Category: Sussex Weald

The ruins of Brambletye

Daniel Greenwood1 Comment

Ashdown Forest in the Sussex Weald, East Sussex, June 2024

It’s time to unearth another Sussex gem from 2024 with a walk to the mysterious Brambletye Ruins. It was an after-work jaunt, starting in the village of Forest Row in East Sussex.

We didn’t stop, clocking up 6.5 miles in 2 hours which is unusually fast for me. There are a couple of B-roads to engage with so take care on those as people can be quite careless with their speed on rural roads. There are no streetlights so you may want to bring a hi-vis and a torch to make yourself visible in lower light.

East Sussex County Council is promoting a shorter version of our walk (3 miles compared with out 6.5) along the Forest Way which you can view here. The Forest Way is the route of the old railway line that used to run between East Grinstead and Forest Row. This line was closed by the infamous Dr. Beeching, and there’s some interesting information about that:

The Forest Row railway station opened in 1866. Although a busy commuter line, it was axed with the Beeching cuts in 1966. Ironically, Dr Beeching lived near Forest Row and regularly travelled up to London on the line when he was Chairman of British Rail.

https://forestrow.co/forest-way/

Kill your darlings, as the creative writing teachers say.

This blog is a comprehensive account of the history of Brambletye (which doesn’t have a Wikipedia page!) from a local. If you want to see Brambletye in this blog you’ll have to get to the end as we left the highlight to the final stretch of the walk.

Woodcut showing a depcition of Brambletye Manor before its destruction ( From ‘Brambletye House’, The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. 279, (1827; Project Gutenberg, 2005), pp. 265-267. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1594)

BBC Sussex recently published an article about Brambletye and a Secret Sussex podcast episode. This is an interview with Garen Ewing, a local illustrator who seems to be ‘the Brambletye Guy’. His website has a trove of information about the history of the house with a lot of interesting old images, which I wish were larger. The whole reason we did this walk was after a suggestion from my friend Edwin, who had learned about Brambletye from Garen’s crowdfunder for The Brambletye Box:

You can read more about Garen’s fundraiser on his Patreon page.

The photos in my post are a blend of mirrorless camera and phone, with the odd illustration and historical photograph where I could find some.

I parked in Forest Row in the village centre, where there are some typically oaky timber construction to be admired. This is an old entrance to the Chequers Inn Hotel. This is not the only reference to oak doors in this post.

The walk leaves Forest Row by crossing a golf course, which I still find quite weird because of the tiny white eggs flying around trying to kill you. Follow the ESCC footpath signs through here.

The view across the greens into the Weald was splendid. It was such a still evening, we could see a hot-air balloon beyond the birch trees in the distance.

Surviving the golf course, you enter into the heathy woodlands so typical of the Ashdown Forest area. This is something you can see along old footways, a mature beech tree with its roots exposed. It’s a nice indicator of how close to the surface tree roots can be. The root has adapted to life above ground and become more like a branch. It looks like there are some bricks or stones under the roots, so perhaps the tree grew on top of a wall.

We passed one stream which is typical of those in the Ashdown Forest. This stream had the brown-orange hue of a Wealden ghyll, caused by the iron ore discolouration that made the area so attractive for the famous iron works of centuries past.

The woods were a tangle of birch and honeysuckle. I’m never sure if these are truly ancient woodlands or recently wooded heathland, but the sighting of the plant below is helpful.

Common cow wheat is an ancient woodland indicator and is far from common. I’ve found it in ancient woodlands around the western side of the High Weald. It used to be found in south London’s oak woodlands but has been lost since the 1980s. Plant diversity declining before our very eyes. It’s in the figwort family, along with yellow rattle and foxglove, of which more later.

June can be a month of mushrooms, so I wasn’t hugely surprised to find this tawny grisette. For more mushrooms have a look at my Fungi Friday blog. After this we left the woodlands.

These heathlands are very birchy, brackeny, oaky and rushy, much like the New Forest.

