Sacred Sussex: exploring spirituality with the Long Man & Friends
Where are the spiritual places of Sussex? A talk from the authors of The Long Man & Friends: Sacred Sussex explored the relationship between the county and faith.
It’s not often in life I get to enjoy a pint in a church. But, on a warm June evening, that’s exactly what I got to do up in Steyning. The Steyning Bookshop had put on one of their excellent author talks, and this time the venue was St Andrew & St Cuthman.
An appropriate venue, as the talks were about spirituality in Sussex, and the church itself certainly fell under that umbrella, with one of the churchwardens opening the evening with a short talk.
Henri Brocklebank: the sacred nature of Sussex
Intriguingly, the authors themselves were held for the back half of the evening. The churchwarden was followed up by Henri Brocklebank, head of conservation at Sussex Wildlife Trust.
This was very much my kind of talk. I’ve always found it much easier to get a sense of the divine, to find spirituality within myself, when in nature. Churches, by their very nature, are the work of human hands. Brocklebank riffed on that theme, talking of the awe that nature can inspire in us, and the way that can be a gateway to spirituality in its own right. And, of course, given her work, of the importance of defending those spaces for nature’s sake, and for human thriving.
I gleaned some interesting things I didn’t know about myth adopted hime county, including the fact that it was never glaciated, which certainly accounts for the soft, rolling nature of our hills. I loved the Mr Men books as a child, but always thought that the style of hills that Roger Hargreaves drew were a simple abstraction for a child’s book. After all, I lived under 5th craggy Ochils of Scotland. And then I moved here, and found that those hills really exist.
But it also means that our surface geology remains intact, as a wave-cut platform of a chalk reef.
Her talk concluded with a call to action to preserve Sussex. And then… it was beer o’clock:
David Bramwell: place, spirituality and art
I've come into David Bramwell’s orbit a few times before, largely back in my days involved in TEDxBrighton (12 years ago now…). He’s very much a Brighton “name”, as an incomer who fell in love with the city and its environments in his 20s. His love affair with the city, extended into the surrounding Sussex landscape.
And he talked both amusingly and thought-provokingly about the relationship between place, human thriving and spirituality. It’s a theme that’s woven through his life, from his Cheeky Guides days, to modern works like White Rabbits in Sussex.
In essence, he added a third element to the themes of the evening: art. That intersection of place and spirituality we were exploring often manifests as art.
It was also lovely hearing him talk about the sorts of places I’ve started exploring of late, like Kingley Vale.
Philip Carr-Gomm: communing with place
And so onto the final, and most mystical, of the talks. Philip Carr-Gomm is a druid. But he’s also a writer, and therapist and an educator. So, the evening took on a certain dream-like quality, as he talked of drifting off to sleep while meditating on a mound in Lewes, and hearing the voice of the Downs themselves calling him to action. But the crux, of course, was in what happened next.
This was one of those talks that doesn’t really lend itself well to being captured in text. My notes from this section of the talk are all but useless. You had to be there is a bit of a cliché, but an apposite one in the moment.
The book all this was centred around is one of the small hardback Sussex Guides series, called The Long Man & Friends; Sacred Sussex. And, despite the title, it’s not a series of meditations or descriptions of landscape. It’s a mix of a gazetteer and a walks book. The first half of the book explores sacred spots in the landscape. The second half gives you nine walks in and around Sussex, with connections to spirituality.
I’ve come back to the event to write it up nearly a month later, simply because I’m about to make use of the book. Summer is upon us, and my daughters will both be on holiday by the middle of next week. It’s time to try out some of the walks…
The Long Man & Friends: Sacred Sussex
If you’re in Shoreham, you should buy this book from Chapter 34. If you’re nearer Steyning, then the Steyning Bookshop is your friend. Otherwise, you could order it through Bookshop via the button:
