Holmes In England: South Downs
Holmes’s cottage was a timber-framed farmhouse dressed in local stone and set in the southeastern face of Went Hill, a gentle slope of green and gold fields that descends for a mile from his backyard and comes to an abrupt end at the Seven Sisters, the great chalk cliffs that stretch from Seaford Head to Eastbourne…
— One Must Tell the Bees
The South Downs (they are not actually “downs”—the name derives from an Old English word for “hills”) stretch eastward some 70 miles from Winchester in the southern center of England, ending in spectacular chalk cliffs at Beachy Head, near Eastbourne.
Today a national park officially recognized as an “Area of Outstanding National Beauty”, in Holmes’s day the South Downs were home to farms and grazing sheep and cattle, while the coast was home to fishing fleets and a growing number of seafront hotels.
Seven Sisters photo visitsouthdowns.com
The South Downs Way is a 100-mile long footpath that runs the length of the Downs, from Winchester to Eastbourne. The final stretch runs right along the edge of the great chalk cliffs known as the Seven Sisters with spectacular views of the English Channel and the “shingle” beaches below. Check out Dave Robert’s interactive map to “walk” the South Downs Way.
Just beware…
In less than half an hour we had arrived at the crumbling edge of the great limestone cliffs overlooking the Channel. We stood in silence amid the swirling fog, England’s eternal moat hidden from our eyes, and listened to the inexorable rolling of the breakers onto the shingle beach a hundred feet below. My foot slipped suddenly, sending a small shower of limestone gravel over the edge, and Holmes seized my arm in his characteristically strong grip.
“Beware the edges, Watson. They take more than a few sheep every spring. The poor devils cannot perceive the loss of the cliffs during the winter storms.”
“Surely you exaggerate!” I took several steps backwards, nevertheless.
“Not in the least. That clump of gorse on the brink yonder was a dozen feet from the edge when I first arrived at Went Hill.”
“Why, that would mean the cliff has lost almost a foot every year!”
“Precisely so, Watson. In another five thousand years my cottage will be washed into the sea.”
“That is a rather gloomy sentiment, Holmes.”
“It is not sentiment, Watson, it is arithmetic.”
“Well, we are together again, and that is enough for me.”
“Good old Watson!” he said, and I thought I discerned a catch in my friend’s voice.
As the wind quieted down the fog continued moving out to sea, revealing the black shingle beach and the dark waters of the great English Channel…
— One Must Tell the Bees
(Seven Sisters postcard / public domain, Seven Sisters photo visitsouthdowns.com, all other photography by the author.)
