The Hidden Landscape by Richard Fortey

Author:Richard Fortey
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781409087694
Publisher: CCV Digital

13

The Weald

Tunbridge Wells lies near the heart of the Weald. Commuters pour from it into London; it is a safe and comfortable place, encapsulating the solid virtues of thrift and family.

Yet in truth this domestication is a recent phenomenon, based on the celebrity of chalybeate water as a health fad in the eighteenth century, and preserved by the subsequent expansion of the railways. Before the railway network pushed outwards from London, the Weald included many inaccessible areas; there are still jungles of little roads wandering and twisting through the countryside, and it is not so long ago that these were merely tracks, rutted deeply with the wear of centuries of cartwheels. Travellers in the early years of the twentieth century reported peasants with accents as incomprehensible as any in Cornwall. This has always been one of the most densely wooded parts of the country, and so it remains. There is still an aura of mystery in the rolling countryside. Much of the past survives: old buildings, ancient landscapes. On a misty morning the centuries roll away, and it is possible to believe that an Iron Age man rising early in the day might have greeted a scene little different in its essentials.

Much of what is seen is related to the hidden landscape. The geology of the Weald is quite straightforward, and it directly influences the landscape. North to south, passing through Tunbridge Wells, it comprises a generous anticline. The oldest rocks accordingly lie in the middle; framed by the Chalk – North Downs to the north, Beachy Head to the south – the earlier Cretaceous rocks underlying the Weald are arranged in their natural formations concentrically about the axis of the anticline. The scenery, broadly, follows the same concentric pattern. The coast also runs obliquely across the middle of the anti-cline, with Hastings near its centre. From Eastbourne to Folkestone the map tells us that we should see the succession of earlier Cretaceous rocks enclosed in the Wealden anticline, but in practice exposure at the coast is by no means continuous. The same succession of rocks are exposed on the south side of the Isle of Wight – and in its westward continuation, as I previously described in Purbeck and Lulworth Cove.

As one would expect in an anticline, the oldest rocks take up the ground in the centre. This is the land between Tunbridge Wells and the coast at Hastings. It is rolling, well-wooded country, probably the most attractive in the Weald. The Hastings beds include several massive sandstones, which naturally tend to take the high ground: this is called the High Weald. Clay beds between sandstones are sought out by the rivers and streams that intricately dissect the hilly country. The valleys they erode are often miniature gorges, flanked by bluffs of sandstone, as near Eridge and West Hoathly. Main roads tend to follow the ridges, while minor roads can duck and dive charmingly between banks and hedges in the valleys. In the deep woods sweet chestnut has long been naturalised, and oaks are again achieving great proportions.

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