The World Outside My Window

Solitary walking opportunities being limited of late by the demands of work, family and a pair of dodgy knees, pulling back the curtains on the first frosty morning of the season, the world outside my window was too much to resist. The early sun was casting long shadows across the fields but was bathing the trees and the distant ridge in a golden glow.

The parish being too big to beat the bounds in a couple of hours, I headed out of Windmill Hill through the hollow by Rocks Farm Shop with the intention of a more modest circular walk. The incline up to Bodle Street Green felt long and laboured at first but the freezing air soon had a restorative effect and, by the time I reached St. John the Evangelist as the dwindling faithful were arriving for the early service, I was well in my stride. This early-Victorian church, fronted by an attractive split-flint gable end wall, was largely re-built after a fire in the 1920s.

After walking through Bodle Street Green, past the pub with the eponymous white horse painted on the roof, I turned left into Chilsham Lane at the Ebenezer Strict Baptist Chapel. If this sounds as though I am making it up, or that I live near Silas Marner, I am not. Such a building exists and, as usual for a Sunday morning, there were a lot of cars parked outside indicating that this faith is popular. These orthodox parishioners are known as Strict and Particular Baptists and are affiliated to the magazine, The Gospel Standard, which has been publishing hyper-Calvinist theology since 1835. Be careful out there.

Chilsham Lane was frozen with run-off from the fields but I managed to negotiate its entire length - past the farms, stables and high-hedged houses - until I came to Stunts Green. Here, I took a quick diversion to my allotment to break the ice on the pond for the wildlife, and the soil with a spade for some leeks. Too cold to do any other work on my plot, I headed down towards Herstmonceux. The pubs and restaurants were all shuttered and the village was quiet save for the sporadic trade at the two rival village shops; I bought a newspaper in one and some milk in the other. By this time, the sun had climbed higher and I felt that my walking worship had paid sufficient thanks for the beauty of the day - and it had been more glorious than any religious service. I arrived back home in time for a late breakfast and to read of the rectitude of dropping bombs on Syria.

Windmills of My Mind

Being brought up on a diet of black and white films - back in my formative years the BBC daytime schedules were not full of programmes about the crap in your attic or vicarious house hunting - has had many personal consequences: a disregard for authority instilled in me by too many Ealing comedies; a reputation for being recondite that is useless, except in pub quizzes; and a disconcertion when it comes to windmills.

Alfred Hitchcock’s 1940 spy thriller Foreign Correspondent left an indelible mark. Starring the American Joel McCrea and supported by the urbane and English George Sanders, the perpetual chase of the film at one point leads to a Dutch landscape overpopulated by slowly turning windmills. The tension of the scene, as McCrea secretly observes the menace of the kidnappers of the drugged diplomat Van Meer behind the ostensibly benign façade of one of the windmills, terrified me; but only as much as the strange, dead ambience of a Hollywood studio set masquerading as countryside. Since then windmills have been a symbol of hidden menace. A fear, I fear, I have passed on to one of my sons who, from the age of two, could not walk past our local windmill. Often we would walk up the hill, only for him to panic and refuse to go on as the mill came in full sight, just like Michael Palin’s teacher character in Alan Bleasedale’s GBH who, everytime he had to cross a bridge, froze.

Our local windmill is magnificent: in a county renowned for windmills the Windmill Hill windmill is the tallest in Sussex and the second tallest in Britain. Built in 1814, it is one of the remaining examples of a post mill in its original condition. After a chequered ownership throughout the second half of the twentieth century, a trust acquired the mill in 1995 and completed a ten-year programme of restoration with funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund, English Heritage and county and district councils.

A post mill is a timber building supported on a vertical post which acts as a pivot so that the mill can be turned to face the wind. When we first moved here my ignorance led to confusion: every time I glanced up at the windmill, it seemed to be facing a different way; that’s because it was. The mill is now open to visitors on out-of-winter Sunday afternoons and some extra days on bank holiday weekends, with entrance by donation.

My son has overcome his fear: he has not just walked past the mill but been inside it and climbed all the way to the top with me. That was an exhilarating experience but I had the scene from Foreign Correspondent in my mind all the time. I think that the Windmill Hill windmill is best enjoyed after dark when it is beautifully lit and I can see its white, spectral shape against the night sky from behind the safety of my window.