Autumn Hills and Watermills (One Operational and Open)

Taking place on a Sunday which is unusual for me, this walk is almost a sampler of West Sussexiness. Five pretty villages, straggling along the springline at the base of the South Downs and built out of all the local building materials; a range of substrates and landscapes from chalk escarpment to clay vale to sandy heath; and a range of buildings for work and worship from the twelfth century to the twentieth. One such working building is Burton Mill, a flour mill from 1780 still in use and powered by the hydraulic head of an idyllic lake. On Saturday 14th and Sunday 15th September it will be open to visitors for free. I can't make the former date, so the walk will be on the latter.

The sights:

Bury: Under the Downs, pretty and leafy. Cottages mostly built of sandstone rather than flint or clunch (chalk) which is only a short distance away. St John the Evangelist Church is C13, big and plain, typically Wealden. Bury House (1910, Tudor-style) was the home of John Galsworthy (author of The Forsyte Saga). 

West Burton: Hamlet; no church. Cooke's House is a solid late C16 house with a charming Jacobean doorway in its high wall. Fine views to the Downs. 

Bignor: A small village loosely arrayed around a square of lanes. The Downs form a splendid amphitheatre around it. Holy Cross Church: plain Norman, renewed by GE Street who added the fussy bell turret. The Old Shop/Yeoman's House: famous C15 Wealden House, half-timbered and thatched, a model of its kind. 

Sutton: One long winding street that combines all of Sussex's building materials: sandstone, brick, half-timber, clunch, flint. St John's Church is big and stately, C11 and C12. Old Rectory is 1330, but refaced in the C19.

Barlavington: Just a C13 church and a farmyard with a fantastic view to the wooded downs. 

Burton: No village, just a church and a house: Burton Park. The church is a delight: no dedication and the mellowest in the county. Norman nave and chancel, left alone by the C19 and restored in 1636. A time capsule of pre-Civil War times: a rare Coat of Arms to Charles I, and a very telling motto 'Obey them that have the rule over you'. Wall paintings of the Ten Commandments and a rood screen and altar rails to conform to Archbishop Laud's desire for 'the beauty of holiness'. Burton Park house was built in 1831 by Henry Bassett. Grecian but rather heartless in style. Both buildings are Grade I-listed.

Burton Mill: A four-storey, five-bay working watermill built in 1780. Converted to a dynamo to create electricity in 1899, then to a sawmill in 1929, a use it had until the 1970s when it became derelict. Bought by the current owners in 2016 and restored in 2018, the water in the lake now drives the mill. Bags of stoneground flour can be bought and the mill is open free of charge on Saturday 14th and Sunday 15th September as part of Petworth Heritage Weekend. Click here to read more: History – Burton Mill. 

Lord's Piece/Sutton Common: Like the New Forest, a sandy heath of birch, oak, bracken and gorse, but backed by lovely views to the Bignor and Bury escarpment. A 3500 year old tumulus is present. Linked to Coates Common nature reserve.

The route (please click the link to see the walk at the Ordnance Survey) site:

The South Downs Way (SDW) will take us along the River Arun to Bury. Church Lane, then The Street, will take us to the crossing with the A29, whereupon West Burton Road will take us to West Burton. The West Sussex Literary Trail (WSLT) will take us to Bignor, where lanes will take us further northeast to Sutton where Folly Lane will take us to Barlavington and Burton Park and Burton Mill. Burton Park Road and Blue Doors Road will take us to Lord's Piece and Sutton Common, and then lanes will take us back to West Burton. The WSLT will take us back to Bury and a walk along the river bank will return us to the station.

Dogs:

Dogs are very welcome on all my walks and this is a very good dog walk, with plenty of fields and heaths for them to run free, although there will be country lanes and livestock in some fields necessitating the dog going on a lead. The length of the walk may be a problem for some, though. A dog off the lead must be obedient. 

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(Picture credits: Burton Mill Pond: Photo © Chris Thomas-Atkin (cc-by-sa/2.0); Approaching Burton Mill Pond: Photo © Chris Thomas-Atkin (cc-by-sa/2.0);The images are copyrighted but are above credited to their copyright holders and are licensed for further reuse under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0). The other pictures were taken by the leader on his recce.)