Lovely Historic Steyning and …the Welsh Drovers

Slightly off message and continuing on my hobby horse about 19th Century Welsh Cowboys! See previous posts here and here. Just back from a few days R&R in lovely historic Steyning, West Sussex. We hired Holly cottage (which is a 200 year old former stables). Steyning is an ideal holiday location not only for some simply glorious walks in the South Downs.

The owners of the cottage had left some local history booklets which described how in the 18th and 19th Century Steyning use to hold Cattle Fair’s in the High Street.  Up to 3000 Welsh black cattle use to be there up for sale. These cattle had been herded hundreds of miles all the way from Wales usually on foot by drovers.

So instead of feeling very pleased with myself about being completely knackered after a local 11 mile hike on Tuesday around Crissbury Ring and 8 miles over the Seven Sisters coastal path today, I should have thanked my lucky stars that I hadn’t walked all the way from Wales only to then face the prospect of walking all the way back again. Regardless of the weather!

Solely in the interests of objective market research we tried all of Steyning four pubs a number of times and would recommend all of them but in particular the “Norfolk Arms” in Church Street. A completely proper traditional English pub. Full stop.

I’ll post totally “on message” another time about the Steyning riots and the Great Reform Act.