This morning, I decided to go on a walk around Charlton before going to Fishbourne Palace as Lizzie had told me it would not take long to get around. She told me to take the Levin Down walk and gave me directions.
And so I turned right out of the pretty housing estate located just outside the village of Charlton where my B & B was, past the entrance to Charlton Mill Way and to my left saw a gate with a latch and a sign telling me it was a public right-of-way. And so I pushed open the gate, shut it behind me and started walking. Soon I found my steps leading me along a mown path through a meadown in which a nascent Tree farm had been planted. On either side were the rolliing Sussex hills. It was a very pleasant walk, but didn’t seem to be going up anywhere. Instead, I ended up opposite a farmyard, and to get around it I had to turn right, cross a road, and take the public footpath sign that wound around a churchyard.
Clearly, something was wrong, so when I saw another sign that told me that Charlton was 7/10 of a mile that way, I followed it. I followed the public footpath until I got to a field of cows. I didn’t know where I was and I had no idea what those cows would be like, so I turned around, coming out into a housing estate. I made my way to the main road, and crossed it opposite a school called “Singleton CE Primary School.” Somehow, without intending to, I had walked all the way to the next-door village of Singleton!
I got onto the Charlton road and followed it back to Charlton. Just as I approached Charlton, at the exact spot where there is a sign saying “Charlton” was a gate with a latch and a sign telling me that it was a public right of way. And so, I found myself in another field, but this time the path was pointing towards a hill. There were another couple of gates, on a steep path that I had to open and close, and the sign by the second one told me I was on Levin Down, the place I’d been trying to get to in the first place!
By this time I’d climbed up to nearly the top of the walk. I continued to another gate that gave onto a cow pasture, but not wanting to mess up my boots with gobs of cow turd, I turned around and found a park bench to sit on to enjoy the view. Which I did for about 20 minutes.
At 11:15, I decided it was time to leave, and so I descended very slowly back the way I’d come. Reaching the Charlton Road, I turned left towards the village, crossed the crossroads made by Charlton Road, North Lane and Knight’s HIll, and walked to the local pub that goes by the name The Fox Goes Free.
It was now 11:45, so when I asked if they were serving lunch, I wasn’t surprised to hear they wouldn’t do it until noon. On the other hand, the very pleasant waitstaff found a seat for me in front of a fire, and told me to wait while they completed their meeting. I had a delicious lunch ~ tap water (FREE), a small glass of Italian red wine, soup of the day (Tomato Basil, beautifully made) together with bread and butter, then a trio of Cumberland Sausages. It was perfect pub food, and perfect for someone who’d done a lot of climbing that morning.
After that, I walked back to the B & B, changed my clothes, freshened up and left, telling Lizzie I was now going to Fishbourne.
When I arrived at Fishbourne Roman Palace, it was about 1:45. There were no school parties in evidence, and so I was able to enjoy it more or less to myself. I wandered past the exhibits of Roman mosaics, and then went out into the Gardens, which were lovely. The best part was being in the Gardener’s Shed, and hearing him going on about how hard the British climate was on his beloved trees and box hedges. My first thought as I looked around was how lucky that the road, the A259, had not interfered with the palace. But I soon learned my mistake, for in fact about half of the palace is under that road and the private grounds of the houses opposite. Apparently, when the site was discovered in 1960, it was because the local company was trying to put the water mains in. Apparently, a developer wanted to develop the whole area, and would have done so except for the discovery of the palace.
And so what you see today is only the North Wing of the Palace plus half of the garden. There are some houses on the same side of the A259 as the palace, and one of them has windows that look directly onto the garden. I imagine that the people who live in that house feel that their privacy is violated if there are masses of visitors there.
LIke Weald & Downland, one very surprising aspect of the palace is the lack of guides. Yes, there are signs, but there is no-one to bring it alive. In the emptiness created by the meager number of visitors, the site seemed very dead. It seemed that everything done by the Sussex Archealogical Association (which owns it) is done on a shoestring. There is very little to bring it alive, except for the disembodied voice of the gardener in the garden shed. It also seems that nothing much has happened here since the 1970s, when I visited it with my family. I don’t know if that is true or not, but it just seemed so dead.
After that I drove to Bosham, as Lizzie had told me it was only 3 miles away from Fishbourne. When I arrived, the tide was out, which was lucky because the road along the quay now floods with every tide. This was not true fifty years ago, when I walked along the quay with my family. However, it was a lovely afternoon, and I got in some good shots before returning to the B & B.
