Who legend Roger Daltrey reveals why he loves Sussex

The singer from The Who said he found his home near Burwash ‘by accident’ more than 50 years ago in 1971.

He told the Sunday Times: “The hallway was black as pitch, there was damp and the kitchen was dreadful, but then we walked into the front room and saw the view across the valleys and villages of the High Weald. I stood open-mouthed and knew I had to live there.”

Mr Daltrey said his home was built by the same architect who went on to build Bateman’s, where Rudyard Kipling lived in Sussex, which is now owned by the National Trust.

He said: “The Sussex Weald is a part of the country I’ve come to love. It’s poor farming land but extremely beautiful and one of the most important areas of medieval landscape in Europe. It’s rolling hills, forest and real country people. It hasn’t disappeared up its own backside like a few counties north of London.”

Mr Daltrey said he started off with 35 acres of land when he bought his house. Now he has almost 600 acres.

He farms in a co-operative and has more than 300 cows, as well as four interconnected trout lakes, which he started building on scrubland in 1979.

During lockdown the Who frontman started a brewery with his son Jamie and two sons-in-law.

The singer was among the many people who attended Hastings Beatles Day last month.

The rock legend was there to support his grandson, who was playing in a band at the day-long tribute to the Fab Four.

Mr Daltrey was also in Hastings in February, when he visited the Albion pub in The Old Town, as the Sussex brewery run by his son Jamie extended its partnership with Hastings Fat Tuesday Music Festival.

Lakedown Brewery is sponsoring a year-long programme that will support the Hastings Fat Tuesday Club into 2023.

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