I was intrigued by this wonderful pond, one of a network of three running east-west. It’s so large and, looking at the map, is clearly part of an historically wet landscape. The placenames nearby include Alder Moors (alder is a tree of wetlands), Hollow Shaw (hollow probably a place where water pools), Mudbrooks House, and Spring Hill Farm.

When the walk turns north out of the woods you pick up the Greenwich Meridian Trail. My parents used to take me and my sister to Greenwich Park most Sundays when we were kids, when it felt more like a south London park than a mass-tourist attraction. It’s nice to feel that connection. The Meridian Line runs through nearby East Court at East Grinstead, which this walk will take you to.

This is a phone pic looking back at the woodland we passed through, a large pond at the bottom of the slope.

On higher ground you have view towards Mid Sussex. For some reason the trunk of a dead oak rested up there on the snooker table grassland, presumably where it fell.

This fine living oak is passed along the way, with signs of cattle gathering underneath its branches for shelter. That’s what causes erosion to the roots, but I don’t know if this is harmful to the tree, or if it’s something they have evolved to cope with over millions of years shared with wild cattle and the like. I have read that the pocking caused by hooves may allow air to reach the roots move effectively than the flat compaction caused by modern human footwear and tyres, etc..

The shelter of the oak is too great to turn down. One oak’s ancient pagan names was ‘dur’, which ‘door’ derives from. This is probably because some oaks had cavities so large you could enter inside them. Also interesting that doors (as per the first image on the post) were once more commonly made from oak.

Nearby was an outcrop of rock! That’s exciting here because we don’t really have much in the way of rocky outcrops in the south-east, compared with the Dales, Dartmoor or the Lakes. This is probably the stone used to build Brambletye House, what I presume is a type of sandstone but I’m no geologist. You wonder if this little section has been quarried over the years.

This is our fine oak with the rocky outcrop seen to the other side.

This is a view north towards Weir Wood Reservoir. There’s a church on the horizon and a helicopter high in the sky. Dramatic clouds were developing but we escaped a downpour.

Let’s appreciate this lichen-touched public footpath stone, with its helpful update pointing us in the right direction.

A snapshot of the hedge and oak boundary we passed through on our way to Brambletye.

I was taken aback by this magnificent display of foxgloves. June is the peak for this wonderful flower, also a member of the figwort family along with common cow wheat as mentioned earlier!

As we neared the famous ruins, we passed over a little stone bridge, what is probably quarried from the same stone seen earlier. It amazes me that this is in fact a bridge over the River Medway, that mighty Kentish river of Dickens and my mate Pete. In fact, by writing this blog I’ve learned that the Medway rises nearby in Turners Hill.

The Medway and its tributaries are known as ‘Wealden Rivers’ – rising from springs across the High Weald where the sand meets impermeable clay.

https://www.southeastriverstrust.org/medway/

We arrived behind the fence at Brambletye just as the sun began to set, the orange light clipping the tops of each remaining tower. According to Garen Ewing, each tower would have had a minaret similar to that of the western tower. This image is looking south with the towers running east-west.

1892 – 1933, C G Harper Collection via Historic England

This old illustration shows two of the towers ivy-clad, and a far more open landscape surrounding them. Now the clump of trees on the western side hides a tennis court, such is the wealth of the current landowner.

It was commissioned by Sir Henry Compton, a prominent landowner and political figure, and would have been one of the most impressive residences in Sussex at the time. However, the Compton family’s time at the manor was short-lived as by the late 17th Century they had left the property – for reasons unknown.

BBC

On the central tower you can see the date of Brambletye’s construction, 1681. Also note the bricked-up windows and what I am guessing is the family crest below. I was using my 24-200mm lens so could zoom in for some nice detail.

The eastern tower had yet more bricked-up windows – perhaps to avoid the window tax, introduced in 1696 in England, 16 years after Brambletye was built.

Western tower aglow in the setting sun, an architectural melange.

