South Downs Ridge, Cuckmere Haven | Drone 4K | Day Hike Saturday | 🇬🇧 Hiking UK | England

Glynde to Seaford walk | The South Downs & Alfriston

The best walk in the book! A South Downs ridge, picture postcard Alfriston, Cuckmere Haven (beach), and cliffs with views of the Seven Sisters. Long but worth it.

Length: 23km (14.3 miles), 7 hours. For the whole outing, including trains, sights and meals, allow at least 12 hours.
Toughness: 8 out of 10.

History
Firle Place (tel 01273 858567) was the seat of Sir John Gage, who helped Henry VIII with the dissolution of the monasteries, despite retaining the old religion himself. During the walk you get a good view of Firle Tower, a watchkeeper's residence. The House is open to visitors (2020) from 07 June to 27 September from Sundays to Thursdays from 2pm to 4.30pm. Its licensed tea room (no charge for entry) is open on House opening days from 12 noon to 5pm, serving light lunches, cakes and teas. Admission to the House (2020) is £9.50.

The Church of St Peter, Firle, contains an alabaster effigy of Sir John Gage wearing his Order of the Garter and lying beside his wife Philippa. It also has a John Piper stained-glass window in warm colours, depicting Blake's Tree of Life.

Alfriston was once a Saxon settlement. In 1405, Henry IV granted the town the right to a market, hence the old market square cross (though now without its crosspiece) which was supposed to help ensure honest and fair trading. The narrow streets are lined with fourteenth and fifteenth-century houses. In the early 1800s, smugglers would run contraband via Alfriston and Cuckmere Haven, with farmers driving their sheep to help cover the smugglers' tracks.

The Parish Church of St Andrew, Alfriston – known as the 'Cathedral of the South Downs' – was built about 1360, all at one time and with no later additions. But because there were no local squires and manners, the church is rather bare inside, with few memorials. It has a basin and ewer on the Sepulchre at the north side of the chancel that came from the Holy Land.

The Alfriston Clergy House (Tel 01323 870 001) was the first building to be acquired by the National Trust, in 1896, for £10 (which makes the £6.60 entrance fee - 2020 - seem rather steep). A Wealden hall house with thatched roof, it contains a medieval hall and has a cottage garden with some rare specimens. It is open from March to the end of October weekdays (closed Thursdays) from 10.30am until 5pm and in winter on Saturday and Sunday from 11am until 4pm.

West Dean Church has probable Saxon elements, and next door to it is a medieval parsonage with a colourful garden. The parish priest from 1891 was the Revd George Lawrance, who believed in captive audiences – it is said that he used to lock the church door before delivering his sermons.

The chalky cliffs of the Seven Sisters developed under the sea, 70 to 100 million years ago – the chalk is mainly made up of microscopic fossils. Later the chalk cliffs dipped beneath the sea again and came up covered in silt and sand, still visible as the top layer. There are also layers of flint – the supercooled liquid leached out of chalk to form globules. The Except Visitors’ Centre has an exhibition on the development of the cliffs and river.

Seaford Museum in Martello Tower No 74, on the front at Seaford, is the most westerly of a chain of 103 similar fortifications running from Aldeburgh on the east coast. It was built in 1806 against a threatened Napoleonic invasion and houses the Seaford Museum of Local History. The Museum is usually open on Sundays and Bank Holidays from 11am to 4pm, and in summer also on Wednesdays and Saturdays from 2pm until 4pm. The Museum closed in October 2017 for refurbishment and reopened in October 2018. Entrance fee (2020) is £2.50.

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© Club Hiking in London. Ltd (CASC) in collaboration with Saturday Walkers Club.
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