Glynde to Berwick walk

Glynde to Berwick via Charleston

Distance: 8.6 miles.
Time without long breaks: Approx 4.5 hours walking (add time if visiting Charleston and Berwick Church).

Terrain: Easy and mostly flat.
How to get there and back: Train to Glynde, return from Berwick (buy a return to ticket to Berwick if travelling from London).
Pub breaks: The Ram Inn in Firle is early on in the walk. The Rose Cottage in Alciston is now sadly close, but The Cricketers in Berwick village with its great beer garden is still open. If you need to wait for a train at Berwick, the Berwick Inn is just over the road.
More information: This walk incorporates a visit to Charleston, former home to Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant of the Bloomsbury Group (see panel below). You will need to book in advance and allow about an hour for your visit. The walk from Glynde to Charleston is 3.5 miles, so when booking your tour allow about 1 1/2–2 hours to get there.

Click on the image below to access the full map on Plotarooute.com

This is one of two walks (also see walk 23) following in the footsteps of the Bloomsbury Group, the artistic collective who set up home in the shadow of the South Downs. This route passes the house Virginia Woolf leased in Firle and takes in the church where Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant are buried. From here it is a short walk to their fascinating former home, Charleston. Continuing along the foot of the escarpment takes you to Alciston and then Berwick Church, with its remarkable frescos designed by Duncan, Vanessa and her son Quentin. Berwick also has a great country pub, The Cricketers.

Combining this route with a visit to Monk's House at Rodmell to make a 'Bloomsbury Group walk' is possible, but it would be a stretch to incorporate visits to both houses in a single day due to their opening hours. If you fancied trying this, however, we suggest doing this walk in reverse, starting from Berwick and then picking up walk 22 at Littledean. You can walk from Southease to Rodmell and then head back along the river to Lewes or by train from Southease station (see walk 23).

Turn right as you exit Glynde station. The village is located near to Glyndebourne, famous for its annual opera season. Follow the road around the bend. On the right you pass a building which used to be the Trevor Arms pub. Carry on straight ahead and follow the road round the corner until you reach the A27. Take care crossing over this busy road and then take the lane immediately opposite. When you reach a red letterbox, turn left down a lane. Ignore the driveways on the right, but carry on ahead until you pass a barn on the left. Just past this, rather than follow the drive to a house, climb over the stile on your left into a field.

Proceed up The Street. Just as you round the bend, on the left is a Victorian villa, one half of which is called Little Talland House. Virginia Woolf had a second home here in 1911 and it is named after Talland House in St Ives, Cornwall, which her family used as a holiday retreat. A few yards further down The Street you will come to the village post office stores and St Peter's Church, which dates back to the 13th century. Near the wall on the north side of the churchyard are the adjacent graves of the Bloomsbury Group's Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, and a memorial to their daughter Angelica Garnett, who grew up at Charleston. Nearby is the grave of her daughter, Henrietta.

Follow the path across this field and the following two before emerging at a track. After 500m you will arrive at Charleston. The house became home to the artists Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant in 1916. Over the course of the next few decades, it became a meeting place and part-time residence for artists and writers of the period and become synonymous with the unconventional lifestyles of the group and their complex intimate relationships. The artists decorated the walls and furniture in post-impressionistic style and landscaped the garden. Allow an hour to explore here (a tour is mandatory with the entrance ticket).

On the corner of the bend, before you reach the village, is a huge flint tithe barn, the roof of which is apparently made from 50,000 tiles. Just past the barn there is a wooden fence on the right, at the end of which is the path to Alciston Church. When we originally did this walk, the main reason for this detour was to visit the Rose Cottage pub, which was located a few yards further along the street. It is sadly now closed, although there are some beautiful thatched houses along the lane if you want to explore further.

Leave the church and head up the lane. When you reach the small roundabout, turn right and walk up the road towards the village. On the left you will soon come to the lovely village pub, The Cricketers, which has a large beer garden out the front. A great place to stop off before the final leg of the walk. On leaving the pub, continue down the lane in the same direction until you reach the A27. Cross over the busy road and turn left, and just down on the right you will see a wooden signpost for the Vanguard Way.

