Findon and the wider area, including:
Amberley, Arundel, Ashington, Clapham, Ferring,
Findon Valley, High Salvington, Patching, Washington,
West Chiltington and Worthing.
Garden open to the public from May to September 2011.
Situated in the heart of a typical downland village, this 95ft by 50ft garden has been developed from scratch by the owners since 2006.
Features include a large selection of roses, clematis, shrubs, perennials, pergola, vegetable plot, hosta collection and small Japanese area.
The garden has a number of seating areas and some slightly quirky additions here and there.
From the large patio you can drink in the wonderful views of the South Downs.
There is a Jazz Band, well known in the West of the County, called Jazz Smugglers and it is is coming East!
The band has developed a family oriented show called Cool Jazz NOSTALGIA.
The great era for modern jazz was the 50's and some beautiful songs were established then.
So the band plays the loveliest of these songs, and asks the audience to join in.
Beautiful songs such as: "All the things you are" - Ella Fitzgerald / "Girl from Ipanema" - Stan Getz / "Loverman" - Billie Holliday /
"Blue Moon" - June Christy / "So What" - Miles Davis / "Watermelon Man" - Herbie Hancock / "How High the Moon" - Les Paul / "Summertime" - everyone.
The audience can dress up a bit in their 50's gear raided from charity shops, or they can remember their jiving technique.
They can sing along, they can even choose some of the songs the band will play.
They can bring their children, their parents, their grandparents, and their neighbours. Everyone will love it.
Usually the octet would charge over £500, and if they took a split on the door take it would be at least 70/30.
However, the band loves playing this show, and they really enjoy village audiences where everyone knows each other and the atmosphere is good.
So they'll split the take on the door 50/50 with either the
Village Hall itself, or a charity organisation, or an event for charity.
The band can help with the marketing of the event.
There is a Guide with 100 ideas for selling the event, there is promotion and display material, they can put the event on all kinds of websites, and even sell tickets through their online agency, for no extra cost.
Special offer to local commercial venues (eg hotels, golf clubs, etc)
At big events, for example where a special meal is offered, the band would expect to take a cover charge of ₤5 a head.
A new group for women over 45 who want to get out and about, make friends, and do things that they wouldn't do by themselves. Some members are single and some married; some are working and some retired. The members individually choose which events they want to go to. The members also offer up ideas for events. If you live within a convenient distance of Worthing and are reasonably fit, then this could be the group for you.
A group of painters in all mediums, including experienced artists as well as people trying painting for the first time.
Date: Wednesday mornings (except the last Wednesday in the month)
Time: 09h30-12h30
Location: Methodist Church Hall, London Road, Ashington, West Sussex RH20 4AL (the hall is situated behind the church)
[aerial photograph & map]
Date: Saturday 18th June 2011
Time: 14h00–17h00
Venue: In the grounds of St Mary’s Church Hall, Church Road, Clymping, BN17 5RB
[aerial photograph & map]
Refreshments: cafe serving cream teas, ice creams and soft drinks.
Stalls: cakes and preserves, bric-a-brac, plant sale, books and toys, bottles and jars, raffle and tombola.
Competitions: prize rose competition; gingerbread house competition.
Arena featuring live entertainment: maypole dancing, Irish dancing, circus skills.
Games and activities: guess the weight of the cake, name the teddy, coconut shy.
Much more on the day!
Tickets: Adults £1.00, Children under 12 years free; available from outside the church on the day.
It is traditional for the annual sheep
fair to be held on Nepcote
Green during September.
The village festival began following the foot-and-mouth disease closures of
the South Downs in the year 2000.
Friday night 9th and all day Saturday 10th September 2011
Transition Town Worthing is a grassroots, non-profit organisation seeking to engage the local community of Worthing and the
surrounding area in responding creatively and positively to the twin challenges of climate change and the end of peak oil.
We aim to work constructively with existing local organisations, and have groups established working on local food, transport,
living heritage, re-skilling, and business resilience.
We run regular events in and around Worthing, and welcome interest from all sectors of the local community.
Please check our website for further details.
Talk and readings on the life and works of celebrated Victorian naturalist John Richard Jefferies, to mark the anniversary of his death in Worthing.
Also visit to his grave in Broadwater Cemetery and optional Downland excursion.
John Richard Jefferies
(6 November 1848 - 14 August 1887) was an English nature writer, noted for his depiction of English rural life in essays,
books of natural history and novels.
Location: Amberley Downs and Arun Brooks
Date: Saturday 24 July 2010
Duration: 11h30-16h00
Meeting time & place: 11h20 @ Amberley Station TQ 026 118
This walk will be between six and seven miles long.
Visit Facebook for further details, or
contact me before Saturday if you would like the details to be emailed to you.
WORTHING DOWNLANDERS
A Midsummer Downs Walk
Date: Sunday 20 June 2010
Time: 11h00-16h00
Location: Meet at Highdown car park [aerial photograph & map]
Chris Hare, local historian, will be conducting a circular walk - from Highdown to Patching Hill, taking in some historic Sussex downland. Pub lunch or picnic en route.
