With its glorious, undulating countryside punctuated by historic market towns and impossibly idyllic villages, it’s no wonder West Sussex has beguiled so many visitors through the centuries.
For poet, painter and mystic William Blake, who penned his verse And Did Those Feet in Ancient Time while living in the little village of Felpham, it really was ‘England’s green and pleasant land’.
Some 70 years later, Victorian Poet Laureate Alfred, Lord Tennyson fled to the area to escape the starstruck fans who flocked to his front door on the nearby Isle of Wight. He built a new home at Black Down – at 918ft the highest point in the county. From there he could gaze across the purple heather and ancient woodlands, immortalising the scene before him in verse:
“You came, and looked and loved the viewLong-known and loved by me,Green Sussex fading into blueWith one grey glimpse
