Gibbet Woods
As was his nature, Powys would frequently escape from the village for long, solitary walks on the downs, slipping out unnoticed through the churchyard.
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' I used to love the margin...between woodland and downland where the Gibbet Woods mingled with the open downs. This, even more than that hidden tow-path by the Old River, was my favourite walk for a decade. I must have come here a hundred times a year for about ten years...' |
The photograph shows the path along the bottom of New Down where the woods do indeed mingle with the downs, sometimes advancing as far as the path itself, sometimes retreating up the slope.
' This place I well recall visiting in walks from Burpham in former times. It is a wonderful green Gothic Cathedral of inviolable quietness going up & down out of all memory...It is a hill, a wood, a park, a sacred grove opening into a great wide Elysian field...' (Diaries) |
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Adjoining the Gibbet Woods was another of JCP's favourite walks, the beech copse at Michelgrove, the entrance to which (the West Door?) is shown above. The woods are now known as Wepham Wood, but there was a sound reason for their older name.
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' But what I used to love myself even better, for it was still more lonely, was the heart of what were called "the Gibbet Woods." Here they hanged a man once who robbed the Royal Mail, and this unfortunate young man's indignant spirit seemed to keep people away from the spot.' |
This post commemorates the event Powys refers to. The initials JU stand for Jack Upperton, although the date of the poor man's demise was 1771, not1774. He held up the King's Mail at Lyminster in September 1770, was tried at the Sussex Assizes at East Grinstead the following March and hanged at Horsham Gaol in April. In accordance with the judge's directions, his body was then 'hung in chains on the most convenient spot upon Burpham New Down'.
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