Me and Edwin are both bird nerds, and we were pleased to see a kestrel perched on the only complete tower. Kestrels love habitat like this, and the lack of suitable buildings to nest in has probably contributed to their decline in the UK.

Thanks for reading.

The Sussex Weald

Arun valley oaks around Billingshurst

Daniel GreenwoodLeave a comment

Billingshurst and the Wey-and-Arun Canal, West Sussex, January 2024

Pre-ramble

This long post (2500 words) is based on the Billingshurst walking route available in the Ordnance Survey guide to walks in West Sussex and the South Downs.

The difference in my route is that I went by train not by car. It’s always better by train if you can do that. I also took a longer route to the south via Parbrook.

Billingshurst is a growing ‘village’ on the from Victoria to Bognor Regis or Chichester.

The name Billingshurst means a wooded hill of the Billa’s people who were perhaps an extended family rather than a large tribe.

Billingshurst Local History Society

For this post I’ve relied on Geoffrey Lawes’ Billingshurst Heritage (2017) for historical references, which I borrowed from my local West Sussex library.

I wouldn’t do the walk after high levels of rain in winter because the Arun is prone to flooding in epic fashion and could make some of the walk impassable, particularly beyond the bridge.

This would be a good one to do in the spring when it’s a bit drier and the birds and woodland flowers are coming to life again.

There are some quite dangerous crossings here, so care needs to be taken when you meet the A29 twice, and another country lane that has poor visibility about a quarter of the way in.

Parbrook

After leaving Billingshurst station you pass through a new housing development to the west of the village, and then the village of Parbrook, which was once separate. There’s an impressive timber-framed building here called Great Grooms, which dates to the 1500s. It’s on the Historic English register as the Jennie Wren Restaurant, as it was recently known.

In Billingshurst’s Heritage there’s an insight into the life of people here around the time of the First World War. Doris Garton describes her childhood in a ‘small, primitive cottage’ in Parbrook, and her father’s life after he returned from the war:

In the 1920s my father did contract to local farms at Parbrook. He would set off at 6:30am with his tools and hay knife strapped on his bicycle. According to the seasons he did hay cutting and tying, harvesting and threshing, thatching and land work, draining, ditching, ploughing with a horse, hedge-cutting and layering of hedges. He was also sometimes hired as a water diviner, using a hazel twig.

Billinghurst’s Heritage: Geoffrey Lawes, 2017: p. 255

The walk gets serious quite quickly as you cross the A29, which is a diversion from the straight line of Stane Street, a Roman Road that provided a route from London to Chichester. Crossing the A29 gives the immediate reward of this – the sort of place where Doris’s father would have plied his trades in the 1920s:

Ancient woodland

As you probably already know, ancient woodland is a sensitive habitat, so be careful not to trample wildflowers like bluebell and wood anemone in the spring (it’s hard!), and not to disturb ground-nesting birds (March-July). I noticed some bluebells were peeking from the leaf litter, which seems to be fairly normal for January in the last decade.

It was here that I spoke to a local woman about the walk I was doing and what the best route was. I’m always looking for tips.

The woods are surrounded by open farmland. The make-up here is typical managed ancient woodland of old – hazel understory with mature oak trees (otherwise known as ‘coppice with standards’). Mr. Garton’s bread and butter.

Holly is another element of this prehistoric mix. This isn’t meant to sound patronising but I think that sometimes too much holly can be removed from woodlands by well-meaning people who want to reduce shade for flowers to thrive. I understanding the motivation, but holly’s powers are subtle.

Speaking of which, this magnificent holly was growing on one of the wood banks. I think it’s one of the largest I’ve ever encountered, probably around 200-300 years old, but I’m not sure.

I got a bit lost here and ended up following a desire-line (an informal path) along the edge of this stream, as you can see on the map above. The erosion of the bank (possibly by people and pets entering it) may have contributed to this hazel losing its footing and falling in. It does look quite dead.

This was my first time on the Sussex Diamond Way!

Having found the path again, I passed through this lopsided gate into the field.

There were some lovely large oaks along the boundary of field and woodland.

