Writers in Sussex: Rudyard Kipling’s Deep Affection for the Weald and Downs
- Ellen Cheshire
- Apr 17
- 4 min read
This is the second in our series exploring writers in Sussex – those who were inspired by its coastlines, hills, and ancient villages. From haunting visions to heartfelt celebrations, Sussex has stirred the imagination of some of our greatest literary voices.
Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936), one of the defining voices of late Victorian and Edwardian literature, found in Sussex not only a place to live, but a place to belong. Although born in Bombay and shaped by the Empire, Kipling’s connection to England was rooted early on in Southsea, where he spent a difficult part of his childhood under the harsh care of a foster family while his parents remained in India. The memory of England - and later, of Sussex in particular - would come to represent both sanctuary and identity.
In 1902, after years of living abroad and amidst rising literary fame, Kipling settled at Bateman’s, a 17th-century Jacobean house nestled in the quiet folds of the Sussex Weald near Burwash. There, surrounded by the rolling Downs, ancient woodlands and lanes steeped in English history, Kipling immersed himself in the rhythms of the countryside. It was at Bateman’s that he wrote many of his later works, and where he found a sense of rootedness he had long sought.
Kipling’s poem Sussex, written not long after he moved to the county, is both tribute and testament. In it, he captures not only the rugged, untamed beauty of the landscape, but the deep emotional connection that forms between people and the places that shape them. His verses speak to an elemental love—a feeling beyond reason—that binds him to this “fair ground… Sussex by the sea.”
Following Kipling’s death in 1936, his widow, Caroline, ensured that Bateman’s would remain a place of inspiration and public memory by leaving the house and its estate to the National Trust, in whose care it remains.
Sussex by Rudyard Kipling
1
God gave all men all earth to love,
But since our hearts are small,
Ordained for each one spot should prove
Belovèd over all;
That, as He watched Creation’s birth,
So we, in godlike mood,
May of our love create our earth
And see that it is good.
2
So one shall Baltic pines content,
As one some Surrey glade,
Or one the palm-grove’s droned lament
Before Levuka’s Trade.
Each to his choice, and I rejoice
The lot has fallen to me
In a fair ground—in a fair ground—
Yea, Sussex by the sea!
3
No tender-hearted garden crowns,
No bosomed woods adorn
Our blunt, bow-headed, whale-backed Downs,
But gnarled and writhen thorn—
Bare slopes where chasing shadows skim,
And, through the gaps revealed,
Belt upon belt, the wooded, dim,
Blue goodness of the Weald.
4
Clean of officious fence or hedge,
Half-wild and wholly tame,
The wise turf cloaks the white cliff edge
As when the Romans came.
What sign of those that fought and died
At shift of sword and sword?
The barrow and the camp abide,
The sunlight and the sward.
5
Here leaps ashore the full Sou’west
All heavy-winged with brine,
Here lies above the folded crest
The Channel’s leaden line;
And here the sea-fogs lap and cling,
And here, each warning each,
The sheep-bells and the ship-bells ring
Along the hidden beach.
6
We have no waters to delight
Our broad and brookless vales—
Only the dewpond on the height
Unfed, that never fails—
Whereby no tattered herbage tells
Which way the season flies—
Only our close-bit thyme that smells
Like dawn in Paradise.
7
Here through the strong and shadeless days
The tinkling silence thrills;
Or little, lost, Down churches praise
The Lord who made the hills:
But here the Old Gods guard their round,
And, in her secret heart,
The heathen kingdom Wilfrid found
Dreams, as she dwells, apart.
8
Though all the rest were all my share,
With equal soul I’d see
Her nine-and-thirty sisters fair,
Yet none more fair than she.
Choose ye your need from Thames to Tweed,
And I will choose instead
Such lands as lie ’twixt Rake and Rye,
Black Down and Beachy Head.
9
I will go out against the sun
Where the rolled scarp retires,
And the Long Man of Wilmington
Looks naked toward the shires;
And east till doubling Rother crawls
To find the fickle tide,
By dry and sea-forgotten walls,
Our ports of stranded pride.
10
I will go north about the shaws
And the deep ghylls that breed
Huge oaks and old, the which we hold
No more than Sussex weed;
Or south where windy Piddinghoe’s
Begilded dolphin veers
And red beside wide-bankèd Ouse
Lie down our Sussex steers.
11
So to the land our hearts we give
Till the sure magic strike,
And Memory, Use, and Love make live
Us and our fields alike—
That deeper than our speech and thought,
Beyond our reason’s sway,
Clay of the pit whence we were wrought
Yearns to its fellow-clay.
12
God gives all men all earth to love,
But since man’s heart is small,
Ordains for each one spot shall prove
Beloved over all.
Each to his choice, and I rejoice
The lot has fallen to me
In a fair ground—in a fair ground—
Yea, Sussex by the sea!
P.S. A curious family footnote: Margaret Lockwood, star of The Lady Vanishes was my grandfather’s first cousin. It is widely reported that Margaret was a distant cousin of Kipling himself. So, if you squint hard enough at the family tree, I suppose that makes me something like Rudyard Kipling’s fifth cousin thrice removed. Not quite literary royalty - but I’ll take it.
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