Tag Archives: Sussex

Historical, Movies, Reviews, Tours, Travel, Videos, Views

Historic Tour: Locations In ‘The Unlikely Pilgrimage Of Harold Fry’ Film (2023)

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National Trust (April 27, 2023) – Based on the bestselling novel by Rachel Joyce, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry starring Jim Broadbent and Penelope Wilton is exclusively in cinemas from April 28 2023.

Recently retired, Harold Fry is an unremarkable man who is content to fade quietly into the background of life, until one day he learns that an old friend is dying. He sets off to the post office to send her a letter and decides to keep walking: all the way to her hospice, 450 miles away.

The Bath Skyline in Somerset and Minchinhampton Common in Gloucestershire were both used as locations for the film, which was shot sequentially across the UK over several weeks, mirroring Harold’s own pilgrimage through England’s many varied landscapes – from bustling cities to wild moorland.

Here Jim and Rachel tell us how being on location helped bring to life story’s themes of reconnecting with the land and embracing the unknown. Filming at National Trust places helps provide our charity with income which we use to keep those houses, gardens and landscapes in good condition for everyone to visit and enjoy.

Arts & Literature, Historical, Homes, Tours, Travel, Videos, Views

Views: A Tour Of Monk’s House, Sussex In Virginia Woolf’s Literary Words

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National Trust (April 18, 2023) – To this day, Virginia Woolf is still known for her novel ‘Mrs Dalloway’ and for her early involvement in the Bloomsbury Group, which was established in the early 1900s in London.

Monk’s House in Sussex was once the place she and her husband Leopold called home, and it’s now being cared for by the National Trust. In this video from the National Trust, you can experience what life was like at Monk’s House first hand. For more than 20 years, Virginia Woolf transformed Monk’s House into a place of beauty, art, creativity and contentment.

Virginia Woolf - IMDb
Virginia Woolf

From reciting lines in her bathtub to writing books in the tool shed, let this literary pioneer tell you in her own words how she finally found ‘a room of one’s own’. Throughout much of her life, Virginia Woolf experienced bouts of mental illness, and Monk’s House was used as a writing retreat by Virginia and Leopold.

The Sussex landscape captured her imagination, and this came through in much of her writing. She was also engaged in the conservation of the land – a legacy that lives on through the work that National Trust staff and volunteers do to care for this place of history.

Architecture, Historical, Homes, Stories, Views

English Architecture: Arts And Crafts Willards Farm In Surrey & Sussex

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The older farmhouses scattered across rural, deeply wooded areas on the Surrey and Sussex border have lost nothing of their appeal in the 21st century. Willards Farm, near Dunsfold, has recently been subject to sympathetic renovation and substantial extension. At its core, the house is a four-bay, 16th-century timber-frame house of two storeys, under a clay-tile roof, with a substantial off-centre chimney stack. It occupies an elevated site and was extended to its northern end in the 1930s and to the south in the 1980s. The latest works, completed in 2019, were imaginatively designed by architect Stuart Martin for a young family.

The brick walls enclosing the pool house create the impression of a traditional farmstead enclosure and the tiled coping echoes the treatment of a Lutyens pergola at Pasture Wood, Dorking, of about 1912. One angle of the walls is resolved with a fine dovecote and ceramic decoration of the pool by Craig Bragdy means that it resembles an ornamental pond.

Willards Farm

Willards Farm, Surrey. ©Paul Highnam for Country Life

Poetry, Travel, Videos, Views

Poetic Travel: ‘Sussex By-The-Sea’, England (Video)

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“Sussex by-the-Sea” is a 4K drone film is based on the words of the famous author and Sussex resident Rudyard Kipling’s 1902 poem “Sussex” and explores the East Sussex coastline between Roedean and Beachy Head.

Kipling, author of the “Jungle Book,” first lived in the village of Rottingdean and in 1902 bought 17th-century house “Batemans” in Burwash, East Sussex, where he lived until he died. His poem explored his love of the area, such as the wonders of the coastline and specific landmarks including the Longman of Wilmington and Beachy Head. Locations seen in the film include Roedean, Ovingdean, Rottingdean, Saltdean, Telscombe Cliffs, Peacehaven, Newhaven, Piddinghoe, Tide Mills, Seaford, Seven Sisters and Beachy Head, as well as landmarks such as the Meridian Monument, Litlington White Horse, The Long Man of Wilmington as well as the Newhaven Ferry.

“Sussex” (1902) Poem written by Rudyard Kipling
Narrated by Howard Ellison (howardellison.net/)
Filmed and edited by Dan Parkes (danthecameraman.co.uk/)
Music track: “Carried by the Wind” (licensed)
Music composed by Florian Seraul (tiny-music.com/)