Fairlight Circular walk

This is a 5 mile walk with stunning land and sea views. There are several climbs and series of steps, but lots of good places to stop and look around, making the effort worthwhile. The cliffs here are sandy and so have a very different look from the chalk cliffs further west. The plants and creatures are also different - the best time for this walk is spring - April or early May - when the bluebells, primroses, ramsons and other flowers are splendid, though this is a walk for all seasons. The route includes Fairlight Glen which is a magical place.
You can reach the start point at Fairlight church (TQ860119) by taking the 344 bus from Hastings - usually an hourly service. The "Coastguards" cafe is nearby - it has seasonal opening times. Explorer map 124 shows alternative routes, particularly the possibility of walking back to Hastings.

Walk Directions

1. Start at Fairlight Church on Coastguards Lane. Walk away from the main road, past Coastguards tea shop on your left and then the information centre and the memorial for Grey Owl and continue through the car park and onto the lane that leads to the coastguards cottages and big radar aerial that you can see ahead of you on the cliff top.
See story Grey Owl
These hills are named for the gorse that blooms throughout the year. From the sea, it sometimes looks as if the hills are on fire. There are two sorts of gorse here, and some hybrids, which bloom at different times, hence the old saying, "When gorse is out of blossom kissing's out of season". This may also refer to the fact that gorse often grows on common land and provides sheltered, secluded spots used for courting in periods where privacy was not easy to find. Fairlight's reputation as being a meeting place for gay men might therefore be seen as a 21st century continuation of traditional ways. On hot days, you can hear the gorse seed pods popping, and in spring see and hear whitethroats and stonechats as well as butterflies and occasionally an adder.

2. Go past Firehills cottages and the aerial and onto the cliff top. Turn right and at the end of the enclosed area go through a gate and take the left hand path that stays nearer to the coast. Follow this path down. From the cliff tops here you can see Beachy Head in the west and Dungeness to the east. When the sunlight catches the buildings on the end of Dungeness Point in the distance they look like a faery castle but are in fact a nuclear power station!

3. Some way down the slope you come to a seat where the path branches. Take the left fork which goes down steps and at the bottom you will see a narrow path to the right which goes off into Warren Glen with its oak woods and bluebells.
There is evidence of occupation and human activity here going back to Neolithic times. So some of the sunken tracks may have been trodden by human feet for thousands of years. One of the rangers told me that people have heard the sound of soft footsteps, at dusk, in the track that runs down Warren Glen, but when they look behind them, there is no-one there.

4. As you come to the bottom of the Glen, turn left and cross the wooden bridge over the stream. Follow the path up a few steps and continue through the woods until you come back onto the main coastal track. Turn right and climb the grassy path up the hill.
See story Holman Hunt

5. When you reach the woods you will see steps leading up through the trees. (If you turn left here you can follow a path to the cliff edge and a place where it is possible to scramble down to the beach.
This is a long scramble over unstable ground and should only be undertaken after careful reflection about the need to scramble back up again.)
See story Covehurst Beach

6. Climb the steps through the narrow belt of woodland and you reach open ground. On your left you will see a flat sarsen stone.
See story Lovers' Seat
Continue on the same path which leads through some blackthorn bushes and then down steps past gnarled oaks to a junction. Turn left, following the path marked "Fairlight Glen, lower". Walk down to the bottom of the valley and cross the stream. Turn right immediately after crossing the stream to take the path which leads up Fairlight Glen.
See story Fairlight Glen
This path is always wet in places and very wet in rainy weather. It is possible to take the second right after crossing the stream which is a wider, drier track leading up the Glen - easier walking but less fun.

7. Keep on the path nearest the stream up to the Dripping Well waterfall where steps lead off to the left up to the drier track. Turn right and carry on in the same direction past the map and gate at the edge of the Country Park area - and walk on up the side of the stream. When the path crosses the stream by way of slippery rocks you have to clamber up the right hand (east) side of the stream and follow the path until you come out of the Glen near some houses. Walk across a small field to the gate and then cross a grassy area by the wide track that goes diagonally left ahead of you. You reach a lane which leads between some derelict buildings and a farm and then past the imposing gates to Fairlight Place on the left.

