History series

Sussex historian, folklorist and folk singer Chris Hare returns to the Festival of Chichester with an exciting series of events.

Tickets are available on https://www.tickettailor.com/events/historypeople

Sussex folk song and folk song collectors is on Wednesday, July 1 at 7.30pm at Chichester City Arts Centre, Mount Lane, Chichester, PO19 3DQ.

“What is a Sussex folk song? Is there even such a thing as a Sussex folk song?”

Chris will offer some answers. As well as detailing the different types of song in Sussex that can be considered folk, Chris will also be singing songs, some of which he learned from his mother, and some of which he learned from retired woodmen and agricultural workers in Sussex villages in the 1980s.

He will also talk about the pioneering work of folk song collectors Lucy Broadwood and Kate Lee in Sussex in Victorian and Edwardian times. CDs of some of these songs will be available to buy after the talk.

Chris is also offering Historic and Literary Slindon: a guided walk (Sunday, July 5 at 7pm – meet outside The Forge, Reynolds Lane, Slindon, BN18 0QT).

“Slindon is one of the very few downland villages that is actually situated on rising ground. Most settlements are found at the foot of the downs, often close to springs. So its elevated position marks it out.

“Historically, Slindon was once a Peculiar of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Archbishop Stephen Langton, the main author of Magna Carta, lived and died here.

“Slindon was one of a handful of parishes in the whole of England where the Catholic Mass continued to be celebrated throughout the centuries of persecution.

“It was perhaps fitting then that the Catholic writer, author, poet, and one-time Member of Parliament, Hilaire Belloc, should have made his home here. Belloc lived in Slindon as a child and retuned again when he was married and with a family of his own.

“This walk will include extracts from Belloc's essays relating to Slindon, and poems referencing the downland landscape to the north of the village. Slindon is built on a hill, so please bear this in mind when booking: although not long in distance, there is a fairly steep climb from the Forge to our final destination near Slindon College.”

Chris continues with Sussex Rural Writers on Wednesday, July 8 at 7.30pm at the Chichester Centre Arts Centre, Mount Lane, Chichester, PO19 3DQ.

“This talk looks at writers who were inspired by the Sussex countryside and whose work, both prose and in verse, reflected this inspiration. Some wrote of the landscape, others of the country people, and all sought to understand and illuminate the elusive Spirit of the Downs.

“Writers considered will include Richard Jefferies, W H Hudson (who loved the Sussex Downs but hated Chichester!), Hilaire Belloc, Sheila Kaye-Smith and Arthur Beckett.

“As England became a country of town and city-dwellers, so the countryside became an unknown, even troubling place; these writers – all in their different ways – sought to reinterpret rural Sussex for urban people and in doing so also created powerful myths that still endure today.”

Chris concludes with All Change! How the Coming of the Railway changed Sussex Forever on Wednesday, July 15 at 7.30pm at Chichester Centre Arts Centre, Mount Lane, Chichester, PO19 3DQ.

“Hard as it is to believe today, before the coming of the railway to Sussex in the 1840s, this county was underpopulated and poor. Many emigrated, despairing that the good times would ever return and hoping for better things in a new land overseas.

“Yet, by the 1850s, the railway was transforming the fortunes of Sussex, employment opportunities were increasing, and with the new jobs came higher wages.

“Small, insignificant little villages like Worthing, Littlehampton and Bognor became bustling seaside resorts while horticulture increasingly displaced traditional agriculture. A Sussex man or woman of 1900 had very different and improved expectations of their forebears of 1800; and it was the railway that delivered the change.”