Responsible Dog Walking
The South Downs National Park encourages responsible dog walking to help farmers and wildlife. Take the lead and keep those paws on the path! That’s the call to action to dogwalkers from the South Downs National Park Authority as ground-nesting bird and lambing season starts this March. With dog ownership at an all-time high post-pandemic,
Your Opinion Matters
Friends of the South Downs was established 100 years ago by ordinary people taking action to protect our precious Downland landscape. Over the past 100 years, our charity’s growth and the achievement of National Park status has been down to the continued involvement of people who care. Now, as we make plans for the next
The Pump Barn
Seven Sisters Country Park was transferred from East Sussex County Council to the stewardship of the SDNPA in 2020 and remains in public ownership. Since then, several improvements have been made including a visitors centre at Exceat, a food outlet, offices and toilets. But the authority, due to financial constraints, was unable to fund the
The Belloc Way
The Belloc Way is taking shape. The project is not yet finished, but there is an end in sight. We have now walked its full length for the first time. It was just under 100 miles and we did so over six days, averaging about 16.5 miles a day and walking Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday of the first
Be a Friend
Celebrating our Centenary this year, we have some exciting events planned as well as funding some projects that will make a real difference on the Downs. We’d like to take this opportunity to thank all our members for their continued support and invite all our new friends to join us today. Be a Friend of
Our Youngest Downlanders
“It is rather wonderful that some of our youngest downlanders have been able to celebrate the Centenary of the Friends of the South Downs, by marking out ‘100’ on the greensward of the Downs. Bury School, nestling, as it does in the heart of the South Downs, has worked with FSD on two of our
Kipling and the Seven Sisters
No tender-hearted garden crowns, No bosomed woods adorn Our blunt, bow headed, whale backed downs But gnarled and writhen thorns Most readers will instantly recognise these lines from the poem Sussex by Rudyard Kipling. Few poems capture the spirit and the beauty of the Downs which he had come to love at the turn of
A Year in the Life of the South Downs
The Friends of the South Downs are appealing to young people in Sussex and Hampshire to write about the South Downs, either as a short essay or a poem. Chris Hare, project manager for ‘South Downs for All,’ a project funded jointly by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and the Friends of the South Downs,
Silviculture
Woodland is an integral part of our lives. It provides fuel, food for farm stock and materials from which we build shelters, fences and tools. This may have started as random harvesting of material but silviculture, the management of trees, soon developed into various forms of woodland management. In the UK, woodland has been defined
The Lupin Field
Against 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 with extensive 19th-century alterations including the addition of a porch. This is St Peter’s Church in the West Sussex village of Terwick and here you’ll
