Eric Ravilious’s chalk downs
Firle Beacon, East Sussex
Think of Eric Ravilious and the sage green hills of the South Downs instantly spring to mind. “Their soft and equalising sunlight, their pathways and their loneliness, primed Ravilious’s imagination,” writes Robert Macfarlane in The Old Ways.
Born in London in 1903, Ravilious grew up in Eastbourne. He studied at the town’s School of Art before winning a scholarship to London’s Royal College of Art, where he was encouraged to develop his interest in engraving by his tutor, the surrealist painter Paul Nash.
Ravilious’s work also encompassed book illustration, murals and design commissions (including commemorative mugs for Wedgewood). But it’s his bewitching 1930s watercolours of the Downs with their chalk figures and eyearresting paths that have proved most enduring.
1 TO THE BEACON
This walk through Ravilious’s native country begins with stunning views from the wind-buffeted summit of Firle Beacon. From the car park, turn your back to the road, head left through the gate to pick up the South Downs Way (SDW). Keep straight on until you reach Firle Beacon, where the sea at Newhaven shimmers on the horizon to the south.
2 ROLLING PATHS
After another, smaller, hill, turn left at the gorse bushes and follow the bridleway sign through a wooden gate and down a steep descent. With the white scar of the disused Bopeep chalk pit far below, it’s easy to imagine that this was the view that inspired Chalk Paths, Ravilious’s mesmerising 1935 painting.
The path becomes shady and deeply rutted before emerging on a chalk track. Turn right through pleasant fields until you reach a triangular seat. Turn left here towards Alciston with its chocolate-box cottages and enormous tithe barn (there are 50,000 tiles in that roof).
“ITS EASY TO IMAGINE THAT THIS VIEW INSPIRED CHALK PATHS”
3 WOODLAND WAYS
Continue through the village passing an impressive restored dovecote, once part of a 14th-century monastery. Shortly after on your right is the undedicated church with its list of vicars dating to 1353.
Refreshment beckons at The Rose Cottage Inn, after which continue on, turning left opposite No 53 onto a footpath that passes through a swing gate into a paddock. Continue over the plank bridge. In the next meadow, follow the bend of the path through a gap and up along the right-hand side of the meadow beyond. Climb a stile onto the lane, turn left, then right at the concrete drive marked Firle Estate.
At the end of the drive, continue on into the unmown grass. Pass Tilton Wood, then follow the path through a series of gates and across a drive, coming to Charleston House.
4 TRAIL ART
Charleston was the Sussex home of the Bloomsbury Set, the famous group of writers, artists and intellectuals that included Virginia Woolf and EM Forster. Now a museum, its interior, decorated by the artists Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell, is a feast for the eyes. Art spills into the dreamy walled cottage garden, too: mosaic pavements, tile-edged pools, and life-sized sculptures by Quentin Bell.
Continue ahead through the metal gates with Firle Tower, a 19th-century gamekeeper’s lookout, ahead of you. Take a left, then a right into the next meadow, and in the meadow beyond that, keep slightly left until you come to a small wooden gate in the centre of the hedge leading into a crop field.
Follow the path, cross the track by the Firle Estate sign and pass through the trees.
Ahead of you, the trees’s branches form a majestic frame for the 15th-century French chateau-style Firle Place to your left and Glyndebourne, the famous opera house just visible to the right. Turn right, then left down though the field, through a gate and out onto a lane. Cross over and into Firle’s sheep-grazed parkland.
5 THROUGH THE TREES
Three wooden posts show the way before you pick up the track to the drive. Visit Firle Place to take in its old masters, furniture and porcelain, or continue along the drive and left into trees. A gate leads on to a wide track between walls, then into Firle village (the church with its John Piperdesigned stained-glass window is worth a brief detour). Turn right on the lane, then along a path to the right of the 500-year-old Ram Inn.
6 MEADOWS AND FIELDS
Bear left before the playground, through a footpath into the grazing meadow. Make diagonally right for a gate in the shady corner and leave Firle Estate through the white gates.
Cross over to the track marked ‘Private Road’. Continue on, skirt the barn and follow the path left through the field. About a third of the way down, the path sinks through thick undergrowth to the right (aim for Preston Court Farm). Pass the farm and follow the path onto a track that becomes tarmac, leading eventually to Littledene. Turn left here to begin the climb up to the top of Beddingham Hill.
7 ARTIST’S COTTAGE
Ravilious was a frequent visitor to ‘The Furlongs’ at Beddingham, the cottage of the painter Peggy Angus. At the fingerpost, go left on to the SDW and continue on to return to the car park.
Where to see the art: The Towner Art Gallery in Eastbourne holds one of the largest public collections of Eric Ravilious’s work. bit.ly/2KniA0i/