Hilaire Belloc bought King's Land (in Shipley, Sussex), 5 acres and a working windmill for £1000 in 1907 and it was his home for the rest of his life. Belloc loved Sussex as few other writers have loved her: he lived there for most of his 83 years, he tramped the length and breadth of the county, slept under her hedgerows, drank in her inns, sailed her coast and her rivers and wrote several incomparable books about her. "He does not die that can bequeath Some influence to the land he knows, Or dares, persistent, interwreath Love permanent with the wild hedgerows; He does not die, but still remains Substantiate with his darling plains."

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Monday 16 March 2020

They might strike root again...






"There is only one consideration which may lighten somewhat the burden of what seems inevitable. It is this: that, just as we could not forsee the sudden tidal wave which has swept over us, so the future, even the immediate future, may check the ruin of our home, of our most ancient life. Some incalculable further change may stop the further process of disintegration. it is not conceivable - but often enough the inconceivable happens. Disaster and decline might destroy the machine and so save, before they had disappeared, the last stocks and found some new repose they might strike root again."


Hilaire Belloc - The County of Sussex (1936)



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