THIS IS FINDON VILLAGE ― These Findon Chronicles are created by Valerie Martin and are progressively growing to be the only record of life around Findon, West Sussex, England.  Everyday stories about real people..... in fact, a potted history of the village.  The topics today, are the history of tomorrow.

VICTORIAN FINDON DOWNS

Copyright Valerie Martin 2000

I suspect that Findon in Victorian times was a quiet country village and Worthing was a long way off— much further away than now. The sleepy village lanes and the Downs would have been full of wild flowers, as were the woods.

The Victorian era was an age when well-bred ladies were supposed to be decorative and submissive, and genteel ones did not work. One such lady was the wife of Edwin Douglas. Her name was Christiana and she was born on Christmas Day in 1847. She described the house they built in 1892 and named Fox Down on the Findon Downs as her "mountain home".

The couple had six sons and three daughters —

The grandeur of the Findon Downs as they were for Christiana over a hundred years ago was quite different from today.  Musky flower scents hung in the air and there were great tracts of vast bare grassland with scatterings of happily grazing sheep, their nibbling teeth giving the turf the unique texture now lost forever.    There was not a fence in sight.  Today the Downs are sectioned off with a criss-cross of unsightly posts and wire and we are strictly kept within bounds.

In the past noises drifted up from the village to the lonely shepherds....the sounds of early waking life in the village, a cock crowing, a barking dog, sheep and lambs bleating — not the drone of the traffic on the A24 so familiar to us all as we start the day now.

The faint sound of a coachman's horn would have also been detected at the beginning of the 1900s.    Old Jim Reeves, the carrier drove his cart with a team of two from Storrington to Worthing three times each week. He gave a blast on a coachman's horn as he entered Findon to announce his imminent arrival. His business was to convey goods to and from Worthing for the local residents. This very personal delivery service carried on for many years and the reliable old carrier plied the Findon roads in all weathers right up until 1930.

Some sounds from the village still float up to the downland.  But even the ringing bells from the slender spire of St. John the Baptist Church is almost a thing of the past and Jim's Reeves' coach horn has been sadly superseded with the sirens on the A24.

Christiana heard the singing of the larks and in spite of predictions that the lark is disappearing, there are still innumerable larks heard and the song of that hovering little bird still fills the air with its shrill song.   The wild screech of gulls sailing inland with widely outstretched wings is also the same. One now has to go a little further to Stump Bottom to catch the cry of the curlew; a bird that was frequently heard closer to the village years ago.

The scent of gorse lay in the air years ago and honeysuckle clambered over the bushes in rich profusion, showering spicy odours in all directions. The isolated sprigs of honeysuckle remain to scramble over a smattering of bushes on the gallops and occasionally a sparrowhawk hangs motionless in the sky.

There are still fox paths criss-crossing the Downs and multitudes of rabbits frisking — but as the years pass there do not appear to be so many as even 20 years back.     Magpies chatter today as they always did to the terror of the linnets — which cease their trilling song and dive deeper into the furze.

The grass on the gallops may not be so enamelled with flowers of various blue, pink and yellow hues as it was a hundred years ago but many different species may still be found to the square yards (or should I march into the 21st century and write "metre")  and there is a myriad of bees gathering a golden harvest before returning to their hives on the edge of the track to Chanctonbury Ring.

Christiana continued to live at Fox Down until her death from tuberculosis on 31st October 1901. It was originally Christiana's health that had induced Edwin to move from Surrey to the south coast and build the house at Findon. She was laid to rest in the cemetery at Broadwater and Edwin continued to live in the house they had built together on the Victorian Findon Downs.

Now continue to read about Fox Down being In The Line of Fire.

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