This is The Lordings, a Grade II-listed farmhouse dating to the 1600s (Historic England listing). With its uneven development and attached Sussex barn on the left-hand side, I had wondered how old it was. The windows of the house are in different places and rather small, which did suggest old age. The ditch in the image is part of a stream and pond. The landscape was lovely here, formed by the movement of water over time, which makes me think that’s a natural spring-fed watercourse. Little Lordings Wood sits nearby, and once upon a time woodland will have covered this entire area. ‘Lordings’ appears throughout this walk but I can’t find any more information about the significance of the name.

Now came one of the most dangerous crossings I’ve encountered during my 15 years of rambling (with my legs). The gate opens right out onto a road where the speed limit is 60mph, and you have no way of seeing what’s coming round the corner, or it seeing you. Having a hi-vis is useful in this kind of situation. Reader, I made it.

There are a number of old farm houses dotted around this walk. This is Tanners Farm, which ties in nicely with the oaks. Tanning is the job of removing moisture from animal hides in the process of producing leather. Soaking the hides in with oak bark releases the tannins from the bark and helps to waterproof the resulting leather.

It had the feel of an ancient agricultural landscape, with oak a core part of its progress over time.

The Tanners Farm section, passing beyond two large oaks, provides the best views of the entire walk. It was misty when I was there, so the views of the Downs weren’t complete. The drama is still felt, and is a reminder that one of the nicest things about walking in the Low Weald are the views of that majestic chalk whaleback.

This enticing path into oak woodland was not to be taken on this occasion.

The misty view south, with the Downs not quite making it into the scene. Another one for a spring or summer day.

So much choice. It was time to leave the Sussex Diamond Way and join the Wey-South Path.

The Wey & Arun Canal

January is too early for blackthorn, though that is changing with the march of climate change. This froth of white is actually lichen hanging over the Wey & Arun Canal.

The canal was constructed after plans were brought to Parliament all the way back in 1641 to ‘link the upper reaches of the River Wey to those of the Arun by a canal between Cranleigh and Dunsfold’:

[I]n 1785 The Arun Navigation Act was passed and the section between Pallingham and Newbridge opened two years later.

Billinghurst’s Heritage: Geoffrey Lawes, 2017, p.174

The canal began to transfer goods in 1816 when the Wey & Arun Junction Canal opened. So it took the best part of 200 years for the canal to be built (sounds like HS2). The Industrial Revolution of the 1790s changed the world in that time, but the impacts only really began to be felt a couple of decades after the 1820s when the canal was in full operation. It closed in 1888 – two centuries of planning, sixty years of action.

I passed these dead oak trees covered in an orange algae (I presume). I expect oak would have been one of the resources transported up and down the canal. The oak woodlands around Billingshurst, which covered a far greater area then, would have been felled, debarked and planked, their produce taken upstream to the Thames’ shipyards, or south to the Solent in Hampshire where international trade could have taken place. My understanding of the specifics is limited, so I’m generalising a bit, but Lawes States that most trade ‘was from London, mainly coal and groceries, porter beer and pottery’ (Lawes, p. 176). Lawes also confirms that the canal gave access to Littlehampton, Portsmouth, Chichester and Arundel via other water-links that could connect with the Wey & Arun Canal.

Ash trees would have been useful also, particularly for tool handles. One way to identify a distant ash tree in wet winter weather is the yellow glow on the outermost branches. These are xanthoria or sunburst lichens which of course thrive in wet weather. I would say this was a significant ash tree, and possibly had been pollarded, due to the branching taking place so low down on the trunk.

The Arun mocks the canal with its swooping bends as it takes its wild course through the outskirts of Billingshurst. The walk along this stretch was a sloshy trudge for a good while (wellies are advisable). It would be nicer in spring or summer, as all good walking guides will tell you.

The damp atmosphere around the river and canal meant the fingerposts have become home to algae, moss and lichen.