There are views of Mount Caburn to your left and Firle Beacon to your right. Walk across the field in the direction of the sign and go through a metal gate on the other side. Cross over the next field to a small wooden gate ahead and then follow the path that runs along the edge of a further field until you reach some farm buildings on your left. Follow the track around. It emerges at a road. Turn right into Firle, another beautiful Sussex village of old flint houses. You will shortly pass the village pub, the Ram Inn, on the left. Worth a stop off if you are not too early for opening time.

Leave the church and head back down the road and take the lane on the right. This leads to the grounds of Firle Place, a country house which dates from the reign of Henry VIII. Where the track meets another, bear right across the parkland before emerging at a lane with two houses on the other side (alternatively, keep on the track until it reaches a farm, then turn right). Take the path between the houses and head uphill across the field, aiming for the corner of a copse. As you enter the next field, you will see Firle Tower, a 19th-century structure built as a gamekeeper's lookout.

Turn left on leaving the house and when the track reaches a T-junction, bear right ignoring the path ahead. This takes you to Tilton Farm, beyond which lies Tilton House. Now a new-age retreat, it was once home to the economist John Maynard Keynes, who was part of the Bloomsbury Group. Follow the lane as it runs southwards before it meets a chalky track at the foot of the South Downs escarpment. Follow the track along, crossing a small lane at Bo Peep Farm. A little further along you will see a muddy track on the left by an unusual raised bench built around a wooden sign for the village of Alciston. Turn down this lane.

Take the path to the church and then exit via the back of the churchyard along a path that runs along the top of a field. After 600m, the path ends at a T-junction. Take a right to head back down to the chalk track you were on before. Turn left and just past New Barn (now called Church Barn), turn left again onto a track that heads north. In 300m, take the first track on the right, which leads round the back of Berwick Church. The interior of the church is not be missed, as it is decorated by a series of stunning murals painted by Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell, inspired by their visits to Italy. Also look out for the burial mound in the churchyard.

Follow the waymarkers as the path traverses a series of fields via three stiles. In about 3/4 of a mile, just after a bridge over a small stream, it goes through a gap in a hedge on to Common Lane. Take the farm drive opposite by the house and continue until you get to Stonery Farm. Once you reach the farm, turn right and follow a path that runs along a hedgerow. Then go through the gate and cut across the next field aiming for a small group of buildings ahead. You emerge at Station Road, opposite The Berwick Inn. Berwick Station is a few metres down on your left.

The bohemian collective of painters and writers who became known as the Bloomsbury Group started meeting in London in 1905. They went on to form lifelong creative connections grounded in deep friendships. Despite gaining their name from their London residences, the set have strong connections with this corner of the South Downs. Virginia Woolf (née Stephens) lived at Little Talland in Firle and then at Asheham House in Beddington, where her sister Vanessa was a frequent visitor. This was despite Vanessa having drifted apart from her husband, Clive Bell, who had fallen in love with Virginia. Vanessa and Duncan Grant formed an artistic partnership that was to continue throughout her life. When war broke out, Vanessa, Duncan and his then lover David ‘Bunny’ Garnett moved to the country so the men could evade conscription by working the land, which was considered work of sufficient ‘national importance’. They settled in Charleston and the house is now a shrine to their creativity, decorated in their distinctive style.

To say the group had complicated romantic relationships is an understatement. Vanessa made no secret of her feelings for Duncan and they became lovers. Vanessa gave birth to his daughter Angelica at Charleston on Christmas Day, 1918. She was brought up as a Bell and only told that Clive was not her father when she was 19. Bunny Garnett declared his intention to marry her when she was a baby – an intention he realised when she was 24. Vanessa and Duncan painted together and hosted parties at the house that became synonymous with their art. The interiors at Berwick Church were completed with Vanessa’s son Quentin during the Second World War. The nativity is transposed to the Downs, with Mount Caburn depicted in the Italianate frescos. Mary is based on Angelica; elsewhere, Duncan appears on the cross. Vanessa’s life was upturned by the deaths of Virginia and her son Julian, who was killed in the Spanish Civil War. She spent more time at Charleston, eschewing the city for life in the pastoral artistic enclave and she eventually died there in 1961. Duncan died in 1978 and is buried side-by-side with Vanessa at the foot of Firle Beacon – their creative connection now part of the Downs themselves. BH

Full-day country walks in SE England and beyond

Glynde to Berwick via Charleston

Click on the image below to access the full map on Plotarooute.com

​

Full-day country walks in
SE England and beyond