Wordless Wednesday: Wolstonbury Hill, West Sussex

Wolstonbury Hill from the South Downs above Clayton (7th January 2012)

Anonymous January 19, 2012 at 5:04 pm #

Classic downland, with grazing sheep and the ‘wooded, dim blue goodness of the Weald’ behind. In the 50s, near the spot where the picture was taken, my Aunt and I used to gather armfuls of cowslips for wine making- illegal now! The West slopes of Wolstonbury, facing the camera, were scarred by detritus fron WW2 in those days, as I believe Canadian troops (one of whom was billeted with my parents)used the area for manoeuvres in the runup to D-day. The local Home Guard had a hidden bunker in the beechwoods below the North face, ready for guerilla warfare if the Germans invaded, and it’s salutary to think that this tranquil landscape would have been right in the front line.

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Ian Gates January 19, 2012 at 6:35 pm #

Silly me, of course the bit of Wolstonbury visible in this view is the Eastern face, not the Western- but my description remains valid. Regarding the Home Guard bunker, you can see details of it on the net,( I think the site’s called Subterranean Britain) and it makes you realise that ‘Dads Army’ really would have been in the thick of It had the balloon gone up. Such a fragile landscape, and very nearly lost to us before the National Trust stepped in- let’s hope that the National Park will afford even more ptotection, bearing in mind the huge pressures for development in MidSussex

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