Sussex Gorse: The Story of a Fight

Boarzell Fair had been held every year on Boarzell Moor for as long as the oldest in Peasmarsh could remember. The last Thursday in October was the date just when the woods were crumpling into brown and fogs blurred the wavy sunsets. The Moor was on the eastern edge of the parish five miles from Rye. Heaving suddenly swart out of the green water-meadows by Socknersh it piled itself towards the sunrise dipping to Leasan House. It was hummocked and tussocked with coarse grass—here and there a spread of heather growing like all southern heather almost arboreally. In places the naked soil gaped in sores made by coney-warrens or uprooted bushes. Stones and roots sharn shards and lumps of marl mixed themselves into the wealden clay which oozed in red streaks of potential fruitfulness through their sterility.