This is a large ash tree with what looks like an old hedgeline queueing behind it. To the right-hand side is what seems to be an alder, a tree that thrives in wet conditions. You can see a vehicle passing on the far left-hand side of the screen. The view of this field completely underwater during twilight is one of the more memorable scenes I can recall from travelling to Midhurst on the A272 over the years.

I passed this massive oak (it looks smaller in this image than it is in real life) several days a week between 2018 and 2022. The mud underneath is from the cattle standing there to shelter from the rain. The oak is probably around 400 years old, making this stretch of the Wey-South Path around Billingshurst a land of giants.

New Bridge only allows one car at a time, but I’d never seen the three frogs under the bridge until I did this walk.

This frog looked particularly surprised to see me.

In Billinghurst’s Heritage there’s a passage from a canal tourist in 1869 – J. B. Dashwood. He travelled along the Wey & Arun Canal one spring or summer from the Thames to the Solent. There’s a description of what our man J. B. saw with his travelling partner somewhere along this stretch. Quoted below.

At a little before 7 o’clock we reached Newbridge where our boat lay quietly at her moorings, wet with the morning bath of dew…[at the first lock] we watched the lock-keeper’s wife and two pretty daughters making butter in the early morning. Though flat the meadows on either side presented such a lovely English picture with cattle dotted about, …the larks sang aloft sending forth their melodious morning song and the banks of the Canal clothed with wild flowers of every hue and colour that we enjoyed this part of our journey almost as much as any.

Lawes, 2017, p.175

I wonder if these are the water meadows being described. While searching online for more information about New Bridge I discovered plans for housing affecting the area you can see in this image on the left-hand side (northern side) of the road. There’s a beautiful timber-framed house and barn called Hole Cottage (Historic England listing), dating to the 1500s. It wouldn’t be affected directly by the housing, the arable fields out of view towards the ‘village’ would be.

The proposal is called Newbridge Park (there’s a consultation online which closed in January). This area would become a country park, which is wise. Driving along the A272, the sight of the Arun flooding these meadows is a sight to behold. No one would seriously suggest building along this floodplain (would they?), particularly with the sort of winter deluges we’re getting now in this part of England. This is a rather old oak, perhaps 200 years, sitting at one of the bends in the Arun, which is just below the ground level.

This is that sumptuous bend in the Arun, a river which I have now learned was previously known as Tarrente or Trisanton which means ‘trespasser’ (Lawes, p.174). The river does trespass widely here, or is it the other way around? We have trespassed far into the floodplain of this great river. This is another view into the area which the developers propose would become a country park. But how long would that hold for, and who would fund the management of a park here?

There was a winterbourne (I am guessing) flowing over the banks and into the canal. Growing up in Lewisham in south London, it’s so nice to see water moving of its own accord in the landscape (with respect to the work to restore the rivers in that particular borough.)

Let’s appreciate the generosity of Eileen Cherriman here, who donated a stretch of the canal in memory of her husband John.

I do enjoy bringing interpretation boards to a wider audience.

Further down the canal is another bridge at Rowner Lock.

This was restored by the Wey & Arun Canal Trust.

Returning to Billingshurst

It was time to turn away from the watercourses and back towards civilisation.

The walk turns east as it returns towards Billingshurst through farmland walked by electricity pylons.

One of the footbridges on the way back was in a state of devastation, probably due to the impact of flooding. I presume this wasn’t vandalism, but from my experience you just can’t be sure sometimes.

A rather sickly oak in a process of retrenchment as the upper branches die away. You can see more oaks dotted around beyond the hedgerow.

Looking north-east into the Weald, with the mist spoiling most of the fun.

There are some interesting boards near the A29 crossing as you enter back into Billingshurst. I’m sorry that this timber-framer didn’t make it. This settlement seems to be very old, possibly prior to the Norman Conquest of 1066. Local school children have found lots of treasure at Burnt Row in their research into the site.

Entering back into Billingshurst I enjoyed the sight of this interesting timber-framer. A couple of local lads were causing a bit of bother here and couldn’t understand what I was doing.