8. Follow the road uphill towards Fairlight Road and when you reach it take your life in your hands and cross. Look for the metal gate slightly to your left and the sign "North's Seat". Go through the gate and follow the path that goes diagonally left across a big field. Go through the next gate you come to and follow the path with the wooden fence to your right. You come to a crossroads where the "1066" footpath goes off to the right. This is your route, but a short detour to the left will take you to North's Seat which offers a splendid 360° viewpoint. If you go to look at it, return to this cross roads and follow the 1066 path through the hedge and downhill between 2 gorsey pasture fields.
See story Marianne North

9. Enjoying the panoramic view across the Brede valley, follow this path until you reach a lane. Cross over and climb the stile on the other side. Your path goes along the edge of the field with woods on your right. After a few hundred metres there is a gap into the woods, marked by a footpath post. Turn right here and follow the path among the giant beech trees. Head towards the wooden fence you can see. Bearing right you follow the fence and then keeping the fence on your left cross a lane and look for the path going left ahead of you. Follow the path past some horse paddocks, over a stile and along by the fence over another stile. The view opens out on your left as you walk across a small field and into a band of woodland. The path is clearly marked and there are stiles at intervals. It leads you past a pond on the left and then some scaffolding which seems to be supporting a derelict building.

10. Follow the grassy path through brambles. It becomes more of a track as it heads up the hill towards the road. Cross the road and ahead and to your left you can see where there is a path behind the hedge that allows you to walk safely alongside the road and back to the church whose tower you can see above the trees ahead of you.

Stories

Grey Owl

As you go into the main car park of the Country Park at Fairlight, opposite the Information Centre there is a plaque in memory of a Hastings man who roamed these hills throughout his childhood in the latter years of the 19th century.
This was the man who, in 1937, initiated an unusual reversal of protocol during a command performance at Buckingham Palace. The convention was that for such a performance, audience and performers gathered and waited. Then a footman announced "their majesties the King and Queen", the doors were flung open and the royals made their entrance.
On this occasion there was just one performer and he requested that he be allowed to be the one to "make an entrance" and it was agreed. So it was that the royal family, including the young princesses Elizabeth and Margaret, waited. The announcement came: "Grey Owl, of the Ojibway Indians". The doors opened to reveal a proud, fierce-looking, brown-skinned, inscrutable-faced Native American in full fringed buckskin clothes. He did not bow to the royal family in the English manner, but instead gave the Ojibway salute - a raised right hand.
Grey Owl spoke about his native land, especially the forests and the creatures who lived there. He had tales of adventures with bears and lynxes, narrow escapes from death and snow blindness, and many instances of the hardships and comradeships of the wilderness life. He spoke about beavers, showing a great knowledge of their ways and environment and especially of their present plight - they were being over-hunted and their habitats destroyed. When he finished his talk, Princess Elizabeth jumped up and said,
"Oh do go on!" and so he continued for another ten minutes.
The royal family were moved and convinced by this performance. But it was a different matter for some members of the audience on the previous tour Grey Owl had made. He came to Hastings to give a similar talk to a packed house at the White Rock Pavilion. Mary McCormick was in that audience and when she came out she said to her friend,
"That was Archie Belaney, or I'll eat my hat!"
It was Archie Belaney. Mary McCormick had lived next door to him in St Mary's Terrace when they were children until they were both eighteen. She went on to tell her friend that Archie had been an unusual child; he'd spent most of his time up on the hills around the town and had kept a menagerie of frogs, mice, snakes and other creatures in the attic of the house he lived in with his grandmother and a maiden aunt. He sometimes took creatures to school in his pockets and all his life from very young, he'd been obsessed with Native American history and culture. To Mary as a child, he appeared to know everything there was to know about the Native people, especially of Canada.
It seems that around 1906, when he was 18, Archie Belaney went to Canada. Some people say he was sent by his family to learn farming; others that he'd seen Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show which was touring during that period and been inspired by that. In Canada, he became a trapper and hunter, and learned the Ojibway language. He traded in beaver skins. When asked, he said his father was Scottish and his mother Apache, and that he'd been adopted by the Ojibway tribe and this was the biography he presented for the rest of his life.
The film of Grey Owl's story shows him living with Anahareo, an Iroquois woman. The two of them adopted two beaver kittens orphaned when their parents had been killed by one of Grey Owl's traps. As Grey Owl lived with these two beavers which he called McGinnis and McGinty, he became aware of their intelligence, skill and beauty and his attitude to trapping changed. In his books Grey Owl writes of the sound a beaver makes when it has lost its mate - a call of heart-rending grief - and tells many tales of the cute and tricky behaviour of the beavers he reared by hand.
He realised that the beaver might be facing extinction in North America and he began to write about it and give talks. His first was to a Ladies Club in Metis-sur-Mer and he describes being very nervous. But his talk was fuelled by passionate commitment and first-hand knowledge and the ladies gave him $700 towards his work. He realised that he could make money this way - much more than by trapping - and he developed the aim of persuading the Canadian Government to set up National Parks to provide secure habitats for the beavers. By 1930 there were 2 parks and a government sponsored film of Grey Owl and his beavers.
Grey Owl continued his work for environmental protection and awareness, writing books and articles, and making lecture tours in North America and England - which included the 1937 command performance. He was a very popular speaker and people responded positively to his message.
Grey Owl, Archie Belaney, died in 1938 and though several people by then knew about his double identity, it wasn't until after his death that one of them, a Canadian journalist, broke the story in the "North Bay Nugget" paper. Grey Owl's cabin on Ajaawan Lake near Prince Albert National Park in Canada is a place of pilgrimage still for people who have been inspired and moved by his nature writing and his work in saving the beaver from extinction and making sure at least some part of its wilderness home survived.
It was these Hastings hills that first inspired his love of the outdoor life on land and with its creatures.

