RST Route 15 Heath Common To Water Lane

1.2 miles heading NW and then SW; generally a level route with one descent of 20 metres. The route is suitable for cyclists.

The centre of Heath Common is at the junction of Vera’s Walk and Sanctuary Lane where Sanctuary Cottage, Vera Pagnell’s original home, is located. Heath Common was a fifty acre site bought by Vera, then a 25 year old, in 1922. She sought to establish a commune “The Sanctuary” where people of all classes could thrive as a community. Today the Common has moved on from the initial Spartan conditions of tents, cabins, water from a well and no electricity to being an area of mainly detached houses on fairly large and irregular plots served by narrow lanes. The NE quarter of Heath Common remains largely wooded.

Walk west to the end of Sanctuary Lane and turn right onto Hampers Lane. After 200 yards turn left onto Bracken Lane and after 400 yards, where Bracken Lane has a slight bend to the right, find a footpath in a hedge on the left. This point marks the boundary between Washington Parish and Thakeham.

The path is uneven and inclined to be muddy. It slopes downhill and after 200 yards crosses an industrial site where care is needed to avoid HGV and other traffic. This is Thakeham Tiles which has been manufacturing on this site a range of paving slabs and other products for outside use for almost a century. Formerly sand was extracted here but that deposit has been worked out; now the site is found not to be suited to current best practice and the company plans to move but within the area for ease of access to local sand, sea dredged aggregates from Shoreham etc. The site is identified in the Thakeham Neighbourhood Plan as being suitable for housing. Continue on the path which after 200 yards brings you to housing on Hillside Walk.

On leaving a short cul de sac turn right onto the main part of Hillside Walk and shortly join Rock Road and turn left. On the left are two schools. This site was from 1789 the location of the region’s workhouse which by 1853 had a capacity for 250 soles. The institution was under various organisations including West Sussex County Council which closed it in 1936. Rydon Community College was built in 1940 and functioned as a secondary school for children aged from 10 to 13 until July 2017. Now Steyning Grammer School (Rock Road) and Thakeham Primary School share the site.

Cross the front of the schools noting the fully grown Scots Pine on the right and take a footpath between Thakeham Road and the schools’ playing fields to the south. The path ends just short of the Water Lane junction with Leather Bottle Cottage on the opposite corner.

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