Arundel's Highlights at Twilight

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Leisure Walks
Aug 17
2016

16 people attending

4 places left

Your price
£10.00
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4 miles / 7 km3 hours

The chief sights along the walk will be:

Arundel: A very English town close to, but very un-English at a distance, with castle and pinnacled cathedral at either end of a ridge and mellow brick houses tumbling down to the river. But all is not what it seems: much is mock-Tudor or mock-medieval as well as real-Georgian. A prosperous, immaculate and now quite chic place with antique shops and fine restaurants aplenty.  

Arundel Castle: To a 12th-century keep and bailey were added enormous mock-medieval walls and buildings between 1890 and 1903. The wealth and might (and arrogance) of England's premier Peer of the Realm and Earl Marshal on full display!

Church of St Nicholas: Built all of a piece in 1380 in perpendicular gothic. Unique in the country for being both an Anglican parish church and a Roman Catholic chapel - the resting place of the Dukes of Norfolk.

Arundel Cathedral: The Roman Catholic Cathedral of St Philip Neri was built by the 15th Duke of Norfolk at his own expense in 1871-3. Impressive at a distance, forbidding close to, but giving Arundel its dramatic Mont St Michel-like outline.

Hiorn's Tower: The Tower is a habitable folly from 1790. It has a triangular shape with octagonal corner turrents and chequerboard stone and flint facings.

Arundel Park: This is the landscaped grounds of the castle but also an SSSI, consisting of oak woodland and open chalk grassland with lots of butterflies and downland flowers. A superb view is to be had over and beyond a broad dry valley, but the descent into it is a little steep.

Swanbourne Lake: 1000 years ago the lake fed a mill but is now the site of one of the most popular walks in Sussex. The lake is fed by chalk springs which make it a pretty shade of blue. The surrounding woodland has box trees and ancient beeches with gnarled roots in among banks of hart's tongue ferns.

River Arun: Rising near Horsham and reaching the sea at nearby Littlehampton, the Arun is least developed of the major West Sussex rivers. Arundel was a port, but nowdays the craft on the river are all for pleasure.

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