- Collecting Redundant Tree GuardsWe applaud our District Officer, James Brown, who was out collecting redundant tree guards around the King Edward VII Estate in Easebourne last month. In ten hours, he collected over […]
- The Lupin FieldAgainst the distant background of the South Downs, a small church stands alone among fields and woodland. It is a modest building from the late 11th or early 12th century […]
- Tree Guard Cleanup DayOn Saturday 21 May 2022, our Trustee Chris Steibelt was out in Singleton Forest with volunteers and Forestry England representatives for our first tree guard cleanup day, collecting redundant tree […]
- Clever Local HerdsOut on a walk with my dog Ruby recently around the Mardens, at the west end of the South Downs, we stumbled across a shoot. Whilst their target was pheasant, […]
- Easebourne/Langham Circular WalkThis Easebourne/Langham circular walk is an easy walk starting either in Easebourne or at Langham Brewery and takes you through open fields with views of the South Downs and patches […]
- We Need VolunteersOur campaign to create more awareness on plastic tree guards takes a hands-on approach in March 2022. In partnership with Forestry England we are organising a clean-up of old tree […]
- Ban Plastic Tree Guards National Park campaigners call for a ban on plastic tree guards as Government considers banning other types of single-use plastic Campaign for National Parks, Friends of the Dales, Friends of the South Downs […]
- The Environment ActThe Environment Act is the current version of the Environment Bill. This Bill should make provision about targets, plans and policies for improving the natural environment; for statements and reports […]
- New Heritage WebsiteWithin weeks of our ‘South Downs Schools Living History Project’ starting in January 2020, we were hit by Covid and the first lockdown. Given that the focus of this project […]
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"I would far rather be forgotten the instant I quit the scene,” he stated. True to his word, he had much of his correspondence burned on his death.![]()
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August 18 marks the 100th anniversary of the death of naturalist William Henry Hudson, buried in Worthing's Broadwater cemetary. In his lifetime, he was admired by the likes of Virginia Woolf and Joseph Conrad, who declared that he wrote ‘as the good God makes the grass grow’. But Hudson did his best to write himself out of history.![]()
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He received little formal education, teaching himself from books and wandering alone across the pampas, where he cultivated an almost mystical love of the natural world. His early life and adulthood was a struggle, with illness and poverty.![]()
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Only in his later years did he gain his enduring reputation. In 1889, he helped found the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, becoming its chairperson. Friends also secured him a civil service pension in 1901 that gave him a stable income.![]()
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His books also started to sell. Hudson focused his later writing on the natural history of his adopted homeland, including Sussex. This included Nature in Downland (1900), one of the best works written about the county’s rural life.![]()
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Hudson knew Sussex well. He holidayed in Shoreham, where he loved watching the birdlife at the Adur Estuary but was less enamoured with the beachfront housing development known as Bungalow Town.![]()
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His walk across the county during the long hot summer of 1899 was the basis of Nature in Downland. Hudson wrote poetically but precisely about not only the flora and fauna of Sussex but also the farming community and their folkways.![]()
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The naturalist was much taken with villages such as Alfriston and Ditchling. He cared less for larger towns. Brighton he tolerated but Chichester, he claimed, smelled and was full of ‘the most drink-degraded creatures it is possible to find anywhere in the kingdom’. What redeemed it was the cathedral, which gave the surrounding landscape ‘a unity and distinction which it would never have possessed if by chance men had not built that spire precisely where it stands’. Read more here: ![]()
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www.sussexexpress.co.uk/news/environment/the-legacy-of-naturalist-william-henry-hudson-100-years-...
The legacy of naturalist William Henry Hudson, 100 years after his death
www.sussexexpress.co.uk
Worthing’s Broadwater Cemetery has the distinction of being the burial place of two of this country’s most celebrated naturalists.