I haven’t featured the church in this post though it is important and has a prominent position in the village. The Causeway is a row of houses, many of them old and timber-framed, with one potential dating back to the 1200s (Historic England listing). If you needed any evidence that Billingshurst and its surrounding countryside is an oaken land, this should be it.

Thanks for reading.

The Sussex Weald

Late summer timbers at the Weald & Downland Museum

Daniel GreenwoodLeave a comment

In August I made my annual visit to the Weald and Downland Living Museum in the South Downs.

You can see my timber-framed building photo gallery here.

This is the first view you encounter inside the museum grounds after you pay your entry fee. Amazing to think the medieval hall house is from Cray in the London Borough of Bexley. It dates to the 1400s.

The Titchfield Market Hall has recently been restored. It’s looking very good indeed now. These halls were once more common in English market towns, but I can’t say I’ve ever seen one in situ. How times change.

The House from Walderton punctuates a quintessential Weald and Downland Museum scene.

These charming railway cottages are a game of two halves. In one part (here on the right) you can see the internal structure of the building. On the left hand side you can see a furnished representation of the cottage.

Poplar Cottage is one of my favourites. I’ve posted about it before.

Bayleaf‘s grandeur isn’t fully accounted for in these three images. It’s a large Wealden Hall that has been dated to the early 1400s.

Pendean sits out of view on the top slopes of the museum grounds. Its timbers are dated to 1609 (the year they were felled – amazing, isn’t it).

Tindalls Cottage is more recent, being from the 1700s. It has a bit of an eerie vibe about it, not sure why.

Mediaeval Hall dates from the 1600s. It’s a beauty.

I’ve been visiting the museum since 2018 but only managed to see the cart and vehicle section for the first time during this visit. Some of the wheels on show were huge. It would have been amazing to see these carts wending their way around Sussex once upon a time.

Thanks for reading

Oak timbers

Going to Battle (the village)

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Not that kind of battle, but instead to the village in East Sussex. Battle the village is the site of one of the major battles of the Norman Conquest of England of 1066, when the Normans invaded Britain and defeated the Anglo-Saxons.

It’s a period in history that absolutely fascinates me. The land ownership brought about by the Normans has shaped much of the rural landscape today, bar the impact of the enclosures in the 18th-19th centuries.

I was passing through from Rye in February 2025 and wanted to experience Battle (the village), so we stopped off for some food and a walk around. The main photographic interest was in the timber-framed buildings. It’s always worth checking out old Sussex villages because they are so rich in history and much of it is well preserved.

The timber-framers are concentrated along the rather loud high street, noisy because it’s the main road and has a fair amount of agricultural traffic.

22 High Street dates to the 1400s!

Now squeezed in by the George Hotel, it’s home to a charity shop raising money to support homeless people.

I know it says 1500, but it goes deeper than that.

I enjoyed this little alley view, but I’m not sure if it’s too wide to be a twitten.

If you came here looking for food, tough luck – the kitchen was demolished in 1685. I’m confused by the date as the Historic England listing only dates it to 1688. What happened to the kitchen!?

This is the imaginatively named 59 & 60 High Street. It’s been restored but dated to the 1400s. Just goes to show how old Battle High Street is.

Before turning off the main road onto Mount Street, I enjoyed the ‘clap-boarding’ on this little shop. This is a technique used to protect the front of a house from rain and wind, hence its other name of ‘weather-boarding’.

This is a decorative hanging-tile style that you often see in Kent and Sussex. The tiles are ‘hung’ on two pegs from holes in the top corners of the tile and laid one by one over each other. It was introduced to protect timbers from rot and weathering, I think. This one doesn’t have a listing but is probably 1700s.

Now we’re talking. This large house, Lewins Croft, is the wonkiest of the wonkies.

It’s a joy, but a shame it’s so close to the road.

It’s also very old, dating to the 1500s.

Here’s another nice clap-boarded cottage along Mount Street, off the main road.

Thanks for reading.

