Shoreham-by-Sea

Shoreham Bank (Mill Hill) butterfly site

Mill Hill (TQ 212 071) is also known as Shoreham bank, as the hillside falls sharply to the River Adur. It is a Local Nature Reserve and has been famous for its butterflies since the 1820s.[18] In May, the hillside is dusted yellow with horseshoe vetch: the butterflies' food plant. In August, the hillside is colourful with knapweeds, pink centaury, the tiny white pinpoints of eyebright, and the white umbels of wild carrot, wild parsnip, St John's wort, and wild thyme.[19] The Hill is known for its dingy skippers and grizzled skippers in the spring, and in summer the chalkhill blue and Adonis blue are 'flagship' species of this Hill.[18][20]

From Mill Hill it is possible to see Applesham Farm, which was a village at the time of the Domesday Book in 1086. To the north end is another Saxon farm, Old Erringham, which King Alfred's successors fortified to defend the estuary. To the south is the Norman church of Old Shoreham, almost on the banks of the Adur, and next to it are the wooden piers of the 1781 toll bridge, which collected traffic tolls up to the 1960s.[16]^:203

Mill Hill now suffers from traffic and aircraft noise. The special mosses and lichens have gone, and the Heath and Carthusian snails are now gone. Despite efforts by volunteers and rangers, the hill still carries far too great an area of dense and simplified scrub, which has flourished at the expense of the biodiverse turf.[16]^:203

A27 Southwick Hill Tunnels

Southwick Hill (TQ 237 077) is owned by the National Trust and has some special wildlife areas. In 1985, local residents were presented with the plan for the A27 road bypass cutting through the Hill. Through the vigorous campaigning of activists from ABBA (the Anti-Brighton Bypass Association) the road was re-routed through a tunnel under the Hill rather than a cutting through it.

In high summer, on the hill ('bostal') path, there is round-headed rampion, blue scabious, and autumn gentian. On the south side of the bridlepath, there is an un-grazed triangle with a taller sward. Here, there are still rabbits playing on the lawns amongst the purging flax, eggs and bacon, squinancywort, eyebright, and wild thyme, which themselves mingle with tall herb patches of parsnip, greater knapweed, ragwort, hogweed, and St John's wort. There are bushes of raspberry and rose-bay willowherb. Butterflies in the area include common blue, clouded yellow, small heath, comma, red admiral, painted lady, and day-flying moths like treble-bar and dusky sallow. There are glowworms too. In autumn, parts of the short turf may be colourful from the many waxcap and other old meadow fungi. Additional mushrooms include puffballs, blue legs, and velvet shank; fairy rings also form.[16]^:211

However, Southwick Hill is not what it was. Until recent years, it was the best place on the Brighton Downs to get a sense of what Down pasture was like during late Victorian and Edwardian times through to 1940. The tenant farmer continuously grazed the whole Hill and, as a result, it was something of a time capsule from a particular period of Downland history, that of the long agricultural depression from 1876 to 1940, when scrub took over many old pastures and cattle replaced many sheep flocks.[16]^:210 In recent years, however, the Hill has been split by fencing into a southern half which is seriously under-grazed, with simplified tussocky grassland, and a northern half which remains better grazed. The southern half has now lost its close-bitten down pasture, with its flowerings of tiny herbs and fruitings of old pasture fungi. Nevertheless, as a whole the Hill still has a mixture of archaic pasture and scrub thickets, sometimes mature enough to harbour small maiden oaks, and it retains much of the wildlife lost elsewhere on the Brighton Downs.

Hedges are very rare on these Downs (except around farmsteads). The Crooked Moon Hedge (TQ 233 070) lies on the top of a prehistoric field lynchet; these southern slopes of Southwick Hill were covered with an Iron Age field system whose banks lay regularly on east–west and south–north axes. At its northern end, it is the boundary between Kingston Buci and Southwick parishes, and at its southern end it bounded Kingston Buci sheep Down to the west, and one of the parish open fields to the east.

The hedge contains a lot of maple and ash and may have been bird-sown. As per Hooper's rule, the hedge is three to four centuries old.[16]^:209

Rest and Be Thankful

There is a large flat block of lichen-covered stone (TQ 238 069) by the path to Southwick Hill from Southwickhill Barn, which marks a corner on the old parish boundary between Kingston Buci and Southwick. It was notable enough to show on the Victorian Ordnance Survey maps.[16]^:210

Thundersbarrow Hill

Thunders Barrow (TQ 229 083) is a large barrow, although it was partially dug away on its south side in the nineteenth century to make way for a dew pond. It sits just north of Southwick Hill. The origins of its name are unknown.

