Lullington, East Sussex

Where was I?

Year: 1968. Scene: A red Humber Sceptre driving along a lane in remote Somerset, my father at the wheel, me in the passenger seat, trying to find where we are on an Ordnance Survey map. We are trying not to admit to each another that we are lost.

DAD: Well, I don’t think this can be the right road.

ME: I know. It doesn’t look right on the map.

DAD: Let’s carry on for now.

ME (excitedly): Look! There’s a post box. Let’s stop and see what it says.

DAD (braking): Good idea – son.

That last word was always said with a slight pause before it, ‘son’ being stressed in an unusual way, part in irony, part in praise, or, occasionally, if the emphasis was very strong, admiration.

Of course, what we both knew was that back then, post boxes carried information about their location on the panel that bore the collection times. So we stopped and discovered more or less where we were.

I thought of this when I saw this lovely signpost at a Sussex junction back in the spring. I found several things about it easy to like – its wooden construction, the tapering column, the black-painted finial, the shaped corners of the pointing arms, and the clear sans serif lettering. Also the way it told me the direction of Lullington church, which is what I was looking for. And the fact that the column spells out where you are: LULLINGTON. If you’re unsure of your bearings, it puts you right. Perfect.

This was useful when the signpost was erected and, it could be argued, it’s still useful today. Most of us find our way around these days with the help of apparently miraculous satnav devices.* They are usually pretty good at guiding us to our destination, but not very good at telling us where we are. We glance at the dashboard map and see we’re nearing a grey area signifying a settlement, but no name is attached to it. If some oaf has driven into the village sign and knocked it over, or if we miss it because we are dodging other dashing objects or are distracted for a split second by an interesting Georgian rectory, we have no idea. If we’re in a place like Lullington, too small to have many signs at all, we’re likewise likely to be foxed. Signs like this still have their uses.

- - - - -

* One of these days I’ll get round to doing a post about the virtues of OS maps when it comes to finding interesting buildings. Come to think of it, I’ve covered this ground already, in more than one earlier post. See this one from 2019.

Lullingon, East Sussex

At home on the Downs

I turn south off the main road between Lewes and Polegate, through Wilmington and on to the Downs. After about a mile I see a sign to the church I’m looking for, but there just seem to be two houses and some garages with cars parked in front of them: there’s nowhere obvious to stop. So I carry on down the hill to a farm where there’s somewhere to pull in. There’s one of those reassuring Sussex fingerposts with the name of the location written up the shaft: Lullington. There does not seem to be much more to Lullington than a couple of houses and a farm. I walk back up the hill to the church sign, find a brick path past the garages and into a copse, and eventually I’m rewarded with a view of the tiny church.

I came here because the church was small and picturesque and, I thought, would probably be a pleasant and peaceful spot to break a morning journey. It was all of these things. Its small size (it’s widely noised as the smallest church in Sussex and one of the smallest in the country) is because it is merely the chancel* of what was once a larger church – part of the vanished section has been left to buttress the building at the front. The destruction of the rest of the building is attributed locally to the army of Cromwell in the 17th century, but I’ve not found any concrete evidence for this. Documentary evidence cited on the Suffolk Parish Churches website seems to point to destruction in the 1670s or 1680s, possibly as the result of a roof collapse. The fact that it was not rebuilt suggests that by that time the community had shrunk to something like its current size, possibly because of the Black Death or for some other reason.† The history of this place seems so elusive that not even the church’s original dedication was known. In a ceremony of 2000 it was rededicated to the Good Shepherd.

What’s left is indeed tiny – I counted 17 seats that one could comfortably sit in – and charming. The flint and stone walls are pierced by windows that look 13th and 14th century and there’s a very simple rough-hewn font that may be Norman. The use of flint is typical of the region and the 19th-century bell turret’s walls are weatherboarded, another local building material. Even the church’s modern dedication seems right for its location, paying tribute to the sheep farming that has been a mainstay of the economy of the Downs for hundreds if not thousands of years. This is a building that feels thoroughly at home.

- - - - -

* Or just part of the chancel

† Plague is often given as the reason for the desertion or depopulation of medieval villages, but causes just as common were to do with convenience (villagers sometimes ‘migrated’ to another site), the vagaries of landholding, or enclosure.