sections are open before you set out. For something gentler, a footpath behind the church climbs onto the Downs to a lookout and comes back toward Peacehaven along the unmade end of Roderick Avenue. The South Downs Way crosses the valley just north at Southease, beside the small station.
There is no pub now. The Royal Oak, purpose-built in 1892, was partly destroyed by fire in 1992 and rebuilt as a private house; the shop, post office and school have all gone too. For provisions there is Piddinghoe Farm Shop on Lewes Road, which began selling game from the farm's shoots and its own lamb and has since widened its range. For a sit-down meal, nearby Denton has the Flying Fish, where Harvey's Ale and Shepherd Neame are on the pumps and the landscaped garden seats around a hundred; dogs are welcome in the bar, snug and outside, but not in the restaurant. Newhaven Town station is a little over a mile away in a straight line, and the 123 bus links the village to Newhaven and Lewes on weekdays.
The village kept busy in older ways. Smuggling ran strong enough that people were said to "dig for moonshine", and a hiding place for contraband was once found behind a chimney at Halyards. A restored bottle-shaped brick kiln still stands in the grounds of Kiln Cottage, rebuilt in 1982 with its original materials.
Little Edith's Treat is a children's outing paid for by a fund a grandmother set up in 1868, after her three-month-old granddaughter died, to be spent on what would have been Edith's birthday, 19 July. The fund still contributes to a village children's treat.