Holman Hunt

In the Information Centre you will find postcards of Holman Hunt's painting "Our English Coasts" which he later called "Strayed Sheep". As you walk along this part of the cliff top path you can see the landscape he painted. Like the other pre-Raphaelites he was committed to painting out of doors and depicting natural scenes with emphasis on light and vitality. He recounts how he was up here on one occasion but unable to start painting because of a heavy mist. So he sat and read a book while he waited for the weather to change. A walker engaged him in conversation and the talk turned to painting. The walker announced that he was an artist and that he knew some of the pre-Raphaelite painters well, and that he knew that it was all a pretence, this painting out of doors. He could swear, from personal knowledge, that they worked in the studio as was traditional. Hunt allowed the man to talk, and didn't reveal his identity.
The painting was interpreted as symbolising Britain's undefended coastline and her perilous, sheep-like disregard for the threat of invasion by Napoleon. Hunt changed the title because his point was not political but spiritual - the sheep were symbolic of people's ignorant and dangerous behaviour.
In 1852 Holman Hunt, Millais and Edward Lear spent time together in this area and one day they were walking on the beach. (There were houses at the foot of the cliffs and more paths and tracks down then than there are now.) Millais began collecting cuttlefish, traditionally used for making "pounce" a conditioner for canvases for painting. Hunt argued that it was a waste of time as substitutes were available, but Millais insisted and then asked Lear to carry them for him. From this time, the pre-Raphaelites spoke about people who did or did not "carry their own cuttlefish". Lear used this landscape and some nearby quarries for part of his painting "Quarries of Syracuse". The fig trees in the picture were painted in a Hastings garden (see Marianne North's story).
Holman Hunt's "Sunlight on the Sea" was also painted here. It is now in Andrew Lloyd Webber's collection.
There are more stories about the Pre-Raphaelites and their associations with this and other areas of Sussex in Peter Wise's "The Pre-Raphaelite Trail in Sussex" published by S.B. Publications.

