Showing 1-50 of 515 posts. Most recent first | Next 50     
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Lord’s Piece is a strange little triangle of heathland just south of the River Rother near Fittleworth. As somebody else aptly put it, “it’s like a little bit of the New Forest placed in the heart of West Sussex”. Where the name derives from I’ve no idea, but within the few acres of this conservation area are at least five barrows made up of a linear group of three and a pair (one large, one small) on a small ridge to the south. Also visible are a number of boundary markers criss-crossing the land which I at first thought were contemporary with the barrows until I came to the middle barrow of the linear group and discovered a ‘boundary marker’ passing right through the centre of the barrow, which seems unlikely to have been the barrow builder’s original intention. The linear group are all roughly the same size, about 10-12m across but not very high at about 2m max and they’ve all recently been cleared of vegetation and are now adorned with giant wire ‘hair nets’ (or at least that’s what it looked like from a distance) which I guess keeps the local rabbits and badgers at bay. The two barrows on the ridge are interesting because of the disparity in size, the larger being about 10m across and 2.5m high whereas the smaller barrow about 30m distant is only about 4m across and barely rises more than 0.5m. The larger barrow also has a curious hole at its northern edge almost suggesting that this was the source of its material, though it’s so messy no Bronze Age barrow builder worth his salt would ever admit to this below par workmanship! It’s probably more modern than that, possibly a dried up drinking hole for cattle. Parking is very easy as there are two small carparking areas on the western side of the heath.
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We probably picked the wrong day to visit here as it was damned cold and quite overcast but the thought of possibly finding a cemetery of up to twenty barrows tucked away in the wilderness of mid-Sussex proved too much of a temptation. Parking is relatively easy as there's a conveniently placed carpark just off the A272 between Midhurst and Petersfield and was very popular with the local dogowners the day we were there, just a shame they couldn't be bothered to pick up after them. I always tend to think of Sussex as being quite highly populated, and I guess the bit I live in on the coast is, but inland you'll find large tracts of land with barely any sign of habitation much like this. Here there seem to be endless glorious vistas of open heather with the occasional birch tree, small patches of conifer and the blue-hued hills of the South Downs on the distant horizon. It's probably looked like this for centuries, possibly millennia. The first barrows you come to after leaving the carpark are a very small pair, possibly conjoined and only just discernible as they're covered in heather, so it's almost impossible to gauge just how big they are, or were. Travelling further South you come around a small pond and follow a track to a linear arrangement of five larger barrows which are part of Fitzhall Heath. The tallest of these is about 30-40 feet across and around 10 feet high, again heather covered and at some time in the past severely mauled, and from here you can see two other large barrows, one of which has been cleared of heather. On top of this we found the tattered remains of a sign politely asking the public to refrain from walking on the barrows and to use the cleared pathways around them. Whoops, sorry. Passing through the middle of all this apparently is a Roman road as well, though I couldn't really work out where it was supposed to be, only surmising that it started in Chichester to the South. We only managed to seek out seven barrows on this visit, but given the size of the common it would take a good day to tramp around the whole area where I know there are at least another eight marked on the OS map. We'll return when it's warmed up a tad.
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Showing 1-50 of 515 posts. Most recent first | Next 50
I'm a professional photographer living in West Sussex and have been interested in ancient sites since childhood. I was brought up near Barbury Castle in Wiltshire so visits to hill forts, stone circles and various lumps and bumps were routine. The grip of these fantastic places still has a hold on me and I still get a feeling of total wellbeing whenever I come across a new place or revisit familiar places. Much of that is to do with the magnificent or interesting locations in which they're found and equally the mystery attached to them - we know so little and can imagine so much.
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