Today, I spent a lovely bright morning having a walk-cum-scramble around the village of Fulking, just north of Brighton. I encountered beauty and history with every step, as I surveyed the village and surroundings for OpenStreetMap. I had with me a checklist of ten questions that I wanted answers to, so they were going to direct my path around the village.
I parked in a layby just west of the village itself and headed south along a track that starts to climb up towards Devil’s Dyke. I passed a couple National Trust workers who had been maintaining the area around my quest: the old lime kiln.
Originally each parish would have had one of these kilns, with a bottle-shaped hole in the top (now safely filled with stone) and the exit hole for the lime at the bottom. It would have been filled with chalk quarried from the face of the scarp just north of the kiln, and the results used for agriculture and building. The National Trust got a grant to maintain this one about 20 years ago, and they have restored the front face of the kiln to its original pattern.
In 1901 a homeless labourer called Alfred Squires was left all night to die here, while Poor Law officials and the doctor argued about the paperwork required to move him. When the doctor finally attended, the next morning, he had died of heart disease. The Worthing Gazette of 8 May 1901 reported that ‘the man would have died in any case,’ while admitting that ‘the lime kiln was the worst possible place to leave a man in that condition.’ Grim stuff.
From here, I scrambled across a dirt trail eastwards and walked back north to the main road, noting stiles and steps along the way. Fulking greets you with a painted sign by local artist Nicholas Bremer, which is apparently just one of a seasonal set!
Fulking stream runs along the south side of the road for a short while here, then cuts through a culvert to the north. I tried to fish what appeared to be a wooden sign about the culvert from the stream but it turned out to be blank. I’m guessing it was more warning than information sign anyway. OpenStreetMap was showing the stream running to the north of the road for most of the way, so I corrected that.
Walking east towards the Shepherd and Dog pub, we see a curious tiny building on the right and the stream running freely out of the wall. An information board (now mapped) explains that John Ruskin and local businessman Henry Willett devised and implemented a scheme to pump water from the stream for the use of the village, supplying some hand pumps up the road. Here we have the pump house, which houses a ram pump that noisily did service from about 1886 until mains water took over in 1951. Today there is a sign warning that this is not drinking water.
Up the hill, passing the Shepherd and Dog, which is not yet open, I’m reminded of Keith Floyd who I think was wandering round Ireland, saying ‘when you walk around here, you’ll pass pubs every few steps, which is a great mistake!’ and then he doubled back and popped through the door.
As well as the hand pumps, the pump house supplied a drinking fountain in the village, which was erected as a tribute to John Ruskin. Neither of the taps work today.
Just beyond the drinking fountain, a gate leads north into a little park area, which a children’s play area on one side. One of the two benches here was already mapped, so I mapped the other and checked the directions that they were facing. Here there are a line of hornbeams, an ash and an exuberant Japanese cherry. I mapped the line of hornbeams and only now, looking through the photos, I realise that I didn’t map the cherry.
Out from the park and back onto the main street which is called The Street. One of my survey questions was to determine whether there were any signs naming the main road through the village, and where they were. As it happens, there are none. There are plenty of indications that the street is The Street but precisely where it begins and ends is anyone’s guess. At the eastern end of the village, houses on one side of the road are on the The Street, but the houses the other side are on Poynings Road.
As you would expect, many of the houses in a place this small are named rather than numbered, including all the houses along The Street itself. One of these, set well back from the road, is The Croft and it has a blue plaque on the right-hand gatepost, proclaiming its association with Dr. William Moon.
The text on the plaque is:
William Moon LL.D (1818‒1894) lived in this house.
Dr. William Moon, himself blind, was the inventor of the special embossed alphabet which bears his name and was designed to enable the blind to read by touch. His pioneer educational and welfare activities are still continued today by the Blatchington Court Trust and the Brighton Society for the Blind.
Further along the street there is an example of one of the hand pumps. It was manufactured in Lewes by Charles A. Wells. It no longers works either, which means that I couldn’t refill my water bottle anywhere in the village that had been so adequately supplied 150 years ago.
Just behind me at this point is one of the thatched houses in the village. It is called Thatchly and looks like something out of Hobbiton, with a round entrance hole in the front wall.
From here, I had a walk up Clappers Lane to number houses and then snapped a picture of the village from Perching Hill before heading back to the car.
The route, questions and answers 🔗
- Is the lime kiln where the map shows it to be? Yes
- Does the phone box contain a working phone? Yes, for now. BT have placed a note in October 2025 announcing their plans to decommission it.
- Is the Ruskin tap working? No, neither tap is.
- Does the spring itself have a tap? No, and there is a sign saying that the spring water should not be drunk.
- Where does The Street become Edburton Road and Poynings Road. Not entirely clear, so I’ve left the existing assumptions in place. There are no signs.
- Is the village sign in place? Yes, and very attractive it is, too.
- Does the playground have a sign and bins? No sign, but I mapped the dog poo bin.
- What does the plaque on the gate of ‘The Croft’ say? Photographed for OpenPlaques.
- Any street furniture need mapping? Another bench, information board, pump house, hand pump and drinking fountain added.
In total, I closed four notes and opened one new one, to remind me to recheck when the phone is finally removed.