It is only at this distance from the bypass that the silence of the Downs and the sound of the birds are bigger than the noise of the road. This point marks the beginning of Downland tranquility. The ramparts of Thundersbarrow's late Bronze Age and Iron Age camp are still tall enough to walk around, although they get a bit vague on the eastern side because of plough damage, and because the Romano-British villagers built their houses just outside the rampart and right up against the barrow on that side. When the village was excavated in 1932, two corn-drying ovens were found, still with soot in the flues and bits of charred grain.[21]

Erringham Hole (TQ 231 082) is the bushy combe to the east of Thundersbarrow, whose Celtic villagers built the huge field lynchets, parts of which are up to 12 feet in height. It was called 'Erringham Hole' because it was part of Old Erringham Farm. Old Erringham Hole (not to be confused with Whitelot Bottom, which is the ploughed land further east down the combe) has flowery chalk grassland, scrub, rank grassland, and lots of rabbits. The rabbits encourage rabbit-resistant plants like tall woolly mullein (complete with mullein moth caterpillars, hound's-tongue, ground ivy, and eyebright. Until 25 years ago, the combe remained substantially open and the ancient lynchet system was plain to see, but cessation of grazing and a lack of scrub control has allowed the species-rich Down pasture to be lost to simplified scrub and even secondary woodland.[16]^:212

Farmland at Hazelholt Bottom

Hazelholt Bottom (TQ 235 084) is a tranquil slope with large flowery glades. There are often roe deer in the wide corn field below the slope. The National Trust own the south slope and Whitelot Bottom further south, but Whitelot was ploughed up after 1945 and has never been returned to public use.

Hazelholt has rich old chalk grassland with cowslips in spring and devil's-bit scabious in September. In mid-summer, there are many butterflies, including adonis blue and chalkhill blue. At the head of the combe, there are more old grassland and great blackberry thickets. Since 1945, scrub has taken over much of this former open slope. The remaining grassland is only lightly grazed, allowing growth of bramble and thorn and a loss of its ancient down pasture character.[16]^:212

Freshcombe and Summersdene Farm, Truleigh Hill

Freshcombe (TQ 230 092) is owned by the National Trust, but was leased away from their management. It is threatened by scrub expansion and insufficient grazing. Its slopes have very old gorse thickets; they are shown as well-established on the 1873 OS map, and may be centuries older than that.

This is the only site in the South Downs that contains the plant saw-wort, which looks like a slimmer version of knapweed, and still blooms profusely in a little glade amongst the gorse. It is a survivor from the days of the Downland heaths. It survives here because the soil must have a strong clay-with-flints influence. The glade where it blooms also contains flowers of betony, red clover, hawkbit, and St John's wort.[16]^:213

Stile, Old Erringham farm

Old Erringham Farmstead (TQ 205 076) has an old flint farmhouse with great chimneys and part-Horsham slab roofing, and ramshackle old flint barns. It has one of only two remaining medieval manorial chapels on the Brighton Downs (the other at Swanborough Manor), which now functions as a front garden shed for one of the modern farm workers cottages just to the south of the old farmhouse. It has a tiny ecclesiastical window on its south face.

The farm is designated as an ancient monument, incorporating the remains of a medieval settlement and an eleventh century ringwork.[22] It was presumably built as a defence against the Vikings, though it's difficult to pick it out amongst the grassy plats now.

It is a mixed farm with corn crops, beef cattle, a bit of livery stabling, and hay meadows. The farm manages the sites of Old Erringham Combe and Anchor Bottom to preserve their natural value. Around the farmstead there is red star-thistle (a Brighton Downs speciality), musk thistle, spear thistle, welted thistle, creeping thistle, teasel, and viper's bugloss, all adding summer colour.[16]^:204

Downland near Erringham

Old Erringham Combe (TQ 205 081) is an old-fashioned mosaic of habitats, making it a great refuge for Downland wildlife. The south-facing bank is the hottest place, but below it there are willows and a tiny tongue of wet grassland where lesser marsh grasshopper, autumn lady's-tresses orchid, bastard toadflax, rockrose, betony, wild thyme, and other herbs grow.[16]^:205

Summer butterflies in the area include wall brown and clouded yellow, and day-flying moths like yellow belle, dusky sallow, common carpet, and grass moths enjoy the drying grassland. The rare Carthusian snail (Monacha cartusiana) still exists in this combe, possibly due to centuries of cattle grazing.[16]^:205

Old Erringham Shaw is a tangled wood of sycamore, ash, elm, and thorn. It's more open at the northern end facing the combe, where the remains of four big old broken beeches and lots of may blossom make it a good place for insects.[16]^:205

Track between Slonk Hill Farm and Mossy Bottom Barn

Slonk Hill (TQ 222 070): there were at least two Bronze Age barrows and a little Iron Age settlement on the Hill.[23] They were surrounded by a rectangular ditched enclosure and perhaps made into a 'temenos' or temple. Ritual deposits of animals and coins were buried at the site.[24]^:122 Evening shadows reveal dips and hummocks at the Hill's southern end, although they are probably due to the trench digging of the large army camp that came here during the First World War.

There are three places that were spared the damage of decades of agribusiness on the hill: an island of old Down pasture on the eastern slope, an old bostal track, which winds down the slope at its southern end, and a patch of hillside a few hundred yards north, surrounded by Iron Age field lynchets. More recently, the use of agrochemicals has stopped, and the hillside is again colourful with herbs. The intact areas have pyramidal orchid, spotted orchid, meadow oat-grass, crested hair-grass, and round-headed rampion.[16]^:206

Mossy Bottom (TQ 226 082) derives its name from 'Muster' Bottom, where the shepherd mustered his sheep. Mossy Bottom slope is statutory access land under the right to roam 'CROW' Act (2000), but public usage is heavily challenged by prohibitive notices and poor access provision. It has boney Iron Age lynchets across it made by the peasant farmers who lived in Thundersbarrow village. They used to be called "Thunder's Steps." There are big old anthills, and plants such as large thyme, dropwort, cowslip, basil, harebell, and round-headed rampion.[16]^:206