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This book has taken a decade to compile and is based on 55 years of walking the Weald, an area of South East England between the parallel chalk escarpments of the North and the South Downs..
This part of the rural Weald is one of the most intact, beautiful, and biologically rich areas of countryside in England. Yet it is profoundly threatened by the hyper-development of our region. This book is an essential tool for all who love this countryside and its wildlife and want to help defend and nurture it. Its chapters describe the area’s wildlife, geology, and landscape history. There are chapters on its forests, woods, ancient trees, archaic grassland and heath, rivers and waterlands, as well as farming and landownership, and the threats this countryside faces.
David Bangs has been in the leadership of several successful campaigns to stop the privatisation of Brighton Council’s huge Downland Estate, Worthing Council’s Downland Estate, and Eastbourne Council’s Downland Estate. He co-led the successful campaign against the privatisation (‘stock transfer’) of the City of Brighton’s council housing (2005-7). He also co-lead the Sussex campaign for the ‘right to roam’ prior to the passing of the CROW Act (Countryside and Rights of Way Act, 2000) which brought in a right to roam on certain types of ‘open country’ – mountain, moor, heath, down, and common. He was raised in Hove, and returned to Brighton after 25 years away, largely living in Kings Cross, London. He’s been a public artist (mostly painting murals), a care worker, and a gardener.