Oak timbers

Sussex Weald: song thrush rules

Daniel Greenwood2 Comments

I’ve been making an effort to go for a walk in my local slice of the Sussex Weald before work in recent weeks. The impact it has on my brain, body and soul is profound, having lost my connection with woodland somewhat recently.

Early spring is a special time in woodland, watching the the leaves appear, the first spring birds, and the woodland flowers. It is so much better than those hot, shady and sterile days of summer, in my view.

The chiffchaffs have been arriving, but the song thrush rules this chunk of the Weald. Its repeated phrases echo through the still leafless branches.

Wild branches against ranks of pine and birch.

Those birches, growing on old heathland, waiting for the onset of new leaves.

A birch tree harassed by honeysuckle, catching the morning light.

A green beech tree with lots of moss and algae.

The ride, with pines reaching across on either side.

Silver birches among bluebell leaves.

An old beech tree.

Bluebell leaves appearing below a mess of beech twigs and old leaves.

The grassy banks of the woodland ride. I often hear firecrest singing along these edges where the ivy climbs and a few evergreen trees like the cypresses grow.

Thanks for reading.

Hoar frost days ❄️

Daniel Greenwood8 Comments

West Sussex, January 2025

One of the nice things about not living in a city is that you get to see hoar frost. I know this because I’ve spent most of my life in cities where the ‘heat island effect’ usually won’t allow for hoar frost to really develop during daylight hours.

Bramble leaves make it through the winter, providing a good platform for these frost spikes.

This thick frost covers the trees and hedges, everything vegetative really, in a thin veil of icing. The puddles become milky ice clouds.

After a very dark, grey and damp December, these blue skies and frosty landscapes have been welcome relief.

Not a great time to sit on a bench though.

This is a reed with a coating of frost.

Remarkably this oak tree still holds its leaves, which is unusual outside of cities in January. I have known deciduous oaks to hold leaves into January in London.

I always seek them out in this weather, especially with a little bit of backlighting. This is quite a heavy crop so the sharpness is lessened a bit. You probably don’t care.

That distant landscape is actually an equestrian estate. It is chewed to within an inch of its life, hence the black sticks of trees, compared to the rough grassland where I stood to take the photo.

Thanks for reading.

The magic birch tree

Daniel Greenwood3 Comments

High Weald, West Sussex, August 2024

I had some hours to take one Friday afternoon in August and so headed to my local heathy woodland to seek out some summer fungi.

I found zero mushrooms, but did learn that summer wasn’t quite over.

In a clearing created a few years ago by the removal of non-native conifers, a heathland has flourished. Sussex, like other southern counties, once had far more heathland before it was either built on or converted to coniferous forestry (like this particular site).

This little patch of restored heathland was zinging with insect life, not least on a fallen birch tree.

Enter: the magic birch tree. Or at least sunbathe on it.

I revered it in such a way because it was providing roosting space for one of my favourite subjects – robberflies!

I’ve blogged recently about robberflies’ love of wooden fenceposts and handrails. I suppose a suspended birch trunk is just that. Nature’s handrail.

I managed to get my best ever photos of robberflies here, thanks to the capabilities of my camera, and a little bit of that famous fencepost knowledge.

Robberflies are predators of other flies, but also wasps. The photo above was taken using an in-built function of the camera to stack about 15 photos together to create a seamlessly in-focus image. It worked to great effect here.

Less dramatic was this flesh-fly, one that is actually quite smart in their black and white get-up with red compound eyes.

On the toe of my shoe a hoverfly that looked like a scuba diver was resting.

There was plenty of evidence of burrowing insects in the form of these pilot holes.

I didn’t get to see who lived here. Probably solitary wasps or bees.

What this blog can never express is the sheer number of grasshoppers. Every footsteps sent insects like the one above flying for the safety of a grassy tussock.

The birches were showing signs of autumn and its inexorable approach.

Thanks for reading.

