This little place which lies between the heights of
Wolstanbury and Newtimber Hill is celebrated for two things, its
shepherds' crooks and the Norman font of lead in the little church
whose chancel arch is Norman too. You may see here even in so small a
place, however, all the styles of England, for if the font and chancel
arch are Norman, the lancets in the chancel are Early English, the
double piscina is Decorated and the windows of the nave are
Perpendicular while the pulpit is of the seventeenth century.
Pyecombe is hard to reach from Clayton without a great climb over the
Downs, but there is a way, though a muddy one, which turns due west out
of the Brighton road where the railway crosses it. This leads one round
the northern side of Wolstanbury (and this is the best way from which
to visit the camp on the top) and so by a footpath past Newtimber
Place, a moated Elizabethan house well hidden away among the trees west
of the road to Hurstpierpoint.
From Pyecombe there is a delightful road winding in and out under the
Downs about Newtimber Hill to Poynings. Poynings is, or should I say
was, one of the loveliest, loneliest and most unspoiled villages to be
found here under the Downs, but of late it has been accessible by
railway from the Devil's Dyke and Brighton.
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