Covehurst Beach

Many guidebooks to Hastings and this coast tell stories about shipwrecks and smugglers, and the suggestion is that, since the days when Hastings was chief of the Cinque Ports whose men supplied the king with ships and sailors, the local fishermen have plied several different trades.
Coventry Patmore who lived and wrote in Hastings tells stories, among them a tale of an occasion when a ship was wrecked on Hook's Reef which lies just off the coast here. Word reached Hastings that barrels of brandy were coming ashore, and there was a general exodus in this direction. According to Coventry Patmore, when the authorities arrived at the scene there were strewn across the beach the corpses of the wrecked ship's crew, and dead drunk fishermen of Hastings - it was a job to work out which were which.
The beaches beneath these cliffs were more accessible even in the recent past. The cliffs are formed of layers of sandstone over layers of clay, and the different porosity and weather resistance of the rock/soil strata causes instability and frequent slumps and landslides. Also the sea level has risen and fallen over the centuries. There were several houses and a coastguard station at sea level, and partway down the cliffs 2 centuries ago, and some lasted long enough to be visible in photographs.
During WW2 the beach was mined and heavily defended and was not made safe until the early 1960s. A local man told me that he remembered the military team coming and working in the area to defuse munitions. They made wooden steps down to the beach south of Fairlight Glen. Local people gladly used this access to go onto the beach for picnics and barbeques. These steps were in use when I first visited the area in the 1990s but have since fallen with a landslide and now it is only possible to scramble down with some difficulty and danger.

Lovers' Seat

This sarsen stone used to be in a different position. There are photographs of it from the early 20th century showing it sticking out, precariously, from the cliff edge. People perched on it for souvenir photo's and there were also seats nearby where trippers and hikers could sit and hear the story that gave the rock its name. It seems that pennies could be earned for a (melo)dramatic rendering of the tale and so there are many variants of it. A feature writer for the St Leonards and Hastings Gazette researched the "true story" in the 1950s and there's a copy of his findings in the reference library in the town.
The story is that, around 1780, Miss Elizabeth (Bessie) Boys of Hawkhurst (there are memorials to her family in the church there) fell in love with Lieutenant Lamb of Hastings. He was commander of the revenue cutter that cruised between Beachy Head and Dungeness Point. Miss Boys' family objected to the romance, even though Lieutenant Lamb came from a good family. (Lamb House in Rye still stands, and records show that the Lamb family provided mayors and were well established in the town.) Bessie's father sent her to stay at Fairlight Place with friends in order to remove her from temptation. But this was not a successful move as Bessie was able to come to this rock on the cliff edge and signal to the boat her lover commanded. He came ashore and wooed her and they eloped together. They were married at St Clements Danes church in London, and Bessie's father disinherited her. They managed without her inheritance, had one daughter and lived together until Lamb now a Captain died in a yachting accident in Southampton Water in 1814.
Local storytellers gave several embellishments to these facts, variations of which have made their way into different guide books. One frequent one has the couple travelling one evening to nearby Hollington church to be married while Lieutenant Lamb's loyal men defended the paths from the lady's irate family who were attempting to follow them and prevent the wedding. Hollington church is secluded and atmospheric, and the parson there was much troubled by folk arriving to look for evidence of these dramatic events. This version usually has the families being reconciled to the wedding once it had taken place.
Another variant has it that Lovers' Seat ought really to be Lovers' Leap because it was here that Bessie sat in helpless horror and watched her lover's ship go down far out in the bay. She leapt from the cliff top, not wanting to live without her man, but became entangled by her clothes in the gorse. She was rescued by a passing smuggler, and later married him. A simpler Lovers' Leap version has the thwarted Bessie and Lamb throw themselves off the cliff top together rather than live without being able to marry.

Fairlight Glen

On this route you cross Warren Glen and walk up Fairlight Glen. If you approach the area from Hastings you cross Ecclesbourne Glen. All three of these steep sided valleys are magical places with their own micro-climates with clay and sandstone loving plants and bubbling streams. The name "Fairlight" is said to derive from the earlier "Fernlye" which means clearing with ferns. And ferns there certainly are in these valleys - many varieties and hybrids between them. They can be very hard to identify, but it's interesting just to notice the differences.
During the Gothic Revival period in the 1840s and 50s circumstances occurred together that created the great "fern fever" during which country people could earn 6 months' wages by selling roots of rare ferns to the dealers who specialized in them. The contributing factors were the Victorian interest in "refinement" - ferns are plants whose sex organs are completely hidden. (Earlier Linnaeus was published his classification of plants by referance to their sexual parts, which caused shock waves amongst respectable folk though it eventually became the standard classification system.) Wardian cases - sealed, portable, glass-walled plant containers were available allowing humid environments for ferns to grow indoors. The price of glass had recently fallen as a result of tax changes; this made greenhouses affordable. (Crystal Palace was built in 1851, reflecting the new availability of glass.)
These factors, combined with the fashion for all things dark and gloomy, created the conditions for the interest in ferns. Some localities were stripped of their ferns, especially in Wales and the West Country where they grow prolifically, but at the same time ferns were propagated and grown in profusion elsewhere. Mr Bevis of Cornwall found one fern unlike any other, sold it to a London nursery, and this became the parent of many varieties some of which carry his name. It has been claimed that no fern became extinct as a result of the craze.
In fact, "fern fever" had a contrary outcome in that it contributed to a growing awareness of the need for conservation. Until the mid nineteenth century the Royal Horticultural Society had offered annual prizes for the best collections of wild flowers. By the 1880s, members were no longer encouraged to collect specimens but the competition was for drawings and paintings of them. The craze for ferns ended by this time too, perhaps because the nurseries were now propagating and selling plants so that ordinary folk could afford them thus making them no longer rare and fashionable with the rich.