Macro

Camped out on a dragonfly

Daniel Greenwood2 Comments

In August I was camping in West Sussex. On the final morning I opened the tent door and nearly stepped on a dragonfly that was resting in the grass outside.

It had been a cloudy night and the ground was very dry compared with the previously dew-laden start.

The dragonfly is probably a migrant hawker (Aeshna mixta) and is known to breed in SE England. As its name suggests it can also migrate to England from southern Europe.

It’s a dream to find a dragonfly in such a restful state, although the insect is vulnerable. It was in the right place however, especially if it wanted its portrait done.

It was an excellent opportunity to look at the wings of the dragonfly close up. They are renowned for their beauty and likeness to stained glass.

By looking at the wings I noticed that a planthopper bug had leapt aboard the dragonfly.

Here’s a closer view. I’m not sure of the species but it’s one I don’t remember seeing before.

A day earlier we had walked along the River Adur, famous for its connection at Knepp Wildland. It was good to see some more wasps around, with so few of them being reported this year.

The wasp is scrapping a layer of wood from a handrail or fence post to be used in the construction of a nest. You can see the ball below its mandibles above.

What a lot of hard work, worthy of my respect that’s for sure.

Thanks for reading.

Macro

Damselflies at Sheffield Park 🐉

Daniel Greenwood4 Comments

For my mum’s birthday in early August, we visited Sheffield Park in East Sussex, just over the border from West Sussex. It’s a National Trust estate so membership is needed to avoid the £17 entrance fee.

I didn’t have a camera with me other than my phone, but the Pixel 7a has an amazing camera, so I managed some nice pics of a few damselflies.

Obviously these are people not dragonflies, but the area was absolutely zinging with Odonata (the scientific name for dragons and damsels). This is looking back towards where the estate house is, though it’s not somewhere you can enter. People live there like in olden times.

Perched on the edge of the giant rhubarb (Gunnera – a super invasive wetland plant installed in places like Sheffield Park long ago for their showy foliage) was a small red-eyed damselfly.

What a beauty. Damselflies generally rest with closed wings, while dragonflies have them open. That notion was quickly dispelled by my next sighting. Usually dragons are much bigger anyway, by the way.

I was chatting to my sister when I noticed a damsel had taken a very pleasing perch in a shrub. A damselfly holding its wings out!

Now this is a willow emerald damsel, a species which ten years ago people were losing their minds over. It was a new arrival in the UK, and likely indicative of a warming climate. Now they are everywhere in southern England, and we’re experiencing temperature breakthroughs year on year.

I was just pleased to share a nice day in Sussex with my nearest and dearest. You can’t ask for much more than that, except for maybe some beautiful damselflies.

Thanks for reading.

Macro

Solitary bees at Nymans 🐝

Daniel Greenwood4 Comments

National Trust Nymans, June 2024

Nymans is a National Trust garden in the western edge of the High Weald. There are great views across Mid Sussex towards the South Downs. This visit was just for a general walk, but it quickly dawned on me that it could be a chance for some macro.

I had my Olympus 12-45mm lens with me which can work really well as a macro lens. Bingo!

Nymans has a lovely array of rock gardens and extravagant flowering borders.

The common spotted orchids were peaking, as you can see, the flowers turning to seed.

I realised this visit could be interesting for macro when we spotted this caterpillar munching on a knapweed leaf. It’s the larva of a sawfly, rather than a moth or butterfly.

Elsewhere on the knapweed was this small robberfly. I love seeing this striking group of flies, they make great subjects. They also strike, in the predatory sense.

I’ve seen loads of alder leaf beetles since moving to Sussex but I usually see them in towns. It’s always nice to see one in a meadow.

There were a number of small bees around. I think this is one of the bronze furrow bees.

In the head of a meadow cranesbill was this rather dozy little solitary bee. I pulled the petal to the side, as you can see here, to see if it had been caught by a spider. It hadn’t, it was just still.

Nymans has rose gardens, where I found this solitary bee trying to make sense of the maze of petals. Life, eh?

Thanks for reading.

Macro