In the Footsteps of H.G.Wells

'My meals at Midhurst are the first in my life that I remember with pleasure. Her (Mrs Walton's) stews were marvellously honest and she was great at junket, custard and whortleberry and blackberry jam'. HG's comment on his landlady who ran the sweet shop, now Ye Olde Tea Shoppe, in North St.

'I spent only a month amidst the neat gilt-inscribes drawers and bottles of Mr Cowap at Midhurst, rolled a few score antibilious and rhubarb pills, broke a dozen soda-water siphons during a friendly broom fight with the errrand boy, learnt to sell patent medicines, dusted the coloured water bottles, the bust of Hahnemann and the white horse'. HG at Cowap's Chemist Shop in Church Hill, Midhurst, 1881. See Old Map of Midhurst in 1895/6. Also refer to Church Hill as the film set for Foyle's War, Series 5 which was shot here this March and April (2006).

"He came into Midhurst by the bridge at the water-mill..." The Wheels of Chance.See pic to the right. Iping Bridge to the left.

'The road to Midhurst is one of the best we have ever ridden - it is our first ride - and goes up and down like a switchback' HG on the A 272 as it was then between Petersfield and Midhurst. Editor's comment: bikers from all over the South of England head for the swoopy A 272 which has gained a bad record recently for biker accidents often with tragic results.

Midhurst is '..a remarkably pretty little town, rapidly undergoing hidification at the hands of cheap cottage builders; there are stocks.. a new town hall with clock, and a grammar school where Sir Charles Lyell, Cobden and myself were educated' ... 'Then comes Cowdray Park, with its fallow deer, fine old trees, and bracken fern, and then between banks like suburban rockeries, and through villages like transpontine scenery to Petworth, and lemonade and beer again - four bottles of lemonade and two pints of beer.' HG continuing his cycle ride, described in Specimen Day published in The Science Schools Journal No 33 of October 1891.

'I know no country to compare with West Sussex except the Cotswolds. It has its own colour, a pleasant colour of sunlit sandstone and ironstone and a warm flavour of open country because of the parks, commons and pine woods about it' HG on West Sussex.(Gardens at Woolbeding House left).

'Midhurst was a little old sunny rag-stone built town on the road from London to Chichester'

'I had taken to Midhurst from the outset. It had been the home of my grandparents, and that gave me a sense of belonging there. It was a real place in my mind and not a morbid sprawl of population like Bromley (HG was born in Bromley). Its shops and school and post office and church were grouped in rational comprehensible relations. It had a beginning, a middle and an end'

Midhurst has always been a happy place for me.I supposed it rained there at times but all my memories of Midhurst are in sunshine'

'Wimblehurst (Midhurst) is an exceptionally quiet and gray Sussex town, rare among south of England towns in being built of stone. I found something very agreeable in its clean, cobbled streets, its odd turnings, and abrupt corners. and its pleasant park that crowds up one side of the town' - Tono Bungay.

Editor's Comment: More walks are in preparation, and more information about HG's life in and around Midhurst and South Harting,which was his immediate stamping ground when he was resident at Uppark. Wherever possible I'll provide links to other sources of interesting related information. (Monet style bridge at Iping right).

[MIDHURST PAGES - MIDHURST TOWN & COMMUNITY] [IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF H.G.WELLS]

[THE IPING-MIDHURST WALK AND MAP]

[MORE PICTURES AMID H.G. WELLS QUOTABLE QUOTES]