Goblin Market

When I first walked in Fairlight Glen I saw all around me the shapes and shadows of small and mysterious beings, and this has been the (unprompted) response of many companions since. At around the same time I read Christina Rossetti's narrative poem "Goblin Market". Then I learned that her brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti spent long periods in Hastings. The next time I walked in the Glen I became convinced that this was where Christina Rossetti found her inspiration for the poem. When I looked into it further I found that Christina did spend many months in Hastings in the two years before Goblin Market was published. It is an extraordinary poem depicting goblins who tempt two sisters with luxurious, exotic fruit:
(they) ".stood stock still upon the moss,
Leering at each other,
Brother with sly brother.
One set his basket down
One reared his plate;
One began to weave a crown
Of tendrils, leaves and rough nuts brown
(Men sell not such in any town);
One heaved the golden weight
Of dish and fruit to offer her:
"Come buy, come buy."
The fruit they offer to the sisters is mortally dangerous and the story unfolds with suggestions of drug addiction which was a common problem at the time when laudanum and other opiates were easily available. Sisterly devotion and determination oppose the sinister goblins and the poem reaches a satisfying conclusion:
"For there is no friend like a sister
In calm or stormy weather;
To cheer one on the tedious way,
To fetch one if one goes astray,
To lift one if one totters down,
To strengthen whilst one stands."
When I told this story on a walk, whilst we sat on the mossy bank beside Fairlight stream, there were all sorts of whisperings and sighings in the trees and ferns around us.

Marianne North

North's Seat was erected by Marianne North in honour and memory of her father, Frederick North who was MP for Hastings in the mid nineteenth century. Marianne was born in October 1830 and she lived in Hastings with her father (her mother died when Marianne was a child) until 1869. She cultivated the garden and greenhouses at their house in Old London Road: she loved plants. She was also an accomplished painter and musician and with her father lived a cultured, comfortable life full of artistic activity and associations. She read, amongst many other volumes, "Robinson Crusoe". She didn't marry.
Edward Lear was a close friend of the family and it was the North's fig tree that he used as model for one of his paintings of a Mediterranean scene. Marianne was also friends of the Brassey family who threw a great fancy dress ball in 1862 after Tom and Annie Brassey returned from their round the world trip. Marianne travelled with her father during his lifetime, and they both loved to walk up on the hills around Hastings. When her "one friend and companion" - her father - died, she was deeply bereft. She left the Hastings house forever, and vowed to use her skill in painting and sketching "to learn from the lovely world that surrounded me". She then travelled the world for the next 15 years, visiting every continent and painting wherever she went. These travels were assisted by her connections with embassy officials and colonial families, but there were long periods when she travelled alone, and many battles with sickness and difficulty. These are described, without self-pity, in her journals, extracts from which have been published in "A Vision of Eden" which also includes many beautiful reproductions of her paintings of plants, places, birds and insects. The vividness and richness of colours in them reflects both her response to the beauty of the plant kingdom and also, I think, the influence of the Pre-Raphaelites.
She also discovered plants, some of which have been named in her honour. In 1879, Marianne North offered her paintings, and the money for a building to house them, to Kew Gardens with whom she'd had lots of contact as a result of her plant-hunting and general interest over the years. The Marianne North gallery is still there some distance from the central area of Kew. The paintings are detailed, accurate, and extraordinary.