Steyning Museum - When You Can’t See The Field For The Trees

Steyning Museum - When You Can’t See The Field For The Trees...

The last couple of winters have been marvellous for sledging in Steyning; many woolly hatted children (and adults) have been spotted hurtling down icy slopes on all sorts of flat objects.

My family’s nearest ‘run’ is the bridleway leading up to Pepperscombe Bank, which starts off Newham Lane. It’s narrow and steep coming down, bordered by trees on your left and the chalk pit precipice on the right.

The trees form part of the Lower Horseshoe, much loved by walkers and dog owners, and I assumed, as a relative ‘incomer ‘to Steyning, that the woods had always been there. It was only when comparing sledging tales with Trevor Tosspell, who grew up at Pepperscombe, that I learnt when he sledged the same track as a child, it was a completely clear field, and the trees on that side of the Horseshoe, with the exception of those along the hedges, had all grown up in the last forty years or so.

A forage in the museum archives revealed some amazing photos of the White House in Newham Lane, with Four Cornered Field (some know it as Three Cornered), behind, and the chalk path meandering up the middle, the chalk pit being smaller then.

George Goatcher farmed Penlands and Newham Farm in the early twentieth century, renting Four Cornered Field from the Wiston Estate, and his grandson, Roy Heryett remembered helping to cut the corn on the field when he was a young lad. Such was the steepness of the hill, Roy and another man had to stand on sacks tied to the back of the binder, to stop it running into the horses. A tractor would struggle with the incline.

The field had reverted to grassland by the fifties, and Paul Norris, a pupil then at the new Steyning Secondary Modern, recalls running up it on regular cross country outings.

Local boys, such as Geoff Chalcraft, used to play cricket on its slopes, as well as sledging down it in winter. Roy Heryett’s son, Des, enjoyed racing down towards Newham Lane, two to a sledge, often having to leap off just before they slammed into the concrete water trough at the bottom. “We once got all the way to Laines Road without stopping,” he said proudly. In 1978, Dennis Read managed to wrap himself round a tree at the bottom, resulting in serious back injuries.

By then, the writing was already on the wall for our field; massive changes in farming, coupled with the decline in the rabbit population from myxomatosis, meant that saplings and bushes grew up unchecked.

The only reminder of its former status as Four Cornered Field is the water trough, near the entrance on the right, by now romantically, (but safely!), obscured by undergrowth.

Kate Rainbow

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