Today a bunch of walkers from as far away as Dorset and the Chilterns walked the forbidden Access Land site of Breaky Bottom
farm and vineyard, near Rodmell, to say:
“A big Raspberry to the selfish landowner who wishes to remove a right of access that has taken 130 years[i] to secure”.
They had with them Kate Ashbrook, General Secretary of the Open Spaces Society and doughty fighter against Nicholas Hoogstraten’s
footpath stopping antics, and Marion Shoard[ii], the author whose books highlighting the destruction of the countryside and the
inequities of landownership have turned around the politics of the countryside in the last generation.
Sixty walkers and their children, with folk from the Ramblers Association, Red Rope[iii], and The Land Is Ours[iv],
watched as we symbolically fenced the steep slope of a tiny chalk pit which the landowner has been using as his excuse
for excluding the public from this statutory Access Land site. We decorated the new fence with our ribbons, banners and placards.
Despite owning “the most fenced farm on the entire South Downs”, with every tiny paddock and vine row fenced or hedged,
this landowner so far refuses to fence this chalk pit because its presence as a safety hazard constitutes the excuse he needs
to secure a Restriction Order forbidding us access to this ancient flowery pasture.
Kate Ashbrook in her speech said: “It is outrageous that we are banned from this lovely site.
The Access Land on the Downs is pitifully sparse in any case. Breaky Bottom is the entry point to a delightful but very
under-used part of the Downs, and is only a short distance from the South Downs Way. All the landowner needed to do was to
put about 70 metres of fencing[v] around the quarry to comply with the requirements for making Access Land safe for the public”.
Marion Shoard called for “a right of respectful access everywhere in the countryside, as already exists in Scotland[vi].”
Dave Bangs, of Action For Access, said. “The landowner wants his right to privacy, even though he already lives in one of the
remotest and most under-visited parts of the South Downs. Yet what about the rights to enjoy the countryside and nature which
all those millions of us cooped up in our cities, towns and villages need for our health and recreation?
Wealth and land ownership should not be what determines our right to enjoy the countryside.”
Our campaign is determined to return and return again to Breaky Bottom until we see Lewes District Council and Natural England
secure the permanent fencing of this little chalk pit and the consequent re-opening of this site to public access.
Notes
[i] The campaign for the right to roam has been going since the 1880’s and the first Parliamentary Bill was put forward by
James Bryce in 1884. In 2000 the CROW Act (Countryside and Rights of Way Act) was passed, which gave walkers a limited
right of access over “mountain, moor, heath, down and common”. In practice the amount of Access Land on the South Downs
increased by only 2%. Breaky Bottom was one of the ‘precious fragments’ of old Downland which was given this statutory right of access.
[ii] Marion Shoard published the famous book “The Theft of the Countryside” in 1980, to be followed by
“This Land Is Our Land” in 1987, and “A Right To Roam” in 1999. Her website has contact details.
[iii] Red Rope is a socialist walkers and climbers group which has long fought for responsible public access to the countryside,
has always worked for equal opportunities in access, and has led countless group walks and holidays into remote and lovely places.
[iv] The Land Is Ours was founded twenty years ago by George Monbiot, and has led strong campaigns for land rights on both urban and
rural issues. They publish a magazine called ‘The Land’. The Land Is Ours in Sussex organised the series of mass trespasses in 1998-9
which was at the heart of the national campaign for the Crow Act.
[v] The landowner, Peter Hall, has recently spent £15,000 on hundreds of yards of new barbed wire fencing on this Access Land,
splitting this slope up into four separate paddocks.
[vi] The newly devolved government of Scotland passed a new access law which gave people the freedom to walk at will anywhere in the
countryside they wished, provide they did no damage and did not enter private domestic or business space. It has worked well.
This legal and customary right has always been held by the people of Scandinavia, particularly Sweden, and is known as “allemansratt”
(every man’s right). RESS
About 400 people gathered at 11h00 at Coombe Rise Car Park
in Findon Valley on Saturday 14th November 2010 to protest against
the sale of Worthing's downland.
Location
[aerial photograph & map]
Washington Village, at the base of the South Downs within the AONB and
where the A283 joins the A24, might have had a 4th landfill
site in the deep Windmill Quarry. Wiston Estate, with Veolia,
put in a speculative planning application for landfill. The site is
not in the current West Sussex Waste Disposal plan. Sand extraction
ceased in 2008.
Pollution
There could have been 250 trucks visiting the site daily, from 07h00 to 18h00.
Noise and pollution would have been a major factor, affecting local residents.
On the very boundary of the sand quarry there are a family fruit farm
and a campsite
for walkers and horse riders.
John Nicholson IRELAND (1879-1962) composed some of his music in the windmill.
Proposal
The proposal was to fill the quarry to follow the original land
contours. The various strata of sand, besides being
beautiful, are a unique geological feature, home to wildlife including
Sand Martins, Rough-legged Buzzards and Peregrine Falcons. The quarry
is the principle view to the north from the South Down Way, from Chanctonbury Ring.
Protests:CLAG (Chanctonbury Landfill Action Group) organised
a gathering at Chanctonbury Ring.
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