Lurgashall to Lord’s Wood
Today I explore the Wealden woods and meadows along the Lod valley for 3.7 miles (6kms). These flat meadows give easy walking but there are several stiles to climb over.
The river name Lod derives from Old Irish ‘loth’ meaning mud; together with Old French ‘luteva’ which seems to me suspiciously close to the Latin lutra, which is an otter. Parking is at Lurgashall village hall, SU936271, pc GU289ET. This gives you the chance to explore the church of St Laurence with its most unusual 16th Century lean-to timber building on the south side, and the 1661 stone font.
Don’t forget the Noah’s Ark pub, village stores and post office. The village name derives from Old English ‘loth, gaers, halh,’ meaning muddy, grass, hollow, grazing ground. Today the cricket pitch is how the 600 inhabitants use this same clearing and camomile grows there as it probably always did.
Southward down the road brings you to a footpath at road bend running down to Mill Pond, actually a lake with its causeway dam across which you walk, and which once gave water power to an ancient ironworks. There are said to be kingfishers here.
Yellow wagtails used to breed in these local meadows and the new British Breeding Bird Atlas suggests that they still do but today they are rapidly declining. They require tall ground cover of grass clumps in damp meadows, although they are often recorded as trying to breed in agricultural crops such as lucerne or even potatoes. Sneezewort, devil’sbit scabious, betony, and tormentil grow in these meadows.
On reaching the ancient woodland of Lord’s Wood you should be greeted by nuthatches, woodpeckers, marsh tits and a possible total of 40 bird breeding species. Butterflies include speckled woods, orange tips (whose caterpillars feed on cuckoo flower, aka maids of the meadows (cardimine pratensis). I suspect the moth fauna could be somewhere in the region of 300 species. The long cleared ride under the electricity cables makes a very useful warm micro climate through this wood for birds and insects.
Our walk turns north-west along the eastern edge of the wood, crossing a farm lane and following the footpath to the next wood which has the unusual name of Dirty Bridge. Now follow the bridlepath north-east, crossing the ‘dirty bridge’, as you walk back to the lake at Mill Pond Farm and then back to the cricket pitch, tea, church, good old Sussex countryside and all the rest of the ingredients that make up our enviable way of life in between the towns and cities.