followed passes westward out of Lewes and then turns
swiftly north, climbing as it goes, under the Downs beyond Offham,
turning west again under Mount Harry and so on past Courthouse Farm
and Plumpton church, which stands lonely in a field to the north of
the road, till suddenly by Westmaston church under Ditchling Beacon it
turns north again towards the Weald and enters the very notable
village of Ditchling. All that way is worth a king's ransom, for it
gives you all the steepness of the Downs upon their steepest side,
their sudden north escarpment, towering up over the Weald some seven
hundred feet or more. On a spring morning early I know no way more
joyful.

Ditchling Beacon itself stands some eight hundred and fifty feet above
the sea and is the highest point in all the range of the South Downs,
though it lacks the nobility of Chanctonbury. The earthworks here are
irregular and not very well defined, but there is a fine dewpound to
the east of the camp though perhaps this has not much antiquity, a
seemingly older depression now dry in the north-west corner is rather
an old rainwater ditch than a dewpound. Altogether it might seem that
Ditchling Camp was rather a refuge for cattle than a military
fortress.

Ditchling village is charming, with more than one old half-timber
house, and the church of St Margaret's is not only interesting in
itself, but, standing as it does upon rising ground and yet clear of
the great hills, it offers you one of the finest views of the Downs
anywhere to be had from the Weald. It consists of a cruciform building
of which the north transept and the north wall of the nave were
rebuilt in the thirteenth century. The chancel, however, has some
beautiful Early English work to show and the nave is rather plain
Transitional. The eastern window and most of the windows in the nave
are of the early Decorated period, the window in the south chancel
aisle being somewhat later.

Something better than Ditchling church awaits the traveller at Clayton
where the little church of St John the Baptist possesses a most
interesting chancel arch, round and massive, that may well be Saxon.
The chancel itself is of the thirteenth century with triple lancets at
the western end with two heads, perhaps of a king and queen on the
moulding. Here, too, on the south chancel wall is a fine brass of 1523
in which we see a priest holding chalice and wafer. In the nave are
the remains of frescoes of the Last Judgment.